[Wednesday one-shots]: The Years Before Love, 1/3, H/D, R
Title: The Years Before Love
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Angst, present tense
Rating: R
Summary: Harry didn’t ever dream he could have a family beyond the Weasleys. But then, at one point he didn’t dream he could have a family beyond the Dursleys, either. He tries not to think too much about those years, but in a way, they’ve made him what he was and given him what he has now.
Author’s Notes: This is another Wednesday one-shot in answer to germankitty’s prompt: Post-war -- Andromeda "adopts" Harry, whether due to his inheriting the Black legacy, him being Teddy's godfather or maybe even because she needs more than Teddy to care about and Harry clearly needs an adult/motherly influence in his life.
Cue a slow reconciliation with Narcissa, who lives with Draco as recluses, and through that the building of a relationship with Draco. Whether gen or more is up to you, don't care about who tops (actually prefer switching); maybe a reconciliation with portrait!Snape thrown in.
It will probably have three parts.
The Years Before Love
Chapter One-Visitation
“There’s no reason for you not to come live here.”
Harry pushes his hair out of his eyes and blinks. He and Andromeda were discussing how much bigger Teddy has become in three months, how he smiles now and seems enchanted by his hands. They were discussing, as always, around the huge hole where Remus and Tonks and Ted used to be.
“I-what?”
“You told me how much you hate the old Black house. It killed Sirius. I don’t want it to kill you.”
Andromeda keeps her head turned away, her hand bustling with the sugar and the tongs and the small, fine porcelain teacups that Harry knows she doesn’t need to bustle with. She has a house-elf who takes care of all that. But Harry knows lots of things now, and has learned to keep his mouth shut on some of them.
Right now, he wants to say that it was actually Bellatrix Lestrange who killed Sirius, but that’s not the kind of thing he can say to Bellatrix’s sister. “That house killed Sirius only because he couldn’t go outside it. I can, you know. Any time I want. Like now,” Harry adds, and gestures around the dim little drawing room where they sit, hoping to make her smile.
He doesn’t. Andromeda turns back towards him, and her large, black eyes-so much more direct and bright than Bellatrix’s, Harry doesn’t know how he ever could have compared them-fix on him. “And are you happy there?”
Harry taps his fingers on his knee.
“That’s the only important question.”
“But no isn’t the only important answer,” Harry retorts, a bit nettled. “I mean, I still haven’t even cleaned the whole house up yet. And I think I need to live alone for a while. And I inherited the bloody thing.” Andromeda’s eyebrows twitch, but she lets the language pass in a way that Harry knows neither Headmistress McGonagall nor Mrs. Weasley would have. “It feels like-like running out on what Sirius left me if I don’t live there.”
“You don’t need to live alone,” Andromeda says. “Anyone can see that who looks at you. You’re paler and more silent than you were right after the war.”
“I had to speak at funerals then.”
Andromeda ignores this as she ignores a lot of statements that Harry can use to vex most other people. “And if you’re going to talk about the Black family legacy…” A sly smile comes onto her face, one that makes Harry blink, and then blink harder, because it looks so much like some of the ones Tonks wore. “Did you know there used to be a legal custom of making Black heirs adults at twenty instead of seventeen like the rest of the wizarding world?”
“Er? No. Why?”
“Because the people who saw the taint of madness in our family thought it would be a good idea to see whether a new adult was going to combust, or settle down and act sane.” Andromeda leans forwards. “It was good for them to wait for a few years. So they could have the companionship of their parents, and learn more about the world around them.”
Harry stares at his teacup. It’s blurring no matter how many times he tells himself that’s stupid. “You’re not my mum or my guardian, though. You don’t need to.”
Andromeda’s hand comes to rest on his knee. “Harry.” He looks up at her. Her face swims, too, but he thinks he sees the compassion in her eyes. “When are you going to stop thinking that you’re someone I would only do things for because I have to?”
Harry nods. And he can’t even listen closely to Andromeda’s cheerful talk about how this is just as much for her as it is for him, how she could use someone else to help with Teddy and how Harry could bring Kreacher with him and then they could have a second house-elf around the place. It’s just-
There’s too much in him. And for once since the war, it’s not heartbreak or uncertainty. It’s a lot more like relief.
*
“This is going to be so good for you, Harry. I’m glad you’re doing it.”
Harry blinks at the back of Hermione’s head as he floats another stack of books down from the library shelves. He’s taking them to Andromeda’s to help him figure out what to do with his life. Being an Auror is now off the table. It’s just-not something he wants to do anymore.
“Really?” Hermione and the Weasleys have been perfectly supportive of him moving in with Andromeda, but so far they haven’t said anything to suggest that he had a problem living by himself.
Hermione makes a little sniffling sound, and when she turns around, her eyes are wet. Harry runs over to her and grabs her. He tries to suppress the impulse to panic. They aren’t in the middle of a war anymore. Whatever’s upset Hermione, it isn’t life-threatening.
Then Hermione grabs him in a hug back and huffs into his ear, “I’m glad, you idiot, because you need someone. And I know you have us and you’ll always have us, but Molly’s a little preoccupied and Arthur’s so busy at the Ministry and I need to spend time with my parents and George is shaken by Fred’s death and Bill and Fleur are busy with the baby and Charlie’s out of the country again and Ron is studying like mad and Percy is-Percy, and-”
Harry interrupts with a shaky laugh of his own. “I never blamed you for any of it.”
“I know. You don’t have to. But you need someone, too. And I think this is going to be great.” Hermione pulls away and actually uses her sleeve for a handkerchief for a second until Harry conjures one for her. Then Hermione wipes her face clean and points one finger at him. “I know why you interrupted me then, too.”
Harry shrugs. The less said about the utter apathy he has towards Ginny, the better, as far as he’s concerned. He likes her and wants to be with her the same way he wants to be with Molly and Ron, but it’s like the war ate all his passion. It’s just hard to care that much about dating anymore. It seems small and silly in the face of funerals and decisions and the rest of his life.
“Come on, then, let’s get this mess out the front door.”
Harry smiles a little as he watches the books float out the door under Hermione’s wand. Like they’d dare do anything else, with her here.
*
Harry groans and sits up. He didn’t count on one particular side-effect of living with a baby when he moved in with Andromeda.
But he and Andromeda have an arrangement. It’s harder for Harry to get to sleep early on, harder for her to wake up towards the morning, so Andromeda gets up with Teddy if he fusses during the early part of the night and Harry does it if it’s after four. And it’s four-thirty by the watch Molly gave him. Harry leaves his room and hurries down to Teddy, past the closed door to a room with a single bed and posters of famous Aurors on the walls. It’s going to stay closed and under a Preservation Charm for a long, long time.
“Shhh, Teddy,” Harry murmurs as he gathers Teddy up and rocks him against his chest. Teddy’s surprisingly strong little hands reach up and yank on his hair. Harry rolls his eyes and reaches for the bottle. He can already tell-and here’s something he never expected to be an expert in-that Teddy doesn’t need to have his nappy changed.
Harry leans back in the rocking chair next to Teddy’s bed and listens to his happy sucking on the bottle. It’s quiet and still, a stillness that Harry thinks is probably sort of unusual for Andromeda’s house. It’s a big house, with two extra bedrooms even besides the unused one, Andromeda’s, Teddy’s, and Harry’s. Harry wonders if she had family visiting often before the war, or friends.
I don’t know all that much about her, outside of what she’s told me about the Black family. I ought to ask.
Harry looks around at the pictures on the walls of the room. There’s a wedding picture of Andromeda and her Ted, and one of Remus and Tonks that he still can’t look at without his eyes starting to blur. The rest are paintings that she asked Harry to bring from Grimmauld Place, though, a few landscapes and a portrait frame that Phineas Nigellus Black can pop in and out of. She’s told Harry that she wants Teddy to know both sides of his heritage.
Or all three. Although Harry doesn’t know much about the Tonks family, either.
Teddy’s mouth pops off the nipple of the bottle, and Harry looks down to find him asleep, with one hand twined in Harry’s shirt. Harry smiles, puts down the bottle, and pats him gently on the back. Teddy hiccoughs but doesn’t bring anything up. Andromeda says that only happens a lot with overfed babies, and Teddy doesn’t often overeat.
“You cry in the middle of the night and you turn your hair blue when you’re upset and Andromeda’s afraid you cry louder at the full moon,” Harry whispers to Teddy as he tucks him back into his cot, “but you don’t overeat.”
Teddy rolls his head limply to the side in what might be a comment on Harry’s words. His sparse hair is green right now. Harry kisses him and goes back to his own room, large, with a shelf for the books he brought from Grimmauld Place and a deep green quilt on the bed. Andromeda had simply given it to him because it was warm and big. No nonsense about House colors or anything like that.
As Harry snuggles down under the quilt, he realizes he has another feeling in him, an unfamiliar one. He watches it, and it swells and breaks like a wave, and pulls him down into sleep after it.
He is happy.
*
“Um, Harry…”
Harry looks up curiously from his cornflakes. He hasn’t heard Andromeda this uncertain since she asked if he was going back to Hogwarts in the autumn, and then she smiled as soon as he told her no.
From the way she closes her eyes now, lines of tension radiating out from them, he suspects this matter isn’t going to be resolved so easily.
“What is it?” Harry leans over and dangles a conjured rattle for baby Teddy. He’s getting stronger, better able to grip with his hands, but sometimes he still does what he’s doing now, reaching for something and then staring at his fingers with a surprised expression. Harry smiles.
“I want-to make connections with the rest of my family, too.” Andromeda’s picking at her plate when Harry turns to her again. “That means reaching out even to the people who aren’t as pleasant. I just want you to know that my sister’s visiting this afternoon.”
Even months after the war and her death, Harry’s mind always flies to Bellatrix first. But then he shakes his head and asks, “Do you mean the Malfoys?”
“Yes. You do get along better with them, don’t you? Especially after you testified at their trials.”
“Yes.”
The bland reply hides a lot of things. Harry wants to say that he only testified because he owed them his life, or Narcissa his life, and he still doesn’t like them. He thinks Lucius, who went back to Azkaban for breaking out and also for the Mark on his arm, finally, deserves everything he got. He thinks big fines and removal of their wands for a year is about the minimum punishment anyone with a Mark should get.
But he isn’t their sister or their aunt, the way Andromeda is. He can’t blame her for wanting to know them.
He just plans to stay out of the way when they’re here.
*
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to meet my little cousin.”
“Funny, you never wanted to meet him before,” Harry says, and he leans back and squints up at Malfoy, who’s standing in the door of Teddy’s bedroom. Harry’s been upstairs playing with Teddy while Andromeda visits with the Malfoys downstairs.
Malfoy looks around before answering. Harry thinks he probably knows the value of all the furniture within the room to a Knut. And his lip curls a little before he turns back to Harry, which just proves the point.
(Harry’s not sure what the point is. But Malfoy’s lip proves it).
“You know perfectly well why that is.”
“Yeah,” Harry acknowledges, and swallows down the instinct to protect Teddy. He doesn’t think he needs to hide him away from the Malfoys. Well, not until they get their wands back, anyway. He holds Teddy up.
Malfoy crosses the room to them with slow steps and sinks down next to the chair. Somehow, he only looks at Teddy even though he’s right there. Harry finds himself grateful for that.
“Can I hold him?”
Harry nods and extends Teddy, although he watches tensely in case Malfoy accidentally drops him. What would he know about holding a baby?
Maybe a lot, Harry has to concede after a second. Malfoy tucks Teddy against his shoulder in the posture Harry uses when he’s feeding him, and considers him for a long, solemn moment. Teddy stares back. Harry wonders if he’s going to change his hair from its current pink color, but apparently he doesn’t know what to make of his newfound cousin, because he doesn’t do anything.
“Hello, little cousin,” Malfoy finally whispers. “I hope we can learn about being Blacks together.”
Harry blinks, but doesn’t say anything. Maybe that’s the way Andromeda is reconciling with her sister, emphasizing the last name they used to share instead of their current ones. And probably avoiding the whole subject of family tapestries and marrying Muggleborns and werewolf sons-in-law, of course.
“I hope we can all learn about it.”
Malfoy is looking at him now, which startles Harry after all the effort he took to avoid it earlier. He responds immediately, “What? I’m here to help raise Teddy. I can’t tell you much about being a Black.”
“Funny. I could swear someone told me that Sirius Black made you his heir.”
“That’s not the same thing as being born one,” Harry says, and rolls his eyes so Malfoy will get the point.
This one, Malfoy doesn’t take. He cradles Teddy against him and says again, “Funny. I could also swear that you had a lot of experience with families being more than blood, Potter.”
Harry stands up. He doesn’t even know why, but he’ll punch Malfoy if he stays here.
“Don’t keep Teddy up too long,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves the room. “We’re trying to get him on a regular schedule of afternoon naps so Andromeda can do some shopping with her friends.”
“Today, she’s going out with my mother. Or didn’t she tell you?”
The point’s apparently that she wants me to reconcile with the bloody Malfoys, too, Harry thinks, and he’s proud of himself for not slamming the nursery door.
*
Harry is eating a peaceful dinner in a blissfully Malfoy-free house later that evening when Andromeda comes in, gives him a single glance, shakes her head, and says, “I did mean to include you as part of the family, too, Harry.”
“I know that,” Harry says, sitting back and blinking at her. “But I would just make everything awkward if I was there. I mean, life-debts and history in school and everything. And I’m sort of indirectly responsible for Lucius being in prison.”
“I meant more than that. I meant that I’ve taken you in, and you’re part of the Black family as far as I’m concerned.”
“You told me it was just-”
“Not formal adoption. I did say that. But you’re welcome around other Blacks. And Narcissa wants to meet you properly. Somehow, she doesn’t think lying on the floor of a dark forest while she lies to save your life counts.”
Harry has to smile, even though he suspects that’s more Andromeda’s sense of humor than Mrs. Malfoy’s. “Okay. Well. When they are supposed to come over again?”
“Tuesday. Do try to be nicer this time, Harry. Narcissa told me she’d liked to meet you, and even Draco told her how good you are with the baby. Let’s make it a family afternoon. You can think of Narcissa as a cousin, if you like. I know some of your history with aunts.”
And cousins, Harry thinks, but even as he thinks that, a sort of thrill runs through him. He reconciled with Dudley at the end, too. He wasn’t that bad. Having other cousins…
It could be a good thing, even if he would just as soon never have another aunt.
He nods. “Okay.”
*
Narcissa Malfoy is so pale and quiet on the Malfoys’ fourth visit it’s more like sitting at the table with a ghost than a person.
Harry eats more of the small sandwiches that Andromeda thinks she needs to serve whenever the Malfoys come over and watches her. Narcissa-as she said he should call her, instead of Mrs. Malfoy-sits at the big dining room table and stares out the window. There are trees changing their leaves out there, but it’s mostly a dull tapestry of red and orange. Harry doesn’t think it really holds her attention.
Then he winces at himself and decides to make sure that he won’t mention tapestries in front of her any time soon.
“Harry?”
The sandwiches are still big enough to choke on, Harry discovers. Luckily, he bolts down the mixture of sauce and tomatoes and lettuce and whatever else is on the thing, and says, “Narcissa?” before she can do more than look at him in concern.
“I understand that you lived with a-very bad Muggle family before you went to Hogwarts.”
Harry feels a flicker of betrayal, but he knows Andromeda didn’t talk. Details about the Dursleys started showing up in the papers a month ago, courtesy of the Order members who guarded the Dursleys during the war. Apparently Vernon and Petunia didn’t stay silent enough, even when around “freaks.” Harry hid away from owls and didn’t read the Prophet for a while, until something else scandalous about Dumbledore showed up and it quieted down.
“Yes, I did,” he says, and waits for the next question.
“Why did it make you not hate Muggles?”
Harry wants to answer the way Hermione would, with a lecture about how Muggles aren’t all bad people because of this any more than all pure-bloods are bad because of Death Eaters, but instead he sighs and thinks about it. Then he says, “I never thought about them as Muggles. I didn’t grow up knowing I was magical. I knew I was different from them, but I just thought that was me and three people I-didn’t like.” He doesn’t think he ever hated the Dursleys, not now, not with what he’s felt towards Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. “I never thought I was different from anyone else. I dreamed about my parents coming back and finding me, or some other relative once I knew my parents were dead, but I also dreamed about escaping from them and finding another life. It was-different, you know? It wasn’t about hating a whole group of people.”
“And when you knew you were magical?”
“I didn’t spend a lot of time around other Muggles after that. The Dursleys told all their neighbors I was mad and a criminal, and so I didn’t spend much time with them even during the summers. They stayed away.”
Narcissa is staring at him. “And yet you still didn’t hate them?”
“I was thinking about other things.”
And that’s really the whole point of it, Harry thinks. He’s not a saint. He can be a coward sometimes. He doesn’t have an open mind like Hermione, and he doesn’t forgive easily. He still doesn’t know if he’s forgiven Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. He doesn’t know if he ever will.
But he had Voldemort to think about, and Sirius, and his friends, and getting better at magic, and the dream of escaping from the Dursleys while Sirius was still alive, and his grief when Sirius was dead, and Horcruxes. There was so much, and it just made the Dursleys’ world seem very small and cramped, and worth ignoring.
“I see.” Narcissa looks back at her hands. Harry looks, too, and sees she’s toying with her wedding ring. “Then-I suppose I have part of my answer as to how you can sit here with me and not strike me.”
“I think I could learn to like you. I don’t know if I could ever learn to like my aunt or uncle. But I did reconcile with my cousin Dudley before the end. I saved his life. That changed him.”
Narcissa looks up with a small smile. “And you could consider me a cousin?”
“Yes.” Harry says, and takes another sandwich. After a minute, so does she.
*
Harry has come to accept Malfoy’s presence when he’s playing with Teddy and Narcissa and her son arrive. Malfoy comes and holds Teddy, and Harry stays there and answers questions about how much Teddy’s eating and the kinds of faces he makes and all the cute things he’s done since Malfoy last saw him.
But peace is as much as Harry thinks there’ll ever be between them, and he and Malfoy only have Teddy in common. Which is why he’s really surprised when, on the sixth visit, Andromeda and Narcissa come into the nursery, Malfoy hands Teddy to them to coo over, Harry leaves the room, and Malfoy follows him.
Not just down to the kitchen, either, which could be excused as wanting something to eat. All the way out to the garden, and the small bench there where Harry likes to sit when he’s outside with Teddy.
Harry sits on it and stares determinedly at the trees, thinking Malfoy will take the hint and leave him alone. But Malfoy sits down beside him and says simply, “You can think of me as a cousin, too. Can’t you?”
Narcissa must have told him what we talked about. Harry picks up a yellow leaf and shreds it, shrugging a little. “I-there was a lot more between us.”
“But she told me that you’re a forgiving type of person.”
“You want me to forgive you?”
“Yes.”
Malfoy turns his head and catches Harry’s eye, and Harry sees emotions there that make him relax and think. Malfoy might only want Harry’s forgiveness because it would mean he has one less enemy. Or because it would make these visits more comfortable. Or because he’s bored and doesn’t have anyone else to talk to. Harry doesn’t think he and Narcissa visit many other people besides Harry and Andromeda.
If any at all.
“Okay,” Harry says finally. “It won’t happen all at once, but I’ll try not to hold those things against you anymore.”
And really, when he thinks about it, it’s what Malfoy did to others that he resents most: hurting Ron and Katie Bell, calling Hermione a Mudblood, letting Death Eaters into the school. His taunting and teasing and the way he dressed up like a Dementor in his third year are so far behind them now. Harry knows what it’s like to be hunted with real hatred, and the same way that Dudley could never compare to Voldemort, neither can Malfoy.
“Thank you, Harry.”
Harry jumps, the same way he did when Narcissa called him by his first name, but then he manages to turn around and say, “Okay-Draco, if you want?”
Draco, who apparently does want, nods, and they lapse back into silence. Harry watches the wind whip leaves to the ground. The garden is almost completely covered, even the little pond that Teddy likes to splash in. And Draco breathes gently beside him, and shows no boredom in Harry’s company, or urge to talk further.
As the silence settles even deeper, Harry realizes that he was mistaken before, in thinking he and Draco would only ever have peace between them. Because they didn’t have this, and this is peace.
Chapter Two.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/793605.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Angst, present tense
Rating: R
Summary: Harry didn’t ever dream he could have a family beyond the Weasleys. But then, at one point he didn’t dream he could have a family beyond the Dursleys, either. He tries not to think too much about those years, but in a way, they’ve made him what he was and given him what he has now.
Author’s Notes: This is another Wednesday one-shot in answer to germankitty’s prompt: Post-war -- Andromeda "adopts" Harry, whether due to his inheriting the Black legacy, him being Teddy's godfather or maybe even because she needs more than Teddy to care about and Harry clearly needs an adult/motherly influence in his life.
Cue a slow reconciliation with Narcissa, who lives with Draco as recluses, and through that the building of a relationship with Draco. Whether gen or more is up to you, don't care about who tops (actually prefer switching); maybe a reconciliation with portrait!Snape thrown in.
It will probably have three parts.
The Years Before Love
Chapter One-Visitation
“There’s no reason for you not to come live here.”
Harry pushes his hair out of his eyes and blinks. He and Andromeda were discussing how much bigger Teddy has become in three months, how he smiles now and seems enchanted by his hands. They were discussing, as always, around the huge hole where Remus and Tonks and Ted used to be.
“I-what?”
“You told me how much you hate the old Black house. It killed Sirius. I don’t want it to kill you.”
Andromeda keeps her head turned away, her hand bustling with the sugar and the tongs and the small, fine porcelain teacups that Harry knows she doesn’t need to bustle with. She has a house-elf who takes care of all that. But Harry knows lots of things now, and has learned to keep his mouth shut on some of them.
Right now, he wants to say that it was actually Bellatrix Lestrange who killed Sirius, but that’s not the kind of thing he can say to Bellatrix’s sister. “That house killed Sirius only because he couldn’t go outside it. I can, you know. Any time I want. Like now,” Harry adds, and gestures around the dim little drawing room where they sit, hoping to make her smile.
He doesn’t. Andromeda turns back towards him, and her large, black eyes-so much more direct and bright than Bellatrix’s, Harry doesn’t know how he ever could have compared them-fix on him. “And are you happy there?”
Harry taps his fingers on his knee.
“That’s the only important question.”
“But no isn’t the only important answer,” Harry retorts, a bit nettled. “I mean, I still haven’t even cleaned the whole house up yet. And I think I need to live alone for a while. And I inherited the bloody thing.” Andromeda’s eyebrows twitch, but she lets the language pass in a way that Harry knows neither Headmistress McGonagall nor Mrs. Weasley would have. “It feels like-like running out on what Sirius left me if I don’t live there.”
“You don’t need to live alone,” Andromeda says. “Anyone can see that who looks at you. You’re paler and more silent than you were right after the war.”
“I had to speak at funerals then.”
Andromeda ignores this as she ignores a lot of statements that Harry can use to vex most other people. “And if you’re going to talk about the Black family legacy…” A sly smile comes onto her face, one that makes Harry blink, and then blink harder, because it looks so much like some of the ones Tonks wore. “Did you know there used to be a legal custom of making Black heirs adults at twenty instead of seventeen like the rest of the wizarding world?”
“Er? No. Why?”
“Because the people who saw the taint of madness in our family thought it would be a good idea to see whether a new adult was going to combust, or settle down and act sane.” Andromeda leans forwards. “It was good for them to wait for a few years. So they could have the companionship of their parents, and learn more about the world around them.”
Harry stares at his teacup. It’s blurring no matter how many times he tells himself that’s stupid. “You’re not my mum or my guardian, though. You don’t need to.”
Andromeda’s hand comes to rest on his knee. “Harry.” He looks up at her. Her face swims, too, but he thinks he sees the compassion in her eyes. “When are you going to stop thinking that you’re someone I would only do things for because I have to?”
Harry nods. And he can’t even listen closely to Andromeda’s cheerful talk about how this is just as much for her as it is for him, how she could use someone else to help with Teddy and how Harry could bring Kreacher with him and then they could have a second house-elf around the place. It’s just-
There’s too much in him. And for once since the war, it’s not heartbreak or uncertainty. It’s a lot more like relief.
*
“This is going to be so good for you, Harry. I’m glad you’re doing it.”
Harry blinks at the back of Hermione’s head as he floats another stack of books down from the library shelves. He’s taking them to Andromeda’s to help him figure out what to do with his life. Being an Auror is now off the table. It’s just-not something he wants to do anymore.
“Really?” Hermione and the Weasleys have been perfectly supportive of him moving in with Andromeda, but so far they haven’t said anything to suggest that he had a problem living by himself.
Hermione makes a little sniffling sound, and when she turns around, her eyes are wet. Harry runs over to her and grabs her. He tries to suppress the impulse to panic. They aren’t in the middle of a war anymore. Whatever’s upset Hermione, it isn’t life-threatening.
Then Hermione grabs him in a hug back and huffs into his ear, “I’m glad, you idiot, because you need someone. And I know you have us and you’ll always have us, but Molly’s a little preoccupied and Arthur’s so busy at the Ministry and I need to spend time with my parents and George is shaken by Fred’s death and Bill and Fleur are busy with the baby and Charlie’s out of the country again and Ron is studying like mad and Percy is-Percy, and-”
Harry interrupts with a shaky laugh of his own. “I never blamed you for any of it.”
“I know. You don’t have to. But you need someone, too. And I think this is going to be great.” Hermione pulls away and actually uses her sleeve for a handkerchief for a second until Harry conjures one for her. Then Hermione wipes her face clean and points one finger at him. “I know why you interrupted me then, too.”
Harry shrugs. The less said about the utter apathy he has towards Ginny, the better, as far as he’s concerned. He likes her and wants to be with her the same way he wants to be with Molly and Ron, but it’s like the war ate all his passion. It’s just hard to care that much about dating anymore. It seems small and silly in the face of funerals and decisions and the rest of his life.
“Come on, then, let’s get this mess out the front door.”
Harry smiles a little as he watches the books float out the door under Hermione’s wand. Like they’d dare do anything else, with her here.
*
Harry groans and sits up. He didn’t count on one particular side-effect of living with a baby when he moved in with Andromeda.
But he and Andromeda have an arrangement. It’s harder for Harry to get to sleep early on, harder for her to wake up towards the morning, so Andromeda gets up with Teddy if he fusses during the early part of the night and Harry does it if it’s after four. And it’s four-thirty by the watch Molly gave him. Harry leaves his room and hurries down to Teddy, past the closed door to a room with a single bed and posters of famous Aurors on the walls. It’s going to stay closed and under a Preservation Charm for a long, long time.
“Shhh, Teddy,” Harry murmurs as he gathers Teddy up and rocks him against his chest. Teddy’s surprisingly strong little hands reach up and yank on his hair. Harry rolls his eyes and reaches for the bottle. He can already tell-and here’s something he never expected to be an expert in-that Teddy doesn’t need to have his nappy changed.
Harry leans back in the rocking chair next to Teddy’s bed and listens to his happy sucking on the bottle. It’s quiet and still, a stillness that Harry thinks is probably sort of unusual for Andromeda’s house. It’s a big house, with two extra bedrooms even besides the unused one, Andromeda’s, Teddy’s, and Harry’s. Harry wonders if she had family visiting often before the war, or friends.
I don’t know all that much about her, outside of what she’s told me about the Black family. I ought to ask.
Harry looks around at the pictures on the walls of the room. There’s a wedding picture of Andromeda and her Ted, and one of Remus and Tonks that he still can’t look at without his eyes starting to blur. The rest are paintings that she asked Harry to bring from Grimmauld Place, though, a few landscapes and a portrait frame that Phineas Nigellus Black can pop in and out of. She’s told Harry that she wants Teddy to know both sides of his heritage.
Or all three. Although Harry doesn’t know much about the Tonks family, either.
Teddy’s mouth pops off the nipple of the bottle, and Harry looks down to find him asleep, with one hand twined in Harry’s shirt. Harry smiles, puts down the bottle, and pats him gently on the back. Teddy hiccoughs but doesn’t bring anything up. Andromeda says that only happens a lot with overfed babies, and Teddy doesn’t often overeat.
“You cry in the middle of the night and you turn your hair blue when you’re upset and Andromeda’s afraid you cry louder at the full moon,” Harry whispers to Teddy as he tucks him back into his cot, “but you don’t overeat.”
Teddy rolls his head limply to the side in what might be a comment on Harry’s words. His sparse hair is green right now. Harry kisses him and goes back to his own room, large, with a shelf for the books he brought from Grimmauld Place and a deep green quilt on the bed. Andromeda had simply given it to him because it was warm and big. No nonsense about House colors or anything like that.
As Harry snuggles down under the quilt, he realizes he has another feeling in him, an unfamiliar one. He watches it, and it swells and breaks like a wave, and pulls him down into sleep after it.
He is happy.
*
“Um, Harry…”
Harry looks up curiously from his cornflakes. He hasn’t heard Andromeda this uncertain since she asked if he was going back to Hogwarts in the autumn, and then she smiled as soon as he told her no.
From the way she closes her eyes now, lines of tension radiating out from them, he suspects this matter isn’t going to be resolved so easily.
“What is it?” Harry leans over and dangles a conjured rattle for baby Teddy. He’s getting stronger, better able to grip with his hands, but sometimes he still does what he’s doing now, reaching for something and then staring at his fingers with a surprised expression. Harry smiles.
“I want-to make connections with the rest of my family, too.” Andromeda’s picking at her plate when Harry turns to her again. “That means reaching out even to the people who aren’t as pleasant. I just want you to know that my sister’s visiting this afternoon.”
Even months after the war and her death, Harry’s mind always flies to Bellatrix first. But then he shakes his head and asks, “Do you mean the Malfoys?”
“Yes. You do get along better with them, don’t you? Especially after you testified at their trials.”
“Yes.”
The bland reply hides a lot of things. Harry wants to say that he only testified because he owed them his life, or Narcissa his life, and he still doesn’t like them. He thinks Lucius, who went back to Azkaban for breaking out and also for the Mark on his arm, finally, deserves everything he got. He thinks big fines and removal of their wands for a year is about the minimum punishment anyone with a Mark should get.
But he isn’t their sister or their aunt, the way Andromeda is. He can’t blame her for wanting to know them.
He just plans to stay out of the way when they’re here.
*
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to meet my little cousin.”
“Funny, you never wanted to meet him before,” Harry says, and he leans back and squints up at Malfoy, who’s standing in the door of Teddy’s bedroom. Harry’s been upstairs playing with Teddy while Andromeda visits with the Malfoys downstairs.
Malfoy looks around before answering. Harry thinks he probably knows the value of all the furniture within the room to a Knut. And his lip curls a little before he turns back to Harry, which just proves the point.
(Harry’s not sure what the point is. But Malfoy’s lip proves it).
“You know perfectly well why that is.”
“Yeah,” Harry acknowledges, and swallows down the instinct to protect Teddy. He doesn’t think he needs to hide him away from the Malfoys. Well, not until they get their wands back, anyway. He holds Teddy up.
Malfoy crosses the room to them with slow steps and sinks down next to the chair. Somehow, he only looks at Teddy even though he’s right there. Harry finds himself grateful for that.
“Can I hold him?”
Harry nods and extends Teddy, although he watches tensely in case Malfoy accidentally drops him. What would he know about holding a baby?
Maybe a lot, Harry has to concede after a second. Malfoy tucks Teddy against his shoulder in the posture Harry uses when he’s feeding him, and considers him for a long, solemn moment. Teddy stares back. Harry wonders if he’s going to change his hair from its current pink color, but apparently he doesn’t know what to make of his newfound cousin, because he doesn’t do anything.
“Hello, little cousin,” Malfoy finally whispers. “I hope we can learn about being Blacks together.”
Harry blinks, but doesn’t say anything. Maybe that’s the way Andromeda is reconciling with her sister, emphasizing the last name they used to share instead of their current ones. And probably avoiding the whole subject of family tapestries and marrying Muggleborns and werewolf sons-in-law, of course.
“I hope we can all learn about it.”
Malfoy is looking at him now, which startles Harry after all the effort he took to avoid it earlier. He responds immediately, “What? I’m here to help raise Teddy. I can’t tell you much about being a Black.”
“Funny. I could swear someone told me that Sirius Black made you his heir.”
“That’s not the same thing as being born one,” Harry says, and rolls his eyes so Malfoy will get the point.
This one, Malfoy doesn’t take. He cradles Teddy against him and says again, “Funny. I could also swear that you had a lot of experience with families being more than blood, Potter.”
Harry stands up. He doesn’t even know why, but he’ll punch Malfoy if he stays here.
“Don’t keep Teddy up too long,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves the room. “We’re trying to get him on a regular schedule of afternoon naps so Andromeda can do some shopping with her friends.”
“Today, she’s going out with my mother. Or didn’t she tell you?”
The point’s apparently that she wants me to reconcile with the bloody Malfoys, too, Harry thinks, and he’s proud of himself for not slamming the nursery door.
*
Harry is eating a peaceful dinner in a blissfully Malfoy-free house later that evening when Andromeda comes in, gives him a single glance, shakes her head, and says, “I did mean to include you as part of the family, too, Harry.”
“I know that,” Harry says, sitting back and blinking at her. “But I would just make everything awkward if I was there. I mean, life-debts and history in school and everything. And I’m sort of indirectly responsible for Lucius being in prison.”
“I meant more than that. I meant that I’ve taken you in, and you’re part of the Black family as far as I’m concerned.”
“You told me it was just-”
“Not formal adoption. I did say that. But you’re welcome around other Blacks. And Narcissa wants to meet you properly. Somehow, she doesn’t think lying on the floor of a dark forest while she lies to save your life counts.”
Harry has to smile, even though he suspects that’s more Andromeda’s sense of humor than Mrs. Malfoy’s. “Okay. Well. When they are supposed to come over again?”
“Tuesday. Do try to be nicer this time, Harry. Narcissa told me she’d liked to meet you, and even Draco told her how good you are with the baby. Let’s make it a family afternoon. You can think of Narcissa as a cousin, if you like. I know some of your history with aunts.”
And cousins, Harry thinks, but even as he thinks that, a sort of thrill runs through him. He reconciled with Dudley at the end, too. He wasn’t that bad. Having other cousins…
It could be a good thing, even if he would just as soon never have another aunt.
He nods. “Okay.”
*
Narcissa Malfoy is so pale and quiet on the Malfoys’ fourth visit it’s more like sitting at the table with a ghost than a person.
Harry eats more of the small sandwiches that Andromeda thinks she needs to serve whenever the Malfoys come over and watches her. Narcissa-as she said he should call her, instead of Mrs. Malfoy-sits at the big dining room table and stares out the window. There are trees changing their leaves out there, but it’s mostly a dull tapestry of red and orange. Harry doesn’t think it really holds her attention.
Then he winces at himself and decides to make sure that he won’t mention tapestries in front of her any time soon.
“Harry?”
The sandwiches are still big enough to choke on, Harry discovers. Luckily, he bolts down the mixture of sauce and tomatoes and lettuce and whatever else is on the thing, and says, “Narcissa?” before she can do more than look at him in concern.
“I understand that you lived with a-very bad Muggle family before you went to Hogwarts.”
Harry feels a flicker of betrayal, but he knows Andromeda didn’t talk. Details about the Dursleys started showing up in the papers a month ago, courtesy of the Order members who guarded the Dursleys during the war. Apparently Vernon and Petunia didn’t stay silent enough, even when around “freaks.” Harry hid away from owls and didn’t read the Prophet for a while, until something else scandalous about Dumbledore showed up and it quieted down.
“Yes, I did,” he says, and waits for the next question.
“Why did it make you not hate Muggles?”
Harry wants to answer the way Hermione would, with a lecture about how Muggles aren’t all bad people because of this any more than all pure-bloods are bad because of Death Eaters, but instead he sighs and thinks about it. Then he says, “I never thought about them as Muggles. I didn’t grow up knowing I was magical. I knew I was different from them, but I just thought that was me and three people I-didn’t like.” He doesn’t think he ever hated the Dursleys, not now, not with what he’s felt towards Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. “I never thought I was different from anyone else. I dreamed about my parents coming back and finding me, or some other relative once I knew my parents were dead, but I also dreamed about escaping from them and finding another life. It was-different, you know? It wasn’t about hating a whole group of people.”
“And when you knew you were magical?”
“I didn’t spend a lot of time around other Muggles after that. The Dursleys told all their neighbors I was mad and a criminal, and so I didn’t spend much time with them even during the summers. They stayed away.”
Narcissa is staring at him. “And yet you still didn’t hate them?”
“I was thinking about other things.”
And that’s really the whole point of it, Harry thinks. He’s not a saint. He can be a coward sometimes. He doesn’t have an open mind like Hermione, and he doesn’t forgive easily. He still doesn’t know if he’s forgiven Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. He doesn’t know if he ever will.
But he had Voldemort to think about, and Sirius, and his friends, and getting better at magic, and the dream of escaping from the Dursleys while Sirius was still alive, and his grief when Sirius was dead, and Horcruxes. There was so much, and it just made the Dursleys’ world seem very small and cramped, and worth ignoring.
“I see.” Narcissa looks back at her hands. Harry looks, too, and sees she’s toying with her wedding ring. “Then-I suppose I have part of my answer as to how you can sit here with me and not strike me.”
“I think I could learn to like you. I don’t know if I could ever learn to like my aunt or uncle. But I did reconcile with my cousin Dudley before the end. I saved his life. That changed him.”
Narcissa looks up with a small smile. “And you could consider me a cousin?”
“Yes.” Harry says, and takes another sandwich. After a minute, so does she.
*
Harry has come to accept Malfoy’s presence when he’s playing with Teddy and Narcissa and her son arrive. Malfoy comes and holds Teddy, and Harry stays there and answers questions about how much Teddy’s eating and the kinds of faces he makes and all the cute things he’s done since Malfoy last saw him.
But peace is as much as Harry thinks there’ll ever be between them, and he and Malfoy only have Teddy in common. Which is why he’s really surprised when, on the sixth visit, Andromeda and Narcissa come into the nursery, Malfoy hands Teddy to them to coo over, Harry leaves the room, and Malfoy follows him.
Not just down to the kitchen, either, which could be excused as wanting something to eat. All the way out to the garden, and the small bench there where Harry likes to sit when he’s outside with Teddy.
Harry sits on it and stares determinedly at the trees, thinking Malfoy will take the hint and leave him alone. But Malfoy sits down beside him and says simply, “You can think of me as a cousin, too. Can’t you?”
Narcissa must have told him what we talked about. Harry picks up a yellow leaf and shreds it, shrugging a little. “I-there was a lot more between us.”
“But she told me that you’re a forgiving type of person.”
“You want me to forgive you?”
“Yes.”
Malfoy turns his head and catches Harry’s eye, and Harry sees emotions there that make him relax and think. Malfoy might only want Harry’s forgiveness because it would mean he has one less enemy. Or because it would make these visits more comfortable. Or because he’s bored and doesn’t have anyone else to talk to. Harry doesn’t think he and Narcissa visit many other people besides Harry and Andromeda.
If any at all.
“Okay,” Harry says finally. “It won’t happen all at once, but I’ll try not to hold those things against you anymore.”
And really, when he thinks about it, it’s what Malfoy did to others that he resents most: hurting Ron and Katie Bell, calling Hermione a Mudblood, letting Death Eaters into the school. His taunting and teasing and the way he dressed up like a Dementor in his third year are so far behind them now. Harry knows what it’s like to be hunted with real hatred, and the same way that Dudley could never compare to Voldemort, neither can Malfoy.
“Thank you, Harry.”
Harry jumps, the same way he did when Narcissa called him by his first name, but then he manages to turn around and say, “Okay-Draco, if you want?”
Draco, who apparently does want, nods, and they lapse back into silence. Harry watches the wind whip leaves to the ground. The garden is almost completely covered, even the little pond that Teddy likes to splash in. And Draco breathes gently beside him, and shows no boredom in Harry’s company, or urge to talk further.
As the silence settles even deeper, Harry realizes that he was mistaken before, in thinking he and Draco would only ever have peace between them. Because they didn’t have this, and this is peace.
Chapter Two.
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