Chapter Forty-Four of 'The Name I'll Give to Thee'- A Kind of Understanding
Chapter Forty-Three.
Title: The Name I’ll Give to Thee (44/?)
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-Four-A Kind of Understanding
“Draco.”
His mother’s voice was a little shaken. Draco finally turned around from staring after Harry and looked coolly at her. “Yes?”
Narcissa reached up and smoothed her white hair back, then let her hand drop to the bed again. Now that she had his attention, she licked her lips several times before she continued speaking. “You know that I care for you.”
“I know that,” Draco said, and sighed. He had wanted Harry to speak words that made an impact on his mother, of course he had, but he wasn’t entirely sure that these had made the impact Harry wanted. Among other things, his mother was almost surely incapable of making such a large change right away. She would want to delay it, to pretend that the words referred to something else and the minor points Harry made were the important ones. “Listen, Mother. I know you love me. I know you think you’re doing your best for me in one way, by trying to detach me from Harry and have me marry someone else. But ultimately, that will do more harm than good. That’s what Harry is trying to get across to you, and that’s what I wish you would listen to.”
His mother’s eyes closed, once, in pain. Then she opened them again and said, “Can you tell me your marriage with him has not damaged you?”
Draco had to shake his head. “In what way, Mother? That’s the essential thing. You tell me I need to let go of him and take some pure-blood wife whom you’ll find for me, but how would that make us stronger? Would she be richer than Harry, or magically stronger than him? Could she bring me the goodwill of his friends?”
“His friends are not the whole of our world.” His mother sat up some more and clasped her hands in front of her the way Draco had sometimes seen her do when she was talking to him about the duties of a Malfoy heir. “And you know that he is more likely to be seen as tarnished for taking our name than you are to be seen as exalted for sharing his bed.”
“Thank you for putting it so succinctly,” Draco said dryly. “But you need to realize, Mother, that I have very little interest in caring what the whole of the wizarding community says about me. And if I tried to divorce him now, then I would be the one who carried the whole extent of the tarnishing that you’re talking about. People would be ready to pity him again as soon as they could, the poor Chosen One, rejected by the husband he thought he could trust, the husband he sacrificed so much for.”
Narcissa’s face looked almost grey. She plucked at the loose skin on her wrists. “Who sacrificed?” she whispered.
“He enforced certain penalties on us, that’s true,” Draco said, as calmly as he could. “But he didn’t mean to. He didn’t know the life-debts that connected us could be used in that way. I don’t think anyone did.” He paused and gazed at his mother, daring her to deny it.
Narcissa lowered her head and closed her eyes. “No, but we could do so much better than him.”
Draco laughed shortly, in spite of himself. “How? Who? Exactly who would be eager to tie their life to mine now, Mother? We’ve lost the prestige we once had. Maybe that’s a horrible thing, but it’s also the truth. Harry has given us more than anyone else could have, than anyone else would.” He paused, watching her, and decided he had to say something else to stop her from looking so devastated. “Besides, Mother, think about this. There is the strong possibility that I wouldn’t be able to end the demi-marriage now anyway, not without all the scandal and confusion that attends the ending of a real marriage. Demi-marriages are only easily annulled as long as they’re not consummated.”
Narcissa leaned forwards as though struggling, striving, to see beneath his mask, to lock her eyes with his. Draco met her gaze and set his lips in a bloodless smile. No mask here, only the truth, and from the way Narcissa sagged back on the bed and turned her head away from his, she knew it.
“That you could have done something like this,” she whispered. “That you could have chosen to tie your life to someone, a half-blood, who fought against your father and for everything he hated.”
“Still hates, I think,” Draco said, moving towards the door. He was anxious to go and find Harry. He understood if Harry didn’t really want his company right now, but he still wanted to know that he was safe in his loneliness. “Please remember Father is still alive, Mother, in large part thanks to his son-in-law.”
For a moment, his mother’s eyelids fluttered. She looked at him and shook her head. “Alive, but not free. If he could give so much to our family, why not that?”
Draco felt his mouth harden again. “You never expected Harry to set Father free. You only did that because you wanted to set him a test, and you gloried in the failure you thought would follow.” He laid his hand on the door. “Worse than rudeness, isn’t it, what you intended to do to Harry? Worse than not making him welcome in the family. I don’t think he would have been upset if you met him with a little coolness, at first, considering what he had done to you, even if it wasn’t on purpose. But you were petty.”
His mother laid her arm over her eyes. Draco let himself out, and sighed when he stood in the corridor. It hadn’t escaped him that his mother could sit up for a much longer time now, only sagging back against her pillows when Harry’s accusations had cut into her quick. He knew it was a good sign. He told himself she was recovering, that he could stop worrying about her so much now.
But that might mean only that a new object of worry would come along to replace the old one, and this time, it had to be Harry.
Draco turned towards the stairs. He could have summoned Ossy to ask where Harry was, but he preferred to have the little elf tending Narcissa at the moment. Besides, he thought he knew where Harry would be.
*
Harry leaned forwards and peered down the long corridor of flowers that led into the garden proper. His hands were pressed against his forehead, and his skin flared hot against them. He shivered a little, even so. He didn’t think he had a fever, but now reaction was coming back on him, coiling back on him, as he considered how much he might have hurt Draco with his words against Narcissa.
They were all joined together into one family, and no one could escape; that was the hell of it. Harry had accused Narcissa of forgetting that and wanting to dissolve the marriage bond which connected him to Draco too easily, but hadn’t he done the same thing? Hadn’t he forgotten Draco might love both of them and flared out at Narcissa because it was easier to accuse her of being rude than to try and come to some sort of reconciliation with her?
Harry leaned back on the bench and stared up at the sun, the light misty clouds that poured through the blue sky above the garden, and the lighter shimmer of the wards beyond them. He had wanted to be outside with the sun and the sky, but he didn’t feel like flying. And the outdoors wasn’t helping the way he had hoped it would, by giving him something else to think about.
I have to learn to get along with her somehow. If she refuses to change her mind, then I’ll have to soften mine, because it’s more important to make the family strong than anything else. Harry shook his head, a bitter laugh tickling the back of his throat. I married Draco partially because privacy behind the wards appealed to me. I should have remembered who would be shut in here with me.
“Harry?”
Harry blinked and glanced up. He had assumed Draco either wouldn’t want to be with him for a while or would want to leave Harry to his privacy. But Draco was standing not far from the stone bench Harry had picked to sit on, watching him with a frown on his face.
“You had better not be regretting what you did,” Draco said, the snap of a drawn sword in his voice.
Harry blinked, then smiled despite himself. “Since you insist that I shan’t, I shan’t.”
“You were thinking that you’d gone too far, hadn’t you?” Draco sat down on the bench beside him, winding one arm around Harry’s waist. Harry leaned against him. Draco touched Harry’s forehead, as though the dragon scar could tell him something Harry hadn’t, and shook his head. “They were harsh words, but they had to be said. And anyway, I did worse than you. I told her it would be hard to annul the demi-marriage now, if you go by all the laws about marriage in the wizarding world.”
Harry choked a little and stared up at Draco. “Why did you want to do that?”
“Because I bloody love you,” Draco said. “And it’s time she knows it. And maybe this will be the shock that jolts her into accepting that your presence in the Manor, and the family, is permanent, and you won’t be leaving.” He laid his cheek against Harry’s. “I knew you would probably start feeling sorry for yourself in a minute, and like you forced me to choose between you and my mother. Because it doesn’t matter how often I tell you that you can’t do that, that I’m content with things the way they are, that I love you, you can’t lash out without feeling guilt a few minutes later.”
Harry snorted. “Believe me, I feel no guilt whatsoever about the Ministry and what I said to them before I left.” He hesitated, then laid his hand on Draco’s. “But we do all have to live in the same house, behind the same wards, especially if any more enemies show up to attack us. I do think that I might have been a bit harsh, considering that.”
“Mother certainly never considered it when she said worse things,” Draco said, and closed his eyes, breathing gently into Harry’s ear.
“But she wanted to drive me away,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I never wanted to do the same thing to her.”
Draco tightened his arms, and finally Harry leaned more into him and put his arm around Draco’s waist in return. Draco nodded on top of his head. “I think she’s reconsidering. And you finally made your position clear to her, in terms she can’t ignore. I would rather talk about something else.”
“Okay,” Harry said drowsily. He had forgotten how nice it was to have Draco hold him like this, and he wriggled a little closer, yawning. Draco snorted at him and once again tightened his arms, until he was on the verge of squeezing a breath out of him.
“What did you mean when you said you knew someone who could be my heir?”
“Our heir,” Harry said, opening his eyes again. “Or even mine, technically, since I would inherit first, remember?”
“Right,” Draco said, and clutched him tighter. “I was unaware that you had any Potter relatives who could be adopted into the family, though.”
Harry shook his head. “It’s my godson, Teddy Lupin. Your cousin,” he added, because Draco’s shoulders had stiffened. “Your aunt’s grandson.”
“Not the one of my aunts who was crazy, I notice,” Draco said. “Because nothing would ever persuade me to adopt one of Aunt Bellatrix’s relatives.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “If she ever had any children, it’s news to me. No, I’ve been Teddy’s godfather since he was born, and since his parents are dead-”
“There won’t be any opposition if we make him our heir?”
Harry half-shut his eyes, because sometimes there was still this overwhelming need to punch Draco. Usually when he acted and reacted as though his assumptions were universal truths. “Not at all,” he said, as calmly and quietly as he could. “Anyway, he would be my heir, not yours. And his grandmother would object if we had him in the Manor all the time. But I think she would like occasional visits, so that she can have some time to herself.”
“He should spend more time here than that, if he’s going to be a Malfoy,” Draco said, with a sharp tone underlying his voice that Harry thought he understood. Draco was anxious to have it all settled, to have an heir chosen and the fact acknowledged.
“We don’t know that yet,” Harry said, turning to him and forcibly taking his hand so Draco couldn’t wave it around and almost put his eye out. “I came much later in life, and I did okay at becoming a Malfoy. And Andromeda is his legal guardian, anyway. She would be the one who could say whether he would stay here or not.”
Draco spent a few more seconds with his eyes narrowed, then sighed. His eyes widened again as he looked out over the gardens. “And arguments about him having a better life here, with more luxuries, wouldn’t appeal to her,” he muttered. “See, I’m learning the way to argue with Gryffindors.”
“I have no idea if she was a Gryffindor or not,” Harry said. It was true. He hadn’t wanted to ask Andromeda much about the past outside of what she volunteered, since thinking about Tonks and Ted seemed so painful to her. “But yes, she’ll want to make sure that Teddy still spends time with her and the rest of his family. I know she wouldn’t want him to grow up with blood prejudice.”
“Malfoys have married half-bloods before,” Draco said. “Case in point.” He picked up Harry’s hand and played with it.
“You’re not the only one here, though,” Harry said, trying to ignore the sparks that spread from his hand down his arm.
“That’s right,” Draco said, looking inordinately pleased. “You’re here, too. So she shouldn’t have to worry, right?”
“Your mother is here,” Harry said, wondering why he had to point it out when they’d just finished one row with Narcissa. “Your mother who despises Muggleborns and as far as I know has never tried to make it up with her sister. So she’ll be worried about much Narcissa could influence Teddy, I think.”
“Is that all?” Draco lounged back on the bench. “We’ll make sure to keep him away from her. I mean, he’ll have to meet her sometime, but we won’t leave him alone with her or let her talk to him about blood politics. We definitely won’t ask her to babysit.”
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “All right. If you think that you can accept having an heir who’s more of Black blood than Malfoy-”
“Malfoy blood isn’t always all it’s meant to be,” Draco interrupted quietly. “You’re more a Malfoy than Aurelius could ever be, and it doesn’t matter who your ancestors were.”
Harry looked at him steadily for a long time, and then nodded. He had been a little afraid that Draco had only relinquished his views about blood prejudice when it came to Harry, since they had to live with each other day in and day out anyway, and Harry had saved his life. But if he could apply the same standard to Teddy, Harry wouldn’t have to worry. “Okay.”
Draco captured his hands and leaned forwards for a kiss. “I’m tired of talking about my mother and heirs,” he whispered. “I think we can find much more pleasant things to talk about.”
And with that, Harry agreed wholeheartedly.
*
“And are you sure this is what you want?”
Harry lounged back against his chair in Hermione’s kitchen, watching through hazy, half-lidded eyes as she put a sandwich on the table. “What do you mean?”
Hermione sighed and stood up. “I just mean that you seem a lot happier, now, since you quit the Aurors and started living with Malfoy.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “You have the strangest reasons for asking questions that I ever heard of, then. Why wouldn’t I want to stay somewhere where I’m happy, with someone who doesn’t ask all that much of me?”
Hermione turned and glared at him. “But you have no outside job now. No means of fulfillment other than what comes from him.”
“There’s a lot more to do than just lie around in bed all day,” Harry pointed out, purely for the pleasure of watching Hermione’s cheeks turn a dusky red as he picked up the sandwich. “Study pure-blood manners. Try to get along with his mother. We’re talking about having Teddy as my heir, and I’ve talked to Andromeda. And it-went okay.” That was the best he could say for a conversation where Andromeda’s eyelashes had fluttered and she’d stared hard at him, and then asked if he should perhaps be lying down.
At least she wasn’t completely resistant to the idea and hadn’t told Harry never to firecall her again. Harry took some comfort from that. He would lose more than he wanted to admit right now if he could never see Teddy again.
“All of those are things that don’t make you leave the house.” Hermione leaned forwards when Harry just kept eating and watching her. “Well?”
“I have you lot,” Harry said, and Hermione’s face softened with a smile before she seemed to remember she was trying to be stern. She shook her head and sat down across from Harry, sighing a little.
“I just want to make sure that you’re happy,” she whispered. “You’ve given up a lot to be with him.”
“He’s sacrificed some things, too,” Harry pointed out. “One of his friends tried to kill him and another tried to kill me. At least you and Ron and the rest of the Weasleys, too, took it better than that.”
“I know,” Hermione said. “But it’s only been a few days since you quit your job, and in that time you’ve been busy fighting his enemies and figuring out where the threats came from and what you should do about them. So that’s one way to make life exciting. But what happens when that runs out? How are you going to keep from being bored?”
Harry hesitated and traced one finger along the edge of the table. Draco had talked about giving another party, which was fine with Harry, always assuming they could manage to invite enough pure-bloods who weren’t invested in seeing one or the other of them dead.
But he couldn’t spend the rest of his days studying pure-blood customs and holding parties. Draco seemed to understand that, and had told Harry that he could take up whatever else he wanted, as long as it didn’t put his life into too much danger or didn’t invite enemies into their home, either.
“I don’t know yet,” he said quietly.
Hermione reached across the table and put her hand on his. “You should start thinking about it,” she said gently. “I know you like your life right now, but-do you remember what happened a few years ago when you broke your arm on that case you and Ron were working?”
Harry scowled. “Yes.” As far as he was concerned, the simplest means of handling his badly-broken arm would have been to make the bones melt away, the way Lockhart had when Harry got injured on the Quidditch pitch, and then regrow them. For some reason, the Healers at St. Mungo’s had been appalled at that suggestion, and they had insisted that Harry have his arm in a cast for a week until they could be sure that they had all the bone chips together to cast the spells that would reintegrate it. “It was horrible.”
“You were a horrible patient, yes,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes at him. “But what really struck me was that you hated doing nothing, even the kind of nothing where you knew that you could go in and work on paperwork during the day. How content are you going to be to sit around Malfoy’s house all day and do nothing?”
“It’s my house, too,” Harry said, but when she glared at him, he shook his head. “Not content for long. The thing is, now I have time to think about things I want to do other than hunt Dark wizards. I sort of leapt into being an Auror, you know. McGonagall asked me what I wanted to do during my fifth year when Umbridge was there, and I came up with that. I enjoyed it, but maybe there’s something else I would enjoy.”
“Maybe,” Hermione said, and stared at him.
Harry sighed and applied himself to his food for a while before he said, “You think I was too hasty in quitting the Ministry.”
“I think you were right to do it,” Hermione said. “They didn’t let you fit in, and you deserve a job where you don’t have to watch your back constantly. But I wish you had thought beyond that.”
“Now I have the chance,” Harry said, and squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Hermione. Try not to worry,” he amended, when Hermione just raised her eyebrows at him. “But I have the luxury of time now, and I’m going to think about it.”
Hermione smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to strain anything.”
“Yes, right,” Harry said, and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth in retaliation, just to see her wince.
*
“Draco.”
Draco glanced up. He had been passing his mother’s bedroom door, but it had been shut, and he hadn’t seriously considered stopping. Now, it stood open, held by Affy from the other side, and Narcissa beckoned to him.
“Yes?” Draco stepped inside, keeping his voice gentle but cold, and his distance from the bed.
Narcissa looked at him, motionless, for long moments. She looked better than she had, her white hair shading more towards pale blond now, and the skin tighter on her hands. Still, Healer Bowman thought it would be a longer recovery period than this, most likely months more.
“Potter is-a source of strength to our family,” his mother said slowly, as though her lips were made of granite.
Draco stifled the urge to correct her about what Harry’s last name was now, and bowed. He knew the effort this had cost her. He could honor that effort without niggling about trifles. “Thank you, Mother.” He paused, and added, “So are you.”
Her smile came and went, and then she turned her head away from him. Draco stepped out into the corridor again and continued walking, his heart lighter than it had been.
Chapter Forty-Five.
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