lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story, although I might do more with it, probably as one-shots, in the future.

Part Four

“Harry, what are you wearing.”

Harry glances at her, and perhaps he can hear that there isn’t a question in her voice, because his lips twitch. “A badge, Hermione.”

“What does it say.”

“You know perfectly well. I thought you were a good reader.”

Hermione folds her arms and scowls at him. Harry’s badge says FUCK.

All right, when she looks more closely, she can see that it says F.U.C.K. But still.

“Do you think it’s an appropriate thing to wear on the Hogwarts Express, where impressionable children are around?”

Harry stretches out on the seat in their compartment and gives her a lazy smile. “Hardly any of them are looking at me anyway, Hermione. They’re too busy whispering that I’m a Dark Lord and shrieking and running if I turn to stare directly at them.”

That’s true, as much as Hermione wishes it weren’t. She folds her arms and says, “What does it even stand for?”

“Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge.”

“But you have more than unicorns in the sanctuary now?”

“Of course I do, but that’s why the official foundation name doesn’t just contain unicorns. But I made these badges,” Harry says, and flicks a finger against the edge of the one he’s wearing. “And it would be a shame to waste them.”

Hermione sighs, but if he wants to have his fun, she can hardly fault him. And honestly, after months of watching people run away from Harry and gape at him and gossip behind his back, she isn’t as upset about the badges as she once would have been. If Professor McGonagall wanted a Head Girl who perfectly followed the rules, she should have chosen one who wasn’t on the run for almost a year.

“All right. Just don’t complain to me if it gets you in trouble.”

“I won’t. You’re the best, Hermione.”

Hermione gives Harry a bright smile back, since at the moment he’s acting more like the Harry she remembers than he has in months, and heads to the compartment where the prefects are having their meeting. Ernie Macmillan, the Head Boy, stands up as soon as Hermione walks through the door.

“Granger, have you seen what Potter is wearing?”

There really must have been a better choice for Head Boy, Hermione thinks crossly, and settles in for an argument.

*

Draco hates the feeling of lurking beside the train at King’s Cross. But this is the last chance to speak to Potter before everyone floods off the train and away for the Christmas hols, and Mother isn’t here, anyway. She understandably doesn’t go out in public much anymore.

Potter gets off the train, one of the last people. Weasley and Granger trail him, of course, flapping and squawking like a pair of chickens.

At least it’s not Theodore. Bloody Theodore, acting like he’s Potter’s friend and he’s so much better just because he doesn’t have the bloody Dark Mark on his arm…

Draco shakes his head. If he lets himself linger in thoughts like that, he’s going to miss his chance.

Potter turns around to say something to Weasley and Granger, and Draco moves.

He casts himself at Potter’s feet, and grabs hold of his ankles.

Potter stares down at Draco. His brain seems to have deserted him. His mouth is slightly open, and he has one hand raised to an obnoxious badge that he’s probably only wearing because he made it in imitation of Draco’s clever idea several years ago. He opens and closes his mouth, and says nothing.

Then he does. “Let go of my feet, Malfoy.”

Draco gazes up at him. He ignores the stares from the sides. They don’t matter. Only Potter matters, and if Potter gives Draco the share of the Black Galleons that he should have rightfully inherited, then Draco can buy back any respect he lost. “I need you to listen to me,” he insists. “Only listen.”

“I am not listening to you, Malfoy, get the fuck up—”

Draco bows his head. “Do you need me to be pitiful and humble?” he whispers, holding onto Potter’s feet harder. That’s what Potter likes, he knows, because that’s what house-elves do. “Because I can. Do you want to hear how terrible my life is without the money that should have been mine? I can do that. Please give me enough Galleons that I can have five thousand every month for the rest of my life, and I’ll leave you in peace. I know you’d like that. Please, Potter.”

Potter’s feet twitch. Draco knows that some of the people staring at them are going to get upset with Potter instead of Draco. Potter is probably thinking about how quickly he can run out of here.

Not very fast, with me holding onto him.

Then Potter twitches his foot out of Draco’s hold, and kicks him so hard in the chest that he goes sprawling, and wheezing. Draco grips his heart with one hand and looks up, struggling to catch his breath. He thinks he might have broken ribs.

Potter glares at him with those glittering eyes that Draco finds so unpleasant and unrefined. “Get fucked, Malfoy,” he says, loudly enough that people start a whole new wave of gasping and chattering. “I’m not giving you a single solitary Galleon, no matter how much you imitate a house-elf. They still have more integrity than you ever will.”

And he turns and walks over to one of the Floos, tossing powder in and vanishing in a green gush of flame.

Draco keeps lying where he fell, not caring about the tears running down his cheeks, not caring about what people will think of him.

Because what matters most is that they’ll think of him as poor.

It’s intolerable. And not refined.

*

“Are you sure that you want to eat up in your room instead of at the table, Harry, dear?”

“Perfectly, Mrs. Weasley.”

“Please call me Molly, dear.”

Harry gives her a bland smile, scoops up the dinner tray that she prepared for him, and trots up to Charlie’s room, which he’s been using since he came to stay with them yesterday. He said he didn’t want to sleep in Ron’s room.

Molly can see the reasoning behind that. Harry and Ron did share a room this summer, and did share a tent for most of last year. But she thinks there’s something more behind it when he won’t even eat with the family.

She sighs and walks into the dining room, then has to draw her wand to keep the potatoes from spilling all over the floor as Ginny attempts to drown Ron in them. “Ginny! Ron! Sit down this instant!”

“I just said you had to think about it—”

“Maybe you should think about it, Mr. Abandoner of Quests!”

Molly sighs again and steps in. “Dear, please release your brother’s hair. And I don’t think we need to talk about that right now, do we? We’re trying to have a nice family dinner.” A dinner that Percy isn’t here for, this time, but Molly hopes that he will be, in a few days, when they have their Christmas celebration.

“I just want him to stop saying that Harry stopped dating me because I betrayed him,” Ginny says hotly, flopping into her chair. Blushing does nothing for her at all, the poor dear.

“Why else would he stop dating you? He thinks—”

“Well, we know that you actually betrayed him—”

This time, they nearly upset the stew. Molly rescues it just in time and glares both of them into their chairs. She thinks she can see why Harry took his dinner upstairs, especially if Ron and Ginny were acting like this on the train.

“I think we should stop having this discussion,” she says firmly, and nods to Arthur, who looks at her with unmistakable relief. “Please pass the stew, dear.”

“But Mum, aren’t you worried about why Harry is acting this way?”

Molly gives her third sigh of the evening as she ladles out the stew. Yes, in a way she is, but in another, she thinks that Harry is dealing with his losses and grief the best way he sees fit. Perhaps it’s unusual to found a magical creature sanctuary instead of doing—literally anything else, but Molly thinks the poor child has been through so much that it’s not surprising his grief is taking an unusual outlet.

“I think we should trust him, and at the moment, he’s not harming other people—”

“He hung that one bloke in the air in the middle of the Great Hall and showed people where he’d torn strips of skin off him—”

“That man was a poacher.” Oh, and now dear Hermione is involved, slamming her own bowl down hard enough on the table to make Molly wince, and spinning towards Ron. “You saw him, I saw him—”

“Then he should have turned the bloke over to the Ministry! Not—not tortured him like that!”

“Do you think the Ministry is going to do anything? Have you heard about the Ministry doing anything since Harry turned him in?”

“Then that means Harry should—I don’t know, work for stricter laws against people who try to poach unicorns or something, not—”

Molly shoots a firework into the air above the table. It spits and rolls, shedding fat purple sparks that fall to the table and make more than one person shriek and dive for cover. Molly is sorry for the memories of the twins and the war that it probably invokes, but it serves its purpose. Both Ron and Hermione have shut up by the time the firework has dissipated and everyone is sitting in their chairs again.

“That’s enough,” she says quietly.

Ron and Ginny exchange sheepish glances, and Hermione nods with her head a little bowed. Molly sighs and sits down again.

“I know that all of us are worried about Harry,” she says, looking around the table and making sure that everyone is paying attention. “That doesn’t mean we need to harass the poor boy and drive him away from us.”

“But, Mum—”

“No, Ron. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I don’t want him to end up like Fred, that’s all,” Ron mumbles into his plate.

Molly is glad that George isn’t at dinner tonight, because that statement might have resulted in an actual attack. She sits upright and lets her eyes glint at her youngest son. “Fred died in the middle of battle, Ron. I trust that Harry won’t have any kind of reason to put himself into that situation any time soon.”

“I mean—I just don’t want Harry dead because of his recklessness or because he doesn’t think things through.”

Yes, definitely a good thing that George isn’t here tonight. “That’s not the reason Fred died, either,” Molly says, and firmly changes the subject. “Ginny, darling, didn’t you say that you thought the Holyhead Harpies are looking for a new player?”

“Oh, Mum, I wouldn’t be hired as a professional Seeker right out of Hogwarts!”

“But you could become a Chaser, couldn’t you?”

“You really think I could be a professional Quidditch player?”

Well, it’s not the career that Molly envisioned for her little girl, but she didn’t think that she would have to go through a war, either. She smiles comfortingly at Ginny. “I do. You have enough skill.”

“And you have one of the best living Quidditch players upstairs right now,” Ron says, propping his elbows on the table and ignoring the little warning jiggle the table gives. It’s been enchanted not to put up with that kind of nonsense. “He could train you! If he ever gets his head out of his arse about this stupid magical creature sanctuary.”

“Ron! This is one of the only things that matters to Harry right now, and—”

Molly sighs as the argument begins again, and scoops up her own bowl and plate. She will eat dinner in her and Arthur’s room, and hope that at least some of her children have moved past their sense of betrayal at Harry’s decisions when she comes down again.

*

“Mate?”

“Yeah, Ron?”

“Do you think that Ginny could become a professional Quidditch player?”

Harry blinks and quits looking out Charlie’s window to turn back and face Ron. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. Why are you asking me instead of her?”

“I did ask her! I mean, Mum asked her. But Ginny seemed a little doubtful, and I said that maybe you could train her if—”

Ron trails off as he remembers what else he said. Harry laughs softly.

“It doesn’t really matter to me, Ron. Ginny should do whatever makes her happy. And not wait for me to train her or do anything else with her. I already told her that.” Harry leans an elbow on the windowsill and goes back to staring.

“Well, but why? Come on, mate. This is supposed to be your peace, the life you won! You can do anything you want, so why are you wasting your time on setting up the sanctuary and protecting magical creatures and everything?”

Harry twists around to look at him. “Is that really the way you see it, Ron? That I’m wasting my time?”

Ron swallows, remembering the bloke in the middle of the Great Hall. But, well, he does trust Harry to never hurt him. If he doesn’t, then he might as well walk away right now and give up on their friendship.

“Yeah,” he says doggedly. “Because you never had an interest in creatures like Hagrid or Luna did before. This seems like a random idea you woke up with. Or didn’t even have until Hermione said something about unicorns, from what she told me. Why are you so committed to it?”

“I could tell you, but I don’t think you would understand.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Harry studies Ron, his gaze distant and cool. Ron swallows the temptation to take a step back. It’s like he doesn’t even know his best friend anymore, but he’s going to try and know him. That means he has to listen.

Harry nods as if he thought that Ron was going to move away, and then he says, “I woke up here this summer and I listened to you snoring—” Ron bites his tongue on an instinctive protest “—and the birds singing outside the window, and I thought about how I was alive to hear those things. And before that I just felt gratitude, that I managed to escape death, come back from death even.

“But then I started thinking about how many people just take that kind of thing for granted. They can hear birds every day of their lives. They grew up with siblings, with parents, with people snoring they didn’t dread sleeping in the same house as.” Harry leans forwards a little. “If it was just the Dursleys, or just having to walk to my death, or just being betrayed a few times, or just being treated unreasonably in the papers, then maybe I could have put up with it. But all together? That’s more than any human being should have to deal with.”

Ron agrees, but he still doesn’t understand. “So you woke up and started thinking about that, and that’s when you decided that you were going to be unreasonable to everyone in your life?”

Harry smiles. It’s a smile that Ron doesn’t ever want to see again. “You think putting a lot of work into running a magical creature sanctuary is being unreasonable? That’s an interesting idea.”

“Harry, you just—I don’t understand—I would understand if you were spending all these Black Galleons on indulgences for yourself. It might not be the best idea, but I would understand it. Or if you were spending them on rescuing house-elves and other things that Hermione thinks are a good idea. But I don’t understand what you’re doing, no.”

“I’m rescuing people who need my help. I can’t deny that impulse. I’m just a bit disgusted with humans right now. But magical creatures still need my help. So I’m helping them.” Harry turns back to the window.

“What happens if you get bored of it?”

“I’ll make sure that someone takes over the sanctuary who has all the support and the passion and the Galleons they need. But I don’t think I’ll get tired of it any time soon. People have a breaking point, you know? This was mine.”

Ron closes his eyes. He hoped having a conversation with his best mate would clarify everything, and—well, it has? But not in the way he hoped for. Not in the way that makes it sound like Harry is going to come back to him.

He turns around and leaves Charlie’s room, walking back to his own and falling on his bed so that he can look up at the ceiling. He wishes Hermione was here, but even though they’re dating, his mum doesn’t like them sleeping in the same room. Maybe especially because they’re dating.

Well. Ron closes his eyes. He supposes Harry could have chosen less productive ways to express his angst and upset people. At least this way, he’s right, some magical creatures are getting helped.

And it’s not like he has dragons in his sanctuary. So that’s something.

*

An owl flutters to Harry’s window around midnight. He could have closed it and gone to bed, but he didn’t particularly want to. Sitting here and looking out into the darkness, breathing the sounds and scents of the field behind the Burrow, are a good substitute for the peace that the sanctuary fills him with.

He opens it, curious if it’s another plea from Malfoy to give him money. If Harry’s honest, just the thought of Malfoy falling on his knees and grasping at Harry’s feet makes him want to laugh like a Fwooper.

But it’s from Theodore. Harry casts a Lumos so he can read it.

Dear Harry,

It turns out that my father bought a few other beasts to replace the ones that I liberated from his pens and kennels. I had no idea that he still had the resources, or I would have acted to block them.

Would you like me to liberate those, as well? Do you have room in the sanctuary?

Your friend,
Theodore.

Harry smiles. He does consider Theodore a friend. Outside of Hagrid and Luna, Theodore is the only who has entered fully into the spirit of the sanctuary, and stopped worrying about what Harry means to do with it.

He lays the letter next to him to answer later and leans his head on the side of the window, contemplating the splashes of moonlight like silver pools on the field. The night air is thick and sweet in his lungs.

He told Ron the truth. He did wake up that day—it might have been any day, but it turned out to be that day—and thought, What am I doing, only being grateful?

And the anger welled up in him. The anger that apparently, other people were allowed to feel, but not him. The fear. The weariness. The hatred, the loathing, for the people who were already saying that he’s probably the next Dark Lord, and how much they fear him, and Harry should just nod and smile and not respond, because “responding would do no good.”

Well, certain responses don’t do any good, sure. But one that will help him help people who need it while also upsetting a whole lot of others because they just don’t understand why Harry is pouring Galleons into this project? That he can do.

Ron said it. He would understand if Harry was using the money for his own self-indulgence or at the direction of his friends, but he doesn’t understand the way Harry is spending it. Because on himself or for his friends are the only ways he should do that, apparently.

Harry shakes his head. He’s doing what he wants, and even if it took Hermione to suggest the unicorns to him, and even if the sanctuary has grown beyond unicorns now, he’s still doing what he wants.

The shock, the horror, the fear when they saw the way Harry had punished the poacher who crept into the Forest…

All of it soothes his soul. Because he’s alive, and he’s doing things this way.

He picks up Theodore’s letter, and pauses as another owl flutters to the windowsill. This one is a nondescript tawny owl who looks a little like the one Serenity uses to communicate with him. Harry gives the bird an owl treat from his pocket and opens the letter, holding it up the Lumos light. Maybe she heard about the F.U.C.K. badge he wore on the Express and is writing to scold him for it.

Dear most esteemed Harry Potter,

You may not believe this, but I, Draco Malfoy, only have five hundred robes left to wear instead of five thousand. If you could give me the Black Galleons, it would be—

Harry’s laughter makes the owl flutter in startlement and might be loud enough to wake up everyone in the house, but he doesn’t care. He carefully lights the letter on fire, shoos the owl who brought it away without a response, and grins up at the moon.

Not every response is acceptable or will do anything, but frustrating Malfoy is a good beginning to a new year.

And so is being alive.

The End.