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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 Fifteen—This Continuing Cycle

            “You are not doing the same thing to my mother.”

            Harry blinked and looked up from Narcissa’s bed. He thought he had achieved the balance of watching and alertness that he needed, focused so he could spring to his feet in a minute if something changed, but not bored with the work of it. He had become so focused, in fact, that it took him a minute to remember what Draco was probably talking about.

            “What I did with George?” he asked. “Oh. No. I would never try to do that.”

            Draco paused, staring at him with narrowed eyes. Harry had to turn his head back so he could observe Narcissa, but he could still feel the storm beside him growing, Draco’s rage deepening and soaring both at once, like a mountain in the process of building.

            “Then why,” Draco asked delicately, “did you think that you could try it on the Weasley?”

            Harry drove his nails into the palms of his hands. He didn’t think he should get upset. Narcissa needed rest. That meant she didn’t need her son and her son-in-law shouting in her rooms, or for the person who was supposed to watch her to neglect his job.

            “Because I thought I could make a gift of my life-force and George would recover,” he said. “With Narcissa, I know it’s more complicated than that. She can’t say yes or no, one way or the other, and the Healer told me it was more complicated because I asked him. You’re the one who would have had to tell me to do it, and I know you don’t want to. No, there was never a chance I would do it to her.”

            Silence. Harry held his breath, waiting for Draco to go, and had to let it out when Draco only stood there.

            “Why are you so determined to fight about this?” he hissed out. “Could we at least wait and do it later, when there’s the chance that we won’t wake her up?”

            Draco’s storm seemed to freeze, and for a moment Harry thought he would burst out shouting anyway, and ruin all the silence and peace that Harry was trying to preserve. But then Draco simply sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, in a way that made it seem as though he was trying to rub away the lines of pain and the furrows of fury on his forehead.

            “We’ll do it later,” he said. “But I want you in the dining room for dinner at precisely six-o’clock. Affy should have had the chance to get some sleep by then.”

            He didn’t slam the door on the way out, either, whatever Harry might have thought of him. Harry had to watch the slenderness of Narcissa’s wrist for a little while before he reminded himself that what mattered was how they got along for her sake. Draco might want to fight with him, and they did need to talk about Harry almost losing his life, but none of that had anything to do with her. She was someone they needed to protect.

            When he thought of it like that, it was simple and obvious, and he could do his duty, however much Draco might think Harry didn’t know anything about duty. He breathed and he focused, and slowly the alertness came back, cautious as a cat that had been shouted at. Harry leaned forwards and watched her pulse beat, and that was helpful.

*

            Draco wanted to stand up when Harry came into the dining room, but Ossy appeared before he could do that, folded his arms, and glared at Harry.

            Draco felt his eyebrows rise, and sat back down, curious as to how the scene would play out if he didn’t intervene. He didn’t know that Ossy had decided to take Harry to task for neglecting Narcissa. Ossy never did the same thing to him, but then, Draco was never the kind to neglect his duty.

            Instead, Ossy said, his voice low and charged, “Master Harry was not eating lunch.”

            Draco blinked. He’d noticed that Harry hadn’t joined him for that meal, but since Draco had eaten only soup and salad before going upstairs to continue the struggle to master his wand, Harry easily could have eaten elsewhere.

            Harry stared at the floor and sighed, but the sight had something of a curse in the back of it, “Sorry, Ossy,” he muttered. “I know I need to keep my strength up. But I’d just got back, and I didn’t want to leave Narcissa.”

            Ossy considered that excuse and then nodded, a slow and regal bob of his head that Draco had never seen. “Ossy is accepting this,” he said. “Master Harry is accepting this.” A meal that seemed to consist almost entirely of potatoes—soup and a thick mashed mass of them in the center of the plate—appeared on Harry’s side of the table. “Master Harry will eat this. And second helpings.”

            Draco waited for Harry to explode. He certainly would have, if Draco had been the one trying to arrange his life like that.

            But Harry only nodded and walked around the table, sitting down in the chair in front of the meal. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks, Ossy.” And as Ossy disappeared with the air of someone who had conquered a stubborn city, Harry grimaced and started working the potatoes down his throat, although they were so thick his fork kept sticking in them.

            Draco said the first thing that came into his head. “Why is it that you’ll listen when he scolds you but not when I say it?”

            Harry’s head rose, and his eyes flashed once with something that looked like temper, and also deeper than temper. Draco reminded himself that he had homework as important as Harry’s homework in pure-blood history and manners: to learn to read his demi-spouse, so that Harry’s moods would no longer be as dangerous or unexpected to him. “Because he makes it clear that his dislike isn’t personal,” Harry said, and went back to his meal.

            Draco stared at him. “What?” he asked at last, when he had examined that statement from every angle he had and found nothing that made sense about it.

            “He wants me to stay strong for the sake of the family,” Harry said, rolling some more potato around in his mouth and swallowing it. Draco wondered that he’d consented to eat it when he’d valued the good and sweet food so much before. Maybe he didn’t realize he could have that kind of food for the asking now. “He’s upset when I fail to eat or sleep because that means I can’t perform my duties as effectively.”

            Draco blinked, and blinked again. Those had been the kinds of words he’d wanted to hear Harry say. It made no sense for them to sting him like soft lashes across his skin.

            “So am I,” he settled for saying at last.

            Harry rolled his eyes a little. “No, you aren’t. You don’t want me to do certain things because it would waste resources, sure, but you also despise me for not having that sense of duty already. Ossy doesn’t despise me. He’s just exasperated. So I find him more tolerable.”

            He went back to eating, and Draco sat there. He was thinking. He was thinking about the words he’d just heard and putting them together with the look on Harry’s face when he’d bent over Weasley’s bed, ready to pour himself forth into that endless well just as he’d been doing all his life.

            “You didn’t know,” he said at last, and his voice was full of—numbness, maybe. It couldn’t be wonder, no matter what it sounded like.

            “Meaning?” Harry asked, and began to eat his soup, having finished with his potatoes. At least he laid the fork in the right place, Draco thought, glad that he could notice that when his brain was whirring and whizzing the way it was.

            “You didn’t know that the spell you performed for Weasley, before I got there, would pull on all your strength and kill you,” he said. “You were—you were willing to die, but you didn’t mean to.”

            Harry gave him a silent, level look. Then he said, “Of course I didn’t think it would kill me. Ron and Hermione performed the same spell when we were fighting, and all it was meant to do was give me their strength. Exhaust them, but not kill them. And I thought it would do the same thing to me. I was thinking that my pulling wouldn’t even have harmed your mum and George that much except that I had a life-debt to your mum and that was a connection, and George was already low in life-force.”

            “You didn’t mean to die,” Draco repeated. He didn’t know what to think. He wanted to sit by himself and consider for a while, but he also didn’t want to leave, not while Harry was sitting there. He found that he had leaned forwards, in eagerness to hear what Harry was going to say.

*

            The potatoes sat heavily in Harry’s stomach. He resisted the temptation to push away his bowl of soup and walk out of the room, no matter how good and warm the soup tasted in his mouth.

            But who cared what the food tasted like, really? Ossy gave it to him because it would keep his strength up, and that was really the only reason it mattered.

            “No,” he said. “I didn’t know. When you told me I could die, then I started thinking of other solutions.”

            Draco shook his head and looked for a moment as though he was going to get up and walk out of the room. Since Harry had manfully not done the same thing, he stayed sitting, and the moment passed, and Draco whispered, “I thought you were trying to commit suicide, that you didn’t care how you died, as long as your friends got to live.”

            Harry winced and frowned at the same time. He could see how that would have irritated Draco. Dealing with a suicidal demi-husband, or whatever he was, would have wasted all the time and effort Draco had put into making the demi-marriage happen. No wonder he had acted as though Harry was deliberately trying to take money away from him or something.

            Being seen as a resource wasn’t that bad, now that Harry understood the reason. They didn’t have any good personal history between them. Draco couldn’t say he was concerned about Harry committing suicide the way a friend would have.

            “Yeah, sorry,” Harry said, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that.” Draco’s frown became more pronounced, but he didn’t, Harry noticed, deny he had been scared. “I just—I needed to help George, and that was the first way that came to mind.”

            “Would you have minded if you had died?” Draco was austere as a judge again, and the brief flash of openness had gone, but at least Harry felt he understood the source of their latest quarrel now.

            “I would have,” Harry said quietly, “because it would have prevented me from keeping my word to you, and Ron and Hermione would have been upset. And I reckon that your mum would have suffered some more.”

            Draco made a cut-off hand gesture. Harry had no idea what it had been, and he was done with trying to assume, since he always ended up making such a muff of it. He waited, and Draco sighed and said, “But you would have chosen that way to die over others.”

            “I would have chosen living more,” Harry said cautiously.

            “You wouldn’t mind,” Draco said. “If you had to die, you would have given up your life for Weasley.”

            “There are worse ways to die,” Harry said, all he could say until he understood exactly what Draco wanted.

            But it seemed that Draco might not understand himself, because abruptly he leaned back, and the plates in front of him filled with food. Harry couldn’t help eying the thick piece of chocolate cake on the plate furthest away from Draco’s hand.

            Draco caught his gaze, and pushed the cake silently across the table.

            Harry hesitated. But it wasn’t as though it would be poisoned, so why not go through with it? He picked up his fork, Vanished the last of the potatoes off it, and began to eat. The chocolate melted and dripped down the tines, and he had to swallow again and again against the sweetness, and he was happy.

            “You like the food here, at least,” Draco said, swirling his drink in a glass and watching him. Harry thought the drink was wine, but he had to admit he didn’t recognize the color.

            “I do,” Harry said, and savored the last bite of the cake with a length and a slurp that made Draco curl his lip. Harry leaned back in his seat and grinned at him. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do something like that in public.”

            Draco went still for a moment, and then reached under the chair, or so it seemed to Harry, and brought out a thick, creamy envelope with the seal standing up in bossed gold. “The Ministry has invited us to a celebration to mark the end of the war with the Dementor ghosts. I hoped you might attend with me.”

            Harry locked eyes with Draco. He could have said so many things: that he wouldn’t have gone without this between them, because he found parties where he was the guest of honor unutterably boring; that there was a lot more room to make mistakes when they were outside Malfoy Manor and they didn’t have Ossy to clean up after them; that Draco could have simply demanded that Harry attend with him, instead of asking, and Harry would have had to do it.

            But because they both knew all those things were there and didn’t say them, Harry felt able to reach out, and take the envelope from Draco’s hand, and look over the details of the party. Two nights from now, and at the bottom of the letter glowed a soft, swirling silver oval, waiting for the recipient to press his wand into the middle of it and announce he was coming. Harry touched his wand to it, and the oval stopped sparkling and became a simple circle of grey ink. Approved.

            “Yes,” Harry said, handing the letter back to Draco. “I think I might still embarrass you, but it’s important that people see us together.”

            Draco leaned back and looked at him thoughtfully. “Your manners are better than I thought. Why can’t you keep your emotions concealed?”

            Harry shrugged. “I never learned. Before I came to Hogwarts, I lived with people who didn’t care what I was feeling one way or the other.” Draco’s brows pinched, but he didn’t say anything, and Harry was grateful. The Dursleys had nothing to do with this, and he knew Draco would probably only despise Muggles more if he heard about them. “When I was there, I just didn’t care. Couldn’t care. I had a Dark Lord after me and people trying to kill me from the time I was eleven. My first priority was surviving, not having a pretty face. Besides.” He gestured at his scar, and then remembered it was changed, but—“The way this used to look, people knew who I was right away anyway, and thought they knew what I was thinking because I was Harry Potter.”

            Draco’s eyes had become slits. “Do you think you could learn? It’s going to cripple you among pure-bloods until you do.”

            “Why?” Harry asked bluntly. “Not everyone at the party we had was concealing their emotions. Greengrass showed plenty of contempt, and I saw the way other people looked disgusted with me.”

            Draco was still for a moment, and then smiled. “Yes, there’s that.”

            “You look a lot handsomer when you smile,” Harry said, without thinking, and then wanted to bury his face in the remains of his chocolate cake to hide the blush flaming on his cheeks.

*

            “It’s something, to know you think that,” Draco said, and watched as Harry slowly lifted his head and peered at him around the side of his hands.

            Had he expected a snapping, a row? Probably. After all, Draco had just finished telling him that he expressed his emotions too freely. Draco reached across the table and let his hand rest near Harry as he thought about how to phrase things, leaving it for Harry to hold if he wanted to.

            “You express too much spontaneously,” he said at last. “Maybe I should say not that they control what they’re feeling, but they control their faces. Anything they—we—show is calculated. Spontaneity is vulgar.”

            “Why?” Harry moved his hand towards Draco’s, as though the gesture meant nothing and he had done it because he wanted to.

            Draco controlled his smile with an effort born of long training. “Because,” he said, “spontaneity like that involves breaking out. You could say something with political consequences—or at least you could, when parties like the one we had last night were important to more than our immediate circle, before the Ministry neutered us and made itself the center of wizarding society. You might undo a marriage alliance by showing too openly that you thought your betrothed was ugly. Perhaps a different kind of wizard would just have restricted it to words. But we put the emotions in the same category.”

            “Oh,” Harry said, and linked their hands. “Does it matter less for me because of my blood?”

            Draco blinked. “You can’t imagine that I liked the insults they leveled at you?”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “Are we talking about you or me? But no, not that. I didn’t think you liked them, just that you agreed with them.”

            Draco curled his own lip. “I don’t like them talking about it,” he said shortly. He didn’t want to say what he felt about Harry’s heritage right now, since it would probably come out all complicated. “But no, it’s more important for you, because you have to show them that someone with your mother can control his emotions, too.”

            Harry hissed at him, and his hand flexed in Draco’s hold. Luckily, though, he didn’t draw it away. Draco held his stare, and reminded him silently that he was the one who had chosen to raise the topic. If he didn’t like the answers, perhaps he shouldn’t have asked the questions.

*

            Harry frowned, and half-closed his eyes. Then he said, “I think I have it, at least for the Ministry celebration. I could practice in front of you or in front of a mirror, but I wouldn’t get as good as I needed to be, even with that.”

            Draco didn’t move or squeeze his hand. He just waited.

            We can get along even we talk, Harry marveled, with a faint shake of his head. It just takes effort, that’s all.

            “This is it,” he said. “I can wear a glamour, one that will disguise the way my eyes light up and the muscles in my face move. I know you can’t cast that glamour right now, but you could give me the instructions for it, or tell me what book to look in, and I think I could manage with that level of instruction.”

            Draco’s whole face twitched, as though he was thinking about the kinds of movements the glamour would conceal. “Someone would notice,” he said. “And what excuse would we give for it?”

            Harry grinned. “That I’m embarrassed about this silly scar.”

            Draco jerked his hand away, or tried to. Harry was waiting for that, and only settled his wrist more firmly against the edge of the table to prevent it. Draco calmed down, but glared at him in silence, waiting for his explanation.

            “I think we should convince the others that we could quarrel,” Harry said quietly. “There’s someone out there who sent the dragon, someone who wishes us harm. If we show that we’re striving to stand together but have a division between us, that I’m ashamed of our marriage or not living up to it properly, someone might come and try to feel me out. That could lead us to know who our enemies are.”

            Draco stared at him, and his eyes saw far more than just the scar this time, Harry was certain. Then he half-shook his head and lowered it as though he was going to butt through a wall. “And you said you had no political instincts,” he muttered.

            Harry spread the hand Draco wasn’t holding. “It’s hard to explain. I just don’t have any outside certain situations. I can come up with a solution once I know what the problem is. I was good at casting certain spells in Auror training and finding ways around obstacle courses they set up.” Draco gave a little jerk at the mention of Aurors, but Harry didn’t know why, and Draco didn’t offer to explain. Doubtless he would find out later. “But I’m not good at seeing a situation from the outside and coming up with a solution that way. I never would have thought of something like the demi-marriage if you hadn’t suggested it.”

            Draco frowned at him. Then he said, “That’s more normal than I thought you were.”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself. So many people outside his friends thought he was abnormal, what was one more? “Yeah, it is. I’m not a miracle-worker, Draco, and you’re showing me that I’m even less good at some things I assumed I was competent at. I can do some things well. I need to learn the pure-blood ways. But this might be a good temporary solution for one particular party.”

            Draco remained silent for some time, his fingers playing on Harry’s wrist as if it was the tabletop, tapping and drumming and shifting back and forth. Harry remained still, biting his lip. He was pretty sure Draco didn’t realize how distracting that was, and for all the wrong reasons.

            Pretty sure.

            Finally Draco said, “Let’s go with it for this party. I’ll fetch the book with the glamour instructions for you.” He stood up and pushed his chair back from the table.

            Harry smiled at his back, and offered, “Would you like me to work with you on your spells?”

            Draco turned and stared at him with such a glacial mask of astonishment that Harry was certain it had gone wrong after all, and started to withdraw the offer. But Draco shook his head, and there was a faint blaze of wonder in his eyes, and he said, “That would be—acceptable.”

            And he left the room, with what looked like a spring in his step. Harry smiled after him.

            He didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because Ossy popped up with a thick plate of ham and a determined look in his eye.

*

            Draco leaned his face on the banister and closed his eyes. The world was spinning around him, dizzy, and he felt as though he wanted to swallow the air in great gulps.

            They had talked.

            And got along. This wasn’t impossible, after all.

            Perhaps it never had been.

            Perhaps it never will be again, as long as I can remember this evening.

*

            SP777: A lot of those titles spring to mind for Draco because Harry is his heir, now.

            And no. There are too many complicating factors in her case.

            polka dot: Harry thinks Draco is okay in small, controlled doses, for right now.

            moodysavage: Draco has given parts of himself already, although he doesn’t know it, by listening to what Harry suggests.

            delia cerrano: Probably not that particular scenario. Harry knows Draco will be on public behavior that night.

            unneeded: Draco thinks of duty as solely a family-oriented thing, and thus Harry doesn’t have it.

            No, Andromeda and Teddy are on their own for the moment, but Harry does help out.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee