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The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42149 -:- 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 Eighteen—The Best Decision

            “You’re an idiot.”

            “Hello to you, too,” Harry said, closing his eyes and then opening them again. He was lying on a bed in the middle of what looked like a large hospital room, certainly large enough to contain more than the two beds it did at the moment. Of course, the Healers had probably wanted to isolate him and Draco, for understandable reasons.

            Harry turned slowly over in the sheets and looked at Draco. Draco lay on his stomach with his head turned to the side to face Harry in what looked like a painful twist. Neither fact had diminished the raw fury in his gaze, and when Harry had flinched from it, Draco looked down at the bandaged arm bound across Harry’s stomach.

            “Oh, that,” Harry said, and shook his head. “I couldn’t think of another way to make them treat someone named Malfoy except using my political power against them. I gambled they wouldn’t want to risk offending me even if my name isn’t Potter anymore, and I was right. What?” he added, when Draco’s stare simply burned him as before. “Weren’t you saying that I should remember to use my name’s power more? It was just a different kind this time.”

            “You still did it by injuring yourself,” Draco said.

            Harry sighed. “Do you need more reassurance that I’m not actively suicidal? I can give you that, if you like. I knew the spells the Healers used on me. I could have used them if they still refused to treat us, and then I would have taken you and gone to a place where someone owes me a favor and would have to take care of you. Plus a stop at the papers. They would have known all about it before an hour was over. But the Healers didn’t want me doing that, so we both got medical care. I knew we would.”

            “You still did it by injuring yourself,” Draco repeated.

            Harry shook his head. “They weren’t treating you. They weren’t going to treat you. Can you think of something else I could have done that would have been one half as effective? Because I’m waiting to hear it, if you can.” He leaned forwards and fixed his eyes on Draco, waiting.

*

            Draco had already ascertained that the long wound in his back had been cleaned out and cared for, in a way that made Harry’s simple spells look incompetent—which of course they weren’t. They were only simple, and that made it hard to remember that they had probably saved his life while Harry got ready to take him to hospital.

            But they make it easy to remember that he’s probably not very powerful.

            Draco shook his head a little to get that notion out of his thoughts, and leaned forwards. Harry was sitting up in the bed facing him. His mouth was set in the smallest of stubborn lines, and he tried to fold his arms before he remembered the bandage that clung to the left one and winced a little. Draco wished that he could shake the idiot until his neck snapped for being so stupid.

            “You shouldn’t hurt yourself for something like this,” he said. “You should come up with some other method.”

            “You could have been dying,” Harry said. He was leaning forwards, on the edge of his bed, and his eyes had a glitter in them that Draco didn’t think he’d seen before. “I didn’t know. I don’t know enough about Healing to be able to tell, actually. That means that I had to act as quickly as I could, and that meant using the first plan that came to mind.”

            Draco eased back a little. If he pressed, he would only start another argument like the one that had sprung up between him and Harry when Harry healed Weasley, and that thought made Draco miserable. “Fine,” he said, hearing the crisp ring in his voice and hoping Harry heard it and understood the reprieve Draco was offering him. “Then what we need to address is the fact that you turn to plans that require you to injure yourself as your first resort.”

            Harry was smiling. Draco chose to call it that, anyway, although it had lots of teeth to be a smile. “I saved your life,” Harry said. “I saved George’s life, and you came in time to stop me from using that stupid spell that would have drained me of life-force. I know that I need to think about it more carefully. But in this case, I understood exactly what the spell would do, and how to stop the bleeding if the Healers didn’t react the way I wanted. It was a different case.”

            Draco shook his head. He knew he should have better words for this, but honestly, it wasn’t a situation that had come up before, the Malfoy ancestors having better sense than to injure themselves in the pursuit of what they wanted. “You should think about injuring your enemies before weakening yourself,” he said at last.

            Harry spread his arms, wincing a little as the bandages on his wound pulled. But not much, Draco noted. Harry was used to more pain than he felt right now, that much was certain. “Point me at an enemy, and I’ll be glad to do something about them. But we don’t know who they are yet.”

            “The Healers—”

            “Wouldn’t have taken well to an attack on them, the way they did to this.” Harry cocked his head, and his grin flashed, so mischievous that Draco had to bite down on the temptation to smile back, which would have given Harry the wrong idea. “I think that was one reason they treated us at all, actually. They thought I was mad when I cut my own arm, and they wanted me out of their hospital and their care as soon as possible.”

            Draco bent his head into his hands. Listen to Harry for much longer, and he would start believing the fool that this had been the only real thing that he could have done.

            “All right,” he said finally. “This is a fundamental philosophical difference between us, and we’ll address it when we get home.” He ignored the way that Harry mimicked him in an undertone. “For now, I do have to ask you if the Healers said anything about when we could get out of here.”

            “They told me that I could go home today,” Harry said, and lounged back in the bed. “Your wound will take a day or two longer.”

            Draco grimaced. “You should go. Affy and Ossy are going to need help watching my mother, and Healer Bowman asked to be told the minute there was any change.”

            “There are two of them, Affy and Ossy,” Harry said quietly, never moving. “One of them can take the other’s place when the first one gets tired, and they don’t need to tend to us right now. You, on the other hand, have only me to protect you.”

            Draco stared at him some more. He wanted to say that no one would dare attack him in St. Mungo’s, but their experience had already proven that wasn’t true. He licked his lips and tried to think of a way to make Harry go home, to tell him that he wasn’t needed.

            “You can save your breath.” Harry was leaning back in his bed, his eyes closed and his voice drowsy. “If our enemy can attack in the middle of a pure-blood party, he could attack here. And the Healers already refused to treat you unless I vouched for you. They might change their minds again if I leave.”

            “She needs you,” Draco tried. It would make him feel much better to have Harry in the Manor with Narcissa—

            And lonely and cold without him.

            Draco shook his head. He couldn’t consider that. “The head of a family has to think of everyone in his care, not only himself,” he said, when he realized that Harry was looking at him, and had cocked his head as though wondering why he didn’t agree.

            “But that includes himself,” Harry said. “You could waste your life, if you die here. And who was it who told me about the Malfoy family’s powerful resources?”

            Draco scowled. “You don’t need to turn everything I say into a—a weapon against me.” It was the only way he could think of to express his irritation.

            “I’m not trying,” Harry said. “But I am using your own standards. If I have to obey them, and keep the good of the family in my mind at every moment, so do you.”

            Draco’s hands clenched. Then he forced himself to lay his head down, mimicking Harry, except that because he lay on his stomach, he couldn’t actually lean back on the pillow and lounge.

            “Someday, you will understand what I mean,” he said. “Someday, you might even understand what I mean without bloody resisting me all the time.”

            “Should I hope for that?” Harry’s voice was light and unemotional, but Draco could hear rustling from his direction that might indicate his hands was exploring the sheets. “Should I hope that I’ll learn your standards and you’ll never see my perspective? I thought we did our best when we were exchanging information, instead of sitting back with a pout and pretending that only one of us was at fault.”

            Draco shifted his gaze over to Harry. Harry looked back at him, his lip curled and a challenging light in his eyes that made Draco want to retreat.

            But while what Harry said made sense, what Draco had said also made sense. He put his head up and said, “If you’re going to insist on being respected, then you have to respect me.”

            “When have I said I didn’t?”

            Draco gave up in exhaustion. He wasn’t used to spending so much time with someone who didn’t understand some pure-blood matters instinctively, the way his mother and father and most of his friends did. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll discuss it in a few hours, when we’ve had some sleep. And I want you to rest. You can’t defend me if you’re exhausted.”

            Harry said nothing. Draco sighed and drifted off to sleep on the waves of a sea that seemed thicker and darker than he remembered it. Had he really been wounded that badly? Perhaps he had. Sleep seemed more productive than arguing with Harry about Malfoy standards right now, anyway.

*

            Harry waited until he was sure that Draco was asleep to roll his eyes at him. Then he got out of his bed and padded over to Draco’s, letting his wand hover for an instant above the wound in his back. It looked all right from a distance, but this close, Harry could see how much area was covered in white gauze that should have been clear and unprotected skin, and shuddered.

            Yes, the wound was healing cleanly, the charms he cast told him. Not that he thought the Healers would try to poison Draco, not now, but they could have messed something up in their extreme haste. Harry sighed and sat back on the bed, shaking his head as he regarded Draco.

            “You’re doing the same thing, you idiot,” he muttered, making the argument now that Draco wasn’t awake to refute him. Maybe that was cowardly, but Draco had been in pain, and Harry hadn’t wanted to subject him to more. What mattered was having his say in a way that Draco wouldn’t hear, so he would be less stubborn about things later. “The exact same thing. You’re valuing your life less than mine, and arguing that it doesn’t really matter what you suffer so long as the family’s safe.”

            You could be less stubborn, then, if he won’t yield.

            It was the sort of thing Hermione would have said if she was here, and it would have annoyed Harry greatly. But that didn’t mean she was wrong. He leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees, and watched Draco, and brooded.

            He could change, if he cared about hurting the person enough. He had been ready to quit Auror training for Ginny once upon a time, when she confessed that she was having nightmares about him dying at the end of a Dark wizard’s wand, and asked if he please wouldn’t consider some other career. But then they had broken up, and there was no reason important enough to keep Harry from doing what he really wanted to do.

            He could do certain things for Draco. Not argue with his standards. Put on glamours that would cover his emotions in public. Be polite to his friends. Leave the Manor when they started having an argument about Weasleys, rather than staying to confront him.

            But he couldn’t do all of it, because their bond was—less flexible. If he was angry with Ron and Hermione, Harry had learned, he could stomp and yell for a while, and then go off somewhere and fume. They would still be waiting when he was ready to either apologize or explain more calmly why they were pissing him off. The time that Ron had left him and Hermione during the Horcrux hunt was actually beneficial that way. It had taught them that Ron would always come back, and Harry and Hermione had learned that lesson, too.

            If Harry and Ginny’s bond had endured, he would have learned the same thing with her. They would have circled around each other in bright rings, sometimes close, sometimes distant. Harry was learning that he got along best with people like that, when the deep affection was never in doubt but they could have some time alone, too.

            But with Draco, there was no way he could yield once and back away, because he would have to live with him for the next five years. And Draco wasn’t someone to think that yielding meant Harry could argue back later. He would consider the argument settled, and be utterly surprised if Harry tried to bring it up again.

            Harry had to fight for equality here, or they would never get anywhere.

            He sat guarding Draco for a while, and turned his head only when the door opened. If it was a Healer, Harry had polite words all prepared about how he planned to stay in hospital until Draco was released and they could leave off trying to get him to depart.

            But it was Hermione, who gasped a little when she saw him and then raced forwards, arms out. Harry caught her close, though he made sure to shift back so their embrace wouldn’t shake Draco’s bed and wake him up. He thought it likely that Hermione didn’t see Draco at all. Her eyes were fastened anxiously to his face, and she reached out a hand as if to smooth back his fringe from his forehead, flinching only when her fingers brushed against the curved tail of his dragon scar.

            “We heard you were here, but not directly,” she whispered, ferocity in her voice that made Harry wince and feel bad. “Someone happened to see you, and they told someone else, who told Ginny, who told us. What happened, Harry? Why didn’t you contact us first thing? Did you think that—”

            Draco stirred as if he would wake. Harry motioned Hermione away near his bed, and then put up a Privacy Charm. He didn’t want to go out into the corridor and discuss this right now.

            “Someone stabbed Draco at the Ministry party we attended,” he said quietly. “We played it off as him being drunk, so we could get out of there. Then I brought him here, but the Healers refused to treat him, because of his last name. So I cut my arm.” Hermione’s eyes had already gone to the bandage on his arm, but she shut her mouth now, her nostrils flaring so hard Harry was surprised she didn’t hurt herself. “I told them that if they didn’t want to treat one person with the Malfoy name, we could go elsewhere, but surprise surprise, it was really only Draco they objected to treating. And here we are.” He spread his arms, and waited for the scolding. With Hermione, he expected it.

            “You moron!” Hermione hissed, taking his arm and moving it back and forth to stare at the wound. Harry doubted she could see anything useful through the bandage, but then again, she had surprised him before with how much she managed to glimpse. “What spell was it?”

            “Diffindo Semper.”

            Hermione let his hand fall and slapped his shoulder. “The one that nearly killed you last time?”

            “I know the counters now,” Harry said mildly. “I had to perform them to your satisfaction, and then Molly made me prove I knew them when she cast the spell on me. So I knew perfectly bloody well what I was doing, Hermione, thanks. And it was the only thing I could think of to get them to treat Draco. We were rather short on time.”

            Hermione opened her mouth, then blinked and leaped off after the new thought like the squirrel she sometimes resembled. “Molly used that spell on you?”

            “It was shortly after Ginny and I broke up.” Harry grinned at her. “I think she was still a little upset with me. But it worked as a test, too.”

            Hermione rolled her eyes. “Anyway, you took a risk.”

            Harry felt his smile melt off his face. He knew it was just because Hermione was with him when he reached the end of his patience, rather than because she, in particular, had triggered his temper, but he was bloody well going to say this anyway. “My life is a risk, Hermione. I did it when I went up against Voldemort, and when I went up against the Dementors, and when I became an Auror, and when I married Malfoy. I risked unhappiness and losing my friends over your anger against Malfoy, if nothing else,” he added, because he knew she was already drawing breath to say that the last situation wasn’t comparable to the rest. “I know what I can do, what I can live with, and what I can’t. Trust me, by now I know.”

            Hermione stared at him for a moment, then sighed and lowered her eyes. “I know, Harry,” she whispered. “I just—I wish that it could be different.”

            Harry smiled at her and hugged her. “I know you did, and I honor you for the wish. I’m glad you have it. I’m glad you’re my friend. But Draco’s already let me know his opinion of what I did, and it’s not flattering, either, although he phrases it in terms of Malfoy resources and one of us needing to remain whole to serve the family. It’s over. Let it go.”

            If Harry had learned that his friends would always come back no matter what, Hermione had, miraculously, learned to let things go in the last few years. She huffed out a last sigh of protest and nodded. “Fine. Loathe as I am to agree with Malfoy on anything. How have the Healers treated you since you’ve been here?”

            Harry snorted. “Carefully. They explained all the spells they used on Draco to me, and the ones that they used to clean out my wound and stop the bleeding, too.” He grinned at her. “I didn’t tell them I already knew those. It was as good a check on the truthfulness of what they said as anything else I could have devised.”

            Hermione made a soft, unhappy noise. “I hate that you have to do this. I hate that some people are going to see you as the enemy just because you have Malfoy’s name now.”

            Harry shrugged, as indifferent as he could be, if not as indifferent as he was pretending to be. “I had enemies when I was Harry Potter, too, and most of the time, they hated me for reasons as stupid as they hate me now. I’ll put up with it. I can always put up with it, you know, Hermione. I’m a lot tougher than most of them think.”

            “I wish you didn’t have to.”

            Harry kissed her cheek. “No more fervently than I do, I promise,” he said, with enough wryness in his voice to force a smile out of her. “Anyway, we ought to think about how we’re going to handle the immediate consequences of this, not the great and overarching question of blood, philosophy, and everything.”

            “Do you want me to tell people about what the Healers did?” Hermione asked. “Or confront them myself?” Her eyes were filled with the light of battle.

            Harry made a rude noise. “No. A direct threat isn’t the way to go here. I already had to do that, and it won me treatment, but they’ll be prepared for it, now. I think we should leave the threat of blackmail subtle and in the background, and someone else who can do a better job than me should remind them of it.”

            “Like me?” Hermione was practically hopping up and down in her need to be useful to him.

            Harry silently turned his head, and she followed his gaze. So their eyes fell on Draco at the same time.

            “Him?” Hermione asked. “You really think—you think he would be the best person for the job?”

            Harry cocked his head. “Do you know anyone better? He’ll be fighting to defend his own interests, and he has some unique advantages. That bloody Mark on his arm makes some people think he’s dangerous.” He had hesitated at the thought of asking Draco to use it, when it would bring up the past, but he thought Draco might relish that, might take the chance to remind everyone that just because he had been a coward once was no reason to think the same of him now. “And he still has some people who might listen to him, some friends who came to that party we had in the Manor. The tale will spread.”

            “But not the way I would spread it.”

            Harry held Hermione’s eyes and nodded. “I think that’s an advantage, in this case.”

            Hermione pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything, which proved that his point had been made.

*

            Draco lay there with his eyes open, although he had turned his head so neither Harry nor Granger would notice, and played through, in silent shock, the conversation between them he had just overheard. Granger had stopped fussing when Harry told her to. Harry had rejected her assistance and complimented Draco without her getting angry.

            He had come up with a plan.

            And he wanted Draco to implement it.

            Draco would, of course. He would love having something to do that would make him useful, rather than simply the wounded victim that Harry had had to rescue. And Harry had almost certainly known that, or thought it through unconsciously when he suggested to Granger that Draco play this part.

            He can think, when he wants to. He says that he only can when it comes to emergency situations, but he can do it in calm ones, too. Or come up with something that sounds an awful lot like it.

            Draco dug his fingers into his sheets. His father had said once that Draco was never satisfied with anything, that if you gave him a stuffed Kneazle he would want a real one soon enough, and then he would want a lion chained to guard his bed. Lucius had said it laughing, proud of his son, proud of the fact that he had strong desires, which were necessary in a head of the Malfoy family.

            Now, Draco’s strong desire pointed a certain way.

            If you can plan, if you can think, Harry, then I want you to do it all the time. And I’m going to see to it that you do.

*

            SP777: The problem is that Harry might really not be. Consider that what he did in canon relies on love and his friends and luck, not power.

            unneeded: He is better at spur-of-the-moment, but not hopeless with long-range. But because everyone, including him, thinks he is, he hasn’t bothered to develop the skill.

            kain: I think the problem is that Voldemort was not exactly a genius. “One plan a year” didn’t work out for him, either. The way he had Moody/Crouch enter Harry in the Triwizard Tournament wasn’t exactly genius, either. Harry could easily have died in the challenges instead of surviving to the ritual in the graveyard.

            But thank you!

            delia cerrano: Harry and Draco don’t know who their enemies are, either, but Draco does think there’s more than one because of the difference in methods.

            polka dot: I doubt they take it.

            disgruntledfairy: Thank you! I appreciate it.

            Deborah Katz: Thanks for reviewing! Here it is.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee