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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 41050 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Brushes With Newspapers
            “And I hear that you will sell your pranks even to,” Ariana Night leaned close and lowered her voice, “Death Eaters.”
            Harry sighed. Night had been pleading with him for an interview, and Harry had agreed because she’d promised to talk mostly about the shop, and he did feel sorry for her, the most junior reporter on the Daily Prophet. But he was starting to regret it. Night would twist questions around so that they were always about the war anyway, or Harry’s old relationships with Ginny and Daphne Greengrass, or something else she considered scandalous.
            They were in the back room of the shop, the one where leaning shelves and piled books contained prototypes and notes on the most delicate magical experiments, so Harry couldn’t simply explode with anger. Instead, he stared at Night until she started to fidget on her stool. Her foot hit a stack of books. Harry prevented them from falling over with an easy motion of his wand, and spoke quietly.
            “I don’t think that I ought to judge a person’s past when selling them pranks. Mr. Weasley agrees with me. We look instead at what a person might use them for, or whether they’re buying pranks in very large numbers, or suspicious ingredients. That’s what we judge them on, not their pasts.”
            Night rapped her quill quickly against her notebook, and her smile spread wide. “But you can’t deny that Death Eaters have used the products of this very shop to cause mischief! Why, Draco Malfoy himself bought the Peruvian Darkness Powder that he used…”
            Her tongue apparently dried up. Harry knew why. Any reference to Fred, even so disguised a one as this, would draw forth a glare from him that Hermione told him was more devastating than a basilisk’s. Ron refused to stay in the same room with him when he looked like that.
            What George would have done was even worse. Harry was thankful beyond words that George was in Romania at the moment, visiting Charlie and also negotiating for scraps of dragon eggshell for their latest project.
            “I won’t deny it,” Harry said. “I also won’t deny that plenty of people who aren’t Death Eaters have pranked people and had the pranks go wrong and cause more harm than they meant to, or used some of the products of our shop to commit suicide, or get away with cheating, or make someone believe a hurtful lie. But they can do the same thing with ingredients from any apothecary, with books from Flourish and Blotts, with magical creatures from any pet shop. Are you going to argue that they should also be questioned?”
            Night lifted her chin with a rustle of thick black hair. “Well, no. But the Boy-Who-Lived serving Death Eaters? It’s so appalling.”
            “You know nothing about me,” Harry said softly, rising to his feet. “And I’ll thank you to leave. This interview is over.”
            “You haven’t answered most of my questions!” Night unrolled a scroll of parchment that looked almost as long as she was tall. “I have so many things that I want to ask you, and you haven’t obliged at all…”
            She trailed off, maybe because Harry had drawn his wand. Harry waved it and murmured, “Ventus.”
            The modified Wind Charm only worked in the back room of the shop, since it was there mainly as a precaution to deter thieves, but it worked quite well. It scooped up Night and her notebook and quill and threw them bodily through the door into the main room of the shop. Harry locked it behind her, and spent some time ignoring her hammering on the wood until she stomped off.
            Then he opened it and called out sweetly, “You might not want to touch anything.”
            A squeal and a puff of blue smoke said that his warning came too late. Harry rolled his eyes and went to fetch a shovel.
            Although he was pleased beyond words that George felt well enough now to do things like travel to Romania and leave Harry in charge of Wheezes, he would also be pleased beyond words when George came back.
*
            “I have to speak to Potter.”
            And that’s Malfoy, Harry thought, poking his head out from the shelves where he was stacking the newest display of Exploding Whizzbees.
            Malfoy was indeed standing in the front of the shop, with little Scorpius beside him again. Scorpius was gaping at the shelf of tiny, color-changing toy puppies in a way that made Harry smile. No child was too young to be enchanted by the pranks that George had invented.
            George stood behind the counter, and his gaze was fixed on Malfoy as if he could make him fly out through the door without using his wand. “Get out of here,” he said. “Death Eater.”
            “Yes, other people call me that name, too,” said Malfoy, unmoved. “It’s that I’m here about.” He caught sight of Harry then, and nodded him over. “Yes, you. I need to talk to you.”
            Being in Azkaban hasn’t cost him all his pride, then, Harry thought, and moved over to him. “I hope you’re not talking about that ridiculous Night woman,” he said. “I told her we didn’t care who bought our pranks. It’s not my fault if she reported something else.” He could sense George’s balance shifting behind him. They’d had a good laugh over Night, and George was curious now, rather than angry.
            “I know you refused to tell her you were concerned about me buying the products of your fine shop.” Harry gaped at him, but Malfoy was apparently speaking those last words with total seriousness. “It’s that I’m here about. She reported you were defending Death Eaters. It took me a while to find out the truth behind that claim, and simply determine that you were defending my right to do what everyone else did.”
            “She brought you up once,” Harry said, a little lost now. “The Peruvian Darkness Powder.”
            There was a footstep and a slam behind him, and Harry turned. George had gone into the back room. He did, when the war came up.
            “She brought me up,” said Malfoy. “You defended me.”
            Harry snorted. “I would hardly describe it that way. I granted her an interview because I thought there was the chance she would report on me more kindly than some people. And because I felt sorry for her.”
            Malfoy looked at him the way a hawk that Harry had found with a broken wing and nursed back to health once had, as though he was such an inconvenience that Malfoy couldn’t understand how he found himself forced to deal with Harry. “And how many people do you feel sorry for on a daily basis?”
            “I’ve lost count,” Harry said.
            Scorpius came towards him, holding a small winged and whirring bird in his fingers. “How do you make it fly?” he demanded of Harry, and extended it towards him.
            “Don’t bother Mr. Potter, Scorpius.” Malfoy clipped both his voice and his son’s shoulder. “Since he only has time for pity.”
            Harry rolled his eyes and knelt in front of Scorpius. “You have to touch the button on its back,” he said. “And speak nicely to it.” He and George had designed the little birds after hippogriffs; they wouldn’t fly around the room, “causing havoc” as one reporter in the Prophet had put it, for people who were rude.
            “Oh, I can do that!” Scorpius’s face was brilliant. He pushed down on the button with one heavy little thumb, and said, “Please fly for me!”
            The bird’s wings stilled for a moment, and then it lifted away from Scorpius’s palm and soared towards the ceiling in a dizzy spiral. Scorpius laughed and clapped. The bird flew back down and landed on Scorpius’s shoulder, rubbing its beak against Scorpius’s chin.
            “I want it, Daddy,” said Scorpius, imperiously enough that Harry changed his mind a little about who was really in charge of this family.
            “How much?” Malfoy’s voice was still clipped as he reached into his pouch.
            “Free to cute kids,” said Harry, and ruffled Scorpius’s hair the way he did with Rosie’s. Scorpius stared at him in a way that said no one had ever dared to do that before. Harry changed his mind again. Scorpius might rule the family and get his dad to buy him anything he wanted, but he was still deprived.
            “We can pay for it.” Malfoy’s chin had achieved new levels of haughtiness. “We are not paupers.”
            “For Merlin’s sake, Malfoy.” Harry would have used stronger language, but not with Scorpius in the room. “I’ve felt sorry for other people. I’ve given away pranks to other people before who were perfectly willing and able to pay, just because I liked them. You keep talking about how you deserve to be treated like everyone else? Well, that’s what I’m doing. Stop talking like you should be the center of my pity or my universe.”
            Malfoy looked at him with blank eyes, and Scorpius looked at him with anxious eyes. “Are you arguing with Daddy?” he asked. He shifted from foot to foot and touched the little golden bird on the back. “Why?”
            Harry broke the gaze that he and Malfoy were holding, and smiled at Scorpius. “No. I was just telling him the truth.” He stepped back. “I should go check on George. Good-bye, Malfoy, Scorpius.”
            “Wait,” said Malfoy, and gestured at him. “I haven’t told you exactly what brought me here.”
            “Misconceptions, I think,” Harry said softly, not taking his eyes from Malfoy’s face.
            “Perhaps not,” said Malfoy ambiguously, which made Harry roll his eyes a little. He wasn’t any better at figuring out riddles in conversation than he was at researching the inane pure-blood customs Malfoy seemed to be relying on. That was what Hermione was good at—both things.
            “Well, anyway, I haven’t done anything that you need to thank me for,” Harry said. “So it can’t be a pure-blood custom.”
            “There’s all sorts of pure-blood customs,” said Malfoy, his voice so soft that Harry wouldn’t have heard if it had already moved a little further away. “But the one that applies in this situation—for defending my good name—is an obligation of hospitality. You ought to visit the home of the family you defended.”
            Harry recoiled before he could stop himself. His mind was full of Dobby’s death and the nightmares from which Hermione woke screaming, the nightmares of her torture by Bellatrix. “No thanks.”
            Malfoy’s face changed as he examined Harry. Then he said, “Perhaps the obligation can be altered, in this case, to meet in a place where we both feel comfortable. The Leaky Cauldron?”
            “You don’t have to meet me anywhere.” Harry stared at the wall, and took a deep breath. The nightmares he’d held Hermione through last month, when Ron had been gone on an Auror mission, had been particularly upsetting.
            “But I want to.”
            Harry stared back at him. Then he snorted. Malfoy wanted to go this far for a silly joke? Fine. Harry would call his bluff.
            “The Leaky Cauldron at one-o’clock on Wednesday, then,” he said, naming the busiest time.
            Malfoy only nodded gravely. “I hope you won’t mind if I bring Scorpius. I hate to leave him with the house-elves.”
            He is persisting with the joke. Harry threw up his hands, physically and mentally, and turned towards the back room of the shop. “I’ll look forward to it, Malfoy.”
            “I will, too. Maybe then, I can extend thanks that will be more graciously accepted.”
            Harry turned around with an acid retort on his tongue that not even the presence of Scorpius would have kept him from saying, but Malfoy was already leaving the shop. Scorpius waved madly at him over his shoulder where the golden bird perched, singing tinny notes.
            Harry leaned against the wall and made a series of noises he wouldn’t have wanted to try to define. They were kind of like screaming, and kind of like grunting, and kind of like laughter.
            Then he went to see how George was doing, but his mind was already on the Leaky Cauldron next week, and what the hell Malfoy would be there for.
*
SP777: He won’t regret it too badly!
…But perhaps a bit, yes.
BAFan: Thank you!
Drake: Thank you!
delia cerrano: I think that this story is going to be fun to write; I hope it’s as much fun to read!
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That