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Chapter Twenty-Three—The Scolding and What Followed

“You are a fool.”

Narcissa could see, even if Harry couldn’t, the way he flinched at that statement and drew himself up. He was fighting to accept such harsh words from someone he had almost trusted. His face flashed through several emotions and then settled into one of forced indifference.

Has he been this transparent to all his enemies? How did he survive? Narcissa approved of the way that Draco and Lucius wanted to teach Harry to survive in their family, but she thought that lessons in controlling his feelings would be beneficial to him for other reasons. He was too open. Of course, that quality was part of what had allowed him to help Lucius and so become a Malfoy in the first place, but Narcissa would have things so that not as much rubbish flowed into his mind.

“For leaving the Manor?” Harry sneered at her. He looked both unattractive and unnatural with that expression on his face, Narcissa thought. “Or for suggesting ways in which I can save Mr. Malfoy’s life without our having to meet?”

Narcissa looked around once—out of habit more than anything else; she knew there was no one there—and then cast the strongest privacy ward she knew. The air turned steel-blue. Harry started and half-ducked his head, as if he expected Ministry officials to appear out of the air to arrest her.

Narcissa ignored that. So long as one had taken certain precautions before casting the spell, then the Ministry could not sense such magic.

“For thinking that we would cast you out of the family because you had a disagreement with our son,” said Narcissa.

Harry bit his lower lip and ducked his head again. His skin flamed red. Narcissa wanted to reach out to him, and had to fold her hands calmly around her wand so it wouldn’t happen. At the moment, coddling him would help neither of them. Harry needed to learn love, the hardest lesson of all. “I didn’t—“

“It is obvious from your expression, and from your manner to me,” Narcissa said. She relaxed a few of the muscles of her face. Harry’s early training had left him with the supreme fault of not trusting people who didn’t look as open as he did. However, it took very little to convince him of the existence of that kind of openness. It was one reason Narcissa had cast the ward; she could trust herself to risk exposing her emotions only like this when she was away from the safety of the Manor walls. “You speak as if we were once more employer and employee only, and as if you expected us to reject everything about you but your skills as a mediwizard.” She paused for a moment, studying Harry. He stared at her, nostrils flaring. More is necessary. “Harry. We are your family. We will not cast you out simply because you have your own opinions about the way your life ought to be lived.”

Harry half-closed his eyes, his face gray with exhaustion. Narcissa had not missed the way he half-leaned forwards on the word family.

He wants it so badly, but he doesn’t yet trust us to provide it to him.

She turned her head slightly to the side so that she could study Harry better, and narrowed her eyes as she realized that some of the darkness clinging to his face was not shadows or the graininess of fatigue, but actual flakes of dried blood. What had he been doing?

“I thought you had very definite opinions on the way my life ought to be lived,” Harry said. The bitterness in his voice could have moved mountains. “Or why bother having me learn to act like a Malfoy?”

“We want you to learn those laws, yes,” said Narcissa. She maintained the steadiness that Harry would expect. He would think it was easier to tell the truth than to lie. “But that does not mean you cannot argue. Arguments will give us the chance to explain our reasoning to you and try to persuade you that our laws make sense.”

That was the truth she most pitied Harry for not knowing. He must have thought any acceptance we extended him was conditional not only on his healing skill, but on his good behavior. We cannot expect him to understand pure-blood codes or react the same way to danger that we would, but nevertheless he thought we would cast him out for reacting naturally.

Because it was inside her head, Narcissa could be more honest than she would have if speaking aloud. And if he thinks that, doesn’t he have reason for thinking that? We did refuse to explain the simple things at first, and trusted him to imitate us without saying why he should do so. We needed to put things in practical or emotional terms, not purely intellectual ones. Harry does not do well on that kind of level.

Really, his escape from the house was only the expected consequence of their own behavior. At least, it would have been expected if their foreseeing faculty had worked as it should have.

And if Draco had thought to share the knowledge that his Muggle caretakers abused Harry with me before he did.

“If both you and Draco are here,” Harry said suddenly, “who’s protecting Lucius?”

Narcissa let herself frown. “The wards on the Manor and the house-elves are even more fanatical about guarding the family when a family member is alone there,” she said.

“It’s still not a good idea.” Harry took a step forwards, and part of Narcissa rejoiced at the concern in his eyes. Harry at least had the natural and proper way of caring about a family member. What he needed to do was accept that he was entitled to that care in return. He had become far too used to being on the end of an unequal bargain. “Listen, I’ve survived and had my wounds healed. I meant what I said about consulting you through the Floo, but for the moment, I’m going to return home and go to sleep—“

He has made important progress. And this time, there is neither Draco present to charm him, nor Rogers present to force him, into making this decision. “So soon?” Narcissa permitted a smile to cross her face.

Harry blinked, and then frowned as if he found it personally offensive that Narcissa had reacted with pleasure. “No,” he said flatly. “I’m going home to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and that way you and Draco can return and guard Lucius.”

Narcissa gave him the stare she had used on Draco when he described stealing Neville Longbottom’s Remembrall, and Harry clenched his fists as if he were trying to avoid squirming. At least that proved her eyes had not lost their power, though the longer Harry persisted in stubbornness, the more she thought her words must have.

“The closeness of blood does not diminish so easily as that,” she said. “We are not angry at you, Harry—“ Not in the ways that you imagine, and only in the ways that you cannot help.

“Draco is going to be smug and brag about how he was right and my life was in danger—“ Harry began.

“If Draco does any such thing, then I shall set him down.” Narcissa moved a step closer to him, and Harry hesitated. Well he should have. Narcissa was openly showing her emotions now as she had not known she still could. “I have already scolded him for being so foolish as to send you fleeing when he should have done anything to keep you close.” She hesitated, fighting the impulse to tell him that safety and the love of his family should matter more to him than Draco’s gloating. But she did understand pride, and the ways that personal instincts sometimes demanded that it be satisfied. Perhaps Harry should understand that as well. “You have been attacked, and I believe you do not understand how powerful the instincts are that command me to take you behind walls at once. Having a family member in danger like this makes me feel as if I were in danger.”

“You probably are,” Harry said reluctantly. “I’ve found evidence that indicates a large number of people knew Lucius was cursed and wanted him dead. But that’s all the more reason for you to return to the Manor and add a human presence to the wards and the house-elves.”

What is broken in him, that he cannot see that that danger includes him?

But another scolding would do more harm than good just now. “Come with us,” said Narcissa.

The door of the cubicle opened, and Draco burst through. Narcissa trained a single quick glance on him, which he would have to understand if he wanted to continue claiming his heritage as her son. Do not make this worse. Do not lie. Do not force Harry into a defensive posture because of your own pride. Yours must bow for the moment, and his be allowed to prevail.

Even as she sent Draco that silent message, it occurred to her that Harry might find all this manipulation around his emotions to soothe him more offensive than Draco’s gloating. She shrugged a shoulder at her own insight. It would be valuable later, to have achieved the power of understanding Harry like this, but for the moment, the knowledge was only a nuisance.

*

Draco paused in the sudden silence that seemed to have enveloped both his mother and Harry when he burst through the door. The Auror he had bypassed when he ran through the cubicle where Harry had been hiding took the opportunity to say, “You’re not supposed to go through there.”

Only an Auror would say that when confronted with a fait accompli. He was probably a Gryffindor. Draco felt entirely justified in ignoring him to stare at Harry and check his injuries, because of course he would have injuries.

He could see the dried blood, the sense of strained tension with which Harry held himself, and the way he slightly tilted to the side, as if he were favoring one of his legs or hips. Draco narrowed his eyes. He might have to let Harry get away with resisting rest and care for the moment, because it was more important to persuade him to come back to the Manor, but this time, he would see him healed. Wounds, and the curses that must have caused them, weren’t minor problems the way that Harry had insisted the Beetle’s Bite was.

Harry lifted his head and quivered, obviously one breath away from folding his arms. He seemed to be waiting for a blow or a sneer. Draco caught his breath against an intense wave of sadness. The Muggles fucked you up, Harry. They have to suffer for that, but you don’t have to find out about it.

He made sure to talk about something entirely unrelated in his next words, so as to catch Harry’s brittle pride off-balance and give him something else to think about.

“I understand that it was one of your former lovers who alerted the Aurors. I think it’s the first time I’ve felt grateful to one of them.” He edged a step closer, because he couldn’t bear to be further away from Harry one more instant. He doubted Harry would recognize the compliment in his motion, but his mother did, from the slight thawing of her eyes, and that was enough. “Now. Are you ready to come home?”

“No,” Harry said.

Of course. Why did I expect anything else?

But his mother had made a slight gesture as if she had thought that Draco would have expected something else, and she didn’t want him to destroy their slight chance with Harry. Draco ignored her, magnificently. He knew he had to be careful. He would speak the necessary words, but he would control the tone with which he spoke them. It was marvelous how many miracles could be accomplished with Gryffindors when one paid attention to the tone. They seemed to think the emotional context of the words would change the reality of those words.

“And why not?” Draco asked quietly. “It makes sense for the family to be together when something upsetting has happened to them, and now you’ve been hunted and persecuted like Father.”

He must feel some identity with Father. That will encourage him to return home. And if he can see himself in the same sort of danger as Lucius, that might pierce those stubborn mental barriers that insist that he is separate from us.

Harry gave the cubicle a glance, as if hoping that one of the Aurors would come to rescue him. Draco permitted himself a mental sneer. You find any confrontation easier than this kind, Harry, don’t you? Killing the Dark Lord was easier than talking with people who care about you and admitting that perhaps you’re hurt and need help.

But remembrance of whose fault this really was soothed his anger before it could turn putrescent. The Muggles who raised him, and the society who encouraged him constantly to assume the role of a hero. Those are the culprits, and Harry is only responding the way that he always thought he should in order to win approval.

Harry stood there, looking half-lost and irritated about it, and Draco’s tolerance for the distance between them waned again. He moved closer, his hand itching and yearning for the touch of Harry’s skin.

Harry seemed to have summoned his courage back. He stiffened his spine as if he expected someone to pile burdens on his shoulders. Draco managed to hold himself back from a restless stir, but it was a near thing. When did he start caring about only using his body for that?

“I hate what you tried to do to me,” Harry said then, staring at Draco, so that there could be no chance of his including Narcissa in his anathema. “I hate everything about it.”

It was not what Draco had expected, again. He drew breath and let it go. Anything he could say now would be wrong. He needed to let a few minutes pass, so that the right words would come to him. He could try to explain that he hadn’t meant to take Harry’s freedom away, which was only the truth, but he doubted Harry would believe him at the moment.

Harry seemed to think that the pause had been a sort of courtesy to him. He clenched his fists and continued.

“I hate that you think you have a claim on me, and that means you treat me like a possession. And just because you were right about my life being in danger doesn’t mean you were right in your way of dealing with it. If I go back to the Manor, it’ll be more of the same. More affection I don’t understand, more things I shouldn’t be paying attention to anyway with Lucius’s life still in danger, more Malfoy ‘laws’ that don’t make sense to me and which I’ll never learn intuitively the way you have. You made me feel like a prisoner. I won’t take that from anyone.”

Draco showed his confusion and horror, because he had no choice. They had made Harry feel like that? They had never meant—the Manor wasn’t a prison. It was the most beautiful and luxurious place Harry had ever stayed; Draco was sure of that. Why had he seen the walls and wards as barriers, rather than the protections they were meant to be? Why did Harry think that his place in the family was dependent on his obeying the Malfoy laws the first time, without prior knowledge of the best way to do that?

Because you have treated him as if that were true.

Harry rolled his eyes, which hurt Draco almost more than his words had, because he had never allowed anyone else to see so far into him, and then to have that gift treated with scorn—

But he realized a moment later that it would have been useless to appeal to Harry on those grounds, because Harry was too interested in pursuing his own grievances.

“You didn’t realize this would have consequences? I don’t know what your lovers have been like in the past, but I don’t fancy letting someone simply have power over me without fighting back.”

“You accepted the other care I tried to give you,” Draco whispered. “The care that Rogers tried to give you.” I don’t understand. Where is the boundary for him? When does solicitous care, and concern for his stubborn life, become confining, and when are they delicate enough that he might appreciate them?

“Because I saw that it made sense,” Harry said impatiently. “I did start feeling better when I slept more and ate richer food. But it won’t make me feel better to spend the rest of my life in a gilded cage. And I wasn’t happy about it. I would have responded to rational arguments better.”

Draco checked a sigh. Yes, that was the answer to the question he had just asked, though he didn’t have to like it. Harry was the one who would decide when he felt confined, and when he could accept the gifts that the Malfoys wanted to offer him the way that his family meant them. Draco would have to learn to understand him, and to adjust his position relative to Harry.

But, of course, he couldn’t simply give in to Harry and let him do whatever he wanted, either. The Malfoys had their own tradition of pride to keep up, and they would be equal partners in any exchange with Harry, not hampered by too-delicate scruples.

“And that is what we ask for the chance to give you now,” Narcissa broke in. Draco looked towards his mother and saw her holding her hand out. He relaxed. She understood and thought the same things he did. She would make sure that Malfoy interests were represented. “We don’t want to cage you, Harry. But we do want you among us, to protect and persuade.”

“That’s the thing that makes the least sense,” Harry said. His head hung slightly when Draco looked at him again, alerted by the weary tone in his voice. His hands trembled. He looked as though he had run a gauntlet twice, the second time with the beaters using far heavier sticks. “The Heart’s Blessing spell made me family to you. Well, nothing gave me that sense of family in return.”

Draco found himself unable to speak. Oh, Harry. Harry. I—I don’t know what to say to you. What else can we do? What else can we offer?

He might have snapped in angry pride, but two things stopped him. The first was Harry’s exhaustion. He had obviously been fighting his own battle to accept what the Malfoys had offered him and was near the end of his strength. Draco might not understand why Harry had missed all their signals so far; he might think that they had sacrificed more for Harry than Harry would ever understand. But the fact remained that Harry felt the same way.

And what is sacrifice if it is made for the sake of family?

The second was that his mother had gone white in the face and begun to speak, and Draco knew Narcissa would do a better job at the moment than he could ever do himself.

*

Narcissa caught her breath against the pain, as she flinched for the first time in—she could not remember how long. She was guarded against the words that Draco and Lucius spoke, even when they intended to injure her, precisely because she had known them so long. They could play the game of banter and wit and intentional irritation all day, and only rarely score a hit. Narcissa could even treat the wrestling as a form of affection.

Only now had she begun to realize how alien that affection must seem to Harry, when his words had flown to her and landed a mighty blow on her heart.

We must both understand each other. We cannot live in the same family if we do not. I will have a son who admires and respects other perspectives than his own, not one blinded by his own stubbornness—but, to have that, I must show him my pain. Defenselessness will win the offensive.

It is a paradox, but I have lived with worse.

“So, then,” she said in a very low tone. Let Harry think the lowness was meant only to soothe him. He did not need to know that Narcissa would have found it difficult at the moment to raise her voice. “None of what we tried to give you made any impression on you at all? None of it mattered?”

“It mattered,” Harry said. He lowered his head and shifted from foot to foot like a small child who had to use the loo. Narcissa was heartened to see that. She did not think Harry was without conscience, but it was possible that he could will himself simply impervious to their pleas. “But there’s no way I can repay it. I don’t know how to answer it. Letting you take care of me puts me into debt, and I don’t know what you want in return. Money for the time I spent under your roof? I can do that. But you can’t have my freedom, or my soul.”

And that is the answer after all. When Draco told me the truth, I should have seen it at once. When he can’t see what conditions are placed on love, he grows fretful.

“What we want,” said Draco, so sweetly that Narcissa felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, “is your presence.”

Yes, Draco, perfection. One of my sons is very clever, at least.

Harry put his head in his hands. The hands shook. Narcissa saw then how fierce the battle was that he had been fighting. He would need healing of his own when this was done, and a long, thick sleep. “Why?” he asked.

My turn, to say the simple and irresistible.

“We like you,” said Narcissa.

Draco stepped up behind Harry and wrapped his arms around him, leaning his head in the center of Harry’s back.

Excellent, Narcissa thought. The gesture will combine with the words and render both of them stronger. And of course, it is easier to persuade someone when you are touching him. She might have attempted to touch Harry herself, but the motions of her limbs seemed stayed.

But her voice was still free—and when Harry looked at her, wild-eyed, she knew that her body was, too. She stepped forwards and cupped her hands around his cheeks.

“We like you,” she breathed, “and we would take the chance to know you better, if we can.” She paused, then let the words flow from her, the words that normally would have stayed as thoughts. “I am sorry if we gave you the impression that you must yield totally to the Malfoy laws to be part of the family. Surely you have noticed that not even Lucius obeys them all the time? And my son is hardly a shining example of them at the moment.” Draco flinched a little, but his arms tightened on Harry. As long as he can still hear. “But none of that diminishes the impact of the blood. An argument cannot. We would mourn if you died, and be bereft in a way that we would not if an ordinary Healer or mediwizard sacrificed his life searching for a cure for Lucius. I understand that the sharing of blood is an unusual basis for family love for you. But none of that makes it the less important to us.”

We must be equal partners in this alliance. If we cannot walk all over him and keep him prisoner, neither can he simply ignore us and our pain.

She paused, and then stroked his cheeks. He felt feverish. “Will you come with us, and give us a second chance to show you the best of what Malfoys can be, rather than the worst, how you may live in freedom and yet be part of something larger than yourself?”

Harry closed his eyes. Narcissa could remember little comparable tension in her life as she waited for his answer, other than perhaps the moments before the defeat of the Dark Lord.

And that involved Harry as well.

Harry nodded.

Narcissa kissed his cheek at the same time as Draco kissed the back of his neck. Their eyes met, and Narcissa saw the same determination she felt shining in her son’s eyes.

It will not be easy. But we will teach him to be at home among us.

Chapter 24.