[From Litha to Lammas]: Take This Man, R, Harry/Lucius, 4/6

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Four

Harry woke up, cradled in pillows and blankets as soft as flowing water, and wondered if it would be wrong of him to marry Lucius Malfoy for his guest bedroom furniture.

He sat up and stretched, then strolled over to the window. Malfoy had Transfigured a few robes for Harry to use as pyjamas and daywear, and the house-elves had brought Harry a toothbrush and the other things he’d needed for an overnight stay, so he hadn’t suffered at all because of his unexpected departure from Longbottom Manor. Harry didn’t think he’d had a night’s sleep so rich and uninterrupted since he went to the Manor, either.

He leaned his elbows on the sill of his window and stared.

Where the Longbottoms mostly had gardens and greenhouses of all types, Malfoy Manor seemed to default to endless fields of flowers. The ones spreading out under Harry’s window were blue-violet, a stunning color that Harry thought he might never get tired of looking at. Here and there was a statue or a fountain or a bench, but mostly it was flowers.

No wonder he was able to get the daffodils for me. I wonder what his second courting gift will be.

Harry shook his head a little. It felt—strange to be thinking this way. Surely he should be worrying about what Ian and the Longbottoms would do when they found him gone. Surely he should be upset and shaking, and panicking over the revelation about Horcruxes.

But maybe he had simply gone too far into fear and anger with Malfoy’s revelation that they would have killed him. Maybe he needed to stand here and stare at the flowers and process for a bit.

Hedwig circled down to land on his sill with a happy hoot. Harry smiled and drew his wand to thicken the cloth of the robe on his shoulder so that she could land there instead. Hedwig leaped into the air with a flutter of her wings and settled on her new perch, reaching out to delicately preen a strand of Harry’s hair.

“What do you think, Hedwig? Should we stay here?”

Hedwig hooted softly.

“It is pretty nice,” Harry said, and stood in the early morning warmth with Hedwig preening his hair for a short time longer. He could make out the wards if he squinted. They were stronger than the Longbottoms’ and also—felt gentler, for lack of a better term. Harry wondered if that was because he was more welcome to the master of Malfoy Manor than he ever had been to the mistress of the Longbottom wards.

A pop sounded behind him, and Harry turned around to see a small house-elf bowing to him. She had large blue eyes and a clean tea towel around her waist.

“Master Lucius’s compliments, and would Master Harry like to come downstairs to breakfast?”

“After I have a shower,” Harry said. It was a test, both to see how the house-elf reacted and how Malfoy would react to a delay.

The elf just nodded. “Very good, sir. You will find the towels and toiletries in the bathroom which is yours.” She pointed towards the door on the other side of the room which Harry hadn’t had time to explore last night.

Harry nodded, and the elf vanished. Harry sighed and spent a moment longer stroking Hedwig.

Then he opened the other door, stared at the shower that was three-quarters of the enormous room, and wondered if it would be wrong to marry Lucius Malfoy for his guest bathroom, instead.

*

“Good morning, Mr. Potter.”

There was an odd tone in Malfoy’s voice. Harry halted on the last step of the staircase that led down to the dining room, wondering if he had accidentally put on his borrowed blue robes inside out or something. Malfoy was staring at him.

“Good morning, Mr. Malfoy. I thought you would call me by my first name.”

“Technically I should not, as you have not yet granted me formal permission for another courtship.”

Harry sighed gustily and crossed the distance between him and the table, settling into the seat beside Malfoy’s where a plate and cutlery had already been set for him. “I grant you permission,” he said. “And if I get to choose my first gift, it’s a set of those sheets. Second gift, one of those bathrooms.”

Malfoy smiled. It transformed his face, and once again, Harry wondered if he was seeing the real expression. “You shall have far more than that, I promise you, whether we wed or not.”

“Why were you staring at me? Did I button the robes wrong?”

“I find that I like the sight of you wearing my clothes.”

Harry was glad that he hadn’t managed to bring a scoop of sliced fruit or sausages or anything else decorating the table to his mouth yet. He flushed so hot that he reached for the glass of water in front of him instead of the teacup. And then he made himself sit back in his chair and meet Malfoy’s eyes.

He deserved this, he reminded himself. He had gone through so much suffering for something that Ian and the others should have done differently, should have told him about, and he deserved this.

“You should know one thing about me,” he announced.

“I feel that I should know many things about you.” Malfoy propped his chin in his hand and smiled at Harry, a gentle, happy smile that made Harry wonder how many he had. “But do tell me what you’re thinking of at the moment.”

“I’m a virgin.”

Malfoy started coughing, even though he hadn’t even been drinking anything. “What?” he managed to choke out, as his eyes watered.

“I’m. A. Virgin. I can draw you a diagram if you like.”

“That’s not necessary,” Malfoy said, and his coughing ground to a halt. “I assume that you—that you know what sex with a man involves?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then that’s not something I’m worried about.” Malfoy leaned back in his chair. “But I would like to ask a few questions. If I might?” Harry waved his hand, and Malfoy said, “First, why did you want me to know that about you?”

“You might have expectations that I wouldn’t be able to meet. If you want someone who’s experienced with all sorts of flirtation and sexual games, then I can’t be even your lover, much less your husband.”

“That will not be necessary,” Malfoy repeated. He was still staring at Harry with what seemed to be unabashed fondness—well, maybe more like fascination right now. “And second, how is it that you are a virgin?”

“Do you need a diagram of how it doesn’t go?”

Malfoy struggled for a moment that made Harry wonder if he had finally said something insulting enough to make him retreat, and then he gave in and laughed. The sound was bell-like and made Harry’s stomach do a happy swoop.

Really, he didn’t know what he was doing. A lot of the same things that had been true yesterday were still true, and some were worse. But he felt happy, and free, and he was going to enjoy that feeling as long as it lasted.

“No,” Malfoy said at last. “I simply assumed you would have been approached by people at Hogwarts. If not those who could appreciate you—I do not think there are many who could—then those who would want to control or influence your brother. Or those who would admire your looks and simply want sex.”

Harry felt a little of his good mood evaporate. He sighed. “Well, almost all the people I spent time around were Ian’s friends, really. His circle, I heard him call them several times—”

“You’re sure that he used that term?”

Harry tilted a look at Malfoy as he used his fork to spear a sausage. They were really good. “Yes. But not Inner Circle, if you think that he reminds you of your—former lord.”

Malfoy didn’t smile this time. “Who were the members of this circle? All the ones you can remember. It is important.”

Harry didn’t doubt that, from Malfoy’s tone, but he took a few minutes of thinking and chewing to make sure that he was counting all of them. Then he nodded and put down his fork. “If you count the people at Hogwarts, Ian, Ron Weasley, Neville, Ginny, Fred and George Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Luna Lovegood. The other Weasley siblings, too, and the Weasley parents. And Augusta.”

“No one outside of that?”

“No one that I heard of,” Harry admitted with a shrug. “I wasn’t around when Ian was growing up, of course, but I can’t remember him mentioning anyone else. And I think the only people who really got added once he started Hogwarts were Hermione and Luna. Maybe not even Luna. She lives in Ottery St. Catchpole near the Weasleys, so she spent a lot of time with them. Just not as much time as the Weasleys and Longbottoms did together.”

Malfoy nodded. His face was tense, carved with grim lines. “How did Granger get added?”

“Ian and Ron saved her from a troll in our first year. It turned out the troll had been let in by Quirrell, who was possessed by Voldemort.”

Malfoy sucked in a hissing breath at the name, but didn’t otherwise react. He was thinking, though, from the blur as his fingers tapped on the table. Then he said, “How do—or did—the others regard Ian?”

“Neville thinks of him as a brother. He was Ginny’s ideal boyfriend, and Augusta’s child. He’s Ron’s best friend, and I think the Weasley parents’ child, too. I didn’t really see him interacting much with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and the older siblings, though. Fred and George Weasley always talked about how much they looked forward to having him as a brother-in-law. Luna said he was the one who drove her wrackspurts away.”

“Wrackspurts?”

Harry shrugged, not really knowing how to explain Luna. “She believes in largely imaginary creatures. But I had the feeling that wrackspurts were the way she talks about fuzzy thoughts that make it hard for her to understand things. She said I increased her wrackspurts.”

“And Miss Granger?”

“What? She didn’t talk about wrackspurts.”

“No. I mean, how does she think of your brother?”

“She says that he’s her best friend, too. She and Ron and Ian used to fight a lot about various things during school, and Hermione was practically frantic when that happened. I think she was really worried about being left behind if Ron and Ian healed their friendship but decided to exclude her.”

“She need not have worried about that.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. Not if I am right. And from what you have told me, I think I am.” Malfoy sat back in his seat. “There is one piece of information that might change what I am thinking, however. Where does your godfather fit into this?”

Harry sighed. He hated thinking about Sirius. “He spent twelve years in Azkaban for a crime that he didn’t commit, but everyone thought he did. They thought he betrayed our parents to Pettigrew and that he was the one who passed information to the Lestranges about how to break through the Longbottom wards. Ian didn’t want to go live with him because his home was with Augusta, and I volunteered to, but Sirius was insistent that it had to be both of us or neither. I think it’s because he had a younger brother who died, and he thought that—if he’d stayed with Regulus, he could have saved him somehow. Or something like that. He wasn’t very clear. I mostly didn’t see him, and then the last thing I heard was that he’d gone to the Department of Mysteries to rescue Ian when he broke in there with some of the others, and died there.”

“Not one of the circle, then.”

“No, Ian never called him that. Is the term important?”

“I believe so.” Malfoy closed his eyes for a moment. “But the explanation is deeply unpleasant, and not one that you would probably care to hear over breakfast.”

Harry studied him. “I’m not going to like hearing this, am I?”

“No. But I believe you will need to.”

“I just want some answers, Malfoy,” Harry said quietly, reaching across the table to grip Malfoy’s hand for a moment. “If you can give them to me, then I’ll be happy to let you open the courtship back up. You’re the only person who’s been honest with me in years, it feels like. I thought they were being honest about their hatred and the reason for it, but I don’t think that now.”

Malfoy lifted Harry’s hand to his lips. “Please call me Lucius.”

Harry opened his mouth to tell him that was irrelevant, but then looked closely at Malfoy—Lucius—and nodded. He was learning to trust again, he thought. He knew that Lucius was going to tell him the truth. He didn’t need to ask for it right now.

He finished breakfast, leaving his hand in Lucius’s hold.

*

When they left the dining room, Harry thought at first they were going back to the sitting room with the silver clock, and tensed. But Lucius glanced at him and shook his head.

“We need to go into my library so that I can show you in visual form what I think happened. But I will not bring you into the room with the Magus Marker, or use such a thing on you again without forewarning.”

Harry relaxed a little and nodded. “Thank you.”

“I never wish to mistreat you again, Harry. I meant what I said before. Your courage is remarkable, and you have caused me to change. Please tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable again.”

Harry caught his breath. Lucius’s eyes shone with something Harry at least thought was sincerity. He nodded again. “I will.”

“Good. Here we are.”

Lucius opened a door that swung so smoothly out of the way Harry almost thought it was made of light instead of the wood it appeared to be. He stared around at the looming bookshelves with deep appreciation. This place made the Longbottom library look as pitiful as the tiny library at Harry’s Muggle school.

“Please come over here.”

Harry walked over to a polished table that extended most of the way across the back of the room. He wondered for a moment why it was so big, but then realized that it was so someone could unroll enormous pieces of parchment on it, the way Lucius was doing right now.

“Now,” Lucius said, and began to draw on the parchment. Harry leaned over to look, but it just seemed to be a series of concentric circles, increasing in size as Lucius drew them. The third one was the largest, and completely enclosed the other two.

“What are the most powerful magical numbers, Harry?” Lucius looked up at him with a lock of blond hair dangling in his eyes that made Harry’s fingers itch to brush it out of the way.

“I never did take Arithmancy.”

“I have faith in your ability to have absorbed the knowledge elsewhere.”

Harry sighed a little. “Three, seven, and thirteen.”

Lucius nodded. “And where have you heard the term circle discussed, other than by your brother and in discussions of the Death Eaters?”

Harry was about to say that he hadn’t paid much attention in History, either—which Lucius should know from their discussion about Binns on their first courtship outing—but he bit it back. He did know.

“In rituals,” he whispered.

Lucius nodded, and began to label the circles. Harry eased to the side to watch him, although he wondered if it would be in Latin. But Lucius was just writing names. The smallest circle, the one in the middle, was labeled Ian, Neville, Augusta.

Harry swallowed. It felt as if a cold hand had gripped the back of his neck.

Lucius moved to the second circle, the medium-sized one, and wrote Seven Weasley children. By the last word, he drew a complicated-looking star that resembled a snowflake more than anything, and then wrote Ginny’s name.

Harry frowned as Lucius moved to the largest circle, because he had thought of a flaw with the man’s theory, but didn’t interrupt. He was still curious to see exactly what Lucius was going to say about the meaning of the circles.

And imprisoning his own feelings at a distance, so that he wouldn’t simply fly into a rage at the thought that he’d been left out.

Lucius wrote quickly and neatly around the outside of the largest circle: Neville, Augusta, Molly, Arthur, Fred, George, Ron, Ginny, Charlie, Bill, Percy, Hermione, Luna. Then he stepped back and stared at Harry.

“That last one doesn’t work,” Harry said as gently as he could, because it was going to be a disappointment for both him and Lucius if the man’s theory wasn’t actually correct. “You can only make it thirteen people by excluding Ian.”

Lucius smiled tightly and tapped his quill against the middle circle. “He is not in this one, either, is he?”

“Well, no…”

“One circle that includes him.” Lucius tapped the innermost circle. “One that surrounds him but does not include him, but does have seven children, and the last a daughter, the seventh child of a seventh child.” A tap on the second circle. “One that is centered on him, and overlaps with the others, but is not identical to either.” A tap on the last circle.

Harry stared at the circles in silence, then shook his head. “I’m not as smart as you think I am, because I don’t understand this.”

“Please do not disparage your own intelligence,” Lucius said, in a low voice that nevertheless made Harry shut up completely. “I think quite enough of that has happened in the past.”

Harry swallowed and nodded, remembering all the times someone had called him stupid for letting Ginny die. “All right. Thanks. But I still don’t understand it.”

“They created an immense ritual,” Lucius said quietly, and leaned back against the shelf behind him, eyes closed, as if he had conducted the ritual instead of simply drawing the circles. “Involving all the most powerful numbers, with people as the moving parts, across years. They needed a thirteenth person, and they found one in Miss Granger. Some people were closer, some were more like outsiders. They played different roles in your brother’s life. The runes they were talking about…”

He hesitated and opened his eyes, looking at Harry. “I can cast a spell on you that would reveal the answer to a question I can’t answer as it stands. But the spell is painful and invasive. I would need your permission.”

“Do it.”

“I have not even described—”

“It can’t be more painful than being part of something like this and not being told the truth about it.” Harry couldn’t look away from the circles on the parchment. “And as for invasive, I want to fucking know.”

Lucius paused as if he assumed Harry would change his mind, but then nodded and drew his wand. Harry was glad. He was shaking, the rage flooding his veins again, his mind on fire with the longing to know.

Lucius gestured with his wand in a pattern of three circles, and whispered, “Revelio scriptum animi.”

Harry shrieked as what felt like lye scraped across every surface of his skin. But the pain didn’t last more than a second. The more disturbing sensation was what felt like hands digging past his skin, into his soul.

He opened his eyes, watering with tears of pain, and saw the air around him flare with runes, floating on a grey light that seemed originate from him.

Lucius stared at the runes, leaning a little closer so that, Harry supposed, he could see all the runes and be able to clearly revise them later in a Pensieve. The light winked out a moment after Lucius nodded, and this time he sagged against the shelf instead of leaning against it, taking a deep breath.

“What did they do?” Harry demanded, barely recognizing his own voice.

Lucius swallowed and looked up at him. “Your brother was marked by Fate,” he said. “The scar on his head, the prophecy that stalked him. That much, I suspect you already knew.”

“Yes. Get on with it, Lucius.”

Lucius nodded and visibly forced himself to straighten, lashing out with his wand. Grey light poured over the edge of the parchment, and the runes—the same ones, as far as Harry could tell—formed around the circles Lucius had drawn. Harry glared at them, but he couldn’t make out the meaning.

I really should have taken Ancient Runes.

“This ritual is a comprehensive attempt to change the course of Fate.” Lucius lightly touched the rune that was nearest to him, but which Harry couldn’t see clearly from where he stood. “Sowilo. A rune of power. Repeated over and over again, chained to Perthro, a rune for destiny—for destiny that can be guided, or changed.”

“So what were they trying to do?”

“They were trying to give your brother the power to defeat the Dark Lord, and a joyous life.” A smile haunted Lucius’s lips for a moment, yet another one Harry had never seen before. “But there was a complicating factor.”

“What was it?”

Lucius looked up. “You.”

Harry swallowed.

“If it had been simply that Ian had a sibling, I don’t think they would have needed to do what they did,” Lucius said. “But he had a twin brother, and you were growing up separated from him. I do not believe that they could have conceived this ritual when he first came to live with Augusta. For one thing, I think it unlikely they would have known about Horcruxes at the time. And things were left up to some chance, or Miss Granger would not have become part of the circle.”

“So what happened with me?”

“Perhaps they entertained early ideas that you could be folded into the ritual. It would explain why the third circle contained only twelve people who were not your brother. But they came up with something else instead.” Lucius reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand, leading it to the parchment. “Here.”

Harry craned his neck as his fingers brushed one of the runes. It looked like two crossed sticks, but the moment he touched it, a sharp burst of pain tore through him, worse than the spell Lucius had cast. He snatched his hand back with a cry.

“I am sorry—”

“The pain stopped when I stopped touching it. Tell me what it means.”

“This is Nauthiz. It can mean overcoming adversity, but it can also mean that adversity. Misery. The darkness at the heart of winter.” Lucius looked at Harry, and there was a quiet sorrow in his eyes that Harry couldn’t remember anyone ever feeling for him. “They channeled the misery of your brother’s Fate towards you. And because the others in your brother’s circle were themselves components of the ritual, they, too, achieved joyous lives, although not to the extent that your brother did.”

Harry swallowed again and again. His mind was full of the cupboard, and the darkness where he had lain shivering without food, and the words that the Dursleys had screamed at him. “They—they made my Muggle relatives abuse me?”

“No,” Lucius said sharply. “But they increased the total evil that you suffered. I believe that your relatives would have mistreated you even without this, but others, I believe, would not have. And if the ritual had not been constructed this way, your brother and the others would not have hated you so. What you have described, what these runes foretell, is more than knowing how fragile the foundation of their happiness is. Their hatred is a price you paid.”

Harry bowed his head.

Lucius stepped around the table and embraced him. Harry leaned on him, too exhausted for tears.

His mind was full of Ian and Neville and Ron and Fred and George talking about the memories of their childhood as blessed, so happy, idyllic. Harry had assumed they were ignoring the bad parts of it, but—maybe it really had been that way. Because they had made sure it would be.

He shuddered and broke free of Lucius’s hold. Lucius let him go, although he remained nearby, hovering, as if he thought Harry would collapse.

Harry wanted to kill things, not collapse, but he didn’t want to kill Lucius, or even Lucius’s books. He stared at the scrolls covered with circles and runes, and swallowed back the temptation to light them on fire.

“How did they get the runes on me?”

“What?”

“I don’t remember them visiting me in the Muggle world. How did they inscribe the runes on me? Did they Memory Charm me afterwards?” Harry wouldn’t have put it past them to do that. He wouldn’t put anything past them at all.

“They were not inscribed on your skin, Harry. They were inscribed in your aura. Your magic. And they could have done that by inscribing them in Ian’s aura.”

“Because we share a connection,” Harry whispered. “Because we’re twins.”

“Yes.”

Harry put his hands over his face. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to do or think. The desire to kill things was there, but it was overwhelmed by the vast, surging wave of How could they?

“It will not endure.”

“I don’t see how it won’t,” Harry whispered, without looking at Lucius. “They inscribed the runes on my aura. That’s not the kind of thing that’s going to fade.”

“But Ginny is dead.”

Harry nodded. “Yes. That fact defined my life. And I know why they hate me. Because they were all bound in this circle together, and the runes would make them protective of her and hate any outsider—”

“What did I tell you about the ritual, Harry?”

Harry stirred a little, angrily. He wanted to hide and not think. But it seemed that Lucius wouldn’t let him do that, so he lifted his head. “That it was made of three circles, thirteen and seven and ten. And that it was made to turn aside the force of Fate.”

Lucius was smiling at him. Harry narrowed his eyes and took a step forwards, but Lucius held up a quick hand. “Yes. And the ritual, to work, relied on all its components. They took a great risk by waiting to include a thirteenth person in the third circle. They needed to have—”

“Get to the fucking point, Lucius.”

Lucius’s eyes widened a little, but he did say, quickly, “With one member of the circles dead, the ritual is broken.”

Harry stopped moving and stared at Lucius. Finally he said, out of the blank, buzzing cloud that his mind seemed to have become, “I don’t know what that means.”

“The ritual is incomplete. Fading.” Lucius gestured at the circles. “They cannot count on any of the things they were planning on. Such as joy. Such as being able to channel the misery onto you.” He cocked his head. “Such as holding back the force of Fate.”

Harry felt as though he were standing on the shore, watching the water draw back, like one of the Dursleys’ programs he had caught a glimpse of once. The water had drawn all the way back, and left a dry shore that a few children had run over to play on.

And then, over the horizon, had appeared the great wave.

“It’s coming for them,” he whispered.

“Yes.” Lucius’s smile deepened, and this was yet another new one, beautiful and vicious, the way Harry thought a cat would smile at its prey. “It is no wonder that you heard them talking so desperately about Ian’s marriage. Ginny played a certain role in their circle, as Ian’s future wife. And it is no wonder that you heard Neville talking about other possible wives for Ian, but only two candidates. By the rules of the ritual they themselves have established, he could only marry someone who is part of the ritual. They have trapped themselves, and the world outside their circle no longer exists for them.”

Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. His heart was beating hard enough to leap out of his chest. His lungs felt like they were seizing.

It might—it might be enough.

But he still had questions to ask. He lifted his head, and Lucius was there, meeting his gaze and nodding.

“What does this have to do with Horcruxes?” Harry whispered. “And what about me? I was part of the ritual, even if I wasn’t part of their fucking circles. What happens to me?”

“I cannot imagine anyone constructing a ritual like this unless they were truly desperate,” Lucius said, his voice a soft thrum that reminded Harry of the sound of a wave drawing into shore. “Which means that it was more than simply wanting Ian to have a happy life—itself often a nebulous desire—or the power to defeat the Dark Lord. After all, the Dark Lord had, to their knowledge, been defeated. Even if they suspected he would return someday, it was not such an immediate concern as would prompt this.” His hand slapped the parchment.

“But if your brother carried a Horcrux, then it begins to make sense.”

“What—what? You can’t—you said that Horcruxes were shards of soul put into objects—”

“And at least one living thing.” Lucius inclined his head, eyes unblinking. “I myself saw the Dark Lord’s snake, Nagini, destroyed by Neville Longbottom. She was a Horcrux. There is no doubt of it.”

Harry just stood there and stared. Lucius stepped around the table, moving as quickly and delicately as a great deer, and extended his arms. Harry collapsed into them.

Lucius whispered to him, his voice joining with the pounding of Harry’s own heart to overwhelm like a waterfall.

“The Dark Lord could not truly die until all his Horcruxes did. What I saw on the battlefield that day at Hogwarts was his disembodiment; his wraith still existed, and fled. If your brother had surrendered to the Dark Lord as was demanded and walked out to face him, then a Killing Curse could have slain the Horcrux in him. But he did not. Ian Potter lives, and the Horcrux lives, as well.

“The people who built this ritual knew about that Horcrux. Those runes—they were meant to channel all the misery that Ian might have experienced to you. But they needed a long time to do their work. And their work was not complete when Ginny Weasley died.

“Now the Horcrux remains in your brother, and my guess is that his time is running out. The ritual is disrupted. They cannot smoothly send it to you and then kill you or have you die—or have the ritual kill you, as it might have if it were still functional. They could, however, transfer the Horcrux to you by force. I do not know if they are on the verge of doing so. I am calmer than I was last night. But then, it seemed as if the conversation you overheard suggested they were on the verge of giving up and moving it.”

Harry shook. He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t think anything.

Except one question.

“Why me?” he whispered. “I didn’t do anything. They didn’t know me. They even pretended they were happy to see me, when I got my letter and came to Hogwarts.”

“I think it is as simple as this,” Lucius whispered back. “The children they were concerned about were the ones in front of them. Ian and Neville and the Weasley siblings. They did not know you. People do things every day to those they do not know or truly understand, and are able to live by not thinking of it.” He hesitated. “I—was like that, myself, for decades. Perhaps the only thing that separates me from Augusta Longbottom is that I finally learned to hate someone who did indeed hurt me.”

Harry leaned forwards, his head tucked beneath Lucius’s chin. Lucius stroked his back, his hair, his shoulders, and said nothing.

Harry didn’t weep, because some griefs were too great for tears.

But he stood there, and he felt as if the wave had crashed over him, and only Lucius’s arms kept him from being swept away.