Chapter Eleven of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- Long Talks
Chapter Ten.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (11/?)
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!
Long Talks
“You talk like a sensible wizard, nephew.”
Andromeda said it reluctantly. Harry could tell from the way that she immediately buried her nose in a teacup afterwards, as if she was afraid that Malfoy would start demanding compliments from her.
But Malfoy inclined his head with surprising humility. “Thank you, aunt. I hope that’s one of the ways we can bring ourselves to reconcile, if we are alike.”
Andromeda fanned herself with the edge of her sleeve. Harry grinned, and made sure he was hiding his grin behind his own teacup. That was the way Andromeda reacted when she didn’t want to show that she was affected. Harry had been with her one time when they’d met up with Celestina Warbeck in the middle of Diagon Alley, and she’d done the exact same thing.
“Perhaps we can call each other by our names, as well?” Andromeda made the offer gingerly, as if she was stepping off a cliff into a crashing ocean. “Not just aunt and nephew.”
“I thought we each needed the reminder of our relationship.” Malfoy leaned forwards. He had taken one of the many neat chairs in Andromeda’s sitting room, all shades of green and blue and gold, which Andromeda rearranged at different times into different patterns depending on what she was feeling. Right now, he was facing Andromeda, and Harry sat on a couch parallel to both their chairs. “But now, we’ve seen that we don’t disagree fundamentally on politics or Muggles or the right way to raise children. So we can call each other by name.”
Andromeda hesitated one more time, then nodded. “Perhaps you can even call me Aunt Andromeda,” she added, offering what Harry knew was a huge concession for her.
Harry caught his breath, and held it. Please, Malfoy, don’t screw this up.
Malfoy didn’t seem inclined to. He had a grave expression on his face, as if he was listening to instructions from a piece of him that was more sensible than he often was. Then he bowed. “That’s fine, Aunt Andromeda. You can call me Draco or Malfoy, just as you choose.”
He turned his head to look at Harry just when Harry was mentally admiring his acumen. “But I don’t feel right not extending the invitation to everyone in the room. Can you call me Draco, as well?”
Harry smiled a little, feeling as though a warm pulse traveled through both the middle of his chest and his finger, under the ring. “That’s fine. Call me Harry if you want to, or Potter. It feels almost homey when you say it.”
“Familiar, perhaps,” said Draco, his hand tightening for one second around his teacup. “I don’t believe that our rivalry at Hogwarts ever felt much like home to either of us.”
Harry grinned and shrugged a little. “Well, I had a kind of rivalry with my cousin, if only because he did things that hurt me and I tried to get him back. So that was familiar. Probably why I got the better of you so many times. You weren’t used to having to compete with anyone for attention, so you weren’t as good at it.”
Draco’s face had tightened to what Harry thought was snapping point. Harry maintained his bland, pleasant expression, and watched Draco’s face and hands all the while. This was something they would have to get past. They couldn’t pretend that the past didn’t exist. Not forever.
Maybe it was just because Harry lived in constant contact with the past and the scars it had inflicted that made him say that, but still.
Draco finally let out all the air that had accumulated in his lungs during the past minute in one long rush, and nodded. “What you’re saying has a deal of truth.” He turned back to Andromeda. “But you were going to explain your reasons for not thinking Shacklebolt will be elected Minister again. It’s true that he made some mistakes right after the war, but he’s grown and learned since then, and I think he’s mounted a strong campaign.”
Andromeda answered with glowing cheeks. Harry leaned back and let his mind wander again. He didn’t care about politics except if it affected him, like someone trying to propose him for yet another honor, or if Hermione brought up the ways that it related to house-elves.
It was good that Teddy would get to know his cousin, and it was good that Andromeda had someone to talk politics with, and it was good that Draco had granted Harry permission to call him by his first name. Yet, Harry thought there was a constraint and formality in Draco’s manner that hadn’t been there before.
Sorry. But it was true that Harry couldn’t keep away from the past forever. He would make a casual reference sometime, at least if their friendship continued at all, and he didn’t know whether it would make Draco stiffen up or ignore it or explode. Better to find out in a relatively neutral setting like Andromeda’s house, and change it later if there was a problem.
*
“That was unexpected.”
Harry turned around. Draco had finally said he and Scorpius should be leaving, and Harry had volunteered to go and get the boys so Draco could enjoy some time alone with Andromeda. But Draco had said he would come instead.
“What? That you got along with your aunt when you’ve ignored each other for years?” Harry asked, obligingly slowing his trot up the great staircase so Draco could catch up.
“That you would refer to our rivalry like that, out of the blue.” Draco turned his head, his eyes so wide and complicated that Harry was astonished to see the pain in them. “Did you mean to hurt me, or what?”
“I wanted to see what you would do,” Harry said. He did soften his voice and reach out to put his hand on Draco’s shoulder. “I can’t avoid speaking about the past all the time, with the hurts my friends have suffered and what they’ve asked me to take care of, and the troubles they bring me. I wanted to know how you would react to hearing about it sooner rather than later.”
Draco tensed as though Harry had tried to hurt him, nostrils flaring. “I would never ask you to take care of me the way you take care of your friends,” he said, and moved away with his muscles strung so tight that Harry thought he would start prancing at any second. “Because I don’t need your sacrifices.”
Harry didn’t feel like arguing about whether or not his friends did expect sacrifices of him, so he simply said, “What about my gifts?”
Draco looked at him sideways. “Those aren’t the same things.”
Harry grinned at him and kept climbing. Draco followed behind him, muttering under his breath. That was all right with Harry. He could do a lot of things, and Harry had lines drawn for what he would and wouldn’t accept, the same way he did with his other friends. Muttering was acceptable.
As they got near Teddy’s room, Harry heard the intense, low sound of Teddy talking. He smiled. Teddy had a few friends at the local wizarding primary school, but not many close ones, and he would delight in showing off one of his games to a new playmate.
“…so this means that you have to go around the board twice before you can attack the dragon’s hoard. And if someone else comes up and lands on the space that you were on in their next trip round the board, then they can challenge you to a duel.”
“But why?” asked Scorpius. “I don’t understand that. Why’s it a duel?”
Teddy started to explain, but Harry tuned the explanation out. Frankly, trying to remember all the variations on the rules that Teddy came up with for what used to be a perfectly simple game of Circle the Mountain would burn up his brain. He did glance back at Draco before he knocked on Teddy’s door, to see how Draco was taking this.
Draco had his eyebrows raised, but he smoothed them down again when he saw Harry looking, as if he thought that Harry would disapprove of him showing surprise at anything Teddy did. Harry grinned and shook his head.
“Teddy makes up so many of his own games that the ordinary toys don’t satisfy him,” he said, the second before Teddy ran out of the room and started talking.
“Scorpius has never played Circle the Mountain,” he announced, as if that was the most important information he had ever told Harry, and shook his head sadly. “He didn’t know about the dueling rules or the rules for when you can get gold and when you can get gems, or anything.”
“The majority of people who play the game don’t know about those rules, either,” Harry pointed out dryly. He knew that Teddy had had at least a few arguments with his friends over what those rules were, to the point where some of their mums had contacted Andromeda and asked that their sons play anything else when they were over at Andromeda’s house.
“Well, they should.” Teddy was unruffled. “It’s a lot more fun to play it that way than just use the stupid rules that come with the box!”
“It’s fun,” said Scorpius, and came out, and slipped his hand into Draco’s. He was looking at Teddy with unrestrained admiration, in a way that made Harry’s shoulders lose the last bit of tension. If Draco did have some prejudices remaining against Teddy, there was no way that he would succeed in imparting them to Scorpius. “I never played a game like that before. When can I play it again?”
“When we visit here the next time,” Draco started, in a voice that Harry thought was probably meant to reassure Scorpius and Teddy that there would be a next time.
And maybe me, too. One of Draco’s eyes was fastened on him, if you looked at him carefully.
“But why can’t I come over to the Manor, too, and bring the Circle the Mountain game along?” Teddy demanded. “Then Scorpius can show me all the things at your house that he talked about!”
Draco blinked. Harry smiled. “That’s certainly all right with me,” he said. “And I think it would be all right with your grandmother, too.”
Then he turned and waited to see if it was all right with the one person they might expect to oppose it, a bit.
Draco’s free hand tightened on air. He wasn’t clenching Scorpius’s hand at all, Harry noticed. Well. That was good. It increased his sense that Draco was a father before he was anything else.
Not that Harry minded. He wasn’t as close to Scorpius as he was to Rose-it wasn’t like he’d been there to see him being born-but he could certainly accept a cute kid as part of the friendship. Especially a kid like Scorpius, and a friendship like the one he might have with Draco.
A moment later, Draco nodded, and even his free hand loosened and relaxed. “I think so. It will be a pleasure to see you there, Teddy.” He inclined his head to Teddy, then to Harry. “I assume that you will be escorting him, rather than his grandmother? Certain-associations-might be too much for her.”
You don’t really think that, you just want to see me more than you want to see her, and this is a convenient excuse, Harry thought in amusement, but he nodded as solemnly as if he hadn’t figured out Draco’s little plan to get them all to the Manor together. “Of course. Should we say sometime next week?”
Draco’s smile was small but triumphant as they worked out a day and time, subject to Andromeda’s approval. Harry couldn’t do anything but smile back. Even though Draco had to know Harry at least suspected what he had done, he was so cute when he acted as though he’d got away with something.
*
“That ring is new.”
Harry blinked up at George. He’d spent most of the morning with his nose buried in a book, trying to figure out why their latest trick-powder that made it look as though the door to a room had vanished-wasn’t working. The magical theory was straightforward enough, and surely Muggles could manage the same thing with paint, so it must not be-
“Harry.”
Harry laid the book down and stretched out his hand so that George could see the ring. “Yeah, it is. It’s another gift from Draco. Along with permission to call him by his first name,” he added, when George’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in what looked like protest.
George shut his mouth on the protest a second later, thank Merlin. He looked away from Harry, and the muscle in his cheek jumped. Then he said, “I really wish that you would give this up.”
“Give what up?” Harry picked up his book again.
“This attempt to have a friendship with him. As if a person like him knows what friendship is.”
“I don’t think that he has the same notions I do of it,” Harry said. “He relates to me through pure-blood customs, and he gets all flustered when he realizes I don’t understand exactly what those mean. But if it’s a different kind of friendship, it’s one that I feel like learning more about.”
“Why?”
“Because I realized that my life isn’t full enough,” Harry said softly. “That a lot of my friendships are of the same type, and that I’d like some others, too.”
George flinched as if Harry had struck him, and then turned away and marched mechanically to the shelves on the other side of the room, restlessly picking up an old Skiving Snackbox. Harry knew it was of a kind that Fred had been working on perfecting when he died. George never altered it, but he did fiddle with it when he was feeling upset.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t make a perfect recovery,” George whispered, staring intently at the box. “I’m sorry that I still miss my twin.”
“That isn’t the point,” said Harry. “Don’t you think I would have done something else by now if I couldn’t stand you missing Fred? I know that you miss Fred. It doesn’t make me wish you were different. It’s just something else about you, like having red hair and freckles. And Hermione has nightmares, and Ron suffers from grief, and so does your mum. Those are just part of you.”
George paused and looked uncertainly back at him. “And Malfoy doesn’t have that kind of past?”
Harry snorted. “Hardly. Sometimes I think that I can hear everything he’s carrying clank when he walks into the room.”
“Then what’s the same between me and all your other friends?” George hesitated, as though he didn’t really want to ask the question, then added, “And what’s different about him?”
“What’s different about him,” said Harry, as gently as he could, “is that he wants to change things and move forwards. And you don’t.”
Sure enough, that made George stiffen up all over again. Harry really thought he would crush the Skiving Snackbox, the way he was worrying it. Harry didn’t go over there and try to rescue it, though. That would be a bad idea right now.
“I’m sorry that I miss my twin and I’m not your perfect new friend,” George whispered. “I think I told you that already.”
“I know what happened when you tried to move forwards,” said Harry. “I wish you wouldn’t think that I blame you for it.”
“It’s hard to do that when it sounds as though you do blame me for it.”
Harry sighed and stood up and walked over this time. George put the Snackbox down and hunched there. Harry shook his shoulders a little. “I told you, it’s okay. It was hard for you to find help. Some people tricked you deliberately. Some people lied to you, and other people just thought they could help and it turned out they couldn’t. So it wasn’t your fault.”
“But you think that Malfoy is stronger than me.” George’s eyes flashed.
“More resilient,” Harry said. “The same word that you and Ron and Hermione apply to me and don’t bat an eyelash about.”
George flushed slowly, the kind of flush that crept up his neck and his face and even under his hair, although Harry admittedly couldn’t distinguish it from the hair at that point. “I don’t want to apply it to someone like Malfoy.”
“Then don’t,” said Harry, and let him go, and stood back. “There’s no reason that you need to talk about him or ever see him again. I’ll tell him and Scorpius not to come to the shop.” He held his hand up. “But then, don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
“What’s so bloody appealing about him?”
“I told you already.”
That ended with George stomping heavily into the back room. Harry sighed and sat down on the chair he’d already taken, reaching for his book and shaking his head.
He meant what he had said. He didn’t want to force his friends to change. He didn’t think they were very happy, but trying to change that had hurt them-mostly as the result of people who didn’t even think about whether the war heroes were happy or not, they just wanted to gape at those war heroes or gossip about them or touch them or take out their resentments on them. So Harry was content to support his friends in the life they had chosen to lead. They had done enough.
But Draco had chosen a different route, and Harry thought that he might want to bear him company on the road.
That could change tomorrow. It could turn out that he’s still prejudiced or trying to trick me into something I don’t want.
Harry shrugged. And until that happened, he would go with Draco. He liked him, he liked Scorpius, and he wanted to see what happened next.
I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand, he thought wistfully, and returned to the book, which really did contain things that were hard to understand.
Chapter Twelve.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/666525.html. Comment wherever you like.