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The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42130 -:- 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 Two—For Necessity’s Sake

            “I’ve never heard of a law like that.”

            Harry smiled and reached out to Hermione, letting her clench her hand on his arm. He appreciated the way her face tightened, how her nostrils flared and her cheeks turned red. He would need support like that, he thought, to avoid despairing when he went into Malfoy Manor. He could feel resigned now, he could feel that it was a fitting punishment and not different from the rules he’d lived with all his life, but he knew his mind would probably change when he was actually in the middle of the situation.

            “I haven’t, either,” Harry said, darting a glance at Malfoy, who once again waited in the doorway of George’s bedroom. He stood with only his profile in view, arms folded, and as long as Harry didn’t make a movement to get away, Harry thought he would largely ignore them. “But I’m not universally familiar with the pure-blood laws, either.”

            “If neither of us have ever heard of it, then maybe it isn’t real,” Hermione hissed at him.

            “I do think that he’s telling the truth about what happened to his family,” Harry told her quietly. “He showed me the cracked wand.” Hermione grimaced; Malfoy had shown it to her, too, although she didn’t appear disposed to believe him about what had happened. “And the way he looked when he came to tell me…no, something happened. If he exaggerated the consequences, I’ll find out soon enough, since he wants me to come back to the Manor.”

            Hermione shook her head, hard enough that her curls flew out and stung him, too. “Harry, why are you so willing to give in like this? You said when we were studying the books to get rid of the Dementors that this was the last time you would ever do something like this, sacrifice your life for someone else, to save someone else.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “If the Ministry came to me and asked me to do something, then I would tell them to go fuck themselves. Or if Dumbledore came back from the grave and asked. I did more than enough for him.” He could still feel the pain from Snape’s old memories cutting him, if he thought about it.

            Malfoy was looking at him. Harry could tell that already. He wondered if he would get more sensitive as time went on, or less. Living in the same house really ought to make him less sensitive to how Malfoy moved, or at least so one would think.

            But Hermione was still waiting, and she was one of his best friends, and the more explosive one would be along any second, and he still had to explain the truth to her.

            “I want to do something for George and Andromeda and the others,” Harry said quietly. “Because what I did cost them, because there was more than one way to do it, and I should have found some other way.”

            “I’m the one who knew more about the ritual, and I didn’t know that would happen, either.” Hermione’s hands tightened on his arms. “This feels like another way of martyring yourself, Harry.”

            Harry licked his lips. He would hear that accusation more than once, he was sure. He had to explain why it didn’t feel that way.

            “I want to do this,” he said at last, helplessly. “I think—it’s because it’s people I know, and owe. The whole wizarding world is a faceless entity that I’ve already saved twice. People I know are different.”

            Hermione shut her eyes, and then turned and faced Malfoy. Her hand was on her wand in a way that made Harry move between them. Malfoy turned his face more directly towards them, cheeks still pale, but with a bit more color than before. Harry hoped that his agreement was what had restored the color.

            “Harry saved your fucking lives,” Hermione whispered. Harry stared at her; he didn’t think he’d ever heard Hermione swear that way before. Hermione kept looking at Malfoy, though, so Harry didn’t get to hear her explanation for it. “Why can’t that be enough? Or else take money from him if he wants to donate it, but don’t take his whole fucking life.”

            Malfoy sneered at her, his lips flexing in a more normal way. Yes, Harry’s agreement had changed something, Harry thought, and moved him closer to the person they used to know. “Because that’s not enough, Granger. You can say that we helped him in the saving of our lives, like you and Weasley. But you chose to do it, you knew about it. Can you understand the way I felt when my wand cracked in my hand and then I realized the wards were down? And then when I heard my mother screaming from upstairs? Not even screaming, moaning, the way a frightened animal moans.” Malfoy’s arms were clenched in front of him, his eyes almost black. “We helped him. We didn’t agree to, but some of our magic and our life went to feed his power. You could probably choose your reward from the Ministry, if you wanted to press it. Well, this is ours.”

            Hermione hesitated. Harry nodded. “That’s the way I feel,” he said. “They helped me, they paid the debt. This is paying the debt back.”

            “Have you asked him what it means?” Hermione said, her gaze still fixed on Malfoy and her voice so slow and deliberate that Harry looked at her in wonder. “Have you asked him what it means, that you’ll be a Malfoy and living in his house?”

            “Well, the living in his house, for one,” Harry said, wondering why she turned her head and gave him a look of pity. “I know that’s part of it. I assume learning manners so that I don’t embarrass his family in public is another. Being nice to his mother. Helping her recover. Learning all the manners that he wants me to learn, and which fork goes where.” He hesitated, suddenly aware that he’d repeated himself, and turned to Malfoy. “What else?”

            Malfoy’s eyes were dark again, devouring. Harry braced himself. He’d been looked at like that enough all his life, God knew, and Malfoy had more reason than the crazy fans who thought they were destined to be with Harry to look at him that way. At least Malfoy probably didn’t think he was a hero and perfect. He wouldn’t want to do everything Harry said or slavishly ask for his political opinions.

            The other way around, if anything.

            “You’ll learn the history and genealogy of the Malfoy family,” Malfoy said crisply. “Knowing that is part of what being a Malfoy means. You’ll donate money to the right charitable causes, and make friends with the right people in the Ministry.”

            Harry nodded. “As long as you remember that some of the people who are my friends right now will stop being so the minute word gets out that I’m taking your name.”

            “We never will,” Hermione said fiercely, and grabbed his arm.

            “I know,” Harry said softly to her, and put his arm around her shoulders, looking steadily at Malfoy.

            “I think you underestimate the power and pull your name has,” Malfoy began.

            “The power and pull it’s going to lose,” Harry said. “Because I’ll take your name. And I think that you’re underestimating how fickle the public is. They’ll be happy enough to abandon me the same way as they adored me before. That happened in second year when they all thought I was the Heir of Slytherin, remember?”

            Malfoy narrowed his eyes a bit, as though trying to see through a gauzy veil. “You worry too much, Potter.”

            Harry shrugged. “I don’t know for sure that’ll happen, but I think it’s likely. What else is part of being a Malfoy?”

            Malfoy continued to look at him. Harry looked back, and kept his arm around Hermione’s shoulder. If Malfoy was about to tell him that he would have to abandon his friends and go around with his nose in the air, ignoring them, then Harry would resist. Perhaps not openly, but he would manage it. He would find a way to help George and Andromeda, and see the Weasleys. He was sure lots of members of Malfoy’s family had done things far more unsavory that their relatives wouldn’t approve of. They might have done them slyly, but then, slyness seemed to be an approved character trait.

            Finally, Malfoy cleared his throat. “You would have to spend some time with the house’s wards. Learn to cast spells that you’ve showed an aversion to before. Own house-elves. And so much else—it’s hard to explain without completing the ceremony, Potter.”

            “The ceremony,” Harry said. “This would be the adoption ceremony.”

            Malfoy stood silent, while Hermione stirred and muttered something indignant about Harry’s parents and Sirius. Harry ignored that. He was Sirius’s legal heir, but he had barely ever lived in Grimmauld Place and he hadn’t used Sirius’s money or taken his name.

            And his parents…Harry felt a pang when he thought of the name of Potter vanishing, but truthfully, he couldn’t remember his parents except from one Dementor-inspired memory that he would never see again now that they were all gone. Everything else, like Snape’s recollections of his mum or Hagrid’s photographs, had come from other people originally.

            He would hate letting his family go, but he could do it. There were advantages to being an orphan.

            “It is a combination,” Malfoy said at last, “of an adoption and a marriage ceremony.”

            Hermione spluttered hard enough that Harry was afraid she would have an apoplectic attack. “Harry, you can’t marry him!” she managed to get out at last. “What about Ginny? What about the family you were going to have?”

            Harry bit the left corner of his lip, hard. He wished Hermione hadn’t mentioned Ginny, and not least because Malfoy was looking at him with eyes like the sun. Harry didn’t think Ginny should ever come into the same context as Malfoy’s eyes.

            “I haven’t married Ginny yet,” Harry said at last, not taking his gaze away from Malfoy’s. “And Malfoy said that what I would undergo is a combination of a marriage and an adoption ceremony. I don’t think it can be exactly the same thing, because that wouldn’t leave Malfoy free to marry someone else and have children. And I think he wants to.”

            Malfoy half-bowed his head. “Very good, Potter,” he murmured. “I can see that it won’t be hopeless after all.”

            Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Harry thought. Malfoy’s frequent comments about how Harry was smarter than he had supposed, or more educated, or whatever else they really meant, only served to convince Harry that Malfoy was trying to convince himself. He had to do this because he thought it mandated by the circumstances, but he wasn’t happy about it.

            Who would be happy about their mother magically aging and their wand breaking and their wards dissolving? Harry thought, and was a bit ashamed of himself.

            “You would marry into the family,” Malfoy said. “And be adopted as an heir at the same time. One ceremony reinforces the other. With things the way they are, I am unwilling to take the chance that you would ever regard yourself as not part of us.”

            Harry just nodded, and waited.

            “After five years, the marriage can be annulled,” Malfoy said, after he seemed to realize that Harry wouldn’t say anything. “That would leave us both free to marry someone else and have children. I am tired of there only being a single direct heir. My father was an only child, and my grandfather. I want—something else. With two heirs to have heirs, that situation will end.”

            “You can’t marry your brother,” Hermione said, sounding revolted.

            “You would be shocked at some of what pure-bloods have done in the past, Granger,” Malfoy said, flicking his eyes over to her. “But he would not be considered my brother, the way he would in an ordinary adoption ceremony. In an ordinary marriage ceremony, he would be my consort, unable to contribute to the continuation of the family line if he was not married to me, but this is not that, either. It is a different arrangement, sometimes referred to as a demi-marriage, and the main purpose at the moment is to strengthen the Malfoys and bind Potter in. Children will not be an immediate need, since I will have an heir.”

            “But demi-marriage is something different,” Hermione said, taking a step away from Harry’s side. Harry let his arm fall, and rubbed the side of it, in the place, he thought, that he would have had a Dark Mark if he’d been a Death Eater. He felt tired, and cold. “I remember that. It was used between cousins when they wanted to tie some property into the family but didn’t want to stay married forever. They would annul the marriage when they had made other heirs and the Ministry realize that the family had no intention of giving the estate up…” Her voice trailed off.

            Malfoy nodded once. “Potter isn’t my direct cousin by blood, but otherwise, it’s the same.”

            “It’s still a stupid idea,” Hermione hissed at him. “You have no idea what you’re taking from him, what you’re depriving him of.”

            Malfoy extended his empty hand and turned it over. “He took safety from us, and life from my mother, and magic from me. It’s going to be at least a year before I can exercise any mastery over my wand. That’s enough to kill me, and certainly enough to kill my mother.”

            “If someone threatens you, go to the Ministry!” Hermione was waving her hands around. Harry stepped up to her gently and took one of them. If George woke up, he didn’t think his first sight should be Hermione arguing.

            “I have,” Malfoy said. “The Ministry doesn’t care. If they did, then I would try Potter for what he did to us and demand a monetary compensation.” He looked at Harry, his eyes dull as ash. “But I can’t.”

            Hermione started to say something else, but Malfoy drew breath faster. “Why don’t you ask Potter what he wants, Granger? Since you’re making yourself into a warrior on his behalf, and he looks less than impressed with you.”

            Hermione turned around swiftly enough that Harry winced and dropped his wrenched wrist. “Harry, you can’t really stand this, can you?” she whispered. “You don’t want it. You know better than that. You might have agreed out of guilt, but you would explode later.”

            Harry stood there for a few minutes, until he thought both Hermione and Malfoy might listen to him instead of putting the words they imagined in his mouth. Then he said, “The Ministry dumped all the burden of saving the world on my shoulders again, Hermione. I don’t want to continue working for them. But what else would I do? Sit around the house all day?”

            “Do something other than learn to be prejudiced!” Hermione snapped. “You know you’re always welcome to come and work with me and Ron, you could—”

            “I don’t want to work to save house-elves, either,” Harry said. His voice wavered, and he shut his eyes and worked himself back towards dry land, ignoring the way that Malfoy’s stare burned now. So it burned. That was something he would have to get used to, along with everything else. “I’m sorry, Hermione, but I just don’t. That’s another faceless mass. What I want is time to think about things, and heal my friends.” He opened his eyes and looked at Malfoy. “And the people I owe life-debts to.”

            Malfoy watched him some more. Hermione said, “Then work in the joke shop. You said you wanted to be with George.”

            “I’m going to help him,” Harry said quietly. “That’s different from thinking of the joke shop as a career. I can’t, Hermione. I don’t want to. I’m not good at thinking up pranks. I’m not fast and clever that way.” Except when it comes to saving the world. And he didn’t think Hermione would insult him by saying that part aloud.

            Hermione shook her head. “Then—Harry, you’re not seriously considering this as something for you instead of Malfoy? What would you do if he hadn’t come along and said that he was taking you into his family?”

            Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. Something else.” He wished that he didn’t have this burning tiredness all over him, that he’d managed to sleep longer that morning or get some sleep while he was sitting with Andromeda or George. Then his arguments would probably make more sense. “But this is here now, and I want to—I want a chance for some peace, a chance to get away from the Ministry. Malfoy won’t treat me that well, but he can’t treat me that horribly, either, because that would mean I’d break away from him no matter what the cost. So I’ll have a chance, a reason, to relax for a little while and do something that has nothing to do with saving the world or catching criminals.”

            He got to the end, and everyone in the room was staring at him. Except George, who was still asleep. Harry more than half envied him.

            Malfoy said, “So you are coming with me for your own reasons. I thought so.”

            “That’s mental.”

            Harry blinked and glanced up. Ron stood in the doorway, his hands braced on the sides, as if that was all that kept him from tumbling into the room. He shook his head back and forth, and then blew out so that his fringe flew up and away from his face. He edged towards Harry, hands raised, palms out.

            “I didn’t hear everything,” he said, calm and concise, his lips twitching. “But I heard enough to know what Malfoy’s asking, and what you’re saying is that you’ll give it up. For him.”

            Harry shrugged. “No. For the reasons that I told you. I’m feeling guilty, but I also want a change. This is a way to change things.”

            “You’re not thinking straight,” Ron said soothingly. “I know you’re feeling guilty about George and Andromeda and—and whatever you did to Malfoy, but those people are fine, Harry. They’re alive.”

            “My mother won’t be for much longer, Weasley,” Malfoy said. “Unless Potter comes with me and helps her.”

            “He could bloody well do that without becoming a part of your bloody family.” Ron whirled around to face Malfoy. “Ask him for money. Harry doesn’t value it all that much anyway. But don’t act as though he needs to give up his freedom and his choices and his future for you.”

            “Does anyone care about what I want in all this?” Harry asked the bed.

            Hermione moved up beside him, Ron turned around in front of him, and both of them nodded vigorously. “That’s why we’re trying to help you, mate,” Ron added. “I know the laws Malfoy is talking about, but none of them says that you have to move in with him and help him that way. Just paying the debt with money is enough. And—”

            “And I want something that will keep the Ministry from going after me,” Harry said flatly. “For the immediate future, a place to get away from all the interviews and the—the parades, and the speeches, and the fucking publicity.”

            The words came out so raw and ugly that he thought he’d torn his throat. He blinked and touched his mouth, while Ron and Hermione did some more staring.

            Malfoy applauded, his fingers just touching, but making more noise than anything else in that supernaturally quiet room. “Well done, Potter,” he said. “You’ve stood up for yourself for one of the first times in your life, and you’re learning how addicting it can be.” He lowered his hands and smiled. “Should I prepare your bedroom?”

            “There are other ways,” Hermione whispered.

            Harry just looked at her. After the war, she had tried to hide him, she and Ron, in the Burrow and then in a flat Hermione had rented while she prepared to go to Australia and retrieve her parents. It didn’t work. The Ministry was clamorous, and the press roared outside the doors, and finally she’d pleaded with Harry to go out and talk to them because it was the only way that any of them would get any peace.

            Hermione flushed. Harry smiled a little. She knew what he meant without him having to say it, and that was a wonderful thing, that showed how close his friends could be to him, even though they were having trouble understanding each other right now.

            “That was one time,” she said starkly. “And I’m older now, and I would have more ideas about how to handle the situation.”

            Harry shrugged again. “I’d rather not deal with the public at all right now,” he said simply. “Malfoy Manor has thicker walls, and once I start repairing the wards, then it’ll be harder than ever for them to get at me.”

            “You will have to go out in public sometimes,” Malfoy and Ron said at the same time, and then glared at each other so hard that Harry gave up on controlling his laughter.

            “I know,” Harry said. “But they can make up more stories about me in the meantime, and they’ll be able to move on day by day with no commentary from me. You can make me go out in public, Malfoy,” he added, when he saw Malfoy’s mouth starting to open. “You can’t make me talk.”

            “Can’t I?” Malfoy said, the tip of his tongue just visible between pale pink lips.

            “No,” Harry said, and turned his back, which made Malfoy stare a bit. He faced Hermione. “This is better. This is protected. It gives me a focus. It’s a way to make up for what I did. Inadvertently or not,” he added, as Hermione’s jaw set. “Maybe I want it for all the wrong reasons, but I do want it right now.”

            “When that becomes five years?” Hermione’s hands were brass bands on his arm. “You heard Malfoy’s terms for the extent of the demi-marriage.”

            “Yeah, I did,” Harry said, with a nod. “By five years on, I’ll probably be more resigned to it. Maybe I’ll even like it. Or Malfoy will have realized that he hates me more than he needs me and he’ll have kicked me out.”

            He looked back at Malfoy. Malfoy was quiet, but tilted his head to the side and lifted his shoulder a little when Harry examined him.

            “I could say many things,” he said meditatively. “At the moment, the best bet seems to be to let you do what you want.”

            Harry nodded and touched Hermione’s hand. “You can still do something for me,” he said. “Look up the demi-marriages that people have had in the past and tell me what I need to do. That’ll help me more than the dusty old books that Malfoy probably thinks will.”

            He serenely ignored the way Malfoy spluttered. Malfoy could do what he liked, think what he liked, but Harry wasn’t going tamely to the altar. Either kind of altar, he thought then, and laughed aloud.

            As he had known it would, his request reassured Hermione enough to make her kiss his cheek and move back a little. “If that’s what you want,” she said.

            “It is,” Harry said, and looked at Ron.

            Ron was shaking his head, his eyes as wide and startled as a deer’s. He tried several times to clear his throat, and when he finally could, said, “You—Harry, you’re going to become a Malfoy, and the Malfoys hate us.”

            “He can change my behaviors, maybe, and my manners, and my name,” Harry answered Ron, leaning forwards to clasp his hand, not caring that Malfoy stared at them the whole time. “It doesn’t mean that he can change my heart.”

            “Becoming a Malfoy involves more changes than you know,” Malfoy murmured.

            Harry flashed his teeth at him. “No one who’s ever tried to change my soul has had good success at it, Malfoy. The Ministry couldn’t make me an obedient little puppet, and they had a hell of a lot more people trying for a longer time than I’m going to live with you. Get that part through your head.”

            Malfoy fell back a step, and maybe that was what reassured Ron enough to smile and hold onto Harry’s hands. “You know that you’ll always be welcome.”

            Harry nodded. “I might have to sneak out to see you, the way that those other old Malfoys sneaked out to see their lovers, but I’ll be there,” he said.

            Ron embraced him once, hard, and then half-shoved him towards Malfoy. “Go and learn what you need to learn,” he said, and sat down by George’s bed. “I’ll tell him you were here.”

            Harry flipped a salute back to Ron and left the room with Malfoy, nearly leaving him behind before Malfoy increased the speed of his strides to keep up. Malfoy murmured, “I had thought you resigned to this.”

            “I’m only resigned until I really feel that I have to do something,” Harry said, and grinned at him again. “Then I’ll go after it with my whole heart. You know. The way I walked into the Forbidden Forest to let Voldemort kill me.”

            Malfoy flinched, and fell silent, though he took over the lead when they got to a turn in the corridor and Harry didn’t know which way to go. Harry fell into step behind him, grimly amused and blackly resigned, at the same moment.

            No law that says I can’t be both.

*

            asiacheetah: Thank you! Here is more.

            js: Thank you!

            SP777: I think there are some similarities with what I’ve written before, but the feel is different, yeah.

            unneeded: Yes, Harry will feel angst about not being with his friends all the time and about some of the things Malfoy asks him to do.

            Diana: Most updates should be every few days.

            GeminiFaerie: Thank you!

            Nightlo: A sort of marriage. But one of convenience, entirely. Draco does plan on a separate marriage later, because he knows that he can’t have more heirs than one with Harry (and that one is Harry himself).

            polka dot: He may find that harder than he thinks.

            thrnbrooke: You perfectly echo Hermione’s thoughts here.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee