[From Litha to Lammas]: A Name Like Henry, sequel to How Like Hatred, gen, PG-13
Title: A Name Like Henry
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Background Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, major AU (Harry is Draco’s twin brother), discussion of canonical child abuse
Wordcount: This part 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sequel to “How Like Hatred.” When Harry goes back to school after Christmas holidays as Henry Malfoy, he has to cope with friends, professors, and just about everyone else having an opinion on his new name and appearance. And that’s not to mention his smotheringly overprotective family.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to “How Like Hatred,” and really won’t make sense without having read that fic first. This one will have three parts and be posted over the new few days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” fic series being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year.
A Name Like Henry
Harry stared into the mirror and sighed. He had darkened his hair with a spell that he’d deliberately looked up in the library, but he still didn’t really look like himself-well, the way he used to look before this all happened. The shape of his face was different, and he had a longer nose.
And there were the grey eyes.
“Henry, what are you doing?”
Harry glanced over his shoulder at Draco, who was leaning in the doorway of Harry’s bathroom and staring at him. “Trying to make myself look more like myself.”
“But this is the way you look.” Draco came up beside him so there were two slightly different faces in the mirror. “You’re my twin brother. And I know you’re uncomfortable,” he continued in a slightly gentler voice, slinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “But we compromised on your name, so we can compromise on your looks, too, right? And I’ll protect you from all the nasty bullies at school.”
Harry scowled at him. “You’re taking this big brother stuff too seriously for someone who’s only three minutes older.”
“It’s a whole four minutes, Mother says.” Draco sniffed. “And look, I’m bigger anyway.” He stood on his toes to loom over Harry.
Harry rolled his eyes. He started to say something else, but Draco interrupted. “Are you going to tell us what happened to cause that?”
“Huh? No one cursed me to make me like that, if you mean that. Anyway, until this year you would have been the most likely to curse me like that.”
Draco snorted. “No, I didn’t mean that. I remember that you were a tiny thing when you showed up at the Feast.”
“I was not a tiny thing-”
“So it must have been something that happened before Hogwarts, with them.” Draco never referred to the Dursleys by name. Then again, Harry thought, he couldn’t remember if he’d told his brother what it was. “What happened?”
Harry folded his arms. He knew what would happen if he told them that it was probably due to the Dursleys withholding food from him. Mrs. Malfoy would fuss over him, and Draco would step up the “big brother” nonsense until it was unbearable. And then Mr. Malfoy would probably go and try to kill the Dursleys or something.
Harry was coming to accept, slowly, that they were his family, but he wasn’t going to be responsible for something happening to innocent people. Well, mostly innocent. Well, innocent some of the time, anyway. Well, Dudley at least wasn’t the one who didn’t give him food, that was Uncle Vernon.
“Heeeenry.”
“If you ever want Parkinson to notice you, don’t whinge like that in front of her,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows.
Draco narrowed his eyes. “You know perfectly well I don’t want to date her. And I know perfectly well what you’re doing. Deflecting. I want you to tell me what happened with those-Muggles. Tell me.”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” he added, when he saw Draco opening his mouth again. “Mother said I don’t have to.” He was always careful to call Mrs. Malfoy Mother in front of Draco, to spare himself the lecture that he’d get otherwise. But he thought of her as Mrs. Malfoy in his head.
Draco opened his mouth, then shut it again, and suddenly gave him a look that was so unhappy Harry blinked. He’d once thought he would never see anything like that on Draco bloody Malfoy’s face.
“I’m worried about you,” Draco whispered. “I just want to know what happened and help you, Henry.”
Harry sighed and thought about saying that that name was part of the problem. He was Henry Malfoy to the Malfoys. He understood why, because someone named Sirius Black he’d never heard of before had talked under Veritaserum about stealing him away from the Malfoys and giving him to his mum and dad-the Potters. They didn’t want to call him Harry when it reminded them of the kidnapping.
But Harry thought of himself that way. He would probably always think of himself that way. He appreciated what the Malfoys were trying to do, but it was-weird. Not him.
“Maybe someday I’ll feel like telling you,” he said, and it wasn’t even a lie. Maybe someday he would.
He just didn’t think it was likely.
*
“Harry.”
Harry gave Ron a tense smile. They hadn’t got along as well as before, not since Harry had found out he was a Malfoy. “Hi, Ron.”
Ron stared at him for a second, then looked at the floor between his feet. They were on the Hogwarts Express, the train shaking a little as it rushed north. Harry had insisted on sitting in a compartment by himself, although he’d only managed that after like sixty warnings from Draco about what he should do if someone bothered him and a promise to come back in a little while.
Ron moved a toe back and forth. Then he gave a great sigh and came in and sat down on the seat across from Harry.
Harry let his smile widen hopefully. Ron peered at him out of the corner of his eye, then looked away again.
“You look like him when you smile,” he whispered. “But not the rest of the time.”
“I’m sorry, Ron. I’m trying. But I’m still me. Still Harry.”
“But Malfoy.”
“Yeah.” Harry leaned forwards a little. “Look, can we try to play chess or something? Maybe that’ll help us remember what it’s like to be friends.”
Ron went back to fiddling with the cuffs of his jumper. Scabbers snoozed in his lap. “Your dad attacked my dad in the bookshop a few months ago,” he muttered. “How am I supposed to forget that?”
Harry discovered a sudden edge of irritation that he hadn’t known was there. He sat back and scowled at Ron, who blinked at him in surprise. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Harry snapped, partially happy when he remembered how Mr. Malfoy would frown at him if he swore like that. “I can’t get out of their custody, and I can’t go back to just being Harry Potter. My godfather kidnapped me, Ron! My parents weren’t my parents! Don’t you think I’m upset about this, too? But I can’t change things. And I think I have more right to be upset about that than you do about a fight in a bookshop.”
Ron was blinking rapidly at him. Harry leaned forwards. “If you don’t want to be my friend, don’t be my friend,” he said, and he knew he sounded tired. “I’ll-go sit with Hermione and the twins or something.” He started to stand up.
“Wait, Harry.” Ron reached his hand out, and Harry paused. He wanted to be friends with Ron so badly. He just couldn’t stand to hear all the “evil” things his parents had done before he even knew they were his parents. It wasn’t like Harry had been lying on purpose about who he was.
“I look at you and I see Draco,” Ron whispered. “I see the man who tried to get my father sacked. I see all the people I’ve been taught to hate. How can I just get over that overnight?”
“I don’t expect you to,” Harry said, turning around and frowning at him. “But it’s been more than two months now, Ron, and if you’re just going to mutter about me being evil or something, what friendship do we have? I don’t have to put up with someone who glares at me and is waiting for me to turn out not to be a real Gryffindor or something.”
He’d actually had a nightmare about that a week ago, where he told Mr. Malfoy that the Sorting Hat had wanted him in Slytherin and Mr. Malfoy made it happen. Harry was sick at the very thought. He wanted to go back to the Gryffindor common room. He wanted to listen to Hermione rant about some obscure point that she’d discovered in the index of Hogwarts, a History.
He wanted Ron back.
Ron took a deep breath and looked at him. “I want you to be my friend, too.”
“The way I am, or the way you wish I was?”
Ron flinched a little, but his eyes were earnest. “The way you are. The friend who laughed and played Exploding Snap with me in September, and went up against a giant chess set with me last year. I want-I know that I can’t be friends with you unless I accept all of you, and if that means accepting you as a Malfoy, I’ll do it.”
Harry smiled at him, so happy that it felt as if he was choking on sunshine. “That’s great, Ron. I want to be there with you, too.” He came back into the compartment and sat down. “And we should play some chess, I think. Commemorate the game last year, huh?”
Ron chuckled and got out his chess set. Then he trounced Harry, the way he always did. Harry grinned at him, and Ron started lecturing him on all the ways that he could win “if you just paid attention, you can do it, Harry, I know you can.”
*
“Henry?”
Harry started and looked up. It took him a minute. Not only had he been listening to Ron explain a few more rules of chess that he insisted were simple, but the name still didn’t feel like his.
Draco stood in the door of the compartment, his face stiff. He stared at Ron, then nodded to Harry. “You should probably get your robes on, Henry. There was an announcement a minute ago that we’re only about five minutes from Hogwarts.” Then he shut the door behind him with a quietness that felt almost like he was leaving a funeral.
Harry scowled at the door before he stood up and reached for his robes. It wasn’t like Draco had come back to the compartment to sit with Harry before Ron showed up, either. He’d left his trunk here and said that he would be “back in a little while,” but he’d spent the entire ride with his friends, not his bloody twin brother.
“Weasley,” Draco said, sounding as though he was about to choke, and then left.
“Henry?” Ron asked in a blank voice as he started getting his robes out of his trunk, too. Harry sighed, hoping they weren’t going to have to have the argument all over again.
“It’s what the Malfoys decided to call me,” he explained as he dragged the robes over his head and straightened the collar around his neck. “I really, really hated the name Aldebaran.” Ron snickered, and Harry smiled over his shoulder. “Yeah. But they didn’t want to keep the name Harry because that’s what my kidnappers called me.”
“Kidnappers? Really?” Ron was looking at him with a half-open mouth. Harry nodded.
“Yeah, we went to the Ministry and they questioned someone named Sirius Black. Who’s apparently my godfather?” Harry shook his head. The thought still bewildered him. “But he betrayed my parents-I mean, the Potters-and got sent to prison. But before he did that, he decided to kidnap one of the Malfoys’ twins and give him to the Potters.” It was still strange to realize that Harry was talking about himself. “They couldn’t have kids, apparently.”
“Wow.” Ron tilted his head. “So Henry is sort of a compromise?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to start going by that in Gryffindor?” Ron wrinkled his nose. “I reckon I can get used to it. It would be a little strange, though.”
Harry shook his head. “I understand why Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy don’t want to call me Harry, but I’m still going to go by that in Gryffindor. Just Draco and probably the professors have to call me Henry. I know Mr. Malfoy wrote them a letter about it. I think.”
“And you’re still going to call him Mr. Malfoy?” Ron seemed weirdly cheerful about that. “Not Dad?”
Harry gave a full-body shudder that he didn’t have to feign. “It would still be strange. And even then, Draco doesn’t call him Dad. It’s always Father.”
Ron nodded, thoughtful. “I reckon you didn’t change that much after all,” he said, with a hearty clap to Harry’s shoulder, and they got ready to leave the train as it slowed down.
*
“Mr. Malfoy? If you would come with me, please.”
Harry turned around and blinked in surprise when Professor McGonagall stopped him from going into the Great Hall. Ron already had, since he’d been in front of Harry, but Draco came to a silent stop behind him. He really had a penetrating stare when he wanted to.
“Er, all right, Professor.” Harry nodded to his brother and walked after her. Then he heard footsteps following him. He turned around and frowned at Draco.
Draco lifted his chin, although before he could say something, Professor McGonagall cut in. “I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, I will return…Aldebaran safely.”
“Henry,” Draco said firmly. “Did my father’s owl not reach you, Professor? I know he was going to send an owl to all the professors telling them the name we compromised on, so they would address Henry properly if they had to distinguish between us.”
Professor McGonagall blinked and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked honestly startled, which made part of Harry relax. She wasn’t ignoring his compromise name on purpose. “Your pardon, Mr. Malfoy. I did receive an owl, but it came during a particularly busy time and I didn’t read it thoroughly.”
“Yes, professor. I would still like to come with my brother.”
“This is a private matter, Mr. Malfoy. I promise that I will bring your brother with me when I go to the Great Hall a few minutes from now.”
Draco glanced at Harry. Harry was startled when he realized that he was getting asked if he wanted Draco to come along. He shook his head, both in response to Draco’s question and in response to his own thoughts. Sometimes he could be surprised at how caring the Malfoys were, despite everything.
Draco sighed loudly and looked at Professor McGonagall once. “Please be aware that we are highly protective of my younger brother, professor. He was already stolen from us once.”
“Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said, and she sounded genuinely shocked. “I hope you are not accusing me of kidnapping!”
“People who were really proud of being Gryffindors did, once,” Draco said darkly, and clasped Harry’s shoulder for a second before turning and going into the Great Hall.
Harry sighed and focused on the professor, who nodded and led him up to her office. She had a large tapestry on the wall of a lion streaking through a forest after what looked like a deer. Harry was looking at it when Professor McGonagall asked, “How are you, really, Harry?”
Harry turned around, wondering if he needed to be on his guard. But Professor McGonagall had taken off her hat and put it on her desk, and she just looked tired. He smiled at her. “I’m all right, professor.”
“I wish there was something I could do to change things back to the way they were.”
Harry just nodded, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure that he wanted things to go back to the way they were. On the one hand, if they did, he would be Harry Potter again, with a normal name and the looks and friends he was used to. On the other hand, he would still be a kidnapped child, without parents, and with the fact that he’d have to go back to the Dursleys during the summer.
“I don’t know that I can do anything, legally,” Professor McGonagall continued, sticking her jaw out a little. “But if you are unhappy, I will do everything I can to remove you from the Malfoys’ custody.”
She doesn’t care whose kid I am. That flowed through Harry like warm milk, and he thought it made his smile a little warmer, too. He shook his head. “No. I mean, it’s still new, and we have to get used to each other. I have to get used to looking like this. But I think I made up with Ron on the train today, and I want to be a Gryffindor.”
“If someone gives you trouble because of your family, you are to come to me at once, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall paused a moment, then sighed and said, “I mean, Mr. Malfoy. Do you understand?”
“Thanks, professor,” Harry said, and beamed at her. “But Ron was the only one who was saying things I really minded, and like I said, I think I made up with him.”
Professor McGonagall nodded. “That is good news, Mr. Malfoy. I would hate to hear that you lost your oldest friendship because there was-nonsense in the past.”
That was probably the only way she would ever refer to it, Harry thought. But that made him sigh with relief. He would be irritated if all the professors made as big a deal as his-his family did. “Thanks, professor. Um, one question?”
“Yes?”
“How are you going to distinguish between me and Draco in the classes we share? I mean, now that we have the same last name?”
“I presume that where I am looking will be sufficient distinction, Mr. Malfoy, as I am not in the habit of turning my back on my classes.”
Harry nodded and left the office, both cowed and relieved. Professor McGonagall was going to be the same as ever, yes, but at least that meant at least one professor didn’t plan to call him by the compromise of a first name he still didn’t entirely like.
As he came down the last flight of stairs and turned towards the Great Hall, Harry jolted to a stop. Professor Snape was standing near the top of the staircase that led to the dungeons, staring at him.
His eyes were-devastated.
That was the only word Harry could come up with, but it wasn’t one he wanted to come up with. He nodded briskly and strode past the professor towards the Great Hall, hoping that the man wouldn’t try to speak to him.
He didn’t. Harry slid in next to Ron at the Gryffindor table with a sigh, nodded to Draco, and began filling his plate.
“Have some potatoes, Harry,” Ron said, with every indication of cheer, pushing the plate over.
Harry smiled, then. Yes, everything was as normal as it was going to get.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Background Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, major AU (Harry is Draco’s twin brother), discussion of canonical child abuse
Wordcount: This part 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sequel to “How Like Hatred.” When Harry goes back to school after Christmas holidays as Henry Malfoy, he has to cope with friends, professors, and just about everyone else having an opinion on his new name and appearance. And that’s not to mention his smotheringly overprotective family.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to “How Like Hatred,” and really won’t make sense without having read that fic first. This one will have three parts and be posted over the new few days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” fic series being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year.
A Name Like Henry
Harry stared into the mirror and sighed. He had darkened his hair with a spell that he’d deliberately looked up in the library, but he still didn’t really look like himself-well, the way he used to look before this all happened. The shape of his face was different, and he had a longer nose.
And there were the grey eyes.
“Henry, what are you doing?”
Harry glanced over his shoulder at Draco, who was leaning in the doorway of Harry’s bathroom and staring at him. “Trying to make myself look more like myself.”
“But this is the way you look.” Draco came up beside him so there were two slightly different faces in the mirror. “You’re my twin brother. And I know you’re uncomfortable,” he continued in a slightly gentler voice, slinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “But we compromised on your name, so we can compromise on your looks, too, right? And I’ll protect you from all the nasty bullies at school.”
Harry scowled at him. “You’re taking this big brother stuff too seriously for someone who’s only three minutes older.”
“It’s a whole four minutes, Mother says.” Draco sniffed. “And look, I’m bigger anyway.” He stood on his toes to loom over Harry.
Harry rolled his eyes. He started to say something else, but Draco interrupted. “Are you going to tell us what happened to cause that?”
“Huh? No one cursed me to make me like that, if you mean that. Anyway, until this year you would have been the most likely to curse me like that.”
Draco snorted. “No, I didn’t mean that. I remember that you were a tiny thing when you showed up at the Feast.”
“I was not a tiny thing-”
“So it must have been something that happened before Hogwarts, with them.” Draco never referred to the Dursleys by name. Then again, Harry thought, he couldn’t remember if he’d told his brother what it was. “What happened?”
Harry folded his arms. He knew what would happen if he told them that it was probably due to the Dursleys withholding food from him. Mrs. Malfoy would fuss over him, and Draco would step up the “big brother” nonsense until it was unbearable. And then Mr. Malfoy would probably go and try to kill the Dursleys or something.
Harry was coming to accept, slowly, that they were his family, but he wasn’t going to be responsible for something happening to innocent people. Well, mostly innocent. Well, innocent some of the time, anyway. Well, Dudley at least wasn’t the one who didn’t give him food, that was Uncle Vernon.
“Heeeenry.”
“If you ever want Parkinson to notice you, don’t whinge like that in front of her,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows.
Draco narrowed his eyes. “You know perfectly well I don’t want to date her. And I know perfectly well what you’re doing. Deflecting. I want you to tell me what happened with those-Muggles. Tell me.”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” he added, when he saw Draco opening his mouth again. “Mother said I don’t have to.” He was always careful to call Mrs. Malfoy Mother in front of Draco, to spare himself the lecture that he’d get otherwise. But he thought of her as Mrs. Malfoy in his head.
Draco opened his mouth, then shut it again, and suddenly gave him a look that was so unhappy Harry blinked. He’d once thought he would never see anything like that on Draco bloody Malfoy’s face.
“I’m worried about you,” Draco whispered. “I just want to know what happened and help you, Henry.”
Harry sighed and thought about saying that that name was part of the problem. He was Henry Malfoy to the Malfoys. He understood why, because someone named Sirius Black he’d never heard of before had talked under Veritaserum about stealing him away from the Malfoys and giving him to his mum and dad-the Potters. They didn’t want to call him Harry when it reminded them of the kidnapping.
But Harry thought of himself that way. He would probably always think of himself that way. He appreciated what the Malfoys were trying to do, but it was-weird. Not him.
“Maybe someday I’ll feel like telling you,” he said, and it wasn’t even a lie. Maybe someday he would.
He just didn’t think it was likely.
*
“Harry.”
Harry gave Ron a tense smile. They hadn’t got along as well as before, not since Harry had found out he was a Malfoy. “Hi, Ron.”
Ron stared at him for a second, then looked at the floor between his feet. They were on the Hogwarts Express, the train shaking a little as it rushed north. Harry had insisted on sitting in a compartment by himself, although he’d only managed that after like sixty warnings from Draco about what he should do if someone bothered him and a promise to come back in a little while.
Ron moved a toe back and forth. Then he gave a great sigh and came in and sat down on the seat across from Harry.
Harry let his smile widen hopefully. Ron peered at him out of the corner of his eye, then looked away again.
“You look like him when you smile,” he whispered. “But not the rest of the time.”
“I’m sorry, Ron. I’m trying. But I’m still me. Still Harry.”
“But Malfoy.”
“Yeah.” Harry leaned forwards a little. “Look, can we try to play chess or something? Maybe that’ll help us remember what it’s like to be friends.”
Ron went back to fiddling with the cuffs of his jumper. Scabbers snoozed in his lap. “Your dad attacked my dad in the bookshop a few months ago,” he muttered. “How am I supposed to forget that?”
Harry discovered a sudden edge of irritation that he hadn’t known was there. He sat back and scowled at Ron, who blinked at him in surprise. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Harry snapped, partially happy when he remembered how Mr. Malfoy would frown at him if he swore like that. “I can’t get out of their custody, and I can’t go back to just being Harry Potter. My godfather kidnapped me, Ron! My parents weren’t my parents! Don’t you think I’m upset about this, too? But I can’t change things. And I think I have more right to be upset about that than you do about a fight in a bookshop.”
Ron was blinking rapidly at him. Harry leaned forwards. “If you don’t want to be my friend, don’t be my friend,” he said, and he knew he sounded tired. “I’ll-go sit with Hermione and the twins or something.” He started to stand up.
“Wait, Harry.” Ron reached his hand out, and Harry paused. He wanted to be friends with Ron so badly. He just couldn’t stand to hear all the “evil” things his parents had done before he even knew they were his parents. It wasn’t like Harry had been lying on purpose about who he was.
“I look at you and I see Draco,” Ron whispered. “I see the man who tried to get my father sacked. I see all the people I’ve been taught to hate. How can I just get over that overnight?”
“I don’t expect you to,” Harry said, turning around and frowning at him. “But it’s been more than two months now, Ron, and if you’re just going to mutter about me being evil or something, what friendship do we have? I don’t have to put up with someone who glares at me and is waiting for me to turn out not to be a real Gryffindor or something.”
He’d actually had a nightmare about that a week ago, where he told Mr. Malfoy that the Sorting Hat had wanted him in Slytherin and Mr. Malfoy made it happen. Harry was sick at the very thought. He wanted to go back to the Gryffindor common room. He wanted to listen to Hermione rant about some obscure point that she’d discovered in the index of Hogwarts, a History.
He wanted Ron back.
Ron took a deep breath and looked at him. “I want you to be my friend, too.”
“The way I am, or the way you wish I was?”
Ron flinched a little, but his eyes were earnest. “The way you are. The friend who laughed and played Exploding Snap with me in September, and went up against a giant chess set with me last year. I want-I know that I can’t be friends with you unless I accept all of you, and if that means accepting you as a Malfoy, I’ll do it.”
Harry smiled at him, so happy that it felt as if he was choking on sunshine. “That’s great, Ron. I want to be there with you, too.” He came back into the compartment and sat down. “And we should play some chess, I think. Commemorate the game last year, huh?”
Ron chuckled and got out his chess set. Then he trounced Harry, the way he always did. Harry grinned at him, and Ron started lecturing him on all the ways that he could win “if you just paid attention, you can do it, Harry, I know you can.”
*
“Henry?”
Harry started and looked up. It took him a minute. Not only had he been listening to Ron explain a few more rules of chess that he insisted were simple, but the name still didn’t feel like his.
Draco stood in the door of the compartment, his face stiff. He stared at Ron, then nodded to Harry. “You should probably get your robes on, Henry. There was an announcement a minute ago that we’re only about five minutes from Hogwarts.” Then he shut the door behind him with a quietness that felt almost like he was leaving a funeral.
Harry scowled at the door before he stood up and reached for his robes. It wasn’t like Draco had come back to the compartment to sit with Harry before Ron showed up, either. He’d left his trunk here and said that he would be “back in a little while,” but he’d spent the entire ride with his friends, not his bloody twin brother.
“Weasley,” Draco said, sounding as though he was about to choke, and then left.
“Henry?” Ron asked in a blank voice as he started getting his robes out of his trunk, too. Harry sighed, hoping they weren’t going to have to have the argument all over again.
“It’s what the Malfoys decided to call me,” he explained as he dragged the robes over his head and straightened the collar around his neck. “I really, really hated the name Aldebaran.” Ron snickered, and Harry smiled over his shoulder. “Yeah. But they didn’t want to keep the name Harry because that’s what my kidnappers called me.”
“Kidnappers? Really?” Ron was looking at him with a half-open mouth. Harry nodded.
“Yeah, we went to the Ministry and they questioned someone named Sirius Black. Who’s apparently my godfather?” Harry shook his head. The thought still bewildered him. “But he betrayed my parents-I mean, the Potters-and got sent to prison. But before he did that, he decided to kidnap one of the Malfoys’ twins and give him to the Potters.” It was still strange to realize that Harry was talking about himself. “They couldn’t have kids, apparently.”
“Wow.” Ron tilted his head. “So Henry is sort of a compromise?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to start going by that in Gryffindor?” Ron wrinkled his nose. “I reckon I can get used to it. It would be a little strange, though.”
Harry shook his head. “I understand why Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy don’t want to call me Harry, but I’m still going to go by that in Gryffindor. Just Draco and probably the professors have to call me Henry. I know Mr. Malfoy wrote them a letter about it. I think.”
“And you’re still going to call him Mr. Malfoy?” Ron seemed weirdly cheerful about that. “Not Dad?”
Harry gave a full-body shudder that he didn’t have to feign. “It would still be strange. And even then, Draco doesn’t call him Dad. It’s always Father.”
Ron nodded, thoughtful. “I reckon you didn’t change that much after all,” he said, with a hearty clap to Harry’s shoulder, and they got ready to leave the train as it slowed down.
*
“Mr. Malfoy? If you would come with me, please.”
Harry turned around and blinked in surprise when Professor McGonagall stopped him from going into the Great Hall. Ron already had, since he’d been in front of Harry, but Draco came to a silent stop behind him. He really had a penetrating stare when he wanted to.
“Er, all right, Professor.” Harry nodded to his brother and walked after her. Then he heard footsteps following him. He turned around and frowned at Draco.
Draco lifted his chin, although before he could say something, Professor McGonagall cut in. “I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, I will return…Aldebaran safely.”
“Henry,” Draco said firmly. “Did my father’s owl not reach you, Professor? I know he was going to send an owl to all the professors telling them the name we compromised on, so they would address Henry properly if they had to distinguish between us.”
Professor McGonagall blinked and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked honestly startled, which made part of Harry relax. She wasn’t ignoring his compromise name on purpose. “Your pardon, Mr. Malfoy. I did receive an owl, but it came during a particularly busy time and I didn’t read it thoroughly.”
“Yes, professor. I would still like to come with my brother.”
“This is a private matter, Mr. Malfoy. I promise that I will bring your brother with me when I go to the Great Hall a few minutes from now.”
Draco glanced at Harry. Harry was startled when he realized that he was getting asked if he wanted Draco to come along. He shook his head, both in response to Draco’s question and in response to his own thoughts. Sometimes he could be surprised at how caring the Malfoys were, despite everything.
Draco sighed loudly and looked at Professor McGonagall once. “Please be aware that we are highly protective of my younger brother, professor. He was already stolen from us once.”
“Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said, and she sounded genuinely shocked. “I hope you are not accusing me of kidnapping!”
“People who were really proud of being Gryffindors did, once,” Draco said darkly, and clasped Harry’s shoulder for a second before turning and going into the Great Hall.
Harry sighed and focused on the professor, who nodded and led him up to her office. She had a large tapestry on the wall of a lion streaking through a forest after what looked like a deer. Harry was looking at it when Professor McGonagall asked, “How are you, really, Harry?”
Harry turned around, wondering if he needed to be on his guard. But Professor McGonagall had taken off her hat and put it on her desk, and she just looked tired. He smiled at her. “I’m all right, professor.”
“I wish there was something I could do to change things back to the way they were.”
Harry just nodded, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure that he wanted things to go back to the way they were. On the one hand, if they did, he would be Harry Potter again, with a normal name and the looks and friends he was used to. On the other hand, he would still be a kidnapped child, without parents, and with the fact that he’d have to go back to the Dursleys during the summer.
“I don’t know that I can do anything, legally,” Professor McGonagall continued, sticking her jaw out a little. “But if you are unhappy, I will do everything I can to remove you from the Malfoys’ custody.”
She doesn’t care whose kid I am. That flowed through Harry like warm milk, and he thought it made his smile a little warmer, too. He shook his head. “No. I mean, it’s still new, and we have to get used to each other. I have to get used to looking like this. But I think I made up with Ron on the train today, and I want to be a Gryffindor.”
“If someone gives you trouble because of your family, you are to come to me at once, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall paused a moment, then sighed and said, “I mean, Mr. Malfoy. Do you understand?”
“Thanks, professor,” Harry said, and beamed at her. “But Ron was the only one who was saying things I really minded, and like I said, I think I made up with him.”
Professor McGonagall nodded. “That is good news, Mr. Malfoy. I would hate to hear that you lost your oldest friendship because there was-nonsense in the past.”
That was probably the only way she would ever refer to it, Harry thought. But that made him sigh with relief. He would be irritated if all the professors made as big a deal as his-his family did. “Thanks, professor. Um, one question?”
“Yes?”
“How are you going to distinguish between me and Draco in the classes we share? I mean, now that we have the same last name?”
“I presume that where I am looking will be sufficient distinction, Mr. Malfoy, as I am not in the habit of turning my back on my classes.”
Harry nodded and left the office, both cowed and relieved. Professor McGonagall was going to be the same as ever, yes, but at least that meant at least one professor didn’t plan to call him by the compromise of a first name he still didn’t entirely like.
As he came down the last flight of stairs and turned towards the Great Hall, Harry jolted to a stop. Professor Snape was standing near the top of the staircase that led to the dungeons, staring at him.
His eyes were-devastated.
That was the only word Harry could come up with, but it wasn’t one he wanted to come up with. He nodded briskly and strode past the professor towards the Great Hall, hoping that the man wouldn’t try to speak to him.
He didn’t. Harry slid in next to Ron at the Gryffindor table with a sigh, nodded to Draco, and began filling his plate.
“Have some potatoes, Harry,” Ron said, with every indication of cheer, pushing the plate over.
Harry smiled, then. Yes, everything was as normal as it was going to get.
Part Two.