lomonaaeren

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Chapter Twenty-Seven—Pride and Dignity

Draco watched from around the corner of Lucius’s door as Harry recited the information he had learned from their vulgar prisoner. He hated to spy on this conversation from the outside, but he needed to see how his parents related to Harry when Draco wasn’t there.

Only a few faint lines of tension at the corners of Narcissa’s eyes revealed how much the news upset her; otherwise, she remained poised, absorbing the information and eagerly thinking about it. Lucius, on the other hand, avoided Harry’s eyes and picked at the blankets. There were moments Draco would have given his soul to hear Harry call his father an idiot.

“That would make sense,” Narcissa murmured. “After I removed your headache curse, I retrieved a Pensieve and cast my own immediate memories into it, to analyze them at leisure. I had thought it possible I would recognize the magical signature in the curse from the time we spent at hospital. And yes, though faint, it might have been your mentor’s.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. You’re downplaying your own power and certainty to make Harry feel comfortable, Mother. And of course you’re not going to tell him about your own little excursion into hospital, when that would make him wonder why we so objected to his own. Tsk, tsk. You are not being honest.

Harry stared at her. “Healer Pontiff’s?” he asked with a slight croak.

Who? Draco thought for a moment, and then remembered Harry mentioning her. She seemed to be the only Healer Harry really trusted, perhaps because she was the only one who had made his life in St. Mungo’s tolerable.

Narcissa opened her eyes then, a blink Draco could measure in terms of her startlement by how fast it happened. “No,” she said. “Healer Emptyweed’s.” Then she smiled. “Ah, yes,” she said. “It would be fairer to refer to him as your tormentor than your mentor.”

Harry blinked as if he had thought Narcissa didn’t have a sense of humor, then turned carefully to Lucius. “In truth, this reveals less than I thought. I still don’t know exactly who the conspirators are, though my house-elf is following a—potential one.” He swallowed. Draco nodded. It was hard for Harry to think of any friend as betraying him, and Draco could understand. He would feel the same way if Harry betrayed him at this point.

That analogy may work well to understand him, he thought suddenly, pleased. His friends are like my family. As long as I keep that in mind, I should not be surprised by the things he does and the promises he keeps concerning them.

“But I haven’t yet asked my friend Hermione Granger to investigate the hospital administrators,” Harry was saying now. “Should I do so?”

Lucius nodded decisively where Draco would have demurred a bit longer. “I remember having reason to admire her research skills,” he said. Draco blinked, but his father was in that mood, he knew, where he would make mysterious comments and keep the truth to himself. “I would suspect everyone on the list I gave you, but the names listed first are the ones who spoke to me sharply at the time of my revoking my donations to the hospital. And of course, we have to consider how much we should tell the Aurors working on the Smythe case. None of them have so far contacted me with definite proof or with a different motive than the one Smythe gave.”

Harry sighed and shuffled his feet. Narcissa stirred, but Lucius took the chance away before she could.

“Speak your thoughts,” he commanded.

Draco shot his father a bleak glance through the crack in the door. He would have preferred it if Lucius had shown a bit more remorse for keeping essential information from Harry.

From the expression on his face, so would Harry, but he spoke evenly. “The Auror who intruded into your hospital room, Julius Adoranar? He’s still working on the Smythe case, from what I know, and he was once my lover. There are measures I could take to get the truth from him.”

Narcissa narrowed her eyes. Lucius stared at Harry. Draco was glad that they remained still, because it provided an example for him to follow when he longed to burst into the room and seize Harry’s arm and spin him about and shake him for being so stupid.

He won’t—he won’t prostitute himself for our family. Does he even know the shame that would bring us? Doesn’t he care?

A deeper, more primal voice spoke from beneath his breastbone. Doesn’t he care that he’s mine, and no one else will touch him for as long as he lives?

And yet, if he made that claim, he stood an excellent chance of driving Harry away for good, when most of his former lovers would have expected a sign of possessiveness about this time. Draco sighed. It was all so complicated. But at least he had channeled his rage into intellectual actions instead of the relationship-destroying ones he might have taken.

Narcissa spoke a moment later, her voice tight. “You will not betray our pride or our dignity in that way, Harry.”

Yes. Good. She said it in a way that makes reference to the code of the family, and not the fact that he’s mine. Harry will take that better.

“Because it would look as if you were desperate to know?” Draco glanced at Harry for the first time since his stupid announcement and surprised a bitter smile on his face. “You don’t need to worry about that. Julius is arrogant; I never knew how arrogant until after I stopped dating him. He’ll convince himself that I came back to him because he’s so handsome I was unable to stay away.”

“I mean,” said Narcissa, voice tighter still, “you will not betray your pride or dignity as a Malfoy.”

Harry blinked, and Draco saw his jaw drop slightly before he caught it. But there was understanding in his eyes, strangely enough. Draco wondered idly if Muggle novels referenced family pride. Perhaps Harry had read about it there.

Narcissa said nothing else, but she had taken a step forwards and was staring at Harry. Draco knew that look. It had compelled obedience from him on clear summer days when he wanted badly to go out and fly before he did his lessons.

It compelled obedience now. Harry nodded slowly. “I won’t go to Julius,” he added, when Narcissa cocked her head in the way that had demanded Draco verbalize.

Good. Draco felt the first tides of a vast relief moving through him.

“Good.” Narcissa turned back to Lucius. “Now. I do still have those connections among the mothers of some of Draco’s schoolmates, Lucius. I have not yet touched them because I did not want to betray family secrets. But I think the time has come. We need to find out who cursed you.” She raised an eyebrow and waited. Draco stifled laughter. As if she wouldn’t do it anyway, even if Father didn’t give permission. But she’s trying to give him back some of his dignity in front of Harry.

Lucius nodded. “Question them, Narcissa. If you can find out which of them might have an aged relative who could have visited Rodolphus in Azkaban—“

“Of course,” said Narcissa, with a small scornful glance at Lucius that Draco could see shaped around the edges by the unuttered words You idiot, and she glided out of the room. Harry shivered for some reason, and Draco looked at him sidelong. The last thing he needed was for his lover to be attracted to his mother.

Narcissa showed no surprise when she found Draco standing outside his father’s door. She simply gave him a deep glance and gestured towards the room, where Lucius was speaking of him.

“Where is Draco?” Lucius asked. “I thought it odd he did not attend this discussion with you, but perhaps he might have been in bed or have a need to think.”

Draco flushed. Not that Harry would know it, but the word referred to a time when Draco was an adolescent and had told his father he needed to think. Lucius had walked into his bedroom, intending to share his thoughts on what he was sure was consideration of a delicate matter—that of Draco’s joining the Death Eaters—and surprised him in the middle of a wank instead.

Harry frowned at Lucius, but said, “He wanted to begin brewing the potion that would purge the dreambane from your body. He says you’ve been sick long enough.”

Narcissa raised her eyebrow at Draco. Draco gave her a defiant glance. “I can brew the potion,” he whispered. “I just wanted to see how you treat Harry when I’m not there first.”

“Of course,” his mother said, and then really departed. Draco put his eye back to the crack in the door.

“And what do you think?” Lucius was asking.

Harry clenched his hands into fists. “I think that I still don’t know enough yet about how the spells in the Mirror Maze connect to each other,” he said. “I could dissipate half of them, but there’s no telling what might happen to the other half. I’ll need to research for at least a few more days before I feel confident to try anything, and there’s no Healer I can trust to consult on this.”

“I trust you.”

Harry glanced away from Lucius, and the deep uncertainty in his face touched Draco’s heart.

“I am still only a mediwizard,” Harry said, sounding as if he were choking. “That makes a difference in talent and skill.” Lucius started to say something; Harry rushed on, his head bowed, and thus didn’t see the deadly expression that Lucius usually reserved for people who tried to interrupt him. Draco doubted he would have stopped if he had. “I know it doesn’t seem to, but I’ve been lucky as much as anything else. The Malfoy blood magic healed you when I would have been helpless to do anything but sacrifice my life. I simply don’t feel ready to dissipate the Mirror Maze yet. I would rather wait until I am.”

My God, Draco thought, stunned, is that caution I hear from him?

He looked again at his father and lover. Lucius was nodding thoughtfully. “And the knowledge I did not give you can hardly have contributed to your confidence,” he said.

Harry frowned, as if he had already forgiven Lucius, but said, “Let’s let Draco try the potion first. When the dreambane is gone from your body, at least it’ll be easier to treat you.”

“And I will feel easier as well,” Lucius said.

Draco snorted softly. Only Merlin knew the wealth of understatement those words represented; he doubted Harry could.

And yet…

And yet there was something like understanding in Harry’s eyes as he stared at Lucius, and he mingled the comprehension with compassion and not with pity. Draco licked his lips and felt himself harden. Harry did make a good addition to their family. He knew how to handle Lucius. That he wasn’t doing so consciously only made him more attractive, and this time, whilst Draco wanted to burst into the room again, it was not to scold Harry.

“I’m sure you will,” Harry said, and gave a small bow to Lucius.

Lucius blinked, but a moment later, his face assumed a small smile.

Draco stepped softly away from the door and went to really brew the potion, exhilaration moving through him as if he had just caught the Snitch in a Gryffindor-Slytherin match.

*

“Come in,” Draco called, when he heard Harry fumbling at the doorknob of his Potions lab. “You might learn something.”

Harry stepped inside as delicately as a deer approaching a hunter, from what Draco could see from the corner of his eye. He stared at the three cauldrons Draco had going, and flinched when bubbles burst from one. Draco didn’t roll his eyes only because that would ruin the count of chopped roots he was casting into the largest cauldron. No wonder he’s no good at Potions, if he acts like they’re going to poison him at every turn.

“The purge to clear dreambane from the body is potent,” Draco murmured, “and requires powerful ingredients.” He paused, curious to see if Harry would be able to trace out a logical conclusion from there.

Harry grunted something.

“Surely you must know,” Draco said, and because they weren’t in front of his parents he allowed himself to sound exasperated, “that ingredients with strength in them confer a greater strength on the potion in return?”

“It seems like it makes sense,” Harry said.

Cautious, so cautious, Draco thought. He was stirring the potion with one hand now and scattering in flakes of cayenne pepper with the other. The pepper would help to burn the dreambane out of the body, but he doubted Harry knew that. Harry would probably assume Draco was cooking up something to make his father feel better.

“But I’ve never been sure what strong ingredients were and how you differentiated them from weak ones,” Harry went on. He forced a grin. “Of course, I don’t have much use for such knowledge.”

Idiot. You’re a mediwizard. But there were times that his mother was wrong and honesty was not the best tactic.

“So you would simply have given any potion to my father when you were treating him in hospital?” Draco kept his voice light and idle. He picked up a vial of scrapings from the inside of a dragon scale, which came out as pink powder, and sifted them into the potion, letting them fall in precise circles. “Without testing it first?”

“Of course not.” Harry folded his arms, scowling. “You were there. You could have identified it for me.”

Yes, an idiot.

“But most of the time I’m not there,” said Draco. “And I could very well have trained for some other profession than that of Potions master, and then what would you have done?” He snatched up the sky-crystal that would lend the potion a piercing light as from heaven, and tossed it from palm to palm to give it a taste of his skin. Such things were helpful when one was making a potion for a member of one’s family; the potion would “know” the person it was made for through the blood connection.

But, of course, Harry probably doesn’t know that.

Draco bounced the crystal off the heel of his palm and into the potion, then seized the stirring rod, which hadn’t even had time to fall still, and moved it through the liquid again. Widdershins, of course, and he wondered if Harry was watching.

“I find that hard to imagine,” said Harry. His voice was breathless. Draco resisted the impulse to preen.

He did look at Harry, briefly, because the potion was in a precarious moment when he could remove his attention from it. “What’s hard to imagine?”

“Both,” Harry said. “That you wouldn’t have trained for a Potions mastery, when you’re so clearly good at it, and that you wouldn’t be there. From now on, I mean,” he added, and then paused, as if fearful he might have said too much.

Draco brewed without answering, both because the potion had need of him and because he was trying to deal with the warm feeling that welled up in him as if he had swallowed Rogers’s special soup for influenza.

He wants to stay. He’s thinking of staying.

Draco tapped the stirring rod on the edge of the cauldron to get rid of the stray drops of the potion that wanted to cling to it, and then sniffed the fumes gently. Yes, they smelled like rosewater mingled with salt, the way they should. He laid the stirring rod down, and turned around.

I want more from him now. And I think this is the right moment to demand it.

Harry stared at him in absolute wonder. With difficulty, Draco kept himself from reaching for the man he wanted as his lover, and with difficulty he spoke the words he thought even Narcissa would have deemed too honest.

“I—need to know what exactly you feel right now, Harry,” he said. “I was committed to friendship that might never build up to anything more after the warning you gave me, and now…” He shook his head and stared at the floor. He knew he was flushing, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “Now you’ve leaned against me for comfort when we confronted Emptyweed, and now you’re staring at me as you wouldn’t stare at a friend.”

Harry licked his lips. Draco could see something brewing in his half-lowered eyes, but he had no idea what it was, or how much the feeling might extend to him.

“I do like you as more than a friend,” Harry said, and took a step forwards.. He looked as if he were wrestling with himself, too. Draco wondered why, then decided that just because one was a Gryffindor didn’t mean one had made many passionate love declarations in one’s life. Especially with the quality of his former lovers. “I like the way you work, the way you care for your parents, and the way you can open your mind and home to someone like me, even if I don’t understand all the reasons why. You can even argue with me and not be mortally offended. I like all of that.”

Draco’s neck twitched; he wanted badly to look up. But in the end, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the floor. Honest, you have to be honest.

“That’s not enough,” he said, voice thick. “You probably like all that about Weasley, and yet you don’t want to go to bed with him. Do you?” he added suddenly, and then bit his lip so hard he drew blood, trying to get rid of that image.

Harry stepped forwards to clasp his wrist, but Draco refused to allow himself to hope. “No, I don’t,” he whispered. “It takes a different combination of admiration and trust and liking for me to want to sleep with someone. My relationship with Ron has never been like that.”

Draco shuffled a bit, pleased with the answer but ashamed of the weakness that had made it necessary for him to ask in the first place. Here comes the hardest question. “And your relationship with me?” he asked.

“I want it to be like that,” said Harry, and leaned in to kiss Draco on the lips.

Draco made a noise that was close to a moan and wrapped his arms desperately around Harry, kissing him back until his mouth grew uncomfortable with the desperation of the kiss. Harry kept control of the kiss, though, and Draco understood why when he pulled away and began to whisper.

“I’m still going to make mistakes. But thank you for everything you’ve done for me so far. And I really do need to show more trust in you. I can’t even imagine how extraordinary it must be for you to reach out to someone like me and not have your hand accepted immediately.”

Draco tensed, because he couldn’t tell which reaching he was referring to. If he’s only doing this because he thinks I’m a little boy in need of the best friend I never had—

But the kiss didn’t feel like that.

“But you kept trying anyway, and you’ve managed to overcome your biases towards me now. It would be silly if I couldn’t do the same, when you’ve shown the greater trust.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Draco said. He was trembling, which annoyed him, but only now did he realize how badly he had needed to hear this.

Harry caressed the back of his head and kissed the side of his neck.

And of course he found a sensitive spot rather like the one Draco had discovered beneath his right ear. Draco groaned and tried not to let his head fall back. There were things that still needed to be said. “You were the one who came and stayed in our house.”

“And you were the one who opened your house to me.” Harry even sounded as if he understood what that gesture might mean now, from a family like the Malfoys, who had been betrayed so many times. “The one who took the burden of caring for me on yourself—“

“Via Rogers.” Draco had to make sure Harry understood, and he was curious to see if Harry really didn’t resent that any longer.

Harry chuckled. “That’s true,” he said. “But it was the impulse behind it that’s admirable. Even your trying to keep me in the Manor and away from the hospital was admirable in its way. Stupid, but shouldn’t everyone be allowed a little stupidity in his life?”

Draco shoved Harry away from him then, because he was so happy he had to move somehow, and more kisses would stifle his breath. But when he tried to speak, no words would come. He had to lean in and kiss Harry again after all.

“I have to finish the potion,” he said.

“You’ve already finished it,” Harry said, taking a glance over Draco’s shoulder at the potion, “or you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to become distracted by me.”

Draco reacted without thinking, and in a way that he liked to think his mother would have approved. “You think all you are to me is a distraction?” He clasped Harry’s shoulders. Harry’s eyelashes fluttered, and his breath caught. Draco felt a tide of satisfaction move up through him, almost as intense as though he’d already come.

“No,” Harry said, and kissed the side of Draco’s neck again. His own voice was deep and restful to Draco’s ears. “Not anymore.”

*

“And what will happen once I drink this potion?” Lucius turned the vial back and forth. Narcissa, watching her husband closely, knew from his splayed small finger that he was nervous, not detached as he was trying to appear.

But of course he would try to appear that way. He would think that he owed it to his family and Harry to appear as a paragon of strength.

Or perhaps, Narcissa thought, with a spark of satisfaction like the flaring of a firework, he does not think of Harry separately from his family anymore.

“The dreambane will stream from your body.” Draco stood at the foot of Lucius’s bed, close to Harry. Narcissa could almost see the tangible warmth of the connection that hovered between them, and was pleased for them, though she could not take the time to question Draco about it now.

“It doesn’t sound a pleasant process.” Lucius turned the vial upside-down so that the potion sloshed against the cork. He had done that purely to make Harry and Draco both tense, Narcissa knew. If they had been alone, she would have scolded him with her teeth on his cheek.

“It isn’t,” Draco said shortly. “Purges never are, and this one less so. The dreambane will seek out every orifice for emergence it can, and it will come out mingled with a stream of blood.”

Harry winced. Narcissa would have liked to catch her breath herself. Lucius merely snapped his fingers to summon a house-elf. “We’ll have to change my sheets quite often, then,” he said, and uncorked the vial to pour the white potion inside down his throat.

Draco sucked in a harsh breath. Narcissa heard Harry whisper, “What’s the matter? Was he supposed to take only a few drops at first?”

Draco shook his head. “He startled me, that’s all,” he said. “Sometimes I forget how much he really trusts me.”

You would do well to remember it, my son, Narcissa thought, and would have caught his eye to remind him of that, but at that moment, Lucius began to bleed.

Lucius coughed, and a small stream of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth. A moment later, bubbles emerged at his ears, and one burst on the side of his eye. Harry flinched.

Narcissa pursed her lips. Lucius should perhaps not have swallowed the potion so quickly.

Draco leaned closer, and then hissed. Narcissa held herself stiff and still against the sudden shock of alarm the sound produced in her.

“What?” Harry whispered.

“Something’s wrong,” Draco said. Narcissa had to blink to stay on her feet. “The potion should have produced a heavier flow by now. It’s impossible that I brewed it incorrectly, but—“

Wounds opened on Lucius’s body, torso and face and limbs, as if he were a pig dragged to the slaughter. There was a hole in his cheek through which Narcissa could see his teeth.

Draco screamed and clawed for his father. Narcissa moved away, holding herself still, because she was sure anything she tried at the moment would only get in Harry’s way.

Harry certainly had no problem shoving Draco out of the way as he cast a spell on Lucius. “Congelo!”

Narcissa knew the spell. It would freeze time around the bed and give Harry extra moments to study the situation. It was a good choice.

The spell flared around Lucius’s body in a blaze of white, and vanished. That was not the effect, Narcissa knew. The air should have hardened and cooled, and their voices would have sounded like scratches on glass.

And the bleeding should have stopped, as it had not.

Narcissa braced herself to swim a sea of terror.

Chapter 28.