Chapter Eight of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- The Petty and the Great
Chapter Seven.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (8/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Warnings: Partial AU after DH (Draco has Scorpius but is not married to Astoria, Harry is not married to Ginny), some angst, off-screen violence
Pairings: Harry/Draco, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Summary: The day that Harry stops Draco Malfoy and his son from being bothered in the middle of Diagon Alley starts a strange series of interactions between him and Malfoy. Who knew there was a pure-blood custom for every situation?
Author’s Notes: A series of loosely chronological, short “chapters” based on silly pure-blood customs, and a developing relationship between Harry and Draco. This is more humor and fluff than anything else, despite the angst warning.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
The Petty and the Great
“George tells me that you went to Malfoy Manor today.”
Harry raised his eyebrows and picked up Rose, who had dashed across the kitchen to him the minute she saw him. She always wanted to be picked up and swung around, and Ron was still too weak to do that for her. “It seems that my great news has preceded me,” he said in sepulchral tones, and then began to spin with Rose in a circle. She laughed, her hair flying behind her.
“Why would you do something like that?” Hermione’s voice was quiet, and she kept her back turned as she worked at chopping some kind of vegetable onto a plate.
“Because I went there in good faith, carrying what I thought was the next gift in this series of silly pure-blood customs he was telling me existed,” Harry replied, and stood Rose on a chair. His arms were getting tired, but he could play another game she liked. He peered sternly into her eyes, and she started biting her lip, trying futilely not to giggle. “It turned out it was the wrong gift, but Malfoy invited me inside anyway. It wasn’t polite to refuse.”
“But you knew what it would do to me.” Hermione’s head was still turned away from him, but her voice had gone fragile in a way that told Harry exactly what expression she would wear. The tired, haunted one she had when she awoke from the nightmares where Bellatrix Lestrange still tortured her.
“I knew you wouldn’t like me doing it,” Harry said. He wasn’t going to agree that simply walking through the gates of Malfoy Manor had somehow hurt Hermione, because that wasn’t true. If it was, then being friends with Malfoy would also have done it. He ruffled Rose’s hair back from her ears, and she leaned against him, giggling. “But I’ll never ask you to go there. I’ll never even talk to you about being there, if you don’t want me to.”
“You still went there.”
Harry sighed and settled Rose back on the floor. This was going to be one of those conversations. “Rose, why don’t you go to your room and find that yellow bird I gave you?” That was one of the birds like Scorpius’s Golden, but Rose was really too young to play with it on her own. “Bring it here, and we’ll fly it.”
Rose clapped her hands and bolted out of the kitchen. Harry watched her go fondly. She wasn’t talking much yet, but she got her point across without it.
He stood up and turned to Hermione, who was looking at him with a pale face probably gone paler since Ron’s illness. Harry felt sorry for her. He wanted to help her. He wanted to make sure that Ron being sick wasn’t too hard on her and Rose.
But he wasn’t going to live his life in perfect accord with the way she wanted him to. He had had minor conflicts with George and Ron in the past about that, especially when he didn’t join the Aurors the way Ron had wanted him to and when he wouldn’t leave George alone in high places on the anniversary of Fred’s death. Only circumstances had kept him from having to confront Hermione about something like that before now.
He lived his life to help his friends, but he didn’t live it for them. It was a distinction that Harry thought had escaped Malfoy, and maybe even Hermione until this moment.
“I’m not going to ask you to associate with Malfoy and Scorpius,” Harry said. Hermione even flinched when he said the name of Malfoy’s son, as if it was the name of a disease that would stalk her. Harry held back a sigh of disgust. “I’ll never talk about them to you. You don’t have to know anything about them.”
“You’re still associating with them,” Hermione said, and turned away to wash her hands.
“I mention the name Lestrange,” Harry said, his voice growing a little harsher. He had tried to help Hermione in the past by talking to her about his own nightmares after fifth year, the ones where Bellatrix killed Sirius bloodily in front of Harry instead of simply casting him through the Veil. Hermione hadn’t been able to stand it, but she had been okay with Harry saying the name “Lestrange” when they worked through her nightmares. “And she was the one who actually tortured you. Why should going to Malfoy Manor be a deal-breaker?”
“I was tortured there!” Hermione slammed down the knife she’d been using to cut the vegetables and turned around. “We were all held prisoner there! I don’t know how you can walk through those fucking gates yourself!”
Harry glared at her. “No,” he said.
“No what?” He took Hermione aback enough that she blinked at him a little.
“You don’t get to depend on my greater resilience and my immunity to nightmares part of the time, and then say I should have it the rest,” Harry told her firmly. “I’ll help you, and I’ve never asked for help with my own dreams or memories, because they’re not that severe. But you don’t get to depend on me being strong for you and then tell me I’m insensitive. Not how it works.”
Hermione’s mouth worked, and her hand trembled. She reached for the knife again, but had to step back and cradle her hands to her breast. “And you’ve never accused me of being insensitive before,” she whispered.
“Yes, I have. That time just after Rose was born when you were yelling at Ron for ever getting you pregnant and how it would be better if both of you were dead, remember? When he was working that case with all those dead pregnant women and children. Damn right I told you off and took Rose for a week.”
Hermione shuddered and held her hands to her face. “I’m sorry that not all of us are as strong as you are and want to make up with our mortal enemies,” she whispered.
“I would never ask you to make up with the Malfoys,” Harry said. Rose came dashing back into the kitchen. Harry was a little surprised she had been able to find the golden bird so fast when her room was so crowded with toys, but he bent down and gravely took it from her. “Watch, Rose. Please fly for me, great bird.”
The bird’s wings fluttered, and it sprang out of his hold and buzzed weakly around the room. Rose stood still and tilted her head back to watch it fly instead of running after it the way Scorpius had. That was another observation that Harry didn’t think he would mention in front of Hermione.
“Just knowing that you’re making up to them…”
“And if I told you that I was serving Pansy Parkinson? That I did that the other day? And a load of fireworks to set off at Blaise Zabini’s wedding?” Wisely, Zabini had contacted Harry to fulfill that order instead of George, but he had still contacted him. “Would you feel the same way?”
Hermione stared at him with stricken eyes. “Not as bad as Malfoy-Harry, he insulted me. And I was tortured in his Manor.”
“So was he,” Harry told her quietly. “Look, Hermione, I already told you that I don’t ever plan on asking you to meet him or talk to him. I won’t pretend that I’m going to ignore him and his son for the rest of our time on Earth because of that. I’m going to protect you and your memories of torture.” He stood up to hug her. “Don’t ask more of me than that.”
Hermione leaned on him and began to cry a second later. “I hate being so weak,” she whispered.
“You’re not weak,” Harry whispered, and stroked her hair back. “Trauma just hits us in different ways, that’s all.” He still woke up in a cold sweat if he hit the wall with his hand, sometimes, thinking he was back in the cupboard. He’d finally had to move his bed away from all walls so it stood in the middle of the room. “Ron’s hits him in different ways yet, and George’s. It’s different trauma. That’s the way things are.”
Hermione gave him a feeble punch in the shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be the wise one. I’m supposed to be the wise one.”
Harry murmured for her to hush and embraced her, and went on rocking her long past the point where Rose wanted to be picked up. He just held Rose with one arm and Hermione with the other, and used a charm that made the knife start cutting up the vegetables. He did have to let go of Hermione long enough that she could tell him what she planned to do with them.
Ron came home not long after, and they ate dinner together; the vegetables turned out to be for one of those salads that looked too awful and crisp to be real, but were fine once Harry added some other ingredients. Ron said nothing about Harry visiting Malfoy Manor, other than to give him one deep, grave look.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, mate,” he said.
Harry gave him a peaceful smile back, because he didn’t want to start a lecture on how not knowing what he was doing was part of the attraction, and changed the subject.
*
“Malfoy scarred my brother.”
“Yes, I remember that,” said Harry, and held up the small wheel he was working on to the light. It was supposed to look like a fallen-off part of a child’s toy, and light up with blazing blindness once someone stooped over to pick it up. But Harry had started having a different idea for it. Pity that the idea had come to him in a dream and he didn’t remember it properly. Turning the wheel in different directions and looking at it from different angles might help him remember.
“Malfoy was responsible for torturing Hermione.”
“That was Bellatrix Lestrange, actually.” Harry put the wheel down and shook his head. He wasn’t going to remember his dream. He really should start keeping a pad of paper and a quill next to his bed, the way George did.
“Same family!”
“It depends,” said Harry, standing up to put the wheel back in its display. “Bellatrix Lestrange was a Lestrange, or a Black depending on whether you want to think about where she was born. But Malfoy was born a Malfoy. I assumed you knew that from the way you keep spitting his name.”
“Harry.” George was all but yelling at him now, one hand clasping his arm.
Harry turned around and met George’s eyes. “Let go, George,” he said. The hold on his arm had tightened past funny to painful, and Harry wasn’t about to put up with that. There were ways that he could help his friends with his trauma, and ways that he refused to. “Let go,” he repeated, when George just stared at him.
George dropped his arm and stalked over to the far side of the shop. Harry took his hand off his wand.
“How can you be so friendly with someone who hurt my family?” George whispered to the far wall.
“Because it’s been ten years since the war,” Harry said. Looking at it from the outside, Harry thought, it was no wonder that Malfoy had come to the conclusion that Harry was the slave of his friends. Someone would look at George still being affected that strongly by the war, and decide that he wasn’t healthy. What Harry and his friends knew-even if they sometimes forgot-was that Harry had his limits, things he wouldn’t do for them and wouldn’t be pushed beyond. Friendship with Malfoy was another one of those limits. It just hadn’t come up before. “Malfoy was sentenced to a year in Azkaban for what he did to Bill, among other things. If that’s not enough to pay for what he did, what is?”
“He called Hermione a Mudblood!”
“And if he said that word, I’d punch him in the mouth,” Harry agreed calmly. “My mother fits the same category. If he said that word, it would be a sign that he hasn’t really changed, and I wouldn’t want to spend any more time around him, either.”
“Then why are you still there?” George spun in place and stared at him.
“If he said the word,” Harry said. “If denoting hypothetical situations. If he said it, then yeah, I would punch him in the mouth and walk away. If you were this much of a prat all the time, then I wouldn’t work with you. You see how it works?”
George looked at the floor. “I wish Fred was here.”
The sound of that whisper disarmed Harry-and he didn’t think George had done it on purpose. Sometimes, it just slipped out, how lonely George was, how much he wished the world still contained his twin. He stepped up beside George and put an arm around his shoulders. “I know,” he whispered into his ear. “And I would trade so many things for him.”
George leaned against him, swaying. Then he pulled back and coughed. “Would you mind holding the shop for me today, Harry? I think I have to go home. I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
Harry nodded. It was as close to an apology as George could give him right now, when he had so much else going on in his head. “Sure. Go home and rest.”
George gave him a wan smile and went to the fireplace, disappearing into it. Harry hid his sigh and Summoned the lunch he’d brought with him, leftover salad from Ron and Hermione’s last night mingled with some blackberries he’d bought that morning. Under a Preservation Charm, all of it was still deliciously fresh.
As he ate, he went over his visit to Malfoy Manor in his head again, and wondered if he had made the wrong decision by going there. It had certainly cost him in trouble and strife with his friends. And Malfoy might never want to invite him over again, if Harry made the wrong response to a pure-blood custom sometime in the future.
But he ended up deciding that yes, it had been worth it. Trouble and strife were what he had a lot with his friends anyway, even if it was just him trying to get them to do something they were afraid to do and them arguing with him. And he had established those inner limits for himself years ago, as a way to keep from getting overwhelmed. He loved his friends. He would help them all he could.
He wouldn’t become their servant, or their extension. If they wanted to live their lives the way they were doing forever, fine; Harry knew he could coax them to go out and do more, but they were the ones who ultimately had to make the decision. Likewise, he was the one who had to make the final decision over how to organize his own life.
Satisfied, Harry had just finished his lunch when there was a squeal from the front door of the shop that meant the wards had engaged. Harry raised his eyebrows and stood up. He might have expected Malfoy to come knocking when the wards were up, or Neville, but they would have both been able to actually knock.
When he looked out through the front door, it was to find a vaguely familiar woman standing on the front step. Harry frowned as he looked at her. He was sure that he had seen her somewhere before, but all he could think of right now was that her sleek blond hair reminded him of Scorpius’s.
Then Harry realized who she must be, and sighed. I hope that I don’t have to reconcile Malfoy and his wife or something. There’s probably a bloody custom about that, somewhere.
She was drawing her wand at the moment. Harry coughed, and she stopped and stared at him. “I wouldn’t do that, Mrs. Malfoy. The wards I put up would throw the curse back with twice the force.”
“I went back to Greengrass when I divorced,” said Astoria, with a kind of low and thrilling voice that Harry could easily imagine finding attractive, if her face wasn’t screwed up like Aunt Petunia smelling magic.
“Okay, then, Ms. Greengrass.” Harry shook his head. “What I said is still true. Are you here to order a prank? We’re closed for half an hour more.”
But he knew he wouldn’t be that lucky, and sure enough, Astoria snapped, “No. I came to tell you to stay away from my son.”
“Er,” said Harry, a bit at a loss. If Astoria had wanted to keep Scorpius away from Harry, or everyone, surely she would have taken custody of him. Or she would have got wind of Harry interacting with Scorpius before now. It wasn’t like they’d been hidden interactions, except for the one in Malfoy Manor. “Why?”
“I don’t want someone else raising him,” said Astoria, and stared at him as if he ought to know what that meant.
Harry gave her a slow, lazy smile. She was irritating him. “If I run into someone who wants to raise him, I’ll be sure to pass the message along.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Astoria, and leaned forwards until her nose came dangerously near the wards. Harry thought of flicking the wards just a touch or so farther until they gave her a little blister, but decided that that would be childish. “You’re all my son can talk about whenever I visit him. I don’t want you settling into his life and then deciding that you’re his parent and you can discipline him. You’re not.”
“I won’t ever think I’m his parent. I’m sure I’d remember.”
Astoria flushed more deeply than anything had made her do so far, even though Harry thought it was one of his weaker comebacks. “You’re not to disappoint him. I don’t want anything to hurt or disappoint Scorpius. Do you understand me?” She laid her hand pointedly on her wand.
Harry rolled his eyes at her. “Have you considered that forbidding me contact with him would just make him more intrigued with me? Like all the things Dumbledore forbade at Hogwarts that just made some students more determined to do them, like go into the Forbidden Forest.” Fred, he thought with a flash of his own distress, but kept his face calm. He needed to show Astoria reason, not weakness. “Let him play with me for right now, and talk about me. Sooner or later, he’ll grow out of his fascination with me. Probably sooner. I’m not all that interesting close up.”
Astoria’s flush faded, and she looked at him more closely still. Then she nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. But if you’re wrong, remember that my son still has two parents. Good day, Mr. Potter.” And she turned and walked rigidly away from the shop, as though the Diagon Alley cobblestones were too dirty to hold her.
Harry sighed wearily and strengthened the wards. He would have to ask Malfoy if there was some custom for what to do when a friend’s ex-wife came to the door and made nonsensical threats.
Perhaps I can send her a mirror so she can see how ugly she looks when she’s despising me.
Chapter Nine.
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