Chapter Seventeen of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- Such a World of Walls
Chapter Sixteen.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (17/?)
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!
Such a World of Walls
“Well, but I have to see my friends.”
“You can see them.” Draco’s smile was light and flexible, and when he reached out and played with one of Harry’s hands, Harry might have thought the same thing about his fingers. But he could see Draco’s other hand, even though it was down by his side, from where he lay in the bed. It was curled into a claw that didn’t look as though it had ever heard of flexibility. “They just have to come here.”
“They don’t want to,” Harry pointed out, with what he thought was reason. “Hermione was tortured here.”
“She doesn’t have to go into that part of the house. We’re far away from that part of the house.”
“We are?” Harry blinked. It was true that he had so far only been down the stairs to a single dining room, since he had a bathroom right in his chambers, and it had felt wonderful to luxuriate in a big bed and eat meals with Draco and play with Scorpius and not do anything else. But he had assumed they were close to the main part, with the room where Bellatrix had tortured Hermione. “Where are we?”
“In the wing with the room that the Portkey brought you to.”
“I thought-wasn’t that kind of out of the way?”
“It’s strictly warded.” Draco gave him an even glance, with a blush high on his cheekbones that Harry didn’t understand for a moment, until Draco finally blurted out. “I’m not taking any chances that someone else could get at you.”
“It’s okay,” said Harry, reaching out and taking Draco’s hand. “Rizzi didn’t find anyone there when he went to get the clothes, remember? They probably left my house as soon as they realized I was gone and I wasn’t coming back.” Draco only went on staring, and Harry added, “It wasn’t like they came there to rob me. They just wanted to kill me.”
“Just,” Draco said, in such a tone of long-suffering that Harry had to grin.
“I know,” said Harry. “How they got through the wards concerns me, and I need to find that out. But I also need to see my friends.” He’d had owls from them, but Draco refused to let him out of the house so far, and they didn’t want to firecall him or come over to the Manor-which Harry understood too well to force them into doing. “So I need to go home. Then I can look at the wards and talk to my friends at the same time.”
“What happens if more Risen Cobras show up?” Draco’s stare was uncompromising.
“I have this handy Portkey,” Harry said, gesturing to his ring.
From his even more fixed stare, Draco didn’t think that was funny. Harry was a little disappointed. He’d thought it was hilarious.
“You dislocated your kneecap,” Draco said quietly. “You have a broken bone in your shoulder blade.” His hand rose and touched the top of Harry’s shoulder as though he thought he would break it again by pressing.
“Had,” Harry corrected. Potions had taken care of the damage to his shoulder the first night. The kneecap was a more delicate issue, and it would still be a few days before the regimen of potions the Healers had given him would have their full effect, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t walk. He just had to be careful.
“And the damage to your hands from the numbing curse was extensive,” Draco continued, as if he hadn’t heard him. He probably hadn’t, Harry thought, torn between fondness and exasperation. There were few people like Draco for focusing. “The Healers said that you probably shouldn’t try to hold your wand for a week.”
Harry scowled. Apparently the curse was a new one the Healers hadn’t run into before, but they could analyze its purpose and effect even if not all the smaller spells that had gone into making it up. The curse was specifically supposed to flare up and cause continuing damage if Harry handled a wand. He could play with toys with Scorpius and use a spoon just fine, but anything magical-even Floo powder, the latest Healer had said-was a problem.
“They said it would wear off in a week,” said Harry. “Probably. But I can’t go around being afraid for the rest of my life.”
“No, you can’t.” Draco’s scowl and eyelids were both heavy. “I’m not asking you to do that. What I hope you’ll do is yield to good sense and not handle your wand for the next week.”
Harry looked away. Draco touched his shoulder, lightly again, but it was enough to turn him back.
“Why are you so resistant to accepting help?” Draco whispered. “Just because Healers didn’t work out for your friends is no reason to think they won’t work out for you.”
Harry stirred restlessly. “It’s not-it’s not that I think I’m too good to accept help.”
“I didn’t say anything about too good-”
“And I did let the Healers help me. I take all my potions every day, like a good boy, don’t I?” Harry gestured to the line of vials on the table beside his bed. In truth, he thought it was a little excessive. He’d suffered wounds before that were as extensive, and even curses, and no one had put him to bed and babied him and fed him potions every few hours.
It felt nice when Draco did that.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that no one had done it, and Harry had still got up and handled himself and any duels that followed just fine.
“You can go home,” said Draco. “Let me take you. You can firecall your friends from there. Let me put the Floo powder in for you, that’s all. I’ll stay out of the way so they don’t have to look at me while you speak to them.”
Harry turned around in alarm. Draco’s voice had a curdled bitterness that made Harry reach out and take his hand again. “They can’t help it. The place is worst for Hermione-she would never come here for any reason-but the sight of you would also…”
“I know, I know, I know, I know,” Draco said, and flung up a hand. “Don’t think I haven’t spent the last few days struggling with myself and telling myself that it’s not their fault. But it’s still-annoying.”
Harry relaxed with a cautious smile. “It is that.”
“And now I’ve distressed you.” Draco spent a long moment looking him in the face, as if he wanted to see exactly how much distress he’d caused. “I’m sorry.”
Harry sighed and stared at his hands. He struggled for a second with what to say, then gave up and decided that he might as well just say it.
“I want my friends to get better,” he told his hands. “I want them to welcome you and for you to all get along.”
Draco found his hand and held it. Harry suspected it was so that he wouldn’t be looking at his hands alone.
“But I know that can’t happen,” Harry continued, and let his gaze lead up the line of Draco’s arm to his face. “I wish for it, but I have to put up with the reality that actually exists, not waste it longing for my dreams.”
Draco was quiet for a moment, and then gave him a look that was not quite a smile. “Well. Part of the reality is that I’m going to handle the magical aspects of your travel for today. Think of me as a house-elf if it makes you feel better.”
“I think you’re a bit-tall.”
Draco burst out laughing. Harry was glad to be able to make him laugh, and touched his hand to add, “I appreciate it.”
“I know you do.” Serious again in a moment, Draco studied him. “I just wish that you would accept more.”
Not knowing what to say, Harry gave him a reserved smile, and turned to get dressed.
He did have to turn and add over his shoulder, a second later, “I don’t think house-elves need to watch people get dressed, either.”
“That’s nice,” said Draco. “If I see any, I’ll tell them.”
Harry hesitated, then decided that it was probably useless to argue, anyway, and turned back calmly to pulling his shirt over his head.
*
“I’ve never heard of a curse that makes your hands numb for a week afterwards.” Hermione was looking through a book that she had gone to retrieve from Harry’s library immediately after he had described what the curse did. She looked back up with a frown. “Do you think the Healers could be wrong?”
“Maybe not,” said Ron. “That you’ve never heard of it is part of the point, remember? The Risen Cobras could have invented it.” He leaned forwards and poured more tea into the cup that sat on Harry’s part of the table. Harry nodded his thanks, although he thought part of the reason Ron was doing that was the ability to keep an eye focused down the corridor in case Draco showed any signs of returning.
“Right, but the Risen Cobras were never that dangerous before.” Hermione combed hair out of her eyes with a frown.
“They could never break my wards before, either.” Harry folded his hand under his chin. He didn’t like the implications. He didn’t like the holes in his wards. He was pretty tired of the Risen Cobras, too, while he was at it.
“They probably found someone who taught them, someone who could do it.” Ron sucked sugar from his fingers, thoughtfully. He and Hermione had found a bakery run by a Muggleborn who apparently used magic for her biscuits and cakes and nothing else, since she lived in the center of Muggle London. Harry had to admit that the biscuits would have tempted him ordinarily, but he’d been spoiled by the food in Malfoy Manor, and he wasn’t hungry. “Maybe you could track that person down by casting that spell, you know, the tracking one you told me about.”
Harry stirred a little, uneasily, especially when he saw Hermione sitting up in her chair. “What spell is that?” She looked back and forth between Ron and Harry with her eyes bright. “I never heard you mention it.”
Ron flinched guiltily a moment later, but the damage was done. Harry glared at him for a second just to let him know that he was displeased with Ron in general, too, and then turned reluctantly back to face Hermione. “It’s a means I found of tracking someone’s magical signature and using that to run them down.”
“The Aurors knew it?”
“No, um,” said Harry. He didn’t want to reveal this mostly because Hermione would angry he’d never told her before, but he had to now. “I kind of created it.”
Hermione’s mouth tumbled open a little. Then she said, “That kind of spell creation is incredibly dangerous.”
“I know,” Harry said, and hid his face in his hands, peeking out at her from between his fingers. He did know it. Usually, new spells were perfected by teams of wizards who worked together, ensuring that the strain of a new incantation and wand movements didn’t fall too much on anyone’s unique magical core. “I’m sorry. I did it out of sheer need, without knowing what I was doing, and then it existed.”
“And you could use it now,” said Ron, who apparently really couldn’t take a hint.
Harry knew where that kind of obstinacy came from, and he couldn’t blame Ron. He was only doing his best to ensure that Hermione knew something he thought she should know, that Harry was safe, and that their little group was still all friends. People who thought that Harry was the only one who made sacrifices for his friends were wrong, although Harry knew he would have found that hard to explain to, say, Draco in the right words.
“I could,” Harry admitted. “Even though it’s dangerous and I don’t know yet who I’m trying to track down.”
“You said that one of them spoke the name Jackie. That could be a start.”
“That name might be the Risen Cobra I defeated in Diagon Alley. I’d have to make sure.”
“I can tell you that much,” said Ron, with a triumphant little shake of his head. “We don’t know all of his name yet, but we can tell that that one is related to the Highhands. You know, that little pure-blood family whose manor we visited the last month you were in the Aurors?”
Harry hissed. Yes, he knew the Highhands. They were pure-bloods so haughty that even other pure-bloods looked askance at them, and for good reason. They thought not only shouldn’t they marry Muggleborns, they should only marry within their own family. At least the Blacks had only married cousins, not their brothers and sisters.
“All right,” he said. “The name Jackie and the magical signature behind the spells would at least take me to the Cobras who broke into my house. Not that they would necessarily lead me to the person who taught them to break through the wards.”
“It’s still dangerous?” Hermione reached over the table and touched his hand with a quick, darting motion. “If it’s too dangerous, then I don’t think you should do it.”
“Lots of different things I could do are dangerous,” said Harry, with a smile for her so she wouldn’t take the insult as personal. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do them. And it’s also true that I would like to find the people who broke through my wards and have them taken into Auror custody before something like this happens again.”
“Harry.”
The whisper from the corridor almost had Harry reaching for his wand before he remembered who else was here. He sighed and glanced over his shoulder. Right. Draco was obeying the letter of the law in staying out of his friends’ sight, but no wonder he wanted to talk to Harry about this.
It is kind of silly that we can’t all just be in the same room together.
But Harry had done far sillier things himself, like going after a suspected mass murderer and fighting a basilisk with a sword. He stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he told Ron and Hermione, who were both sitting as rigidly as though Harry’s comfortable chairs had suddenly turned into masses of splinters.
Harry stepped around the corner, and straight into a pair of waiting arms. Draco felt him all over as though wanting to make sure that Harry had taken no wounds during that small conversation with Ron and Hermione. Harry rolled his eyes at everything and nothing. He understood the impulse behind what Draco was doing, but his friends would misunderstand it.
Just like Draco misunderstands them.
It was getting tiring to be caught in the middle, but Harry had chosen this. He could have refused to honor Draco’s pure-blood customs at any point in the process of them becoming friends. He drew a little back and murmured, “What? Well?”
“This spell is dangerous,” said Draco. “I’m glad that I wasn’t there during the creation, because that would have been worse. But you’re not going to perform it alone.”
Harry blinked. “The actual discovery of the names is going to be the dangerous part. I’ll take off running, and I might find myself in the home where the Risen Cobras live, or in their headquarters, if they have one. That doesn’t mean I need someone with me when I perform the actual wand movements.”
“Too bad. You’re going to have one.” Draco put a hand on his shoulder. “They fear your magic. They must, or they wouldn’t have bothered with the curse that numbed your hands. And although I think the Healers are right about the amount of time it’s going to take to wear off, there’s no telling what side-effects it might have. The Cobras might have come up with that curse specifically to make sure that you would have trouble using magic against them. Someone needs to be with you, to watch you.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to do the spell for a week anyway, until it’s safe to use my wand again,” Harry muttered, and leaned for a second against Draco. Draco put a hand on his shoulder blade. Harry sighed. It was nice, he had to admit that, being with someone who wanted to fight for his safety. Harry just had to make sure that it didn’t go too far.
“I’ll be with you.”
“But Ron and Hermione might want to be with me.”
“If I can’t put aside the past to be with you during that time, I shouldn’t even be here now.” Draco buried his face in Harry’s neck. “And the same is true of them.”
Harry opened his mouth to say it was more complicated than that, that it had to do with traumas and nightmares and the scars of wounds years part.
And then he wrapped an arm around Draco’s waist. He’d felt Draco trembling with what he thought was less fear than fear of being sent away. He couldn’t resist that, any more than he could resist Ron and Hermione’s entreaties not to see Draco.
He wanted to do everything he could for his friends. He would manage, somehow. He had to.
“All right,” he whispered, and had his reward in the brilliant smile that Draco didn’t bother looking up to give him. He must know that Harry could feel it against his skin.
Chapter Eighteen.
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