Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'The Name I'll Give to Thee'- Basilisk Truths

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Title: The Name I’ll Give to Thee (37/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco (eventual), Ron/Hermione, Lucius/Narcissa
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, violence, illness, references to canonical child abuse, forced adoption.
Summary: Harry just saved the world-again. But he did it by pulling on the magic and lives of all the wizards tied to him, and the Malfoys had the most to lose. Now Draco is demanding the ancient payment of such a debt: that Harry become a Malfoy, in name and life and tradition.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a long, slow-moving story, with lots of angst, especially at the beginning. I don’t yet know how long it’ll be. The title comes from a variation on a line in the poem “Be Mine, and I Will Give Thy Name” by William Cox Bennett.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Seven-Basilisk Truths

“Again.”

Harry was learning to hate that word. He thought about throwing up his hands and storming out of here. He hadn’t even finished his dinner, and he knew from experience that Ossy would get angry at him because of that, not Draco. He might as well go now. They weren’t going to learn anything from this that the first experiment hadn’t told them.

But he had visited prison for Draco today, and compared to that, this was small stuff. Harry gritted his teeth and focused again on the target Draco had set up, which resembled a man in Auror robes. Of course it would, Harry thought. He was learning something about Draco’s temper and sense of humor now, and both of them would be involved in something like this.

So he lifted his wand in front of him, waited until he thought his furiously beating heart and grinding teeth wouldn’t interfere with his casting, and spoke again. “Incendio.”

The stream of fire shot away from his wand and hit the target straight on. Since it was only made of parchment stretched over wood, it caught fire at once and burned merrily. Harry had to step back from the heat. In a few seconds, it was ashes, and he turned to Draco, bouncing his wand on his hand and drumming his foot on the floor. “Well?”

Draco stared at the pile of ashes and cast a few spells with his basilisk wand that made glowing green numbers appear in the air next to him. Harry couldn’t read them, but Draco had told him they measured the temperature of the ash and compared it to other things like dragonfire. That would tell Draco, in a roundabout fashion Harry didn’t entirely understand, how powerful his magic was.

It took long moments, during which Harry’s bouncing and tapping both slowed down, but then Draco leaned back and gave him a slow, tragic shake of his head.

“Damn it,” Harry said, and whirled away. He was going to walk out the door of Draco’s lab, he really was, and fuck what Draco said or if Ossy was waiting for him in the corridor.

“No, Harry, listen to me,” Draco said, and Harry’s resolve or not, there was something compelling in his voice. At least Harry didn’t think Draco blamed him for not having powerful enough magic, the way his relatives had blamed him for having too much.

No, he just wants someone more powerful, because that kind of person could guard the Malfoys better and also add more to their prestige.

Harry did his best to stand still and not wince as Draco walked up and laid a hand on his arm, gesturing at the target. Harry looked dismissively at it again. “Maybe I’m just good with magic used against real people,” he suggested.

“I thought of that,” Draco said. “And I thought that perhaps you were only good with defensive magic, like the kind that you need to produce the Blue Asylum. But you said that you rolled an Auror who was about to curse my father up in a carpet. And Disarmed him and Stunned him all in a few seconds.”

Harry frowned. “Well, yeah. But that’s a spell I perfected for dealing with people who annoy me. I’ve cast it before.”

Draco sighed, although Harry didn’t see why. So far, everything he had said seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and he had done what Draco asked of him, too. If Draco couldn’t think of a test that would reveal Harry’s “real” level of power, then, well, maybe it wasn’t meant to be found.

“Listen,” Draco said at last. “The protection you cast for my father-do you know how strong that is?”

Harry sighed. “Yes, because you’ve done nothing but talk about it since I came home. Look, I know it’s a powerful variation of a basic spell.”

“It’s the finesse that gets me,” Draco muttered, letting go of Harry’s arm to pace back and forth with his head bowed.

Harry glared at him. “Oh, thank you very much for that vote of confidence.”

“I didn’t mean that, and you know I didn’t mean that.” Draco turned around and glared at him in turn.

“No, I don’t,” Harry muttered, but he dropped his folded arms and shook his head. Of course Draco didn’t mean Harry was such a clumsy oaf it was unusual to see him do something skilled.

But that left the question of what he meant and why it was so bloody important. “Maybe I can do it because I don’t care about the end result,” Harry offered. “So the things that look impressive to other people are really clumsy, and-I don’t know, not impressive. But if they analyzed them carefully enough, they would realize what they’re really like.”

He shut his mouth, because Draco was giving him a long, slow look that resembled Ossy’s. Since there was no food in the room, though, it had to be about something else. So he awaited results, while Draco rubbed his forehead as though he was the one who had a curse scar there.

“The problem with the Blue Asylum that you created for my father isn’t the degree of power, even,” Draco said, as if talking to himself. Harry relaxed a little. He liked it better when they could treat his magic like that, as if it didn’t belong to him. “It’s the number of changes that you made to it. How did you know that it would protect him against magic cast through the slot, or magic in his food, or poison? I’m not doubting you that it will,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth. “But it is unusual, you know. Why did you know the changes will hold?”

Harry shook his head. “I cast it all at once, and I didn’t think about the specifics of what I was doing. I told you, Draco, I don’t know how powerful I am. And why does it matter?” he added, finally coming to the heart of the problem. “Why does it matter if I can raise stones a hundred feet in the air or two hundred? I’ve done well enough protecting your family and you so far.”

“You’re good enough,” Draco said. “This isn’t about not being good enough.”

He said it in the tone that made Harry think he was going to seize Harry’s shoulders and shake him again. So Harry backed a step towards the lab door just in case, watching Draco all the while. “Right,” he said. “I don’t think we need to go into the childhood and self-esteem issues again. But why does it matter, Draco? Tell me why it matters to you, not to your family,” he added, because Draco had drawn a breath that seemed to predict a long speech.

*

Draco hadn’t thought he would have to explain that. So he shook his head and stood there for a minute until the words that he wanted, or some of them, welled up in his head.

“Because don’t you want to know?” he asked. “Exactly what you’re capable of, if our enemies bring something as powerful as another dragon against us again?”

Harry shook his head. “We’ll find a way to survive it, and the battles we’ve lived through have been at least as much because of your talent and your new wand and your knowledge of the way our enemies are going to act. Why do we have to have something more than that?”

“You have a lot of faith in the future,” Draco said. “Optimism at that level is blind, Harry. If I know how strong you are, then we can set up new wards that use that strength.”

Harry rolled his eyes a little. “And what if it turns out that I’m not very strong? Is that going to disappoint you?”

“It’s the inconsistencies I want to figure out,” Draco began. “How can you feel so weak and then do something like create that protection for my father?”

“Draco. Answer the question.”

Draco focused on Harry’s face, and saw the way his face had turned pale, and smiled.

“It won’t disappoint me,” he told Harry quietly. “I already thought that you might be weaker than I always assumed you were, and I could live with it. I just want to know. All right? So that you can know, too, and we can plan for the future with knowledge as well as hope. Hope’s fine, it just needs to be backed up.”

Harry went on studying him for a few seconds, and then relaxed and nodded. “Right,” he said. “Sorry to come across all strange, but it matters to me. I had-well, I’ve had lots of people who were disappointed in me for not waving my wand and fixing the wizarding world after the Battle of Hogwarts. As though anyone’s powerful enough to change some of those prejudices and attitudes that we’re buried in.”

Draco didn’t say anything, carefully, about the Imperius Curse, or how powerful wizards could use their magic to bend minds and wills in weaker people. He just nodded and held out his hand. “I thought of something else you can do.”

Harry smiled faintly and moved forwards until he was right next to Draco. “Like this?”

“Yes.” Draco held up his wand towards Harry’s eyes, and although Harry narrowed them a little to focus on the tip, he didn’t move away. “Do you trust me enough to cast a spell that makes you tell the truth?”

“You have Veritaserum for that.”

Draco had to close his eyes. No, there was no question but that Harry trusted him, and that was just a bit overwhelming. “Not the same,” he explained calmly. “Veritaserum can only make you tell the truth about what you yourself know.”

“What?”

“It couldn’t make you tell the truth about the reason your magic is so inconsistent,” Draco said, “because you don’t know it yourself. But this spell can pull out the real reason. It’s like Legilimency, but it only asks a question and finds the answer to it, not reads memories.”

“Only,” Harry echoed dryly.

“That’s all it does,” Draco said, and chose not to respond to the tone. “And this wand does what I want it to, which means it won’t hurt you. Please, Harry?”

Harry sucked in a breath that went deep enough to be a “no,” but what came out was a, “Yes.”

Draco let the wand tremble in his hand for just a second, and then straightened it, so that Harry would understand how much this meant to him. Then he nodded. “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, as he laid his wand along Harry’s eyelids, and Harry nodded and shut his eyes, standing still.

Draco whispered the incantation, and for a moment, it looked as though the front of Harry’s forehead was swinging out like a door. Draco grimaced. He had always hated this part of the spell, illusory or not. He thought it was one reason no one used this more often.

A cold wind traveled past him, and Draco heard his voice asking the question. He concentrated on it so it repeated in his mind. Why are you so powerful at some times and not at others? He had thought it best to ask that instead of how powerful Harry was, because the way he thought of power and the way Harry thought of it were different, and he might receive an answer that made no sense to him.

There was a long, almost sullen silence, and Draco wondered if Harry would answer, whether or not he could. Then the response came back.

I’m strong when other people need me to be. The rest of the time, I don’t need to be.

Draco took a rapid step away, shaking, and Harry blinked and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “Did you get an answer?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows.

Draco nodded, cursing himself in his head for a fool. Of course. Of course. He should have thought of that before now. That was the connection he had missed between the offensive spell Harry had used on the Auror and the defensive one he’d used on the bars of Lucius’s cell. The way Harry saw it, they were both defensive. When he got angry and reacted without thinking, he could do anything he wanted. And he’d been able to draw on power against the Dementor ghosts because he was protecting the world.

But he didn’t see it as worthwhile to be able to protect himself, or do daily charms more efficiently, or any of the other things that Draco had assumed powerful magic would help him with. He gave his heart to defending people.

Of course he does. Bloody Gryffindor.

Draco shook his head a little. “That you can use powerful magic when you’re defending others,” he said. “The rest of the time, you seem to think it’s not worth the effort.”

Harry blinked at him for a short time, then nodded. “I probably could have told you that, actually,” he said. “Well, it’s not that I don’t think it’s worth the effort,” he added, probably because he’d seen the way Draco’s eyes had narrowed. “Exactly. What I mean is-I always feel pushed to my limits when I protect someone else, and that doesn’t happen when I’m trying to, I don’t know, clean my desk or lift burdens heavier than my body.”

“If you have the magic, then you should be able to access it all the time,” Draco said. “No matter what you feel, no matter if someone’s asking you for help right then or not.”

“But why?” Harry asked, and met his eyes squarely, with the kind of darkness in them that Draco hadn’t seen since the demi-marriage ritual. “Since we know this now, we don’t need to ask more questions. And you know I’ll always do what I can to defend our family.”

Draco had to smile in spite of himself at hearing Harry talk about our family, but he shook his head. “You should have your magic because you deserve to do things for yourself, too,” he said. “And you’ve forgotten about the one member of the family you won’t be able to defend that way.”

“I think I did a pretty good job with the Blue Asylum on your father’s cell, and in the meantime, I can try to work on ways of using my magic to drive back Narcissa’s age,” Harry began.

“Yourself,” Draco said.

Harry shut his mouth, then opened it again only to say, “What?”

“I think you should be able to defend yourself, too,” Draco said. “What happens if you run into enemies-the one who stabbed me at the Ministry, perhaps-and you can’t call up the same kind of magic you used today to protect your own life? That strikes me as shitty for everyone involved. Including my parents. Including your friends who love you.”

Harry was staring at him as if he’d never seen Draco before. Then he snickered a little.

Draco didn’t appreciate that, but tried to show it only in a little narrowing of his eyes, rather than yelling. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just trying to think what would happen if the boys we were at Hogwarts could somehow travel forwards in time and see this,” Harry said, shaking his head. “How the little you would squint.”

Draco did have to smile, but he said, “No running back in time as a way to escape dealing with this, Harry. Do you at least understand why it’s so important to me that you have all your magic available to you?”

Harry was quiet, studying Draco’s wand as though he assumed that he would have to use it someday. Then he looked up and said, “No. Because there’s no such thing as full magic. When you’re tired and can’t cast powerful spells, does that mean that you’re somehow weaker or inferior to the way you act when you’re rested? When you don’t cast certain spells because it would be impolite, are you deprived of power that should be yours? And I refuse to let you call yourself weaker than me because you don’t have-I don’t know, this weird power that can manifest when someone really needs me to do it. I refuse. You’re as good as me. Better, sometimes.”

“It has nothing to do with moral worth,” Draco said, feeling the argument would go better if he could get Harry detached from that concept. “It has to do with strength, and the kinds of things pure-bloods respect.”

“You haven’t had any of your friends over-unless you count Zabini-”

“I don’t.”

Harry nodded, but without losing track of his argument. “Since the night when they watched us dancing. Why is that?”

“I wanted to give you a chance to get more comfortable with me, and then I forgot about the rest of it in the excitement. I’d still like to deal with the wizards in our dungeons and finding out who stabbed me before we try a party again,” Draco said briefly, and then stepped up in front of Harry. “You know that I would never do anything but honor you for your strength. I wouldn’t be afraid of it.”

“But you would think of yourself as weaker.” Harry glared at him. “I don’t want you to.”

“Not worth less,” Draco said patiently. “Not as physically weaker, or not fit to be with you. Just not as strong magically. That’s all it means.”

“Then why do you stare at me with this kind of awe whenever I talk about doing something strong?” Harry demanded.

Draco hesitated, wishing for the first time that Harry was still studying those pure-blood books. They would make the value that people had placed on magical strength for centuries clearer than he could.

But maybe it was simpler than that, or at least there was a simpler explanation that Harry could accept.

“Because it’s beautiful,” Draco said. “And you’re beautiful when I see you in full flight with it.”

Harry swallowed a little, and then said, “Well. The expression on your face when you said that was convincing, at least.”

“I hope it’ll always be convincing.” Draco leaned forwards coaxingly. “And there’s another thing. Sometimes, protecting yourself with your full strength might make you better able to defend someone else further down the line. You might be able to come to my aid if you were protecting yourself from a trap that someone set. Don’t you see that I have legitimate reasons to want you to be able to use all your magic, all the time?”

Harry hesitated a little more. Then he said, “All right, but since this was happening and I didn’t know why, how do you think I’m going to make it conscious? Most of the time, I don’t use the full strength of my magic because it really doesn’t feel like it’s there. I don’t know of any way to-I don’t know, bring it to the surface and make it available to me all the time. It sounds like that’s what you want to do, but you don’t know a way to accomplish it either.”

Draco said, “I might.”

“What?” Harry looked from his face to where his hand was resting on the basilisk wand, and narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure that thing obeys you all the time, Draco? And only does what you want it to?”

“It has so far,” Draco said. His heart was pounding steadily enough that the wand shook a little when he raised it, but Harry had trusted Draco to go into his mind and pull the reason behind his lack of magic out. Surely he could trust Draco to bring his magic to the surface, too? “Will you let me see if there’s a-it seems silly to call it a spell when there’s no incantation involved, but will you let me see if there’s a way to get your magic up to the surface?”

*

Harry shut his eyes. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t want Draco think he distrusted him.

But at the same time, he was wary of that basilisk wand and what it could do. And if its magic went deep enough, maybe Draco would actually give him power that Harry didn’t have. There was too much of Draco’s desires tangled up in there.

Even if I still don’t completely understand why. Draco might think Harry was beautiful in the midst of battle, and Harry could accept that, but how many times outside battle would he ever have occasion to use his “full” magic? Why was it such a wonderful thing to use it?

Harry would rather work on breaking down the blocks that apparently existed in his own mind and eventually use his power whenever he wanted, for whatever he wanted, than have to deal with it all now.

So he opened his eyes and shook his head. “So far, we’ve done well enough with my magic only defending other people,” he said, when Draco’s eyes turned stormy. “And now that I know you think it’s beautiful and you want me around, I’ll be more careful with my own life. And I probably won’t worry as often about frightening you, either.”

“Good,” Draco said, the lines of his mouth still pulled tight. “Because I’m not frightened of you.”

Harry reached out for his hand, and smiled at him. “But we have enough to deal with. The prisoners in the dungeons, for God’s sake, and your mother, and finding out once and for all who stabbed you. I don’t want to deal with new magic that might get out of control sometimes on top of that.”

“Hard to concentrate on who stabbed me when they apparently haven’t done anything else,” Draco muttered, but nodded. “All right. Maybe later, when our lives aren’t as complicated, you’ll let me?”

“Maybe,” Harry said. He tried to imagine a time when their lives would be less complicated, and had to shake his head a little. But there had to be at least a week when someone else wasn’t trying to kill them, right? And maybe an hour when Narcissa would have accepted him as her son-in-law.

Narcissa was a problem that he didn’t feel prepared to deal with right now, though, and might not for a long time. He shoved the realization away and focused on the vial that stood on the top of a table near them. “You’ve already finished the Veritsaerum for Shepherd and the wizards he brought with him, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Draco said, but lingered before he picked it up, frowning at Harry.

“It really is okay,” Harry said, trying to make his voice as gentle as he could. “I’m grateful to you for showing me why my magic fluctuates like that. I just don’t think of it as a problem right now-not as urgent as some of the other things we could be doing.”

He leaned in to kiss Draco when Draco still lingered, and Draco melted against him, his hands clutching at Harry’s shoulders and his wand pressing hard against the side of his neck. That was Draco, Harry thought, easing back. He might need support, but he had dangerous power of his own.

Maybe we should also concentrate on teaching him how to use his full magic.

But right now, they had something else to do. Harry picked up the Veritaserum, and gestured for Draco to lead the way to the dungeons.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

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