Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42129 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 6
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—Introducing Harry Malfoy

            “This is my mother.”

            Harry winced a little, automatically, as he stepped into the suite of rooms that Malfoy had kept locked until now. That had to do with the robe still swinging loose around his shoulders, and Malfoy’s hand low on his back—

            I reckon I ought to think of him as “Draco” all the time now, and not just during the ceremony.

            —and the fact that he had been the one who had caused this woman to suffer the horrific injuries that she had. He wondered if she would forgive him long enough to talk to him, or if she even knew about the demi-marriage intended to make him part of the family.

            He came to a halt a few steps from the bed, and looked at it. There was a limp hand there, and a softly yellow-tinged face visible in the middle of a mass of pale hair. Harry flinched from it despite himself. The face turned and the eyes opened, a misty grey that looked at him without hate and without recognition.

            “Mother.” Draco ushered him forwards, and Harry crossed the last few steps of plush carpet and stood looking down on his new mother-in-law. “This is Harry. He’s shed the Potter name and joined us, now.”

            Narcissa continued to look at him. There was nothing there, nothing of the woman who had saved Harry’s life in the Forbidden Forest, and nothing of the blame that Harry had thought he would receive, that it was only fair he receive. He didn’t know if she was senile or simply had too much to think about that didn’t include him. After a few minutes, her eyes wandered away from him, and a house-elf Harry hadn’t met yet popped into being at her bedside and handed her a glass of water. It had to support her wrist.

            Harry stood there, his hands clenching into fists despite himself and his eyes burning with pity. He watched the way the skin stretched over the bones in Narcissa Malfoy’s wrist, and nodded to himself.

            Then he turned around and faced Draco. Draco looked back at him, still, his eyes gone as distant as his mother’s. Perhaps he saw something in Harry’s face he didn’t expect.

            “I’m going to make it right for her,” Harry said. “I’m going to pay back the debt I owe to her. No matter what the cost.”

*

            Draco almost smiled. It seemed Harry—Malfoy—had quite the habit of swearing impulsive oaths to pay back debts. That was the reason for the ceremony they had gone through, the pain he could still feel under his skin, the memory that tingled and burned and seared in his mind. He didn’t know what to do with that memory of Harry walking through the Forest yet. Well, he knew what he wanted to accomplish, but not the means he would use to do it.

            Now, though, he could hardly dishonor Harry for the wish to pay his mother back. Draco, too, wanted to see Narcissa up and about again. He dipped his head, slowly, let his eyes blink once, and then said, “You won’t find any opposition in that from me.”

            Harry let his hands fall open. “Right,” he muttered. “I didn’t think I would. It’s just—I’m so used to opposition that sometimes I tend to jump right there, if that makes sense. Without thinking about who’s going to oppose me and who’s going to help me.”

            Draco stood up and let Harry see his muscles stretching, the graceful stance he could take up, and the determination in his eyes. “I’ll help you.”

            Harry nodded, quickly. “Thanks. Do you have that list of Healers we were working on finished? Is there anyone you would prefer see her above anyone else?”

            Draco had to take a deep breath before he responded. Of course. This was the way it should be. He should have someone at his side to help him make the decisions, as his mother had been before this, as his father would have been had Fate been kinder.

            He just wasn’t used to having a demi-spouse to help him carry the burden yet.

            He avoided Harry’s eyes as he turned and picked up the parchment he’d written the names on. He had the idea they might be all too knowing, and while that would help at times, there were other times when he didn’t really want to put up with it.

            “This is the list I came up with,” he said, briskly, and held it out so Harry could take it from him. “Private Healers would be best. Healers in St. Mungo’s may still have ties to the Wizengamot that tried us, or they may think it’s an outrage that you were taken into the family, and I don’t want to inflict either kind on her…”

*

            Harry leaned back and sighed. He had gone through four names on the list so far, and still not found one Healer who would agree to treat Narcissa.

            Oh, they all prefaced their refusals with apologies and sad headshakes and murmurs about the complications of the case. Harry thought that it was complicated, and he would have respected a Healer who didn’t want to take it on for fear of making fifty years of sudden age worse. But all of them let their gazes flicker up to the scar on his forehead first, and their wide eyes and jerky movements when they noticed the way it had changed told him what the real problem was.

            No one wants to serve the Malfoys, Harry thought, and rubbed his forehead. The new scar didn’t itch the way the old one had sometimes when Voldemort was about. It felt weird, though, the outline of a coiled tail and an arched neck. He still hadn’t looked at it in the mirror. He supposed he should sometime. I wouldn’t have felt sorry for them a few years ago, but this time, it’s really my fault.

            He reached for the list with one hand, to try the fifth name, and for the Floo powder with the other hand. Then he jumped as the table jolted with the huge pile of books that had just been dumped on it. He turned to look up at Draco, blinking.

            Draco nodded to him, or perhaps nodded to the extensive mini-library of tomes he’d just handed Harry, Harry didn’t know which. “That’s the first installment of your homework,” he said, stepping back. “I wasn’t sure how many books you could read at a time, so I just brought them all. You can work your way through them slowly.” He glanced at Harry, his eyes seeming to see too much, from the scar on Harry’s forehead to the scar on his ribs that a Lethifold had left. “Just do it steadily.”

            Harry studied the spines of the books, or at least the ones turned towards him. They all seemed to have worn leather covers, or wrinkled ones that were probably other kinds of skin. Pure-Blood Traditions, The Pride of Our Heritage, Manners Make the Man, The Lamb and the Tiger…and near the bottom was Hogwarts, A History.

            Harry gave a thin smile. Well, Hermione ought to be pleased that I’m reading that at last, he thought, and shifted the rest out of the way to pick it up. There were small interesting parts in this book, he knew, from the many she had recited at them. “What’s most important for me to learn?” he asked, and squinted at the tiny script on the page the book had opened to.

            “Manners,” Draco said. “Pure-blood attitudes. Family trees. The way to dress. The reasons behind the most recent wars with the Dark Lords. The—”

            “Everything, in other words,” Harry said, and Summoned the ink and parchment to start taking notes. “All right, I’ll look for that.”

            “Manners first,” Draco said, so emphatically that Harry paused and looked up at him. “We have a party tomorrow, to introduce you to the world as Harry Malfoy.”

            Harry hissed, and only remembered after he’d done it that Draco had been in the Manor with a Parseltongue-speaking Dark Lord for a year. He offered a little shrug in apology, and then said, “Can’t we wait a bit? I’ll only embarrass you.”

            “Better we make an announcement this way than leave it up to other people to find out,” Draco said firmly. He held Harry’s eyes. “And I don’t think you’ll embarrass me, or yourself, or the family. If you study.”

            And then he walked away, probably to continue practicing spells with the basilisk wand, to get it accustomed to him. Harry looked back and forth between the pile of books in front of him to the parchment with the list of Healers’ names.

            Then he shrugged. The party was tomorrow night, but Narcissa needed a Healer more than Harry needed pure-blood manners.

            He put down Hogwarts, A History, and threw the Floo powder into the fire again, this time casting a quick spell so that his fringe pushed forwards and clung above his changed scar. That might gain him more traction, or at least a chance to explain the situation first and have the Healer judge him later.

*

            Draco closed his eyes. He had thoroughly mastered Lumos and Wingardium Leviosa, and he had Ossy to let him out if he messed up this time. The locked door in front of him—the library door—wasn’t frightening. He only needed to call up the wand motion he had done so many times it was embedded in the bones of his wrist, the incantation that was already lingering on his tongue, and the will to cast the spell.

            “Alohomora.”

            The spell spread out in front of him and attacked the lock. Draco shuddered. He couldn’t remember feeling that reaction from the magic so viscerally before. Normally, the magic would simply go and do what it was supposed to do, without feeding back through the wand to touch Draco’s magical core.

            The door clicked. Draco opened his eyes and stared at the small opening, and then down at the wand in his hand.

            A wizard could use his own, chosen wand best, followed by a wand he had conquered. Even a broken wand could be recovered from, at least if it happened while the wizard was still relatively young. Draco had heard the rumors that Harry’s wand had been broken during the war, and that he had repaired it with the Deathstick. Late, but still late enough for Harry to recover his magic instead of having to enter years of training again.

            But someone Draco’s age, who had bonded with one particular wand for so long and was out of school, out of the regular habit of practicing spells over and over again, with his core formed and settled…

            That took longer.

            Draco smoothed his hand along the wood and then turned and thrust the wand into its holster on his belt. For the moment, he would accept the gift of power instead of focusing on how awkward it might become in the future. He had three spells. He would find another first-year one and practice it. The party would be less awkward than it would have been, because he could have Ossy at hand to bring him what he otherwise would have Summoned. And the house-elf would be glad to fill in for whatever other duties Draco couldn’t perform for the moment. He knew that.

            He simply wished, with all his heart, that this hadn’t happened, that he had his father back at his side, his mother young and strong as she had been five days ago, the hawthorn wand smooth and familiar in his hand.

*

            “Master Harry is being scandalously not-dressed yet.”

            Harry started and looked up. The words of The Pride of Our Heritage swam in front of his eyes, blocking his view of the house-elf’s face. Something about forks in the right place and how one always entered the room after any great dueling champion had already taken his seat.

            Well, I don’t think Draco has invited Flitwick to his party, and Snape is dead, so we should be okay.

            “Oh, right, I’m not,” he said, and stood up, shaking his head when Ossy began to circle him with measuring tapes. “Isn’t it a little late for that? I’ll just need to wear the dress robes that I brought with me.” Well, “brought with him” was a bit too strong a term. Hermione had sent owls flying with packages to him when it became clear that leaving Malfoy Manor before the party would be a bad idea. There had also been a Howler that had spent a lot of time telling Harry, in detail, how angry his friends were with him for not contacting them immediately after the demi-marriage to tell them he was all right. Harry shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. Getting a Healer for Narcissa was more important, and he had finally accomplished that at the eleventh name down the list.

            “Master Harry is being scandalously inattentive,” Ossy said, in a tone that made Harry suspect there was no worse word in his vocabulary, and snapped his fingers again. The measuring tapes vanished. Ossy spent some more time gesturing, and a bolt of dark cloth unrolled and spun into being before him as though he had conjured it from thin air. Maybe he had, Harry conceded, studying him warily. It was probably a bad idea to underestimate a Malfoy house-elf.

            Ossy spent some time twitching his fingers and muttering to himself, and the cloth tore itself into pieces. Needle and thread waltzed with it, and Harry thought he saw the edges of sleeves emerging, and the hem of a robe, and the dance of a dragging curve that had better be a hood and not a train like some witches had on their formal robes. Harry crossed his arms and scowled as the color of the cloth became apparent. It was deep royal blue, a shade he knew from experience made his face and eyes look stupid.

            “Look,” he began, “Ossy, I won’t look good in that—”

            His voice withered on his tongue as Ossy glared at him. He coughed and looked away, his face burning hot enough he could have fried eggs on it. “Fine, forget I said anything,” he muttered, and winced when Ossy closed a careful hand around his arm.

            “Ossy is never making the family,” Ossy said, and took a deep breath, apparently mustering up deep reserves of courage to say this one thing, “stupid. Ossy would never. Ossy will never. And Master Harry will never.” His fingers dug in, and Harry decided that they wouldn’t find him dead stabbed with knives through his eyeballs and his mouth stuffed full of cake, they would find him cinched in half with a belt.

            “Okay, okay,” he muttered, and brushed at his fringe. Ossy eyed his hair for a moment, and clapped his hands. Harry started as what felt like a brisk, warm Aguamenti combined with a Breeze Charm and a Refreshing Charm swept across his hair, flattening it and wetting it and softening it further.

            “Master Harry is not saying—that word,” Ossy murmured. “Master Harry is saying ‘all right’ if he must be talking. And Master Harry’s robes is being done right now.” He clapped his hands again, and the robes whirled up and into being before Harry.

            Harry had to admit they looked good, handsome, with the cloth shimmering so richly that he couldn’t help but want to reach out and touch it. The point was, they wouldn’t look good on him. He shook his head and tried to think of a way to explain that to Ossy, but the elf clapped his hands again and Harry was naked.

            Absurdly, Harry’s first impulse was to grab at his groin. Draco had seen him naked and he’d got used to it, and Ossy would probably be a lot less interested in what he had, but still. “Ossy!” he yelped.

            “Prudishness is not being here,” Ossy said, and stitched his fingers through the air, seemingly making a few last-minute adjustments to the robes. Then he waved again, and the robes, and a pair of assorted pants Harry hadn’t realized were hovering next to them, fastened themselves to Harry. Ossy studied him, and sniffed, and snapped his fingers. A half-cloak dangling down Harry’s back joined the robes a moment later.

            Harry shifted from side to side, and tried not to think about how ridiculous he probably looked in this outfit. The point wasn't how ridiculous he looked, was it? The point was that he would go down to the dinner party and make a good impression on Malfoy's guests.

And he should probably start thinking of Malfoy as Draco and those guests as his, while he was at it.

He started to turn away, and Ossy stepped in front of him. Harry started. He had never met a house-elf with such a commanding manner. Kreacher should have taken lessons, and then he and not Mrs. Black would have ruled Grimmauld Place.

"Master Harry will be wanting to see himself," Ossy said, and at least Harry was prepared this time for the implication that the elf was the master and not him.

"If you say so," he muttered, and stepped back as Ossy waved his hand and conjured up a mirror probably worth twice what most of the furniture in Harry's old flat was, given the heavy wood the frame was made of and the way the surface shimmered, like water lit from within.

It was really the first time Harry had seen himself since the first ceremony where the scar wad changed. Sure, he should have looked before this, but he had been drowning in books and worries and formal words. He personally thought he had done well to struggle along as far as he had.

He had thought he might look like many different people in the mirror: a child playing dress-up with his father's clothes, a toy doll, the Auror out of water. He hadn't expected another, entirely new person there.

The man staring back at him was proud and stern, his head half-bowed as though he expected to begin a duel every second. The blue robes looked better on him than Harry would have expected, bringing out colors in his face and eyes that he hadn't even realized he had. Maybe this shade of blue was the right color for him after all, though if it was, Harry didn't know why he had never seen it before.

The lightning bolt scar had been silly enough; Harry hadn't relished seeing what he would look like with a dragon on his forehead. But it was--all right. The dragon was mostly done in light silhouette, rough outline, without a lot of detail on the face or horns, and curved outlines suggesting the spine, the neck, the blurred motion of raised wings. It didn't make him look any less dangerous, Harry was glad to see.

It was all right, maybe. If he could remember the manners that Draco had said he should learn and how to act. It was going to be all right.

“Master Harry is not acting ridiculously so,” Ossy said, and dismissed the mirror with a snap of his fingers. His voice had grown sharp, but not cold. He studied Harry in his blue robes for a few more minutes, and then nodded. “Master Harry will be doing.”

“Doing what?” Harry asked, before he remembered the way that house-elves spoke. He would do, Ossy meant.

            Perhaps even for the proud and ambitious Malfoy family, or the pure-bloods he was about to meet.

            He sighed, and made his way to the top of the stairs, where Draco was waiting. They would make their grand entrance together, passing down those stairs, Harry imagined, like two ships under full sail.

            If it works, it works.

*

            Two hours into the evening, and Draco was watching the bright shards of his plan on the floor, like shattered glass.

            Harry was polite enough. He made conversation with everyone who came up to him, and sipped the wine instead of gulping it. He had used the correct forks and knives at dinner, which was the area where Draco had expected him to flub the worst. Of course, he had deliberately ordered Ossy to prepare the simplest dishes tonight, which probably had something to do with it. But still, more grace there than expected.

            But Harry was no good at the most vital art of all, the one Draco realized now he should have required him to study: controlling his eyes.

            He would listen to someone talk about the Ministry or blood politics or the amount of money and time spent on Hogwarts, and nod, and murmur agreement, and look inquiring when they paused. But those eyes flared, or flamed, or turned aside, and he used his drink too much as a barrier. The pure-bloods, old money and new money and the people Draco had seen rise in the past few years as the formerly powerful families declined due to their association with the Dark Lord, could tell he despised them.

            And so more and more eddies bent away from Harry, and the conversation chilled like some of the wine in Draco’s ears.

            Draco stepped towards Harry and put a hand on his arm. Harry nodded to him, and went back to listening to Matilda Moonspirit, whose eyes were bent away from Harry as she spoke, on his hand. The hand that was clenched around the stem of his wineglass, and could be scored by it if it broke.

            “Harry,” Draco said, and smiled at the way Moonspirit started and her eyes came back up. That was something, anyway, a small triumph to counter the way the evening had flowed so far. “I need to speak with you.” He bowed to Moonspirit. “Will you excuse us for a moment?”

            Moonspirit nodded and murmured something about “young love” that withered like the smile on her face when Harry gave her a death glare. Draco tugged Harry firmly along to a corner and gestured for Harry to set up a ward. Harry did, but this time Draco was the one who got the glare.

            “You have to control yourself better,” Draco muttered to him, trying to make it look like his lips were moving in sweet nothings rather than the angry words.

            “I have been,” Harry said, and his power snapped around him, attractive and intoxicating and dangerous. “I haven’t hexed anyone yet, have I?”

            “Not just that,” Draco said. “The eyes. The face. You have to look as though you appreciate what they’re saying, or you have to look regally bored. Either will do. Not the mask that you wear now.”

            “What mask?” Harry asked, tilting his head to the side. “These are my honest feelings.”

            “I know, and that’s the problem.”

            Harry closed his eyes as though exhausted. “The Ministry tried to teach me the lesson of being polite at parties,” he said. “It never took, either. They learned to let me appear when they needed me as a hero, and not otherwise.” He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “This isn’t going to work, Draco.”

            “Too bad that you can’t give up, because we’re demi-married now,” Draco said. “Too bad. You can’t shrink backwards.”

            “I can’t learn that—”

            “Then you can do something else,” Draco interrupted him. “Some other diversion to explain why you’ve snapped around looking like a thundercloud all evening.” He held out his hand. “Will you dance with me, Harry Malfoy?”

            Harry stared at him, at his hand, and at his arm as if they were three separate beings. “I can’t dance, either,” he said stupidly.

            “Then it’s time you learned,” Draco said, and tugged Harry towards the middle of the room, shattering the ward, gesturing for Ossy to begin the music. Conversations ceased, and heads turned to track them.

            His heart danced with the risk, but with something more, too: with the need to challenge the stubborn no in Harry’s eyes. And to make Harry challenge him in return.

            This was something they both knew how to do, after all.

*

            delia cerrano: They might not know which one it is themselves for a while!

SP777: He meant that it’s enough that Harry wants it. That’s all that Draco needs to know to do something. (Well, at least then it was).

unneeded: Draco is falling away a bit from that realization at the moment.

Seiren: I have an e-mail update list that you can join, a Yahoo!Group. I think the link should be in my profile. If not, just search for lomonaaerensstories and join it.

And thank you!

polka dot: It’s nowhere that intense, thank goodness.

moodysavage: Probably Draco.

Nightlo: Yes. Harry’s going to find that everything about the Malfoys is specific and special.
- 9
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Name I'll Give to Thee