Chapter Forty-One of 'The Name I'll Give to Thee'- Back At It
Chapter Forty.
Title: The Name I’ll Give to Thee (41/?)
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 Forty-One--Back At It
"I still can't believe that you're going to construct a permanent place for that coward to live."
Harry hunched his shoulders a little and did his best not to look away from the book he was studying, the book that talked about various kinds of shelter spells and the ways to make them permanent. He and Draco had worked together so perfectly yesterday with the way they'd trapped and tricked Daphne. He didn't know why they couldn't do the same thing now. "I already said that this is the only solution I could think of," he snapped, flipping a page. "They could get Shepherd out of Azkaban if they're really as powerful as he says they are--not only that, the Ministry might decline to try him." He was a little worried that they might refuse to try the wizards Harry would be bringing in who had assaulted the wards, but that was the reason he had wanted proof that they'd helped to drain Shepherd's magic, a Dark enough crime that the Ministry probably wouldn't refuse. "If you have a better plan, by all means tell me now."
Draco paced around in front of him and slammed down one hand. Harry jumped and glared at him. Draco's eyes were narrowed, his nostrils pinched as though someone was holding them shut. Harry folded his hands on top of the book and waited. Draco had something that he wanted to say, clearly, so let him say it.
"You don't know for sure that the Ministry's grudge against you runs that deep," Draco said quietly. A dangerous quietness, Harry thought, and only kept from glancing at the basilisk wand in Draco's hands with a huge effort. "You don't know for sure that they would refuse to hold a prisoner just because you're the one bringing him in, and you're the one he threatened and assaulted."
"I know that I can't risk it," Harry said. "And remember that we would have to tell the truth about who Shepherd assaulted. It was you, mostly. What would they say to that? Do you think they would willingly hold someone who hurt a Malfoy? They would find some excuse to let him go, and then our enemies could pick him up and use him against you again. No. I'm going to give him a permanent home where that can't happen." He turned back to the book.
Draco gripped it and shut it. Harry barely got his fingers out in time. He leaned back in his chair and gave Draco a flat stare, not sure what else he was supposed to do.
"You're going to waste your magic on him," Draco said.
"On someone who's a member of the family," Harry said. "I thought everything would be okay as long as I was working for someone who's a member of the family."
"I want you able to use your power for any reason, remember," Draco said, and ground his teeth so hard that Harry was surprised he didn't bite his tongue in the middle of it. "Including to defend yourself."
"If you want me able to use it for any reason," Harry said, putting his hands on the table and drawing his legs up, ready to move if he had to, "then you ought to accept that I'm using it for this one."
"I don't," Draco said. "Not when you'll spend so much of your time and patience on him, over and over and fucking over again." His voice rose, and then he caught it back, panting.
"Just once," Harry said. "I intend for the house-elves to be the ones who take care of him. If you think that I'm going to use all my magic to conjure food for him, then maybe I can see why you're upset. But even though I thought about that, I decided it wouldn't work. So you ought to be happy."
"I am not fucking happy," Draco said, so pleasantly that it took Harry a minute to realize the sense of the words. "I don't want you to do this."
"Yes, but although you're technically the head of the family, you don't get to dictate every single thing I do with my life," Harry said back just as pleasantly, shoving the chair back so he could stand. Draco caught his breath as though Harry's defiance meant something more than Harry thought it did, but he didn't move forwards or try to hold him down, so Harry stood up. "You don't have to watch me expend the magic. I don't require anything but your key to open the doors of the dungeon cell. Or is that going to be refused to me?" he added, as he watched Draco hesitate and blink.
Draco hissed and pulled the key from his pocket, but he clutched it tight instead of tossing it to Harry. "I wish you could see the way you recklessly spend magic as I do," he said.
"As a waste?" Harry snorted. "I wouldn't want to see it that way. Magic is meant to be used. If I have more to use than other people do, that's a blessing, of sorts, and I should just go ahead and use it. I don't understand what you think I would use it for if not to defend and protect my family."
Draco bit his lips savagely, and then thrust out the key. "Since nothing I can say will convince you, then take it."
"I preferred the way you looked the last time you said those words," Harry retorted, and swiped the key from his outstretched hand.
Draco stood there staring at him for another moment, and then turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the room. Harry buried his head in his hands before he followed.
He knew they were doing much better than they had been, when it came to making the marriage a real one, but it seemed there were still some barriers that he couldn’t cross.
*
Draco took his broom outside into the gardens, to soar over them and brood alone. Harry had gone to the dungeons to be with Aurelius, of all people. It still amazed Draco that he could see anything good in the man who had almost had him killed.
And how much of that comes from his general disregard for his own life and safety, and how much from his tendency to forgive anyone who has a different opinion from his?
Draco didn’t know, and as he spun his broom in a steep dive at the ground, he admitted to himself that he really had no idea how he could find out, either. He pulled up again and took sharply to the sky, swirling back and forth in a lazy circle. His fingers dug into the broom hard enough that he winced and pulled them back a minute later with splinters under his nails.
Then he pulled up a few feet above the grass and hovered there with his eyes shut, his lungs working as he struggled to breathe normally, and admit that he wasn’t afraid for Harry, or even all that angry with him. He was just frustrated, and he didn’t know how to let go of the frustration and accept what Harry wanted to do.
It was wasteful, he thought. That much, at least, Harry would be able to admit if he was a little more distant from the situation. Why create an impregnable shelter for someone who was worth so little? Why not save that kind of defense for the Manor’s wards, or at least Lucius, the way Harry already had? Aurelius could go to Azkaban, as far as Draco was concerned. The Ministry might hate Harry, but not enough to let someone go who had tried to assassinate him.
Maybe.
That was the horrible thing, that they might not be able to depend even on publicity that said Harry was the Chosen One and must be kept safe now that he had married a Malfoy.
Draco kicked the broom backwards and flew towards the far end of the gardens, snarling steadily under his breath as he did so. No, he couldn't depend on the Ministry, and Harry was right that the distant master that Aurelius's companions had served might be able to get him out of Azkaban or use Aurelius against them somehow. Perhaps neither of those things would happen.
But Harry was done with perhaps, Draco knew, and so was he.
He landed on the grass after a long backwards flight, and sighed into his hands. All right. He had done what he could to make his point-of-view clear, and Harry had still rejected it. It was probably best to give in and make a compromise now, rather than continue the opposition that he knew was useless.
My mother would encourage me to continue.
Draco shrugged. Narcissa had also tried to demand that Harry do something she had to know was impossible. For her, compromises would be an admission of weakness. She was still married to someone who was part of the family by blood.
This situation is different. I'm not my father, and I accepted that a long time ago, but now it's time for my mother to accept that I'm not just her son, either.
Draco went upstairs to wait for the time when Harry should be done making his impregnable dungeon for Aurelius, and they should be ready to take in the Dark wizards who had committed crimes bad enough that the Ministry might keep them under guard.
*
"I don't understand what you're talking about."
Harry rolled his eyes as he paced back and forth in front of Shepherd, studying the stones in the walls. With luck, he could use them as the basis for the cell he was going to place Shepherd in. He hoped he could, since he had never tried to create a spell like this without the benefit of a physical base. Even Lucius's blue cube had the bars backing it up. "That's not an uncommon experience for you, is it?"
"Yes, I suppose I'm stupid."
Harry sighed and glanced over his shoulder at Shepherd. He sat with his head dangling down towards his chest, and his knees hunched up in an absurd position, and his hands clenched in front of him. Now and then he sniffled.
He was so weak. That was the problem. He was sorry now for having gone against Draco and tried to kill Harry, but only because he had got caught. If they let him go, he would become a weapon in the hands of whoever cared to pick him up, and if he went to Azkaban, then he might hate that so much he would agree to go with whoever tried to break him out.
"I don't know how the Malfoy line produced someone like you, I really don't," Harry muttered, and turned back to his task. Even Lucius after years in Azkaban had had more grace and strength than Shepherd did after a relatively short time spent under a confinement that he had to have known was coming.
"I don't, either."
Harry rolled his eyes, and reminded himself not to talk to Shepherd anymore. It only made Harry exasperated, and even his agreement couldn't satisfy.
Harry finally stepped back and closed his eyes, beginning to weave the cell. It was made of blue light, like the wall that enclosed Lucius, and it had the same strengths as the wards, borrowing from them where they were closest to the wall of the dungeons. The only one who could pass through it was someone who was a Malfoy either by marriage or by blood. That way, Harry and Draco were the only ones who could reach Shepherd, or break him out if that became necessary.
Shepherd tried to say something else in the middle of Harry's casting, but Harry didn't listen to him. He was lost in the middle of the blue light now, of the magic that swelled inside him and poured through him.
He did enjoy that strength, he had to admit, as his wand spun around him in curves and patterns that he never knew outside that initial spellcasting. He could get used to having that power available to him all the time, the way that Draco wanted for him.
But it wouldn't come when it was him and his convenience. He had to have the spur of danger to someone else, and life-threatening danger at that. He had banished the dragon that was attacking the wards the same way.
Better to have it when I really need it than never have it.
He breathed out the incantation, and the light made his eyelids glow through with blue from the back. Harry opened his eyes and looked around, then smiled. Yes, he had created an asylum that punched a bit through the walls, making this place a little larger than the cell Shepherd had stayed in so far, but still depended on the stones and wards for strength. In one corner was a small bathroom, and there was a bed, and some shelves with books, and a fireplace that would never have any connection to the Floo network, and a tiny kitchen. There were plenty of Muggles who lived in worse places than this.
Harry turned around. Shepherd had stopped muttering and was looking around the walls with the air of someone who intended to make trouble as soon as he could.
“I suppose it’s all right,” he said, stressing the “all right” so much that Harry found himself smiling in spite of all the reasons he had to hate the man.
“You’ll use it, and you’ll stay here, and not attempt to escape?” he asked. In fact, although the wards had an exception for someone who was Malfoy by blood or marriage, only Harry and Draco could both come in and out, but he didn’t see any reason to tell Shepherd that.
Shepherd huffed a little and looked again at the gleaming blue lines of the walls. “You swear that no one can get at me in here?” he asked, his voice lowering as if he found it difficult to comprehend that there was no hanging about in the corridor to listen to him.
“No one can get in except me and Draco,” Harry said. “And the Malfoy house-elves, who will bring you food and drinks, and take away all the old dishes, and clean up after you, and bring new books.”
Shepherd blinked a little. He hadn’t thought of house-elves, obviously, and he sat up and clasped his hands in front of him. “They’ll take care of me like a member of the family?”
“They will.” Harry saw no reason not to promise that. After all, Shepherd was a member of the family, and while Draco’s hostility to him might make Ossy and Affy dubious, Harry was taking care of him.
Shepherd closed his eyes and sniffled a little. “That was all I ever wanted,” he whispered. “Just a little bit of the Malfoy life-style, and the way they would live. To have some house-elves, and to have someone attend to my wants, and to have a safe place I could retreat to…”
Harry smoothly stepped back through the walls into the corridor, listening as Shepherd’s voice became muffled by the wards. Then he took a deep breath and faced the corridors that led up to Draco’s rooms-Draco’s wing, really. They had kept their separate bedrooms, although they spent most of their time together now.
Time to go tell him that Shepherd was safely in an impregnable prison, and hope that would give Draco some sense of satisfaction, and the inclination to forgive Harry.
*
“Do you still admire the man you married, Draco?”
Draco grimaced a little. His mother had summoned him and he’d come, but she didn’t have to sound like that, with the vicious drawl in the back of her voice that made her resemble his Aunt Bellatrix. “Yes,” he said shortly. “We don’t agree about what he should do with his magic, obviously, but we agree about a lot of other things.”
“Like what?” Narcissa leaned back in her bed and played with the blankets on her lap, her eyes never wavering from his face.
Draco stood up and prowled around in a circle. Normally he would never show such agitation to his mother, but she knew what he felt about this and her constantly picking at his love for Harry already.
“Like what should happen with Father,” he said, staring out the window and not seeing why he should turn around even when his mother took in a loud, exasperated breath behind him.
“I wanted your father back,” she said. “He has served enough time in prison. He would be a comfort to me in my time of trial. That is the only reason I asked, and you know it, Draco.”
Draco turned around and looked at her, resting his elbows against the glass windowpane. “I think you asked because you intended it to be a test for Harry,” he said. “A test that he wouldn’t pass, because of course he couldn’t free Father from prison without setting off a huge legal scandal. And then you could point to that and claim that he didn’t love me enough, and didn’t want to be a part of this family enough.”
His mother regarded him distantly, in the way she often had during the war. “If you believe that, then of course nothing I can say will convince you otherwise, Draco.”
“And that’s the other thing you do that exasperates me,” Draco said, crashing straight ahead. He had held back on saying all this because he didn’t want to upset his mother, but she had recovered enough that Healer Bowman no longer thought she should be under constant observation. So he would say it. “You manage to make it sound as though you’re the reasonable one, and all the complaints I have about the way you treat Harry don’t matter.”
“If you don’t sound reasonable to yourself,” said his mother, with a slight shake of her head, “then perhaps you are not. You are the most sympathetic audience you could imagine.”
“There’s one other person.”
His mother stiffened as Harry pushed open the door and stepped into her bedroom. He gave Narcissa one mild look, and then turned and smiled at Draco. “Can anyone join in this conversation, or is it a private affair?”
“Nothing I think and do is private from you,” Draco said, smiling at him, partially because it was true, or he wanted it to be true, and partially because he could feel the repulsion radiating out from his mother.
“Good.” Harry turned and studied Narcissa for a moment. Then he said, “I do still feel guilty about what I did to you, but that doesn’t mean you can use the guilt into manipulating me to do anything you want me to. Your husband has been mistreated in prison, that’s true. But I used the Blue Asylum Spell to put up a shield that will keep him safe.”
Narcissa’s hands knotted in the blankets. Draco winced a little. He could imagine the kind of retort that was coming, the sharp, poisoned words that Harry would have no shield or defense against.
Then he looked at Harry’s face again, and hesitated. Harry was waiting, patient, but without the coldness he had shown the first time he and Narcissa argued about freeing Lucius from prison. His hands were lightly knotted in front of him instead, and he had an expression Draco remembered his father wearing when he had to get through boring meetings.
“You have no idea what it would mean to me, to have my husband free,” Narcissa began, voice soft.
“I think I do,” Harry said. “It would mean the same thing to you that having Draco free would mean to me, if he had spent a long time in prison.” He turned and smiled at Draco, and Draco found himself reeling in the face of that smile. Harry reached out and took his hand. “But it would all depend on what he had done.”
“You can condemn your husband to prison, then?” Draco had never heard his mother sound that way, shrill and yet broken, like a shattered window. “Draco, are you listening to this? To the way that your Gryffindor husband places principle above a sense of loyalty to his family?”
“I’m listening,” Draco said, reaching out and taking Harry’s hands. “And he’s right, it would depend on the reason that I was in prison. If the Ministry had arrested me on some spurious charge and rushed the trial through because they wanted to get their hands on Malfoy property and money?”
“They would never be able to get even that far unless they’d already knocked me unconscious and immobilized somewhere,” Harry said easily. “Especially since I’m your heir, and they would have to get rid of me, too.”
Draco rubbed Harry’s knuckles with his thumb. That showed Harry had paid attention to the lessons Draco had tried to teach him about pure-blood property and inheritance laws.
Harry smiled back at him, and Draco would have liked to drag him into another room and continue the fantasies that had sprung into his mind. But his mother was there, watching, and there was another question to answer. “What if I had committed murder?” Draco asked. “Or become a Death Eater like my father?”
“Then I would have to look into the evidence,” Harry said quietly. “But if you really had committed murder, then I would visit you in prison, and make sure that no one mistreated you simply for being there. And I would make Teddy Lupin my heir, and make sure that he grew up knowing as much about his grandmother’s family as he does about his father’s.”
Draco turned to his mother. She was watching them with a peculiar expression, her brows set and drawn down. It looked different on her pale, age-spotted face than it would if she was her normal age, but Draco thought he knew it anyway: the expression she wore when Draco used his first bit of accidental magic, or first said that he wasn’t going to sit down and do what his parents told him.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Draco told her quietly. “I don’t want to hate you. But I am going to have the husband I want, and Father is going to be safe-but he isn’t going to leave prison.”
“If it was Draco,” Narcissa said, speaking straight to Harry now, “you would find a way to do it.”
“It would depend on what he’d done,” Harry said, “which you should have learned by just listening to us. But there’s also a difference between someone who committed a few crimes during the last war and someone who committed crimes during both wars. He’s going to stay there, Mrs. Malfoy. But you can visit him when you feel better, and I’ve made sure that no one can poison or curse him.”
He turned to Draco. “I’ve done the same for your cousin. Now, we should take the wizards who tortured him to the Ministry, and hope that draining someone’s magic is a crime bad enough for them to hold them.”
“I’m certain it will be,” Draco said, and turned to his mother. Do you still think I should have chosen a different husband? He let his eyes ask the question for him, because he knew that it would hurt both Harry and his mother, for different reasons, to hear it spoken aloud.
His mother turned her head away and said nothing. Draco left the room with Harry, hand in hand.
It might take her time to become reconciled to Harry’s presence in the house, but he thought they had made a fine beginning.
Chapter Forty-Two.
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