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Changing of the Guard	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 58627 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 23
- 24
- 25
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter
Twenty-Four�Against All Hope

�� Harry
frowned when he took the message from the owl that had just fluttered to the
window and realized it had come from Draco. He really didn�t know why Draco would need to write to him when
they had just seen each other a few hours before. Harry had spent those hours
calming Nusante, reassuring him that the Aurors wouldn�t remember anything of
the attack, and then sitting stiff-faced through a conversation with Ron and Hermione
in which Ron had chattered on about the raid�of which he�d heard rumors�and how
much he wished he could have gone on it. No matter how many times Harry told
himself that Ron was looking forwards to arresting the criminals who had caused
a riot (as far as he knew) and not to the destruction of gay witches and
wizards, there was still a small wound inside him from Ron�s words that refused
to heal.

�� And then he
had come back to Grimmauld Place hoping that he would find a response to his
letter from Narcissa. How long would it take
for her to acknowledge that, yes, Harry was still keeping his part of the
bargain by attempting to leave Draco, even if he had to resort to false
cheating in order to do so? Perhaps she was having trouble locating a piece of parchment
that would show she was telling the truth.

�� Instead,
there was this message from Draco. Harry ripped it grimly open, expecting an
invitation to a date or a suggestion that Harry come over so they could have
sex. That would be like Draco, who
despite his cleverness and unexpected depths was still one of the most
thoughtless, impulsive, shallow�

�� Harry:

�� My father disowned me.

�� Harry
froze, staring at the letter. His hands were shaking, and he only noticed when
the paper startled to rattle. He took a deep breath and licked his lips and
read on.

�� My father disowned me. He made threats, of
course. I have the notion that he�s started plans, perhaps even participated in
them, that he hopes will destroy the rebellion we�re raising. We should discuss
the best way to get in touch with Nusante and warn him about this. The next
meeting place can�t be too obvious, and though Nusante has passionate belief in
his cause, I don�t trust him to choose a place that�s not obvious. Come visit
me tonight. I�m in the flat that you first came to in your Brian disguise. Our
conversation might not be long, but it should prove interesting.

�� Draco.

�� Harry shook
his head, growling softly. Draco could have made a few suggestions in the
letter, and waited for Harry�s return owl. That would have allowed them to have
half a productive conversation, anyway. He only wanted to see Harry again so he
could ask troublesome questions and leer.

�� And then
Harry closed his eyes and fought the temptation to smack himself in the forehead
with the heel of his hand.

�� The most momentous piece of news is still
the one he put first.

�� Draco had
hired Brian to help him get disowned. It sounded like the plan had succeeded
brilliantly, even with Brian�s less-than-direct help for the last part of it. That
meant Harry had fulfilled the contract, and that
meant this was the end of the job, and he owed Draco nothing more.

�� Harry
purred deep in his throat. Then he stopped, frowning. That sound belonged to
one of his personas who liked hunting and always purred when she crouched over
a dead animal, expressing a mingling of human and feline satisfaction.

�� Well, you still haven�t quite regained
control of yourself after your confrontation with Draco. A little confusion is
to be expected.

�� Harry leaned
back on the wall of his bedroom, not far from the closet which contained his
selection of robes, and took several deep, calming breaths. All was well now.
He would be free to take up other jobs for Metamorphosis, to forget about the
danger dogging his heels from the moment Narcissa had figured out who he was.
Mrs. Malfoy ought to be happy, he thought absently, even if she wouldn�t write
him back and tell him she was. He would stay away from her precious son. And
Draco would have to forget about him and go on. After all, what could he do?
Send Harry Howlers?

�� I�ll go in to Metamorphosis tomorrow, he
decided, straightening. Who knows? Among
the letters may be a case that will require the creation of an entirely new
persona, perhaps the best one I�ve ever invented.

�� And if he
felt a small wound as he had when he listened to Ron�s ranting earlier that
evening�well, none of the other promises he�d made Draco had been binding. No
money had changed hands, and no one would be hurt.

�� Nusante and his followers?

�� They�d have
Draco. And maybe Draco was impulsive and arrogant and shallow, but if he knew
how to do anything, Harry thought, it was how to engage in activity that would
make Lucius Malfoy want to kill.

�� He went to
tell Kreacher that he�d have Italian food tonight�the house-elf had hidden
inside the kitchens of several Muggle restaurants to learn how to cook the more
unusual food choices�whistling under his breath all the way.

*

�

�� At first
Draco watched the sky for an owl every few minutes, in between reading Harry�s
letter to his mother over and over again and trying to figure out how to feel.
A coldness lurked behind these words that felt forced and feigned to him,
rather like the story of a ten-year crush that Harry had tried to sell to him
and, apparently, to Narcissa. Was that all Harry knew how to do when confronted
with the truth, lie? And why did he try when he was so bad at it?

�� At one
point, Draco woke from a fantasy of what Harry would say when he finally
responded to the owl, and realized that he�d been sitting in his very
comfortable chair in the dark for some time. He cast a Tempus charm, the bright glow of the numbers cutting through the
gloom.

�� Nine-o�clock. And Harry hasn�t written me
back.

�� Draco sat
still, his mind roaming over all the available evidence in much the same way it
had when trying to figure out the specifics involved in Harry�s wrist movement
to Transfigure himself. Harry might have been hurt in the fight with the
Aurors, but Draco thought he would have noticed a wound, or the results of a
curse, during those long moments they�d stood talking after his use of the
mind-reading potion. He might have been with his friends for the evening, but
that wouldn�t have prevented him from stealing a moment to respond, even if
only to tell Draco he was busy. He might have not opened the letter, but Draco
hadn�t written anything on the envelope or used the Malfoy seal (he thought he
should start observing the scruples that applied to a disinherited son); he
would have had to open the letter to find out who it was from.

�� Which must
mean he wasn�t going to write back.

�� And why?

�� Draco�s
shoulders tightened as he remembered his own letter, written in the first flush
of excitement after he left the Manor. He had told Harry that his father had
disowned him. That was the very first sentence. The invitation followed it, and
Harry would have to be stupid not to glance down the rest of the parchment.

�� But Harry
could be stupid when he wanted to be, couldn�t he? He was very good at simply
not allowing certain facts to enter his head.

�� What if he
thought that, since Draco had hired him for a specific purpose and that purpose
had been fulfilled, he could pull back now? What if he sought to end their
association in the simplest manner possible, by vanishing from Draco�s life and
hoping he wouldn�t follow?

�� Draco rose
slowly, deliberately, to his feet. His hands were clenched into fists, and his
breath sounded in half-hungry rasps over his lips. He observed himself from a
distance, aware that his anger must be quite astonishing, though as yet his
mind was insulated from the full force of it.

�� Then the
dam broke, and he and his anger were the same thing, swimming in liquid as sour
as bile and hot as acid, and his breath had become one long, continuous hiss,
as if he and not Harry were the one who spoke Parseltongue.

�� He turned
and flicked his wand, issuing the soundless call that would summon a house-elf
from the Manor. Normally, of course, a disinherited child should never have
been able to do such a thing, but this was a Black spell, not a Malfoy one,
taught to Draco by Narcissa one summer day long ago when he�d been fretfully
searching for things to do. He was nearly certain that Lucius would not have
set up wards to prevent his house-elves from hearing it. Now, of course, it was
the elf�s choice whether to respond.

�� Rini seemed
to know what was good for him. He appeared a moment later, bowing frantically
even as he banged his head against the floor, punishing himself for disobeying
the orders of the Lord of the Manor.

�� Draco�s
words made him look up, eyes wide, and stop moving immediately.

�� Take me,�
Draco whispered, �to the house that you entered once before. The house where
you found Harry Potter.�

�� Rini�s
mouth dropped open, and he whimpered for a moment. Then he said, �I is trying,
but I can�t bring Master Draco through the wards, Master Draco! Just room
enough for one house-elf at a time! Sorry! So sorry!� He grabbed his ears and
whacked his face into the floor again.

�� Draco
curled his lip in distaste. The small gesture was enough to make Rini be still.

�� Simply
lead me to the house,� Draco said. �Once there, I will do the rest.�

�� He thought
of Harry complacently sitting in his house, probably whistling as he planned
how to spend his seven hundred Galleons, and his rage increased.

�� Did anything we did matter to you besides
the money, you bastard? What kind of person are you, that you can ignore the
offer of a passion you�ll never feel with anyone else?

�� Well,
either Harry really wasn�t the kind of person Draco had thought he was, and
Draco was about to correct his own misapprehension�

�� Or he would
burn Harry�s shell to ashes with the force of his righteous anger.

�� Either way, I win.

*

�� Harry had
just finished eating his dinner�he�d eaten at a leisurely pace, one of the
weaknesses of his base self that he rarely took the time to indulge�and settled
back into a chair in the library with one of those �modern Muggleborn novels�
that Hermione had been encouraging him to read. They supposedly depicted in
detail the dramas of young Muggleborn men and women trying to fit into a
society as traditional and restrictive as the wizarding world. Harry, who
considered that he lived daily with evidence of exactly how restrictive the
wizarding world could be towards those it idolized or hated, saw no need to
read fiction about it, but tonight he was in just the sort of amused, tolerant
mood that a book like this needed. He�d won a victory he didn�t want to think
much about, and�

�� And someone
was out in the street, applying steady pressure against his wards. It wasn�t
flashy magic, but more like a loud, sustained knocking.

�� Harry rose
swiftly to his feet, his wand in his hand, smooth possibilities traveling
through his head as he brought his cold persona forwards. If it were fans, he
could scare them off. If someone from the Ministry wanted to talk to him and
had given up in disgust at the blocked Floo connection, Harry could give the
answers in a cold enough tone to ensure they�d never do this again.

�� He reached
out with his awareness of magical signatures, sliding around his own wards,
trying to tell if it was a stranger or a friend standing there. Probably
stranger; Ron and Hermione were keyed into his wards, after all, and so were
most of the other Weasleys�

�� He reeled
back when he felt the blazing magical signature, and caught himself with a hand
on a bookshelf. What the fuck was Draco doing here? How the fuck had he known
where Harry lived?

�� Harry felt
the storm building in his head again, the flickers and flakes of his
personalities breaking apart from one another and flying in circles. He
immediately barked an order at the fragments, pulling himself�himselves�back
together with a physical jerk. This kind of reaction whenever he thought of
Draco was unacceptable. They had to live in the same world together, since
Harry wouldn�t give up visiting the pure-blood social circles Draco moved in.
And he had managed to fool Draco once already, hadn�t he? Draco hadn�t looked twice
at Elizabeth Gouldier, and in fact hadn�t seemed very interested in anything
she had to say.

�� Draco could
not make him break down and do stupid
things. That was all a problem Harry had created for himself, because he had
leaped from knowing that Draco knew one of his secrets to anticipating the day
when Draco would discover them all. He was attributing a cleverness to Draco
that the other man simply didn�t have any reason to possess.

�� There�s no doubting his persistence, though,
Harry thought in irritation as the wards kept resounding like a badly
played piano.

�� With his
cold self foremost in the front of his mind, and not-so-incidentally casting a
spell that highlighted the mouth-shaped bruise on his neck, Harry went
downstairs.

*

�� Harry
opened the door after Draco had knocked more than a hundred times. His eyes
were wary, his face set and cold, and altogether he looked like nothing so much
as a stag preparing to charge. Draco could see the same sort of noble courage
in his half-flared nostrils and tightly-clamped lips.

�� If he had real courage, he wouldn�t find
telling the truth so hard.

�� Draco
pressed in as soon as the wards were lowered. No chance that Harry could tell
him to wait on the doorstep and Draco would fall for it. He turned the moment he
got inside the door, so that he could have his back to a wall. No telling how
violent this would get before they were finished, either.

�� Harry
raised an eyebrow and shut the door slowly. �Come right in,� he said, every
word tart and acidic.

�� With his
own acidic anger still boiling and churning in his head, Draco hardly cared. He
had planned to handle Harry very carefully, dancing around the topic at first,
hoping to lure him into confessing of his own free will. But that was before
Harry had decided to ignore his owl and pretend they meant nothing to each
other.

�� How stupid is he? It hadn�t escaped
Draco�s notice that Harry�s breathing had quickened the moment he stepped into
the gloomy entrance hall, and that he stood a little straighter, now, as if
Draco�s approval were something to be courted. We reach out to each other whether we want to or not. We would react to
one another in a crowd of a thousand.

�� You might
as well give up your sham of cheating on me,� Draco said, and drew out the
letter his mother had given him, flinging it at Harry. Harry caught it with
that same quick motion, the Seeker�s catch, the twisting wrist. Draco shivered,
and wondered if he should be annoyed or grateful that he was shivering with
desire. I cannot be free of this shared
obsession either, it seems. �I know that you�re not.�

�� Harry
lowered his eyes to the letter, and then turned absurdly pale. Draco found
himself actually tensing to take a step forwards, thinking Harry might faint
and he would have to catch him. But when Harry�s head came up, his eyes were
brilliant and furious, and he was crumpling the parchment in his hand as if he
could hide the evidence of his deception that way.

�� She had no
right to share this with you,� Harry said, and his hand slipped back towards
his robe as if he were feeling for his wand.

�� She�s my mother,� Draco said, a new scathing gout
of rage breaking out beneath his heart. �What is she to you but someone else
who�s trying to get you to tell the truth?� He did take that step forwards now,
ignoring the way that Harry�s wand�a polished wooden wand quite different from
the one he used as Brian�pointed straight at his chest. �Do you ever tell the truth, Harry? Or do you
just hide behind all the deceptions you can and gnaw rat-like at every trust
that someone tries to put in you? Do your friends know who you are, what you are? A liar, and worse, someone
who lies to himself about what he wants and what matters to him? I would never
have thought that you, the hero of
the hour, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, could be such a coward and a
hypocrite. But I see I was wrong. The truth is frightening, isn�t it? And you
can�t handle it. You build masks. You��

*

�� Harry didn�t
realize consciously what he was doing until it was done. He just wanted Draco to
stop saying those words. Someone else
couldn�t suspect that he�d made masks
up and hidden behind them. Not multiple ones. One was fine. One was Brian.

�� And the
names Draco was calling him�speaking as if those names actually belonged to
him, as if all of Harry Potter was confined and held in the Chosen One, or the
Boy-Who-Lived, or whatever other labels the wizarding world decided to adopt
for him. That Harry Potter wasn�t real, never had been, but Draco was trying to
make him be, and it was intolerable.

�� His wand
flicked, and Draco flew backwards across the entrance hall, slamming into the
far wall. His head sagged forwards on his chest as something seemed to explode
in his body, and Harry, staring out of the haze of rage and magic that had for
a moment consumed him, suddenly realized what he had done.

�� His wand
clattered to the floor as he put his hands over his eyes.

�� No. Oh, no.

�� He wanted
to claw at his own body, tear the magic out of himself. He shouldn�t have it if
he misused it like this. It was the real Harry, the weak Harry, who had done
this, and the real Harry was as stupid and undeserving of any gift or blessing
as Harry had always thought he would be. Of course he was. He was nothing more
than a shell of others� expectations wrapped around the ashes of his
self-confidence, wasn�t he? Nothing made sense for him anymore. Harry couldn�t stand
being him anymore.

�� His head
lifted as the thought cut through him. He
couldn�t stand being him anymore. Yes, that was right. And though he might
have had no option but throwing up desperate walls a moment ago, trying to make
himself believe that he was not that person anymore when he would know all
along that he was at core and bottom and center, he was thinking clearly now,
and he remembered that he had another option.

�� Upstairs,
the reverse Pensieve wanted. Harry had to brew the potion that went with it,
but that would not take long. He had familiarized himself with every step of
the potion; it had been his bedtime reading when he found himself locked in the
persona of the weak Harry Potter and he couldn�t sleep. Yes, that would do. He
would make it now, and he would wake up as�

�� As whom?

�� There was
an endless list of possibilities stretching before him, endless personas he
could become, endless people he could be. He only needed to choose the one that
had the fullest personality, the most curious life. And he would bury himself
inside that person and become them,
with their memories, and forget all about the horrible thing he had just done.

�� He started
to turn away.

�� And then
Draco groaned.

�� Harry
turned back slowly, staring. He had been so convinced Draco was dead that it
felt, now, as if the world had tilted off its axis, or death had reversed
itself, even though Dumbledore had told him it was impossible to resurrect the
dead. He swallowed. He had come to peace with himself as a murderer, because he
was going to annihilate the person who had done that. Could he come to peace
with himself as someone who had hurt Draco?

�� Draco
stirred weakly. Harry crept back towards him, slow step by step, and then
caught him as he crumpled to the floor, the force of Harry�s magic no longer
holding him against the wall.

�� Harry felt
horrible, clumsy, weak with guilt and the fear that he might touch a broken
bone and exacerbate Draco�s pain. He was breathing hoarsely as he Summoned his
wand with a flick of his hand and then ran it gently over Draco�s body, using a
simple spell to determine the source of any pain. Draco arched and groaned as
the wand traveled over his bottommost rib on the left side. Harry breathed
softly now, because he had learned a spell in his bodyguard training that might
help with this.

�� He reached
down, his wand resting against the rib, and closed his eyes. He had not
performed this spell on someone else before, but he was used to doing it
through cloth and flesh. In the midst of battle, there was no time to strip
down and have all the luxuries he might be permitted in hospital.

�� Carefully,
he Transfigured Draco�s rib from a broken bone to a healthy one, feeling out
the lines of breakage and the chips of bone, removing them or realigning them
according to what the magic dictated. The spell proceeded slowly, and more than
once Draco groaned and shifted uneasily, his hand rising as if he would clasp
Harry�s arm and make him stop. Harry shifted so that he could give Draco a hold
on his shoulder; with one arm slung beneath Draco�s body, supporting him, and
the other controlling the wand, he had no hands free.

�� It took
perhaps ten minutes, which felt like two hours to Harry when he sat back, his muscles
trembling. This time, though, the spell he cast to detect pain revealed only a
slight soreness on Draco�s left side, quickly fading. Harry cast one more spell
just to make sure; this one illuminated the flesh from the inside, briefly, and
let him examine Draco�s bottom left rib. He sighed a breath of relief when he compared
it to the one just above and realized it was as whole as the others.

�� The
desperate task done, his guilt came crashing to the forefront. Harry put an arm
over his eyes and sobbed.

�� His weakness
had caused this, but it was not
simply the weakness of vulnerability to Draco�s words. He had the ability to
maintain control of his magic; he had hung on through worse insults, harder flayings
with words, such as the night he had come out to Ron. He had not injured Ron
the way he had Draco.

�� And then to
simply assume Draco was dead without
checking! He had suffered minutes of pain Harry could have spared him.

�� There were
certain things Harry did not do. He
could justify the games he played with Metamorphosis to himself because he was
practicing an art, having fun, making money, and hurting no one else. Not his clients, anyway, the people who
mattered. He had hurt people who tried to attack his clients when he was
playing bodyguard, and sometimes others, like Lucius, who had their worlds spun
upside-down by the �revelation� the client had hired him to provide�that they were
straight, or capable of attracting a lover other than the one their parents
proposed for them. But those were risks Harry evaluated before he ever took a case.
He could be at peace with them because he had decided they were acceptable. He
did not take cases where the main motive seemed to be petty revenge.

�� Now, with
his vision ripped open, he wondered when he had started accepting that it was
all right to cause pain to Draco. The moment Narcissa had discovered his
identity? The moment they had slept together? The moment they had met?

�� He had
blamed Draco for causing him to lose his emotional control, but if Harry had
really mastered himself as he had always liked to think he had, he would have
found it easy enough to refuse to sleep with Draco, to withdraw from the
relationship when Narcissa threatened him, or to sit Draco down and explain. If Draco had been a raging
arsehole about the explanation, Harry could have Obliviated him.

�� Those were
the things he could have done, should have done, if he were really at the top
of his game. Now, it was beginning to seem like mere luck that he had not
become emotionally involved with a client in this fashion before.

�� Or maybe�

�� Harry
swallowed. He didn�t know what part of himself, what persona, was speaking
these words to him with cold, merciless clarity. Perhaps a new one. It didn�t
sound at all familiar.

�� Maybe it was different because you really do
share something with Draco that you didn�t share with any of your other
clients. Avoid calling it liking or infatuation or love if the words make you
uncomfortable, but the emotion is there, and running from it involves you
inflicting emotional and finally physical harm on others. That is not
acceptable. How could you ever think it
was?

�� Harry
stared down at Draco and ran a hand through his hair. Yes, he was guilty�

�� Forget about guilt. It does nothing
productive. Atonement, reparations, restitution. Those are the words you should
be thinking on.

�� Harry
sighed, and relaxed. He felt as if he�d been placed under the Imperius Curse
and had it suddenly lifted. Glancing back over his actions in the past week, he
was horrified at his stupidity.

�� He had prided
himself, before, on how good he was at creating personas that could face up to
every situation. He could create one for this situation.

�� The new
voice in his head, his own voice, speaking to him, would be the core of that
persona. It could have the strength of the cold Harry, the principles that the
weak Harry Potter wouldn�t surrender, and the openness of the person Draco
needed.

�� The persona
would have to have all those
qualities, or Harry didn�t think he could make things up to Draco.

�� He gently
slung his arms beneath Draco�s waist and back, lightened him with a flick of
the wand, and then carried him upstairs to one of the bedrooms that Kreacher
kept scrupulously clean, even though it was never used.

*

�� Draco
opened his eyes slowly. Memory took a moment to return, and when it did, it
made his throat ache.

�� He turned his
head to the side, and a hand held a glass of clear, cold water to his lips.
Draco gulped eagerly, then opened his eyes to see his savior, expecting to find
himself in St. Mungo�s or back in the Manor. Harry would have owled Narcissa about
him, surely, and she might have sneaked him in.

�� Instead,
Harry sat on a chair beside the bed, gazing steadily at him, hope and caution
and an incredible weight of sorrow in his gaze.

�� You have
every right to ask me to leave you alone forever,� Harry said quietly. �And
that�s what I�ll do, if you want it. But I want to ask you what you want. What I did was inexcusable, and because of that, it
has to go beyond an apology. What do you want?�

�� Draco
stared at him in silence. Harry looked back. Draco didn�t think he had ever
seen anyone look so tired before, and so determined to fight back against the
weariness and do what was right anyway.

�� This was
the man he had seen, briefly, when they lay in bed together.

�� For a
moment, Draco toyed with the idea of asking Harry to leave him. He had been
hurt�he could still feel the remnants of pain in his left side when he breathed
deeply�and he had never been into love games that almost killed him.

�� On the other hand, you should have known
better than to confront a dangerous, emotionally unstable, magically powerful wizard
the way you did. Back a lion into a corner and what do you think will happen?

�� Draco
grimaced. What he felt was not self-blame, exactly, as much as it was disgust
with himself for being so stupid. That was unacceptable. He�d come off the high
of defeating Lucius and finding out his mother was still on his side, but he
ought to have been Slytherin enough to rein in his emotions and subtly get the
answer out of Harry.

�� Harry, it
seemed, had already arrived at that calm, clear-headed position, and would do
what Draco wanted even if it hurt him. Draco was not going to be stupid enough
to throw this chance away because of his own mistake, or in pique.

�� He reached
out and took Harry�s right wrist, squeezing just enough to be painful. Harry
raised an eyebrow and said nothing, waiting.

�� I want you
to do the most difficult thing of all,� he said quietly. �I want you to tell me
the truth.�

�� Harry gave
him a half-smile, the right corner of his mouth twitching up. �Yes,� he said. �That
is very difficult. But you�ll have it.�

*

�� snappy pants,
broomrider949, momoko, Engwaaearien: Thanks for reviewing!

�� SoftObsidian74:
Lucius probably is capable of changing his mind. However, a lot of evidence has to accumulate that a
particular course of action doesn�t work before he�s willing to try. Changing
his mind would mean admitting he�s wrong, and he hates that.

�� I�m not
sure if you will like Chapter 24 or not. It is both bad and good, I think.

�� Mangacat:
Narcissa will be working behind the scenes for Draco. Whether she will have to
do more work than Draco will with Harry, I don�t know.

�� s2kitty: That�s
fine. Thanks for reviewing now, and I�m glad you enjoyed the chapter.

�� ghot: I
think Harry would agree that the personalities are all real in their own way;
whether he can actually reconcile himself with them is a different question.
You�ll hear about what made him decide he was weak in Chapter 25.

�� avihenda: Well,
Harry imagined that he could stop
answering owls and fade away. He didn�t count on Draco discovering his house.

�� qwerty: I
think Lucius could be Slytherin if he really wanted to be. But he�s gone too
long without a challenge. It�s one reason he appeared absolutely helpless at
first when Draco challenged him; he�d spent too long thinking of Draco as his
pawn and relaxed his guard.

�� Narcissa
and Lucius love each other. Kind of. In a cold way.

�� Yume111: I
think Draco needs to be free of his father to love him. So long as his father
always assumes he�s in control and Draco must prove he�s not, it�s a little
difficult to feel anything else.

�� Lucius
thinks Draco is stupider than he is, and he hates changing his mind, so it is
taking him a long time to recognize his own tactics in Draco.

�� Draco is
very happy for Narcissa�s support, yes. It�s just so shocking, and he has so
many other emotions right now, that he hasn�t thought about it in depth.
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Changing of the Guard