Chapter Thirty-Three of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- A Matter of Labor
Chapter Thirty-Two.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (32/35)
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!
A Matter of Labor
"I really want to have lunch with you, Harry."
Harry hesitated. He'd been about to leave the shop and go to Malfoy Manor for lunch, where he knew Scorpius probably had stories to tell him, and Draco would turn his ring in ways that made the light flash off the ruby in it. It amused Harry that Draco thought he needed to show his ring off so often to the person who had got it for him, but it endeared Draco to him, too.
"Please," George repeated, staring straight ahead with his lips quivered with something that wasn't amusement.
Harry studied his face, and then nodded. He didn't think this was going to lead to an argument about the Malfoys. Honestly, George hadn't fought with him since Harry had started coming back to the shop on a regular basis, but he had been silent. He had seemed perfectly happy to have Harry there sometimes and away sometimes.
This time, it was important that Harry stay.
"Of course," he said, and drew his wand. "Let me just send a Patronus so Draco will know where I am for lunch."
He had thought George might flinch at the sound of Draco's name, but all he did was close his eyes and nod, his face grateful. That convinced Harry it was even more important to stay. He turned away and summoned the silver stag, then gave it its message and watched it bound through the far wall of the shop.
Draco and Scorpius would be disappointed he wasn't there for lunch; Draco might also be concerned. But Harry wasn't breaking any promises this time, and a Patronus was better than a firecall, which had a remarkable ability to turn into Harry promising to do what Draco wanted.
"I'm all yours," Harry said, and turned around and smiled at George when every trace of the Patronus had faded.
George stood up. "Then let's eat in Diagon Alley."
It was so unusual for him to want to go out and eat that Harry stared. But George had already turned away and didn't see the stare anyway. Harry blinked and caught up with him, hastily locking the shop. George had walked out without turning his head, apparently assuming Harry would use his own key.
Harry cast the small enchantment that made letters of colored fire wreathe in front of the door, spelling out, Sorry, we're closed! Call again in an hour! and then turned and hurried after George.
He caught him up in a moment; George was ambling along with his hands in his pockets. George flicked him a quick glance, and then looked down at the cobblestones of the Alley. Harry could see a faint smile trembling at the edges of his lips, as though he was uncertain what effect actually smiling would have.
But he didn't say anything, and Harry was content to walk silently at his side, for as long as George needed that.
*
They came to a stop in front of a large stone building that they'd never entered before. George hesitated, and Harry followed his gaze to the sign in front of the building. He knew it was a pub, but at the moment, he couldn't remember what it was called.
The Sign of the Black Apple.
That was encouraging, Harry thought dryly. But if George wanted to eat here, they would eat here. He honestly didn't have much of a problem with it. He waited silently for George to make up his mind, his hands in his pockets.
George took a deep breath as though expecting Harry to complain, and then he ducked into the stone building. Harry followed him, and saw a large dim room that didn't differ too much from the Leaky Cauldron, although the black wooden paneling on the walls might originally have been finer than the Leaky Cauldron's. There was a low eddy of smoke from the pipes of numerous wizards and some witches sitting at the tables, and both the chairs they sat in and the mugs they clutched bore the same unfinished, edged, chipped look.
"Welcome, gentlemen," said a witch who seemed to appear from nowhere. She had black eyes, black hair twined in braids over her shoulders and streaked with grey, and she looked back and forth between Harry and George as though she suspected one of them would draw a knife any second and she was prepared to deal with it. "What will it be?"
"A table, and the hottest food you have," said George.
Harry had had his mouth open to order. He blinked and closed it. It had been years--in fact, he couldn't remember the last time--that George had made his will clear in a pub. Of course, he wasn't usually in them at all to make his feelings clear.
The woman checked once with Harry, then nodded and led them towards a table that stood right in front of the fireplace, overhung with a mantel and sides of strong wood, as though it had been built of the logs that would someday be burned in it. "Of course. And to drink?"
"The hottest drinks you have, too," said Harry impulsively. He suspected that might be Firewhisky, but on the other hand, either he or George might need Firewhisky before the end.
The woman's eyes lit up, and she nodded enthusiastically as she took Harry's Galleons. "You're going to love this," she promised, and trotted away.
The table had only two chairs, close together, as if whoever had sat here before them had wanted to incline their heads together and whisper secret business. Harry dragged his chair around so that he was sitting opposite George and could see his face more easily, and waited.
And waited.
George stared at the dark surface of the table and traced a finger through it, which had no discernible effect on a surface so marked with smoke, chips, rings, actual fire, curses, and Merlin knew what else. Harry finally lifted his eyes from a particularly deep lightning-shaped stroke down the center of it, and wondered if George's unaccustomed will had finally run out, if he would have to take charge to at least begin the conversation.
But the witch came back first, carrying shallow, steaming dishes of what looked like black soup and brown noodles, and mugs that bubbled as if they were boiling. She set them down, one mug and two dishes for each of them, and tossed spoons onto the table in afterthought. She gave Harry a slight, smug look.
"Thanks," said Harry. "Nothing else for now."
The woman nodded and turned away, walking into what seemed like a door made of shadows just beyond Harry's line of sight. Harry ignored the shivers that wanted to spread through him when he saw that, and scooped up a little of the black soup. George copied him, but slowly.
The soup was beyond hot; it was peppery, spicy, each sip that Harry took of it seeming to change in his mouth. Harry coughed and started drinking from the mug before he remembered that he had ordered the hottest drink, too, and that was hardly going to help him.
It didn't, much, but it did replace some of the heat in his mouth with its own heat. It tasted, intensely, like baked apples, but it was as dark as the soup in the dishes, which Harry supposed was part of where the name of the pub came from. He sipped again for its own sake, and then turned to the noodles. These were still steaming, of course, but this time, the taste was a little gentler.
"It's good," said George, and then launched straight into the conversation he obviously wanted to have before Harry could say anything in response, even to scold George for not eating. "Harry, I need--I need help, I know that. But I don't know how."
Harry considered George for long minutes while he kept eating. George sat with his hands folded in front of the bowl, staring at it. He did drink some of the cider, or whatever it was, when Harry stared at him, but his pleading gaze stayed on Harry. He didn't know what to do, that much was clear, but that he was asking for help at all was a good first step.
"I think you ought to have a chance to talk to Fred," Harry said at last. He knew what he was saying was risky, but leaving George in this sort of state was riskier, he'd already seen that. After all, George had talked about wanting to die for certain.
George blinked. "But I talk to him all the time. Any time I'm alone, and I feel his presence draw near me."
Harry ate some more of the soup before he responded, and then he reached across and locked his hand on George's. He didn't want George to start and upset the bowls or the drinks when Harry said what he had to say. "I'm talking about a Calling Back ritual."
George did start, but Harry's hand was stronger, especially because Harry had been eating more regular meals lately than George had, and his fist didn't fly very hard or high off the table. "What? Why?"
"Because nothing else is going to do," Harry said. "You've got to see him and talk to him and learn what he really thinks about you--about you coming to join him." That was the most diplomatic way he could phrase the shocking thing George had told him.
George was silent for long seconds, staring at the table, drawing the fingers of his free hand over it in the search for scars he could follow again. Then he whispered, without looking at Harry, "But that's necromancy. Dark Arts."
"Not for twins," Harry said. He'd looked into this ages ago, because he'd wondered if George would need it. "Their bond is exempted under the old laws. I doubt that anyone thinks about it very much anymore, because they don't want to practice necromancy anyway and it's easier to just assume that the Ministry has banned everything, but that's the way it is."
George's throat bobbed, and he looked up at Harry with a desperately appealing expression that made Harry nod in spite of himself. He thought George could do the Calling Back alone, magically speaking, but he would be there. He would help. And it would prevent George from doing something rash, like going with the ghost.
"But it's disturbing his rest," George whispered next. "That's what I've always read about necromancy, why it's horrible. It wakes up the dead and drags them back."
"You've already said that you feel him near you sometimes, and that you think he wants you to take revenge on the Malfoys," Harry said quietly. "How is that restful? Maybe he would be happy for one more chance to see you and talk to you."
George was silent, his head bowed. Harry waited him out. He had no idea what George would say next.
When he looked up at last, there was such a burning desire in his eyes that Harry knew what the answer would be before his head moved in the tiniest of nods. He did want to see his twin's ghost again. He simply thought that he owed it to morality, or conventionality, or something, to object to necromancy no matter how much he wanted it.
"Two days, then," Harry said. The moon would be full then, and Light necromancy should be done with as much support from the elements of the natural world as possible. If they had done it at the new moon, then that would be closer to Dark necromancy.
George either already knew the reason or was just as grateful to have someone who wasn't him decide on a deadline when they would do it, because he bowed his head and sat there with his hand clutching Harry's. Harry let him hold on in silence, and ate the very good food with his free hand.
*
"What you're doing is reckless and irresponsible."
Harry leaned his elbow on the table and considered Draco. Scorpius was still in the room, and so Harry hadn't been specific when he talked about what he was going to help George do. He had only said that George really needed to speak with his brother again, and so Harry would aid him in doing so.
Now Scorpius was looking back and forth between them, holding his fork up in the air and not bringing it near his asparagus, and Draco had one hand clenched on the table like he was going to shove it into Harry's stomach and get his attention that way. Scorpius shook his head a little. "I would talk to a brother if I had one," he said. "Why can't he talk to his brother, Daddy?"
Harry thought Draco would put Scorpius off with a little lie and return to the subject later when they were alone. He couldn't want his son to know about necromancy yet. But to his astonishment, Draco turned to Scorpius and said, "His twin brother is dead. You can't speak with the dead. It's magic called necromancy, and it's evil and Dark. You must never do it."
"It's not Dark for twins," Harry muttered.
He had thought Scorpius would ignore him, but lots of his assumptions were turning out to be wrong this evening. Scorpius focused on him instead. "Why not?"
Harry glanced at Draco, but Draco said nothing, sitting there with his arms folded and his gaze drilling into Harry. Besides, Harry thought he had already made his preferences clear when he had said what he'd said about necromancy in front of Scorpius. So Harry would feel free to talk about it.
He turned back to Scorpius. "Twins have a special bond," he said. "That bond isn't meant to be broken by death, but sometimes it happens."
"Did his brother die in the war?" Scorpius asked.
Harry nodded.
"Is that why he doesn't like us?" Scorpius had a solemn look on his face, and he was clutching the fork hard enough that it wavered back and forth. "Because lots of people who had their family die in the war don't like us?"
"Yes," said Harry. This was a big dose of truth at once, but he thought it would be worse if he concealed it, the way it would have been worse to help George without telling Draco what he intended to do.
Scorpius nodded, processing it. Draco broke in before he could ask another question which Harry thought would be just as fascinating as his last few. "It's not illegal for twins. That isn't the same thing as it being a Light spell."
Harry turned to him. "It's not illegal, and in this case, it would prevent a larger evil," he said. "George told me that he thinks he hears Fred calling to him, that he wants to be with Fred all the time, and that he thinks Fred would approve of him taking vengeance on living people. Even people who weren't born when the war was going on." That was as close as he would come to mentioning George's desire for suicide to Draco.
Draco looked a little grimmer. "That means he's likely to wrench the spirit back unwilling with the Calling Back ritual, even if it's the spirit of his twin. I don't think Fred Weasley would be telling his twin things like that, so he must be far away from the world."
"I won't deny that George needs other kinds of help," Harry said, lifting one protective hand before Draco could start a rant. "But I do think that keeping this one away from him in the name of doing good would only hurt further. He's never going to be convinced that he can have any kind of life until he hears it straight from his twin's lips that he can. It's been ten years since the war. Ron and Hermione got better when I stopped coddling them because in a certain way, their problems were exaggerated by what I was doing for them. George's problems aren't like that, and I want him around for a good while to come."
He and Draco battled through gazes for a long moment until Draco finally looked down at the table. "So you don't think it's reckless and irresponsible," he said. "And nothing I can say will convince you otherwise."
"I think it could be reckless," Harry said. "I also think that it's something my friend needs, and that's what I'll do. The same way that I've done things for other people I love that they've needed." He met Draco's gaze squarely. "The reckless and irresponsible thing would have been not telling you about it."
"Daddy?" Scorpius asked uneasily. "Harry? What are you fighting about?"
Draco maintained his stare at Harry for a moment, and then sighed and turned to Scorpius, ruffling his hair. "Something that isn't Malfoy business anyway," he said. "It'll be okay."
"So you and Harry aren't going to fight?" Scorpius asked. "You're still going to be married?"
"No, we won't fight," said Harry. "And we're still going to be married." He reached out and touched Scorpius's head in turn. "I promise."
Scorpius immediately started talking about what toys he planned to bring to the bonding ceremony, while Draco looked at Harry again. "It's up to you, in the end," he said, although he still looked unhappy about it. "Although I object if you intend to bring any artifacts that belong to that kind of thing into my house."
"Of course not," said Harry. "George would think they were forever tainted if I did that, anyway."
That won a reluctant smile from Draco, and they were finally free to turn their attention to what Harry considered really important about the evening: Scorpius's descriptions of the ideal bonding. And when Draco's hand slipped into Harry's and squeezed tight, Harry knew himself forgiven.
Chapter Thirty-Four.
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