[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A Godfather Like Him, gen, Malfoys series, 1/4 or 1/6, PG-13
Title: A Godfather Like Him (1/4 or 1/6)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background Lucius/Narcissa and mentions of Lily/James, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Major AU (Harry is Draco’s twin), not compliant with PoA, violence, angst, drama, family, discussion of canonical child abuse
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 2700
Summary: Sequel to “How Like Hatred” and “A Name Like Henry.” Harry comes home for the summer, and it really is a relief to be at Malfoy Manor with his parents and brother-at first. But then he finds out a secret that they’ve been keeping from him, and gets the news that Sirius Black has broken out of Azkaban. Plus he has to go a Mind-Healer. Harry isn’t sure which one is worst, frankly.
Author’s Notes: Make sure you read the first two stories in the series before this one. I’m posting this as part of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fic series, and it should have between four and six chapters.
A Godfather Like Him
“Mother will say if they can visit.”
“They can visit.” Harry scowled at his brother as they stepped off the train.
Draco pointed his nose at the train ceiling, and let Harry see that he’d done none too good at a job at cleaning out his nostrils that morning. “I know that my friends won’t insult anyone. You can’t say the same about Weasley.”
“Ron wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t insulted his rat!”
“Rat is a misleading term. Dust rag would be more accurate.”
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and Ron pushed past them hard enough to make it clear that he’d heard. His ears were bright red, and Scabbers was clinging to his shoulder and squeaking in alarm. Harry gave Draco a dirty look and ran after Ron, catching up with him just as he was getting off the train.
“Not right now, okay, mate?” Ron turned his head away from him.
Harry sighed. He knew Ron wasn’t really upset about Scabbers. It was the reminder that he was poor, and even if Harry had turned out to be Henry Malfoy instead of Harry Potter, he’d just gone from one rich family to another. And Draco could say volumes about wealth with a look.
“All right. Write to me when you can, okay? I want both you and Hermione to come over this summer.”
Ron glanced at him, then nodded. “We’ll see,” he said, just before he saw his parents and ran towards them. Ginny tagged after him with a blush for Harry. Harry was glad that she at least seemed less shy and withdrawn than she had at the beginning of the year.
He shook his head as he watched Gilderoy Lockhart step off the train. It was kind of a pity that something terrible hadn’t happened to him the way it had to Professor Quirrell, but Lockhart had announced that he wouldn’t be coming back for a second year as the Defense professor because he had “fans to please and books to write.” So there was that.
“Henry!”
Harry turned around more quickly at the sound of that name than he had at the beginning of the winter term, and saw Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy waving at him from the end of the platform. He started towards them, Hedwig flying out the train door ahead of him. She was just as happy not to be spending the summer in a cage.
Mother and Father, Harry reminded himself as he leaned close and let Mrs. Malfoy hug him. I should think of them as Mother and Father when I’m around them.
It was still difficult, though. Especially if what Draco had said in their argument was true. From the way he was standing with his nose still in the air and his cheeks flushed a smug pink, he’d already told the Malfoys-Mother and Father-about it, and expected to get his way.
“Henry darling,” Mrs. Malfoy said, gently putting her arm around his shoulders, “Draco told me that you’d like to invite some children from Slytherin over to the house during the summer and thought they might not be welcome. Of course they will be. I wanted to reassure you about that.”
“They’re not from Slytherin,” Harry said, and tried to ignore the feeling of alarm that flashed through him when he saw how Mr. Malfoy’s face changed. But he persisted, because being afraid of his own family wasn’t going to help him achieve anything that he wanted. “They’re Ron and Hermione. Maybe Neville. They’re all from Gryffindor.”
“The Ron boy is Arthur Weasley’s youngest son?” Mr. Malfoy asked.
Harry threw him a defiant glance, remembering the way that Mr. Malfoy-his father-and Mr. Weasley had fought in the bookshop last summer. “Yes, he is. My best friend.”
“And Hermione is Granger,” Draco butted in, his face flushing with more than temper from the look of it. “From no distinguished family.”
“I really hoped that the next word out of your mouth isn’t about to be Mudblood, Draco,” Harry hissed, softly enough that most of the people passing by them on the platform wouldn’t hear.
“Draco. What have I told you about that word?”
Mrs. Malfoy sounded gentle, but that tone held steel underneath. Harry knew that tone. It was the kind that she had used to tell Harry that he would be going to a Mind-Healer this summer. He sneered at Draco from behind his mother’s back when Draco caught his eye.
“That I shouldn’t say it in public.”
“Well, don’t,” Harry snapped, although he felt a jolt of pain that apparently, Mrs. Malfoy hadn’t just forbidden Draco from saying that word altogether. “And Neville is Neville Longbottom. I like them. They’re my friends. If Draco can have his friends over, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to-”
“Of course, of course.” Mr. Malfoy made a little patting motion on the air. “No one has said that you can’t.”
“Draco said you would say I can’t!”
“They’re Gryffindors.”
“So what?”
“Not in public, boys,” Mrs. Malfoy said, and led Harry away from the platform with her arm still around his shoulders. Harry tugged at his trunk, but Mrs. Malfoy lightened it with a tap of her wand, and a slight glance at Harry. “Why would you think we wouldn’t let your friends come over?” she added, as Mr. Malfoy fell behind with Draco. Mr. Malfoy looked like he wanted to say something private to Harry’s older brother. Harry viciously hoped that it would be about what a git Draco was.
“Because Draco said that you would be the one to give permission,” Harry muttered, and ignored, as best as he could, the impulse to kick at the ground. Now that he came to think about it, Draco hadn’t actually said that their parents would forbid it. He’d just implied it. “And he said that his friends wouldn’t insult anyone, but Ron would. That was after he insulted Ron for being a Weasley.”
Mrs. Malfoy shook her head. “The main problem I can see in our inviting Mr. Weasley over is the lack of permission from his parents, rather than Mr. Weasley himself.”
“Oh.” Harry tried to relax his tense shoulders, but Mrs. Malfoy seemed to know that was what he was doing, and gave him a single, affectionate squeeze before she let go.
“It’s all right, Henry,” she said. “You and Draco couldn’t get along perfectly forever. You’re siblings. It’s natural for siblings to fight.” She sounded like she was speaking from experience.
“Um. I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course not. But you will find that it will be fine.”
Harry did his best to relax further as they arrived at the Apparition point outside the station. “Okay.”
Mrs. Malfoy smiled down at him, and then they whirled in place and were gone.
*
“Henry! Mother wants to see you.”
At least Draco didn’t appear to think it was a good idea to talk about friends coming over for the summer any time soon. Harry looked up from his Potions essay and found his twin brother standing in the doorway of Harry’s room, studying him intently. “All right.” Harry put down his quill.
“Why are you holding your quill like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to strangle it to death.”
Harry bristled as he passed Draco. “Just because some of us were born able to buy quetzal-feather quills if we want-”
“You were, too!”
“It’s not like I grew up knowing that, though, did I? It’s not the same-quit following me.”
“Mother thought you might not be able to find her rooms by yourself,” Draco said, and sped up a little, as though he wanted to get in front of Harry. “You haven’t been to this part of the house very often.”
Harry shot him a skeptical glance, and then came to a stop altogether as they reached the bottom of a grand, sweeping staircase (there were always staircases like that in Malfoy Manor, from what Harry had been able to tell). There was a small creature standing in front of him and staring up at him with his mouth open.
“The Great Harry Potter is Henry Malfoy,” whispered the elf.
“Dobby?”
“No, his name isn’t Dobby,” said Draco hastily, whipping around in front of Harry and standing tall as if he would be able to hide the house-elf from sight. That didn’t work well with such a wide staircase, of course. Harry simply stepped to the side and stared at Dobby again. Draco hopped in front of him. “His name is-Shobby. Yes, that’s it.”
“No, I know Dobby,” Harry said softly, his mind flying back to the summer before second year again and how Dobby had shown up at his relatives’ house. Well, no, the Dursleys’ house. He shook his head. Thinking of Lily and James Potter as his parents was still something he wasn’t entirely over.
And then his mind snapped back to the far more disturbing evidence in front of him.
He narrowed his eyes at Draco. “Dobby said that his family was evil and treated him badly.”
“Dobby would never be saying that about the great and noble Malfoyses!” Dobby exclaimed.
Harry blinked at Dobby, and Dobby held out his hands with a pleading expression. Harry understood that well enough, at least. It was the way he had sometimes looked when one of his primary teachers noticed something out of the ordinary at the Dursleys’ and tried to help him. Dobby didn’t think Harry could do anything, and he was begging Harry not to get him in trouble.
“Boys, what is the matter?”
And now Mrs. Malfoy was climbing the stairs from the bottom, her frown faint and reminding Harry of the kind that Aunt Petunia would wear when someone mentioned Harry in public. Dobby squeaked and bowed and began to wring his ears. Draco sighed as if he thought that meant the problem was solved and darted over to stand at his mother’s side.
Harry folded his arms.
“You were the ones who were going to do something evil at Hogwarts and mistrusted Dobby?”
Mrs. Malfoy reached out a hand. “Henry, darling-”
“Did you mistreat him?” Harry backed up and away a step. He glanced over his shoulder, quickly, but then quickly back towards Mrs. Malfoy, because he had figured out what happened when he removed his eyes for too long a time from someone in front of him. “Dobby said that his masters would punish him for warning me, and that they were cruel. What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Malfoy said. “Truly, Henry, my word. House-elves are-formed such that they punish themselves when upset. What Dobby got upset with, I don’t know. Why he would have sought you out in the middle of a Muggle neighborhood…” She shook her head.
Harry narrowed his eyes. Last year, the subtleties of what she was saying would have passed him right by, but not anymore. “Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean you can’t guess. And you didn’t actually finish the sentence about why he would have tried to find me when I lived with Muggles.”
“Henry-”
“Dobby,” Harry said strongly, staring past Mrs. Malfoy’s shoulder at the elf, “can you answer me now that I’m a Malfoy? What was the evil plot?”
Dobby slowly stopped twisting his ears and looked up at Harry. His eyes quivered as much as the rest of his face, and then big tears slipped out of them and down his face. He flung himself on the ground and started wailing, beating his fists on the carpet.
Harry grimaced. That hadn’t been what he meant to do, and he hurried down the steps and caught Dobby’s fists. Dobby nearly kicked him in the jaw before he seemed to get control of himself and stop moving, but then he sniffled and stared at Harry in tragic silence.
“Are you still under orders not to speak about it?” That was the only thing Harry could think of that would make Dobby behave like this now that Harry was part of the same family.
Dobby nodded, looking relieved. “Dobby wishes he could to the young Master Malfoy, who was the Great Harry Potter!” he said, and then made a motion of locking his lips with a key. “But Big Master Malfoy-”
“Dobby.”
That was Mrs. Malfoy’s voice, and Harry shivered a little from how cold it was. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Malfoy staring at Dobby, her hand clenched down on Draco’s shoulder as if she thought that she would have to keep him from moving and going to Harry. Harry didn’t think Draco would actually try, though. He looked frozen with shock.
“That will be all, Dobby. You may go.”
Dobby bowed his head and vanished from his lying position on the carpet. Harry turned around to face his mother and brother again.
And yeah, they were still his, even though Harry could feel a sick, dizzying spiral in the middle of his chest and head. They weren’t good people. He should have known that no relatives of his could actually be good people, he told himself. The Dursleys weren’t, and the Potters were kidnappers, and the Malfoys hurt house-elves.
He should have known. He was cursed. He was tainted. Nothing good ever came his way.
“Henry,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered.
“Narcissa? What is going on?”
Mr. Malfoy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, a tense frown on his face. Harry glared at him and said the first thing that came into his head. “So how often do you make the house-elves punish themselves?”
Mr. Malfoy twitched a little, but only a little. They were all so alike, Harry thought. All the Malfoys. The other Malfoys. Cold and frozen and beautiful.
Not him. He wasn’t like that, no matter how much he might look like it. And again the sick spiral threatened to dump him on the floor.
He’d wanted a family. And that didn’t work out, of course, because it never did.
“I do not often need to do so,” Mr. Malfoy said. “Many of our servants anticipate our needs perfectly and never need to be punished.”
“Dobby, though,” Harry said flatly. “You told him to not to talk to me about whatever evil plot he wanted to report to me-which means there was something. He’s not just making it up. What was it, Mr. Malfoy?”
“I had hoped you were past the point of childish behavior in which you attempted to distance yourself from me with that name, Henry.”
Harry laughed wildly as the house spun around him again. “Harry. It’s Harry. I should have known this is what would happen. You still aren’t answering my questions, and you hurt the people who cook and clean for you-you’re like the Dursleys!”
A stormcloud came and went over Mr. Malfoy’s face. Then he said, “If you come into my study, I will tell you all about it.”
“Why do you mistreat house-elves?”
“House-elves are servants. They are meant to-”
“That’s what the Dursleys said about me.”
A wave of something pure and cold seemed to move through Harry, and then struck out from him. The stained-glass window that overlooked the staircase abruptly shattered, shards of red and blue and green flying through the air and scattering around them like the petals of an unfolding flower.
Mr. Malfoy shouted something incoherent and jerked his wand up. There was a dome of blue light over his head in half a second, and then it extended over Harry and Mrs. Malfoy and Draco. Harry watched the shards of glass falling around them in soft pattering twinkles of dust, and felt nothing.
“Henry.”
Mr. Malfoy’s voice was frozen, again. Harry looked at him, and felt none of the apprehension he would have felt that morning if his father was angry at him.
“With me.”
Mr. Malfoy walked towards his study. Harry knew, because Draco had told him, that it was the room where punishments were assigned and scoldings took place. Draco had made it sound like the scoldings were worse than the punishments.
Harry walked behind Mr. Malfoy, and felt nothing at all.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background Lucius/Narcissa and mentions of Lily/James, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Major AU (Harry is Draco’s twin), not compliant with PoA, violence, angst, drama, family, discussion of canonical child abuse
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 2700
Summary: Sequel to “How Like Hatred” and “A Name Like Henry.” Harry comes home for the summer, and it really is a relief to be at Malfoy Manor with his parents and brother-at first. But then he finds out a secret that they’ve been keeping from him, and gets the news that Sirius Black has broken out of Azkaban. Plus he has to go a Mind-Healer. Harry isn’t sure which one is worst, frankly.
Author’s Notes: Make sure you read the first two stories in the series before this one. I’m posting this as part of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fic series, and it should have between four and six chapters.
A Godfather Like Him
“Mother will say if they can visit.”
“They can visit.” Harry scowled at his brother as they stepped off the train.
Draco pointed his nose at the train ceiling, and let Harry see that he’d done none too good at a job at cleaning out his nostrils that morning. “I know that my friends won’t insult anyone. You can’t say the same about Weasley.”
“Ron wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t insulted his rat!”
“Rat is a misleading term. Dust rag would be more accurate.”
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and Ron pushed past them hard enough to make it clear that he’d heard. His ears were bright red, and Scabbers was clinging to his shoulder and squeaking in alarm. Harry gave Draco a dirty look and ran after Ron, catching up with him just as he was getting off the train.
“Not right now, okay, mate?” Ron turned his head away from him.
Harry sighed. He knew Ron wasn’t really upset about Scabbers. It was the reminder that he was poor, and even if Harry had turned out to be Henry Malfoy instead of Harry Potter, he’d just gone from one rich family to another. And Draco could say volumes about wealth with a look.
“All right. Write to me when you can, okay? I want both you and Hermione to come over this summer.”
Ron glanced at him, then nodded. “We’ll see,” he said, just before he saw his parents and ran towards them. Ginny tagged after him with a blush for Harry. Harry was glad that she at least seemed less shy and withdrawn than she had at the beginning of the year.
He shook his head as he watched Gilderoy Lockhart step off the train. It was kind of a pity that something terrible hadn’t happened to him the way it had to Professor Quirrell, but Lockhart had announced that he wouldn’t be coming back for a second year as the Defense professor because he had “fans to please and books to write.” So there was that.
“Henry!”
Harry turned around more quickly at the sound of that name than he had at the beginning of the winter term, and saw Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy waving at him from the end of the platform. He started towards them, Hedwig flying out the train door ahead of him. She was just as happy not to be spending the summer in a cage.
Mother and Father, Harry reminded himself as he leaned close and let Mrs. Malfoy hug him. I should think of them as Mother and Father when I’m around them.
It was still difficult, though. Especially if what Draco had said in their argument was true. From the way he was standing with his nose still in the air and his cheeks flushed a smug pink, he’d already told the Malfoys-Mother and Father-about it, and expected to get his way.
“Henry darling,” Mrs. Malfoy said, gently putting her arm around his shoulders, “Draco told me that you’d like to invite some children from Slytherin over to the house during the summer and thought they might not be welcome. Of course they will be. I wanted to reassure you about that.”
“They’re not from Slytherin,” Harry said, and tried to ignore the feeling of alarm that flashed through him when he saw how Mr. Malfoy’s face changed. But he persisted, because being afraid of his own family wasn’t going to help him achieve anything that he wanted. “They’re Ron and Hermione. Maybe Neville. They’re all from Gryffindor.”
“The Ron boy is Arthur Weasley’s youngest son?” Mr. Malfoy asked.
Harry threw him a defiant glance, remembering the way that Mr. Malfoy-his father-and Mr. Weasley had fought in the bookshop last summer. “Yes, he is. My best friend.”
“And Hermione is Granger,” Draco butted in, his face flushing with more than temper from the look of it. “From no distinguished family.”
“I really hoped that the next word out of your mouth isn’t about to be Mudblood, Draco,” Harry hissed, softly enough that most of the people passing by them on the platform wouldn’t hear.
“Draco. What have I told you about that word?”
Mrs. Malfoy sounded gentle, but that tone held steel underneath. Harry knew that tone. It was the kind that she had used to tell Harry that he would be going to a Mind-Healer this summer. He sneered at Draco from behind his mother’s back when Draco caught his eye.
“That I shouldn’t say it in public.”
“Well, don’t,” Harry snapped, although he felt a jolt of pain that apparently, Mrs. Malfoy hadn’t just forbidden Draco from saying that word altogether. “And Neville is Neville Longbottom. I like them. They’re my friends. If Draco can have his friends over, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to-”
“Of course, of course.” Mr. Malfoy made a little patting motion on the air. “No one has said that you can’t.”
“Draco said you would say I can’t!”
“They’re Gryffindors.”
“So what?”
“Not in public, boys,” Mrs. Malfoy said, and led Harry away from the platform with her arm still around his shoulders. Harry tugged at his trunk, but Mrs. Malfoy lightened it with a tap of her wand, and a slight glance at Harry. “Why would you think we wouldn’t let your friends come over?” she added, as Mr. Malfoy fell behind with Draco. Mr. Malfoy looked like he wanted to say something private to Harry’s older brother. Harry viciously hoped that it would be about what a git Draco was.
“Because Draco said that you would be the one to give permission,” Harry muttered, and ignored, as best as he could, the impulse to kick at the ground. Now that he came to think about it, Draco hadn’t actually said that their parents would forbid it. He’d just implied it. “And he said that his friends wouldn’t insult anyone, but Ron would. That was after he insulted Ron for being a Weasley.”
Mrs. Malfoy shook her head. “The main problem I can see in our inviting Mr. Weasley over is the lack of permission from his parents, rather than Mr. Weasley himself.”
“Oh.” Harry tried to relax his tense shoulders, but Mrs. Malfoy seemed to know that was what he was doing, and gave him a single, affectionate squeeze before she let go.
“It’s all right, Henry,” she said. “You and Draco couldn’t get along perfectly forever. You’re siblings. It’s natural for siblings to fight.” She sounded like she was speaking from experience.
“Um. I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course not. But you will find that it will be fine.”
Harry did his best to relax further as they arrived at the Apparition point outside the station. “Okay.”
Mrs. Malfoy smiled down at him, and then they whirled in place and were gone.
*
“Henry! Mother wants to see you.”
At least Draco didn’t appear to think it was a good idea to talk about friends coming over for the summer any time soon. Harry looked up from his Potions essay and found his twin brother standing in the doorway of Harry’s room, studying him intently. “All right.” Harry put down his quill.
“Why are you holding your quill like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to strangle it to death.”
Harry bristled as he passed Draco. “Just because some of us were born able to buy quetzal-feather quills if we want-”
“You were, too!”
“It’s not like I grew up knowing that, though, did I? It’s not the same-quit following me.”
“Mother thought you might not be able to find her rooms by yourself,” Draco said, and sped up a little, as though he wanted to get in front of Harry. “You haven’t been to this part of the house very often.”
Harry shot him a skeptical glance, and then came to a stop altogether as they reached the bottom of a grand, sweeping staircase (there were always staircases like that in Malfoy Manor, from what Harry had been able to tell). There was a small creature standing in front of him and staring up at him with his mouth open.
“The Great Harry Potter is Henry Malfoy,” whispered the elf.
“Dobby?”
“No, his name isn’t Dobby,” said Draco hastily, whipping around in front of Harry and standing tall as if he would be able to hide the house-elf from sight. That didn’t work well with such a wide staircase, of course. Harry simply stepped to the side and stared at Dobby again. Draco hopped in front of him. “His name is-Shobby. Yes, that’s it.”
“No, I know Dobby,” Harry said softly, his mind flying back to the summer before second year again and how Dobby had shown up at his relatives’ house. Well, no, the Dursleys’ house. He shook his head. Thinking of Lily and James Potter as his parents was still something he wasn’t entirely over.
And then his mind snapped back to the far more disturbing evidence in front of him.
He narrowed his eyes at Draco. “Dobby said that his family was evil and treated him badly.”
“Dobby would never be saying that about the great and noble Malfoyses!” Dobby exclaimed.
Harry blinked at Dobby, and Dobby held out his hands with a pleading expression. Harry understood that well enough, at least. It was the way he had sometimes looked when one of his primary teachers noticed something out of the ordinary at the Dursleys’ and tried to help him. Dobby didn’t think Harry could do anything, and he was begging Harry not to get him in trouble.
“Boys, what is the matter?”
And now Mrs. Malfoy was climbing the stairs from the bottom, her frown faint and reminding Harry of the kind that Aunt Petunia would wear when someone mentioned Harry in public. Dobby squeaked and bowed and began to wring his ears. Draco sighed as if he thought that meant the problem was solved and darted over to stand at his mother’s side.
Harry folded his arms.
“You were the ones who were going to do something evil at Hogwarts and mistrusted Dobby?”
Mrs. Malfoy reached out a hand. “Henry, darling-”
“Did you mistreat him?” Harry backed up and away a step. He glanced over his shoulder, quickly, but then quickly back towards Mrs. Malfoy, because he had figured out what happened when he removed his eyes for too long a time from someone in front of him. “Dobby said that his masters would punish him for warning me, and that they were cruel. What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Malfoy said. “Truly, Henry, my word. House-elves are-formed such that they punish themselves when upset. What Dobby got upset with, I don’t know. Why he would have sought you out in the middle of a Muggle neighborhood…” She shook her head.
Harry narrowed his eyes. Last year, the subtleties of what she was saying would have passed him right by, but not anymore. “Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean you can’t guess. And you didn’t actually finish the sentence about why he would have tried to find me when I lived with Muggles.”
“Henry-”
“Dobby,” Harry said strongly, staring past Mrs. Malfoy’s shoulder at the elf, “can you answer me now that I’m a Malfoy? What was the evil plot?”
Dobby slowly stopped twisting his ears and looked up at Harry. His eyes quivered as much as the rest of his face, and then big tears slipped out of them and down his face. He flung himself on the ground and started wailing, beating his fists on the carpet.
Harry grimaced. That hadn’t been what he meant to do, and he hurried down the steps and caught Dobby’s fists. Dobby nearly kicked him in the jaw before he seemed to get control of himself and stop moving, but then he sniffled and stared at Harry in tragic silence.
“Are you still under orders not to speak about it?” That was the only thing Harry could think of that would make Dobby behave like this now that Harry was part of the same family.
Dobby nodded, looking relieved. “Dobby wishes he could to the young Master Malfoy, who was the Great Harry Potter!” he said, and then made a motion of locking his lips with a key. “But Big Master Malfoy-”
“Dobby.”
That was Mrs. Malfoy’s voice, and Harry shivered a little from how cold it was. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Malfoy staring at Dobby, her hand clenched down on Draco’s shoulder as if she thought that she would have to keep him from moving and going to Harry. Harry didn’t think Draco would actually try, though. He looked frozen with shock.
“That will be all, Dobby. You may go.”
Dobby bowed his head and vanished from his lying position on the carpet. Harry turned around to face his mother and brother again.
And yeah, they were still his, even though Harry could feel a sick, dizzying spiral in the middle of his chest and head. They weren’t good people. He should have known that no relatives of his could actually be good people, he told himself. The Dursleys weren’t, and the Potters were kidnappers, and the Malfoys hurt house-elves.
He should have known. He was cursed. He was tainted. Nothing good ever came his way.
“Henry,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered.
“Narcissa? What is going on?”
Mr. Malfoy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, a tense frown on his face. Harry glared at him and said the first thing that came into his head. “So how often do you make the house-elves punish themselves?”
Mr. Malfoy twitched a little, but only a little. They were all so alike, Harry thought. All the Malfoys. The other Malfoys. Cold and frozen and beautiful.
Not him. He wasn’t like that, no matter how much he might look like it. And again the sick spiral threatened to dump him on the floor.
He’d wanted a family. And that didn’t work out, of course, because it never did.
“I do not often need to do so,” Mr. Malfoy said. “Many of our servants anticipate our needs perfectly and never need to be punished.”
“Dobby, though,” Harry said flatly. “You told him to not to talk to me about whatever evil plot he wanted to report to me-which means there was something. He’s not just making it up. What was it, Mr. Malfoy?”
“I had hoped you were past the point of childish behavior in which you attempted to distance yourself from me with that name, Henry.”
Harry laughed wildly as the house spun around him again. “Harry. It’s Harry. I should have known this is what would happen. You still aren’t answering my questions, and you hurt the people who cook and clean for you-you’re like the Dursleys!”
A stormcloud came and went over Mr. Malfoy’s face. Then he said, “If you come into my study, I will tell you all about it.”
“Why do you mistreat house-elves?”
“House-elves are servants. They are meant to-”
“That’s what the Dursleys said about me.”
A wave of something pure and cold seemed to move through Harry, and then struck out from him. The stained-glass window that overlooked the staircase abruptly shattered, shards of red and blue and green flying through the air and scattering around them like the petals of an unfolding flower.
Mr. Malfoy shouted something incoherent and jerked his wand up. There was a dome of blue light over his head in half a second, and then it extended over Harry and Mrs. Malfoy and Draco. Harry watched the shards of glass falling around them in soft pattering twinkles of dust, and felt nothing.
“Henry.”
Mr. Malfoy’s voice was frozen, again. Harry looked at him, and felt none of the apprehension he would have felt that morning if his father was angry at him.
“With me.”
Mr. Malfoy walked towards his study. Harry knew, because Draco had told him, that it was the room where punishments were assigned and scoldings took place. Draco had made it sound like the scoldings were worse than the punishments.
Harry walked behind Mr. Malfoy, and felt nothing at all.
Part Two.