Chapter Thirty of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- Home Strength
Chapter Thirty.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (30/?)
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!
Home Strength
Harry knew he didn’t have to hold the Risen Cobras for long. Just until the Aurors got here. Ron would scold him for even trying that long.
But the threat they had launched proved they could get past the wards. And Harry wasn’t going to huddle in a room with Draco and Scorpius and wait for the door to break down. If they had the ability to hold out the way they had last time, it would be one thing.
But this time, it was different. And in a small part of his soul that he rarely acknowledged by the light of day-a part that he perhaps only nodded to when he had to confront an enemy made by the war, like the Cobra in the middle of Diagon Alley-Harry was glad for it.
He began casting the moment Draco was out of the room and he had the Risen Cobras firmly in sight. First he expanded the shield he maintained beyond the gates, until the shimmering color of it lapped at the Cobras’ boots. They would recognize it, or should. They would know that by hurting the shield, they could hurt him.
Harry was sort of counting on that.
Behind the shield, the distraction and the color of it, he began setting up a different shield, a glinting, glowing enchantment that lay like a purring golden cat across the ground that until recently, the Malfoy wards had surrounded. Harry let his fancy guide him and sculpted it into a real cat, made of joy and light. The cat stirred and rubbed its face on the ground, and Harry turned its head gently with his power until it faced the Risen Cobras.
“Ready,” he whispered, then went back to work casting, readying yet another enchantment behind the cat-shaped one, one that would spring into life only when the cat-like one engaged.
The Risen Cobras began to pound on the outer shield. Harry hissed as he felt ribs cracking and pain crackling up his side, prickling at his nerves. But that didn’t matter. He had a more important task in front of him right now than paying attention to his pain.
The spell was finished by the time that the agony became so severe Harry had to lean on the windowsill. But the deed was done. Harry was grinning as he waved his wand in a gesture that would dispel the outermost shield before the damage to it could knock him unconscious.
The Risen Cobras might be able to counter the cat-like shield; though uncommon, it was a spell they might know. But they weren’t going to be able to do anything about the spell behind that one, because Harry had invented it in the course of working with George.
He was looking forward to this.
The cat sprang to work the minute the outer shield dissipated, arching its back and tail and hissing at the Risen Cobras from an enormous translucent mouth. They froze, staring, and the cat grew bigger, spreading out its fur, encompassing the Manor. With the protection spread so thin, each individual spot was more vulnerable-but the cat wasn’t merely defensive.
One taloned paw made of light reached down and swatted the Cobra standing nearest to the gate away. He flew and crumpled, and two of the others ran over to tend to him while the nearest one tried to attack the cat.
The cat mewed and opened its mouth, swallowing the spell before it could touch even the fenceposts. A second later, it spat the spell back at the Cobra who had cast it, not redoubled but exactly as strong, a version of the usual Shield Charm’s reflecting effect. That Cobra, too, went down with a cry of anguish. Harry chuckled.
“Why is there a giant cat defending our home?”
Harry turned and smiled at Draco. The expression was surprisingly hard to summon. He must have been in more pain than he thought he was. “Because that’s the shape the spell took,” he said, and began to cough. The cough made his ribs feel as though someone was beating them with a hammer.
Draco was at his side in instants, his arm curved around Harry’s waist. Harry gasped and tried to shove him away, but Draco only loosened the firmness of his hold; he didn’t back off. His eyes were narrow. “How much did the first shield drain you?”
Harry would have answered, he honestly would have, but the shrieks from outside made him turn so he wouldn’t miss anything.
The second spell he had placed behind the cat shield was engaging now. It rose in the form of a great tendril, which might look like a serpent if you were imaginative, rearing from the ground. It had been growing around the Risen Cobras without their noticing, weaving a circle of rooted vines beneath the surface of the soil.
Now it pulled tight, snaring even the Cobras that had been thrown back by the attacks of the cat-shield, and gathered them all into a whirling net of green. A second later, it had sunk back into the earth, and the Risen Cobras were up to their waists in the dirt, struggling and flailing.
The cat-shaped shield stalked delicately up to them and flicked their wands out of their hands. If it did some more damage to their hands while it was doing that, well, Harry had no problem with a cat’s actions.
Then the Risen Cobras were sitting there, wandless and helpless, and the cat-shield turned back to the house and bowed with its forelegs stretched out in front of it before vanishing in a sharp burst of sparkling golden light.
Harry laughed, at least until he coughed. Then he turned to Draco and managed to croak out, “Are the Aurors on their way?”
“They are.” Draco tore his eyes away from the sight the Risen Cobras made and stared back so hard at Harry that Harry winced before he could stop himself. Draco promptly looked as grim as though Harry had listed all his symptoms. “You saved our lives. Thank you. Now to take care of you.”
“Scorpius is safe?” Harry looked out once more to make sure that none of the Risen Cobras were getting out of his trap of molten earth. But it seemed they had no chance without their wands, which was what he had suspected.
“Yes,” said Draco, and put a hand beneath Harry’s chin and turned his face back. “Now. Are you going to struggle and resist when I take you to St. Mungo’s? I think you need more than the healing I was able to offer you after they chopped the hole in your wards.”
Harry bowed his head tamely. Now that his anticipation about what was going to happen next to the Risen Cobras wasn’t protecting him, he could feel the pain more acutely. And then something seemed to pop in his side, and he gasped aloud. Draco promptly floated him into the air, conjured a stretcher, and maneuvered him towards the doorway to a different room.
“I love you,” Draco whispered, as if he thought Harry couldn’t hear. “I just wish you loved yourself.”
Harry opened his mouth to object to that. He did so love himself. The problem was that other people didn’t necessarily love him, and in the meantime they would attack him, and he would have to defend himself.
But there was a brutal sensation when he tried to open his mouth, and while he didn’t entirely suspect that Draco was responsible for it, he knew that either way, it wasn’t a good sign. So he leaned back and tried to avoid jolting his ribs while Draco bore him grimly to the nearest fireplace.
*
“May I ask what combination of spells you used to get yourself into this state, Mr. Potter? Your damage was severe. If your ribs had snapped in a slightly different pattern, one would have punctured a lung.”
The voice of the St. Mungo’s Healer was gentle and respectful, but his eyes were narrowed in a way that made Harry suspect he was about to get a scolding. He smiled and hoped it was charming enough to get around the impending words.
“Protego Maximus was the one that caused the majority of the wounds,” he began, and the Healer straightened up and turned a flat expression on him.
“You know that using that spell can kill,” said the Healer. He was an older man with grey hair and a silver beard, and Harry thought he might look as cheerful as Dumbledore in other circumstances. Obviously, this wasn’t one of them. He jabbed an accusing finger at Harry. “You wouldn’t have used it if-”
“If my adopted home and my loved ones hadn’t been in danger,” Harry interrupted. He knew the Healer probably meant to say “if you cared about yourself,” the way Draco had, but that wasn’t the point. “I know it was dangerous. But it was the only way I knew to fend off enemies who had already broken through powerful wards. Be angry at them for the necessity, not me for doing it.”
The Healer continued to regard him with narrowed eyes for the longest time, and then snorted and bowed his head. “A sensible way to look at it. I wish that I could be sure you would be as sensible in the future.”
“I plan to be,” said Harry. “I don’t think there are that many other groups out there capable of destroying me.” He considered that thought and how it tempted fate, then added, “Well, anyway, I hope there aren’t.”
“A wish that many of us here share,” said the Healer, and nodded to him, and walked over to the door, opening it. “You may come in and visit now,” he added.
Harry sat up curiously, ignoring the way that some of his muscles still ached. He didn’t know if it would be his friends or Draco and Scorpius that walked in.
To his surprise, it was George. He halted the instant he entered, and stood with his hands clenched as though he was fighting the impulse to walk back out. Maybe he thought Harry’s stare was pushing him back out.
“You’re welcome if you want to be,” Harry told him quietly. “But the last I knew, you didn’t want to be associated with me.”
The Healer looked at George with a frown that was more intimidating, coupled with his narrow eyes, than it would otherwise have been. “You can only stay if you don’t quarrel with and upset my patient,” he said. “Otherwise, leave.”
“I wouldn’t have been the first one,” George said, as if his pain was strangling him. “Malfoy was here, but he left to get some sleep and be with his son. And Ron had to go to work, and Hermione had to go home to Rose-”
“I’m not saying that you’re unwelcome, if you want to be here,” Harry said. “But what happened to me being banished from the shop and being a traitor?”
George closed his eyes. The Healer moved in to put an authoritative hand on George’s arm. “Say anything like that, and you really can’t stay,” he admonished George.
“It was you almost dying,” George whispered. “That’s what Ron firecalled and told me. And all I could think of was-Fred died without us being able to resolve our latest wager. And you would have died thinking I-”
“I understand that,” said Harry, and had to smile at him. He didn’t like the way George looked now, as though he would sway on his feet and faint, but it was at least familiar from the bad spells Harry had helped him through. “But I really don’t want you to compromise with your principles or anything, George. You told me that I can’t understand what it’s like to lose a twin, and if that’s still true, then it’s better that we don’t talk for a while.”
“I thought that,” George said, and sat down on a chair that had been drawn back to the wall. Harry imagined his friends or Draco sitting in it while they worried over him, and was a little glad that he hadn’t been awake while they did that. “And then I realized that I felt almost the same this time as when I thought about Fred.”
The Healer withdrew quietly when Harry caught his eye. Harry really didn’t think George was about to turn violent or ungracious, and he wanted to be alone with him so he could understand. “But not the same,” Harry prompted, turning back to George.
George swallowed. “Not exactly. But-but I thought about it. It’s been ten years since Fred died. What if-what if my emotions have faded a little? That would make sense. I thought they’d never faded, because it still hurt so much, but then I thought about losing you. You’ve helped me. The shop would never have succeeded without you.” He was babbling by now, his eyes locked on his hands. “I never-I didn’t think about it, I don’t know, you’re just always there, taking care of me, and it’s almost a betrayal of Fred to feel this way, that’s what it’s like, but-”
Harry stood up, ignoring the way that his wounds twinged this time, and walked across the room to take George’s hands. George caught his breath and looked up.
“I was wrong,” he whispered. “You’re not a traitor. I hate that you’re dating Malfoy and I’ll never like him, but you’re not a traitor.”
“Thank you,” Harry said, and it did feel as though someone had removed a spear that had been sticking through him. He took George’s hands and squeezed them. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“And the rest?” George was looking at him intently.
“It was thoughtless of me to bring Draco and Scorpius to the shop without at least owling you first,” Harry told him quietly. “I won’t do that again. And we don’t have to talk about them if you don’t want to.”
George nodded, his face sharp-etched with relief. “I never knew how much you were my social life,” he said. “Clients aren’t the same. Even Mum isn’t the same.”
“I know,” Harry said. In some ways, he thought that hadn’t been good for George; he’d coddled George a lot, not helped him, the same way he had done for Ron and Hermione. But this wasn’t the time to bring it up. Maybe, with time, he could help George back into a more active social life, or at least into accepting some help from the rest of his family. “And I’ll be back in the shop as soon as I can.”
George closed his eyes. “I don’t deserve this.”
“You deserve as much of my aid as I want to give you,” said Harry fiercely. “Nothing more than that, but nothing less. I’m the one who decides what I want to give you.”
George blinked, seemed to consider that from a deeper angle than he had before, and nodded. “I reckon that’s true.”
“Of course it is.” Harry squeezed George’s hands and stepped away. He hated to admit it, but his head was spinning and he needed to sit down on the bed. “Now, why don’t you go back to the shop and work on your own for a while, and maybe write one of those letters to Fred that you told me you used to write? They helped you when your grief was new, you told me.”
“That’s true,” George whispered, and stood up. His heavy regard was almost painful, but Harry had brought this situation on himself, and he couldn’t abandon George when he had been the one who’d encouraged George to depend on him. “I need-I need to write one of those. Thank you, Harry.”
Harry smiled at him and sat down on the bed without slumping, which left him impressed with himself. “Good. I’m glad I could help.”
“And now you’re going to lie down before you fall down,” Draco’s cool voice said from the door.
Harry couldn’t prevent the smile from lighting his face or the way he turned around, and only a second later did he think to check what effect Draco’s presence was having on George. But George seemed to have accepted it as at least a temporary thing. He nodded and mumbled something, and fled past Draco, out the door.
“Lie back,” said Draco. “Do you know how badly you were hurt? Internal bleeding. Torn internal organs.” He walked over to the bed the way that Harry thought he probably would when Scorpius was sick and eased Harry back against his pillows.
“I thought it was just broken ribs,” said Harry, a little startled. “The Healer didn’t mention anything about internal bleeding.”
“He probably would have, if you’d asked him.” Draco’s gaze was heavy in a different way than George’s had been. “But you never would, would you? No, instead you exhaust yourself feeding self-esteem back into someone who recently called you a traitor.”
Harry winced, then winced again because of the pain still tearing through him. Draco cursed softly and reached for a potions flask on the table beside the bed.
“This isn’t the time to have this conversation,” he said in a tight little voice as he poured the potion between Harry’s lips. “But we are going to have this conversation about why you keep doing things like this to yourself.”
Harry knew he couldn’t leave it there, even if the potion would make him fall unconscious in a few minutes. He reached out and caught Draco’s arm, squeezing it tight. Draco looked at him with a clenched jaw that didn’t his misery, or his worry.
“I do love you,” Harry whispered. “And I’m sorry. I need-to think about this.” The potion was thickening his throat and his voice. “Need to think of better ways to protect the people I love. Will you-help me?”
He had time to see Draco’s face soften, see his nod, before the unconsciousness claimed him.
But a few leftover thoughts spiraled around him like falling leaves in the blackness: how close he’d come to dying, much closer than he’d realized.
If he’d died, he would never have heard George’s words. Never played with Scorpius again. Never seen Draco again.
Maybe it was time to think of some other way.
Chapter Thirty-One
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