Chapter Twenty-Four of 'A Path of Thorns and Stones'- Rain of Decisions

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Rain of Decisions

“I don’t want to.”

Lily stared down into Arianna’s eyes. They were as bright green as her own, as the ones Harry had been born with, but Arianna’s lower lip was quivering and her eyes filling up with tears that Lily suspected Harry had never been given the chance to cry.

Lily took a deep breath and said, “All right. Why?”

Arianna looked down at the floor and made a little sweeping motion with her feet. It was one of the signs that she didn’t want to talk about something, but Lily ignored that. They were going to talk about Lily’s request that Arianna be polite to Harry, whom she had described as an isolated Muggleborn in Slytherin, and they wouldn’t just skip past it.

Everything would be easier if Lily were able to tell Arianna who her brother really was, of course. But with the disownment spell, and the fact that Arianna hadn’t been born when it was cast, that option had been taken away.

“I’m going to be a Gryffindor,” Arianna finally whispered, and Lily snapped her attention back to the situation. “You said I could ask the Hat. And I would never let it put me in Slytherin.”

Her emphasis surprised Lily. She and James had both downplayed House rivalries in the past few years, and even before then, they’d grown up enough that Arianna and Patrick wouldn’t automatically think of being a Gryffindor as the best and only good thing at Hogwarts. Even Sirius had grown past that.

“Why, Arianna?”

Her daughter looked up at her, and Lily shivered a little. There was an echo of Harry’s determination to avoid all their efforts to help him in that fearless green gaze.

But Arianna will not suffer what Harry did. I will make sure of that.

“You know it was a Slytherin who crippled Dad,” Arianna whispered at last, her voice fierce. Yes, she was just like the brother she would apparently never get to know as a friend. “We can’t trust any of them. I’m not going to be nice to them, and I’m not going to be in that House!”

By the end, her voice had risen to the point that Patrick shouted a complaint down the staircase. Arianna turned and glared up the steps, and Lily spoke hastily. The last time Arianna’s accidental magic had lashed out, it had lit a fire that had taken hours to extinguish. “Why do you think it was a Slytherin, dear?”

“All of Dad’s enemies in the Ministry are Slytherins.”

“We don’t know that the poison came from the Ministry,” Lily said weakly, although she didn’t know where else it could have come from. James being poisoned for something the Auror office was doing made the only sense.

“I know that it did.” Arianna folded her arms and frowned. “And I know that the people who work there used to be Slytherins because Dad said so.”

Lily swallowed roughly as she was reminded by that that James would never work at the Ministry again. His blindness was permanent, although a few other things like his vocal cords might recover with time. Now she said only, “And you would take that out on a Muggleborn Slytherin who probably doesn’t want to be there, either?”

“I can read, you know.”

“I don’t know what that means, dearest.”

“I read the letters that you sent to this Harry Grayson.” Arianna’s voice was shrill and mocking, and Lily winced from the sound of it. Not a sound she had thought would ever be applied to Arianna’s brother. “You offered him sponsorship as a Potions brewer—well, Uncle Sirius did—and you discussed all these plans for him. Why, Mum? Why, when he refused and was rude?”

“We—were afraid that being alone in Slytherin would drive him to turn to the Dark Arts. Or would get him murdered.”

The truth, not the whole truth. There was no way that Lily could give her precious daughter, Harry’s little sister who should have been, the whole truth.

“Well, it sounds like it already has,” Arianna said. She kept her arms folded. “I’m not going to make the mistake of being nice to someone who’s already rejected our whole family.”

“All right,” Lily whispered, knowing when the battle was lost. “I won’t ask you to. But, please, don’t go out of your way to antagonize him, or any Slytherins, all right? We don’t need the House rivalry deepened by this.”

“I’ll do what I want, Mum. What I think is right.”

Arianna turned around and stomped out of the room. Lily closed her eyes. She was such a child, still, but that was right. It was right that Lily and James had managed to shelter her so that she would fight back for what she thought was good without a care of the larger consequences.

At the same time, Lily could have wished that they hadn’t managed to raise her this well.

*

“Welcome, Mr. Grayson.”

Mr. Nott’s face and tone were the opposite of welcoming. Harry bowed to him anyway, because he would give respect to the pureblood adults who still saw him as an upstart Muggleborn. Mr. Nott’s son was courting Harry, and Mr. Nott hadn’t tried to forbid it. That still gave Harry much more of an advantage than anyone else would have had in this situation.

“Thank you for welcoming me to your home, Mr. Nott.”

“Hmm.”

Mr. Nott had a certain resemblance to Theo in the face, and Harry supposed their eyes were the same shade. But he was altogether colder. Harry tilted his head towards Theo as they walked from the dining room, where Harry had Flooed in, in Mr. Nott’s sweeping wake. “Does your Dad not like me?”

“It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t.”

Harry blinked. That wasn’t the response he had expected from Theo. “It sort of does. Since he invited me to his home and all.”

Theo turned towards him. Harry stopped and raised his eyebrows. Theo had given him excellent courting gifts and had invited Harry to stay at his house for the first week of summer. Harry would be disappointed if he went back to the old intimidation routine now.

Disappointed, and something more.

“I am the one who invited you,” Theo said. “I am the one who’s courting you. Father is smart enough to respect that.”

Harry blinked a little, again. He knew that Lucius Malfoy had been punished by the Dark Lord, and Draco had been upset because of it, not really understanding why. He had thought the relationship between Theo and his father closer, though. “You—have a conflict with him?”

“He raised me to match a certain ideal. And now he has found out that I’ve matched it more than he suspected.”

Theo’s mouth had a cold curl that Harry had to admit he really liked. “And so you’re more independent and think less like him?”

“He raised me to know my own mind, to demand what I want as a right. And now that I’m doing that, he is finding that he doesn’t always like my questions or my demands.”

Harry shot a glance ahead down the corridor. Theo just shook his head. “Father knows exactly what I think, Harry. It’s not so much a conflict between us as an accepted—existence. We might come into more serious conflict in the future, but we will always understand each other.”

Harry took a deep breath and wondered if he would have had a relationship like that with his father, if he had ever known who the man was.

Then Harry shoved it out of his mind. He didn’t know who the man was, and if he had been a Muggle, then he would have been pathetically unable to understand the world Harry had entered. It was best to forget the past, to think of the Tower that the tarot cards had shown him, and walk on.

Harry straightened his shoulders and walked on.

*

“Mum?”

“Yes, dearest?”

Draco leaned on the doorframe of his mother’s bedroom and watched her staring at the intricate web of silver and obsidian in front of her. As he watched, she added an onyx bead to the web and then nodded. Draco couldn’t see the differences in the strands, which somehow related to the political machinations that he knew Mother pursued at the Ministry, but he was long past mourning that he didn’t have her gift.

Something else was on his mind.

“It’s about Harry.”

Mother pivoted at once away from her web, something that made Draco’s heart grow warm. That was something that neither Harry nor Theo would ever have, and he wanted to value her as much as possible. “Did Mr. Grayson do something to break off the courting process?”

Draco bit his lip, a little embarrassed that she would think he would be so distressed by something like that.

(Even if it was true).

“No.” Draco took a deep breath. “But you know how Harry is accepting gifts from both me and Theo at once?”

“Yes, dear.” Mother’s voice was slow.

“How would I—how would I go about courting both Harry and Theo at once?”

Mother’s eyes widened, and she considered him for a long moment. Then she said slowly, “Are you sure this is something you wish, Draco? You know that being in a marriage is challenging enough, oftentimes, with only one partner. And you wish two?”

Draco gave a long, firm nod. He had spent hours thinking about it since Hogwarts had let out for the summer and Harry had accepted Theo’s invitation to stay at Nott Manor for the first week. He had thought at first that he was lonely because Harry wasn’t there, but then he’d turned to say something to Theo and Theo wasn’t there, either.

It was obvious and stupid, but he missed them both. And he had thought about what would happen if he won Harry’s heart, and then about what would happen if Theo did, and—he would lose someone no matter what. If Theo won, he would lose two people, but if Draco won, then Theo would still be left out.

And Draco knew Theo. He might very well leave the country to avoid running into Draco and Harry in the future.

That was unacceptable. Draco didn’t know when it had become unacceptable to him, but he knew it was.

“You have thought about this.”

“You needn’t sound so surprised, Mother.”

“I know that you aren’t prone to impulsive decisions about things like this, Draco.” Mother came forwards to enfold him in her arms and bent down to kiss his forehead. “But I thought that you might be motivated by spite, given the way that Mr. Nott also decided to pursue Mr. Grayson.”

“I—we were both courting Harry, and I realized that I would miss Theo if I lost his friendship.”

“And is that all it is, darling? Friends don’t always make the best spouses.”

Mother’s voice went dark on those words, as if she were thinking of some specific example, but Draco didn’t know what it was and resolved not to let it trouble him. He nodded. “I’ve been thinking of—Theo’s eyes, his smile, the way that he makes jokes. I don’t want to lose that even if I win Harry.”

“I can tell you the etiquette. But you know that he may not accept?”

“I know.” Draco bit his lip. “But I didn’t know if Harry would accept a second suitor at the same time, either, and I still wanted to offer for him.”

Mother gazed at him long and steadily for a few moments, as though evaluating whether he would really do well with her help. Then she smiled. “My brave little Gryffindor.”

“Mother, that is not funny! You know the Hat picked me for Slytherin right away!”

“And how hard were you thinking of Slytherin, my darling? Did you give the Hat a fair chance?”

Draco settled happily into the old debate with his mother, relieved that she approved of his choices. His courtship of Harry might have gone very differently if she didn’t, let alone the one he wanted to start with Theo.

And all the way back to his bedroom, he thought a new thought.

Draco had once admired and loved his father desperately. Wanted to be exactly like him. Wanted to be with him every minute of the day.

But now, he thought his mother was more the one he wanted to be like, with her subtlety and good sense and keen eye for what would work and what wouldn’t.

He wanted to make her proud of him.

*

“Theo tells me that you are a skilled brewer.”

“Yes, Mr. Nott.”

Victorinus had to admit that there were no faults with the little Muggleborn’s manners. Grayson had stopped brewing the instant that Victorinus had entered the private potions lab Theo had proposed his courted using. His eyes were respectfully on the ground, his hands clasped in front of him so Victorinus could see they held no wand.

“Why did you decide to pursue the art of potions? It is not a common choice for people who come from a background of no money and no connections, given the value of some ingredients.”

“I believed that brewing potions would earn me the most money, sir.”

Victorinus frowned. “To speak of money is vulgar.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do not actually agree with me, do you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing, sir.”

Victorinus prowled closer. Grayson kept his eyes on the floor, but he didn’t bow. He didn’t cringe. He just continued standing there, as though the wrath of a suitor’s father—and the owner of the house he was currently staying in—wasn’t something he had to fear.

“Those statements are non-literal enough that you could be disagreeing with me without disagreeing,” he breathed.

Grayson didn’t reply.

Victorinus darted out a hand. Grayson ducked smoothly underneath it, with the grace that Victorinus would have expected of a dancer rather than a Quidditch player, and stood up on the other side of the cauldron.

“I would not have touched you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Victorinus almost smiled. It felt as though his face was trembling and threatening to crack, an unusual and distressing enough situation for him not to complete the expression. But he had to say, “You would not have let me touch you?”

“No, sir.”

“Even to please your suitor’s father?”

“I need to please you only so much, sir. There are others who would have been disappointed if I had let you touch even my shoulder.”

“You are not speaking of Theo and Malfoy.” Granted, he might have been, but Victorinus was an expert in reading facial expressions and tones of voice, and the boy had sounded too confident. There was someone else he thought he needed to please.

“No, sir.”

“Then whom?”

Grayson gave a small, dark smile. “I would have to ask his permission to tell you of him, sir.”

“Ask that permission,” Victorinus said, and he knew his tone was demanding, was a test. He was interested to see how the boy responded.

It was with an evaluating glance and a little tilt of his head as if he wanted to see whether Victorinus looked better from another angle. Grayson must have decided that he did, because he inclined his head respectfully and said, “I’ll write to him, sir.”

“You are welcome to stay another week if you’d like,” Victorinus said abruptly. The boy might receive the letter when he was back at the Malfoys’ house otherwise, and Victorinus might never know if Grayson had lied about his ally, or patron, or whoever it was.

“All right, sir. Thank you.”

There were to be no objections, it would seem. Grayson’s gaze was already straying back to the cauldrons bubbling on the table, and so Victorinus nodded and walked out, clasping his hands behind him as he strayed down the corridor.

For the first time in years, he was interested in seeing what someone would do who was not a member of his family or the Dark Lord.

It was a novel sensation. He would have to thank Theo for introducing it to his life.

*

“I have never seen a geas like the one on you that prevents you from telling me the truth about Harry Grayson.”

Remus Lupin, coughing up blood from his latest attempt to explain Grayson’s identity, didn’t answer.

Lord Voldemort tapped his fingers together as he waited. Luckily, Lupin straightened up and took a deep breath within a few seconds. The consequences might have been more severe for a non-werewolf, Lord Voldemort supposed.

“You see what happens when I try to tell you,” Lupin wheezed, rubbing his throat.

“I do. What I want to know is the circumstances, and why someone would work so hard to hide this child’s identity.”

“That part was—an accident. They intended to temporarily hide him and then reclaim him when the danger they were hiding him from was past. They used magic to make him not a—”

Lupin burst into bloody frothing coughs again. Lord Voldemort sighed and cast a healer’s charm that stopped the cough. Lupin wheezed again, his hands clenching on the arms of the chair he sat in, and then he leaned back, exhausted.

“An accidental disownment?”

Lupin nodded, although it looked like his muscles were rebelling against the movement.

“Fascinating,” Lord Voldemort murmured. He had never studied magical disownments in detail given the pathetic state of his own blood family, but he knew a little about them as he knew a little about all branches of magic. They were finicky things, unlikely to take if the parent or other relative disowning someone had the slightest doubt about their actions.

As Lord Voldemort understood the intellectual side of family love, he knew they must fail quite often.

“They intended to hide him, but the magic was convinced they were giving him up and removed him from their family entirely.”

“Yes,” Lupin said, although he still looked wary. Given that the spell had made him choke, Lord Voldemort understood.

“And you have no way of conveying to me his true identity?” Lord Voldemort asked the question mostly rhetorically. Lupin had already tried to write out Grayson’s true name, and Lord Voldemort had looked at Lupin’s memories in Pensieves and used Legilimency on him with Lupin’s natural defenses as subdued as possible. The man’s hand had frozen on the quill, and all his memories were murky.

Lupin mutely shook his head.

Lord Voldemort sighed. In truth, the boy’s identity was probably not that important. A pureblood who didn’t want a spouse to find out about his illegitimate child, a Muggleborn mother who might have feared the child being killed for her dirty blood, a family who had gone insane with fear during the war…it truly did not matter, except for his own curiosity.

And because he would have liked to recreate such a geas with a more appropriate purpose, admittedly.

“I trust that you will still help me take revenge on the Potters and Black, since they abused your good name?”

Lupin’s teeth flashed in answer, and Lord Voldemort smiled. Perhaps, after all, he could create something like the geas, although without the power that the accidental collision of spells had given it. He could apply it to the Potters.

Lupin would probably enjoy the show.