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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.

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Chapter Thirteen—The Meaning of Duty

            “Master Harry is coming with me now.”

            Harry raised his head, blinking, and for a moment feared that he had fallen asleep watching Narcissa after all. But no, he was still awake, and staring. It was just, he realized as his brain caught up with his eyes, that his view of Narcissa for the last few minutes had included a little house-elf bustling around her and touching the sheets and the pillows back into softness with gentle hands.

            Ossy, of course, was the one who stood in front of him with his hands on his hips and his gaze apparently attempting to drill a hole in the scar.

            “All right,” Harry said. He felt light-headed and wool-headed at once, as if his brain was packed with dead thoughts. He stood up, a hand on the back of the chair, and turned towards the door of the room.

            Ossy appeared in front of him again, and did some more staring. Harry blinked down at him. “What?” he asked. “We agreed that I was coming. Did you somehow want me to stay here and come with you at the same time?” He didn’t know how that would work, but he was used to even more irrational demands from house-elves. Kreacher sometimes tangled himself up in contradictory demands until Harry was glad that he had forbidden Kreacher to even punish himself again.

            Ossy leaned back and tapped his foot on the floor. Then he snapped his fingers.

            The chair twisted. Harry nearly fell, but then he realized that the chair had scooped him up by the arse and was floating behind Ossy, out the door and down the corridor towards his rooms. The door of Narcissa’s room closed with a quiet but definite click.

            Huh. Harry swallowed. Well, maybe the Healer had told Draco that there should be only one watcher at a time, and anything more would exhaust Narcissa. Harry wouldn’t try an unlocking charm on the door except in a case of fire, that was certain.

            “Master Harry is eating,” Ossy told the air in front of him. He marched along down the corridor, leading Harry and the chair, although Harry would have thought that was too far beneath him. “Master Harry is having a shower. Master Harry is going to bed.”

            “Master Harry is apparently sitting down right now and not doing any of them,” Harry pointed out.

            Ossy spun around on one foot, in a complete circle, the better to give him a vicious glare on the way and then keep going. Harry blinked. Whatever he had done, it must be some kind of sin against Malfoy propriety.

            But I only did what Draco asked me to do, sat and watched.

            Harry thought some more about that, and then gave it up as they floated into his bedroom and Ossy sent the door banging back against the wall with a single careless gesture. If the sin was small enough for him not to notice, with all the new rules banging and burning in his head, then he wouldn’t be able to think of it now, either.

            Ossy hesitated for a moment between the tray of food on the table and the shower. Then he landed the chair in front of the table and shoved the food at Harry, hard enough that Harry had to catch the sides of the table before the tray toppled over in his lap. Harry blinked at him, then down at the food. A thick slice of cake topped with chocolate, a piece of meat that he didn’t recognize with a single glance but which was at least red and steaming, and a salad that looked like a jungle seen from the air.

            “Master Harry,” Ossy said, his voice breathy with passion. “Is eating.”

            The thought of any house-elf going breathy with passion was so repugnant that Harry picked up the fork in front of him and started eating so he wouldn’t have to hear any more of it. Once he got started, it was easy to go on. Crisp and sweet and bland and sour and rich blended in his mouth until it was hard to distinguish them from one another. Then again, he probably didn’t need to, when what mattered was the pleasure that he got out of it. He swallowed and chewed and swallowed and chewed, and lost himself in a comfortable haze of knowing that he didn’t have to do anything else right now.

            Before the end of the meal, though, those doubts were creeping back. George was out of hospital now, had been for two days, and Harry hadn’t seen him yet. Frankly, he was afraid to. He had cost George the most physically of anyone except Narcissa, and telling him that he had caused the collapse because—

            “Master Harry. Is taking a shower.”

            Harry blinked and realized that Ossy was pulling him again, and also speaking in that breathy way again. He stood up and stumbled into the bathroom as soon as the chair was close enough. No, he wanted to stay far away from all house-eves who talked like that.

            He managed to wash himself, although he still felt strange and languid. And crowded, with all the thoughts of the duties he had crowding up on top of one another. Learning more about pure-blood history, and watching Narcissa, and surely other interviews with Skeeter, and Draco had said something earlier about how he wanted Harry to escort him to the gathering at the Ministry to honor the end of the war with the Dementor ghosts…

            But he did manage, sometimes, to concentrate on the way the sponge and the soap were moving over his body as simple actions and pleasures in and of themselves, and then he was out of the shower, and done. He looked around for a towel.

            Three enormous ones appeared in front of him, and then a set of pyjamas that looked as if they were made of sapphire-colored silk, but also looked soft and comfortable. Harry put them on, wishing that he could trust Kreacher to do the clothes shopping and not come back with “traditional” black robes that looked as if a vampire should be wearing them to mourn the death of his pet bat. Ossy had taste.

            “Master Harry is sleeping now.”

            At least Ossy sounded normal again, Harry thought, as he stumbled out to the bed and lay down, pulling the covers up over him. He wouldn’t want Draco asking him why his house-elf was stuck speaking in that kind of voice.

            It felt so good to lie down, to let his head fall on the pillows, to feel his eyes shut. At least he knew he would deal with sins and violations of propriety in the morning.

            And Ossy will probably wake me up early to deal with them, too.

            But that thought didn’t have the chance to linger in his mind and make much of an impression before he slid down into unrelenting sleep.

*

            Draco leaned back from the breakfast table and frowned up the stairs. He had assumed Harry would join him. Surely he had been reading about the importance of punctuality in the books that Draco had given him?

            Well. Perhaps he hadn’t had much time to read yesterday, after giving the interview and rebuilding Weasley’s house and then watching Narcissa.

            Draco would ask him to take another turn today. He trusted Affy, but the most devoted elf needed to rest sometimes, and Draco would have other things to do.

            He opened the newspaper, and smiled grimly at the picture of Harry on the front page. His smile was false, a little, but only someone who had been at school with him and remembered exactly the way he used to smile at his friends would notice. And Draco was confident that Harry’s friends wanted his marriage to succeed enough that they wouldn’t be giving any of their memories to the papers.

            The headline said, BECOMING HARRY…MALFOY?

            Draco shook his head as he read the article. Skeeter thought she was so clever, and sometimes she was, such as when she’d become a beetle Animagus, but there were other times when Draco wondered how she could really think so. The questions were exactly the ones Draco had expected she would ask—about Harry’s magic and vaults and the duties of joining the Malfoy family—and Draco wasn’t even a reporter.

            The answers were also exactly the ones Draco had expected Harry would give, although one or two of them made him narrow his eyes. Skeeter asked him if he had ever expected to become a Malfoy, and Harry said it had been a complete surprise, which was true, and well enough.

            But then Skeeter asked why he had agreed to marry Draco, and Harry’s answer sounded as though he was restraining the temptation to laugh.

            “Because it was my duty, of course,” the new Mr. Malfoy says, after a moment in which his eyes focus on me as though he think I might not know the word. “Because it was the least I could do after costing him so much.”

            Draco frowned as he folded up the paper. That would be a fine answer if it was true. But one did one’s duty without passion and without regret, and he doubted that Harry was capable of that in any way. Instead, he would do his duty with guilt chaining him to the Malfoy family, and there were also the selfish reasons he had agreed to take Draco’s name, like the privacy the wards could give him.

            Maybe I should remind him what duty means.

*

            Harry spent a little time staring into the mirror before he went downstairs to eat breakfast with Draco. Not because he really cared about what he looked like—and the dragon scar wasn’t so bad, even if it probably would lead to people making jokes about the fierceness of his temper—but because he didn’t, and looking at something he didn’t care about was one way for him to center himself, to think, to decide what he wanted to do.

            So he considered the face Draco would see, and the mouth he would hear speak, and decided what kinds of thoughts he wanted to fill his head with.

            He had been upset with Draco yesterday for what he said about the Weasleys, but he shouldn’t have been. He had married Draco knowing that Draco’s attitudes hadn’t changed, and Draco hadn’t even considered it noteworthy that the vows would require Harry to put his new family before his friends. Maybe Draco could have changed a few words to be more diplomatic, but it would always be the same underneath.

            That was all right. Harry didn’t need to spend all his time in the Manor, and in fact, he intended to spend a lot of it outside, with his friends in hospital and at home. He would rebuild. He would become an active Auror again, as the uproar around the Dementor ghosts died down. He would probably be on his own more than he had been, because some people would avoid him now that he had changed his name, but it would work out.

            When he was here, he could be as calm and dutiful about what Draco needed him to do as Draco needed him to be. Read the books. Watch Narcissa. Answer questions. Watch pure-blood behavior and learn how to imitate it.

            Really, he was always at his best when he was doing something. He had certainly learned that during the Horcrux hunt, when the enforced inactivity of hiding from Voldemort had distressed him far more than being captured by the Snatchers and dragged to Malfoy Manor. Give him something to do, and he at least had a goal to work towards.

            He stepped back from the mirror, and nodded. Easy enough to do his duty to the family and his pleasure outside it. He’d compared this situation to the Dursleys yesterday, but that was silly. When he was with them, he’d had no way to escape except inside his own head. Here, there were plenty of ways to do that.

            Harry turned and marched down the stairs to breakfast.

*

            “Why did you tell Skeeter that it was your duty to marry me?”

            Harry had taken a big swallow of tea immediately before Draco said that, but he bit his lip and simply looked him soberly in the eye instead of spitting it out. Draco stared at him. He looks like he was anticipating the question, but that’s impossible.

            “It’s true,” Harry said, patting his lips with a napkin and laying the cup down. Draco was pleased to see that he was making an effort not to eat like a wild boar at the table even when there were only the two of them. That would eventually pay off in the public atmosphere of parties. “Should I have said something else? I thought it was okay, because everyone knows that we didn’t marry each other for love.”

            Draco leaned back and crossed his legs. “I didn’t think the word was in your vocabulary, that’s all.”

            Harry’s eyes changed. Draco didn’t know what kind of name to put to the look that filled them, but he knew he didn’t like it.

            “Oh, believe me, from the first time I stepped into the wizarding world I knew what my duty was,” Harry said, in a voice on the edge of a snarl. “Hard not to, with so many people staring at my forehead in hope.”

            Draco shook his head. “I don’t mean your duty to defeat the Dark Lord. You could have chosen to do that or not, and it would be all one to me.” Harry’s smile took on a nasty sheen, but he said nothing. “I mean your duty to a family. How can you know that, when you had to grow up without your parents?”

            Harry leaned back in his chair and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he nodded. “I can see why you’d be suspicious,” he said. “So. What do you think it means? The books tell me what pure-bloods in general think, but not what you do,” he added, neatly cutting off the response about studying more that Draco was about to give him.

            Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought Harry would pay enough attention to him to force him to talk about that, but on the other hand, he could hardly refuse now that Harry had asked him directly.

            He clasped his hands in front of him and leaned across the table. “Some of the definitions, you’ve already seen, thanks to the demi-marriage ceremony,” he said. “Someone who puts their family first. Someone who understands that his own desires aren’t always important, that he has to yield and do what he can for the sake of others.” For some reason, Harry smiled faintly at that, but didn’t comment, leaving Draco free to go on. “Someone who—knows, deep down in their bones, that they don’t want to be doing anything else.”

            “I don’t know about the last,” Harry said, staring at the wall over Draco’s head. “I have a hard time changing my desires. But I’ll do what I can, and I hope you won’t find me a disappointment.” He ate a little more of the scone that Ossy had set on his plate with a significant look Draco hoped to understand later. It wouldn’t do for Harry and his house-elves to start having secrets from Draco. “Would you like me to sit with Narcissa today?”

            “Not this morning,” Draco said, standing up. “Affy can take care of her for a few more hours, and you should study.”

            Harry nodded, his face reflecting nothing now. Was he already learning to hide his emotions the way a pure-blood should? That would help them enormously in the future, and yet Draco didn’t know if he was pleased.

            I will have to learn to be, then, if this is his best effort. We all have sacrifices to make.

*

            Harry waited until Draco was gone, and then turned and glared at Ossy. “I ate enough,” he whispered.

            More scones appeared on his plate in response, with melted butter on them. Harry met Ossy’s eyes, and doubted he would get out of this argument. Or, at best, he would cause some kind of disturbance that would upset Draco. Harry sighed and bit into his scone, fighting not to stiffen his shoulders at Ossy and huff in offense.

            Ossy had been standing by his side throughout breakfast, glaring at his plate. Draco hadn’t seemed to notice. Maybe he was used to that kind of protective behavior from house-elves. But Harry had winced every time Ossy shifted back and forth, or seemed to jab one long finger towards his plate.

            He understood, now, why Ossy had been so insistent about eating and bathing and sleeping last night. He thought Harry wasn’t taking care of himself.

            But I am. I just sort of fell into a trance when I was watching Narcissa, and lost track of time.

            That couldn’t happen again, Harry decided, because then Ossy would tell Draco, and he would have a problem of a different kind on his hands. He needed to remain focused but alert, watching Narcissa’s breathing and heartbeat every minute. He had learned how to do that in the Aurors, though it was a rarity in the last few years, when they had tended to put him on the more explosive cases.

            So he would learn again, that was all. He could do it. He merely had to make sure that he balanced that with the things he wanted to do for his friends.

            He could live up to family duty in the way Draco demanded—and the way Ossy demanded, he thought, eating again when the house-elf’s finger poked him. He had to be strong to be a strong Malfoy, and starving himself or getting so weak he couldn’t stand up, no matter how accidentally, wouldn’t help his family’s reputation.

            He would go visit George this afternoon, though, when his watch was done. He had put off the visit long enough, and his duty to his friends was to be courageous and strong and admit he had done something stupid.

            Harry managed to eat six of the scones Ossy put in front of him before his stomach rebelled. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Ossy. Ossy leaned in to sniff his plate, as if that would tell him something about Harry’s eating habits that the way Harry acted and moved couldn’t.

            Then he stepped back and sniffed at the air in general. “Master Harry can be going,” he said grudgingly. “But he is not to move too far or too fast.”

            “I’ll be studying,” Harry said, and shoved his chair back from the table, grateful to escape the interrogation. “I won’t move far or fast at all.”

            The black glare Ossy gave him made Harry decide there was probably an interesting story about Lucius somewhere in the past, but he didn’t have time to hear it right now. The books would give him enough foreign information to take in.

*

            Draco sat and faced the ledger that lay on the other side of the room. It was the ledger that contained important family records about the distribution of funds in various bank accounts, and Draco wanted it next to him.

            But he was not going to walk across the room and get it.

            He swung his wand up. “Accio ledger,” he whispered, and aimed the basilisk wand directly at the book so that it wouldn’t try to Summon something else, which was only one of the tricks it had tried to play on him.

            A shudder traveled up and through the bones of his arm, which had happened before. Draco ignored it this time, bending all his will on getting the wand to surrender to him, the ledge to come to him.

            The ledger rose in the air, wobbling, some of the pieces of paper that stuck out of it riffling as if in a high wind. Draco held his breath in triumph.

            Then the ledger plummeted towards the floor, and the magic seemed to run out of Draco’s wand as if it was the end of an open tube. He snarled and jerked his wand up again before he thought about it.

            The magic caught and held, but in a strange way. This didn’t feel like the smooth pull of the Summoning Charm Draco was used to; it felt like he was spreading a mesh net out beneath the ledger and then pulling it up and shut around the book.

            Draco hesitated. Then he made another reckless motion with his hand. He frankly didn’t give a fuck about how he got the book to him. He only knew that working with first-year spells alone didn’t help him anymore, and that he wanted the Summoning Charm perfected in time for the next party he had to attend.

            The book trembled once and then shot towards him, so fast Draco barely had time to duck. But the ledger didn’t fly over his head and slam into the wall behind him, the way he had thought it would. Instead, it coasted to a stop in front of him, wobbled again, and then dropped down to land with a bang on the desk.

            Ossy appeared and stared at him, until Draco leaned back and gave him a stern look. “I’m fine, Ossy,” he said.

            Ossy rolled his eyes—a privilege that only a long-serving house-elf would have been able to get away with—and then disappeared again. Draco swallowed and looked at the book, then at his wand.

            It was strong. Bucking under his control. It would take some getting used to.

            But Draco thought he could welcome the power, the same way he could get used to Harry’s power being behind him now. He only had to make it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate challenges to his authority for long. Harry and the wand would both have to back down and make concessions.

            Draco sniffed and began looking through the book.

*

            Harry squinted down at the book in front of him. Sure, all right, it was called The Dust and Ashes of Pure-Bloods, so it made sense that it would mostly be about history, and from the perspective of someone who thought everything good about pure-blood society had crumbled ages ago, but did it have to have so many names? Already it had mentioned fifteen new wizards in this paragraph it seemed to expect him to memorize, along with extremely lengthy titles. Harry kept expecting a Malfoy to show up, but none had yet.

            He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice the owl in the room until it flapped its wings and hooted. He jumped and looked up, but held his fire when he realized that it was George’s owl. The letter from him looked suspiciously thin, but at least it wouldn’t be a Howler.

            The envelope only had a single sheet of thin paper inside it.

            Come at once.

            And that was that. Harry stood up and Apparated, without thought, leaving behind the litter of books and duty.

*

            unneeded: Yes, the Black vaults were handed over, too, as they were family vaults.

            But Draco doesn’t think he needs to use tact with family.

            SP777: They will do things that are fun for Draco, but it takes a while for Harry to get on the same page.

            Yes, in some ways they’re orbiting. Harry’s trying to reduce everything to a list of tasks, and Draco wonders why he doesn’t see more enthusiasm.

            polka dot: Well, he won’t run off and have an affair. But otherwise, that’s pretty close.

            disgruntledfairy: Harry thinks he might have come up with a solution to heal Narcissa in the next chapter, but Draco Does Not Approve.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee