Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Family Talks
            “There,” said Harry, and leaned back in the chair, holding out Golden to Scorpius. “Now he’s going to fly and act just like he always has.” He felt confident making that promise at last, where he wouldn’t have the day before. It had taken him this long to sort out his memories with the help of Draco’s Pensieve and make sure that he knew how to work all the spells.
            Scorpius took the bird with such solemnity that Harry had to look away, because otherwise he would start smiling and Scorpius would probably take that the wrong way. “Thank you, Mr. Potter,” he breathed, and stroked the back of the bird as though it would fly into pieces again if he touched it too hard.
            “You don’t have to call me Mr. Potter,” said Harry, and smiled at him. He saw Draco start to life across the table, where he had been reading the paper while Harry worked on Golden. Harry ignored that for the second, though. Scorpius’s shimmering, uplifted eyes were more than big enough to fill his world. “You can call me Harry.”
            Scorpius looked around as though someone was standing behind him ready to smack him on the head. “But calling an adult by their first name is disrespectful.”
            Harry could hear Draco’s voice behind that admonition, the paces and the pauses and the phrasing. He held back his snort, and held out a hand to Scorpius. “Only if they don’t ask you to call them by their names. I’m asking you. I think that I’m—I mean, I hope that I’m not a stranger anymore,” he added, because ultimately Scorpius was the one who would decide that.
            “Daddy?” Scorpius turned to Draco and held out one hand as though appealing for help.
            “Do what Harry says.” Draco’s voice was strangled. Harry glanced at him, but he had already vanished behind the paper again.
            “All right,” said Scorpius. He faced Harry again and beamed at him, then grabbed his hand and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry.”
            Harry bowed his head a little. “You, too, young Master Malfoy.”
            Scorpius frowned. “No,” he said fiercely. “If you’re going to be my friend, you have to call me by my first name.”
            Harry choked back on laughter. He had known he would get a reaction like that if he tried to be formal, but he still enjoyed it. It was so perfectly Scorpius, and so amusing. “All right. I’ll try not to sound like a house-elf.”
            “No human should sound like a house-elf.” Scorpius gave him another stern look, and then turned around and fiddled with Golden for a second. Then Golden flew up and around his head, and Scorpius looked up with an adoring smile Harry could remember from when he got his first broom. “Golden will bite anyone who sounds like a house-elf.”
            “Unless they’re a house-elf,” said Harry gravely. He was going to lose it in a minute, really he was, but he would try not to laugh in front of Scorpius and make Scorpius think he was making fun of him.
            “Yes,” said Scorpius, in the contented tones of a child who was happy that the adults in his life understood him. He nodded to Harry and wandered off, his hand held out to Golden, which whirred down into his palm a minute later. Harry wondered idly if that was a trick all the birds could do, one Scorpius had managed, or one that Harry had added to the bird when he altered the magic.
            “I want to know if there was a period in your life when you did,” said Draco, laying the paper aside and listening to Harry’s snorts of laughter with an abstracted smile.
            “When I did what?” Harry picked up his cup of hot chocolate that the elves had brought him a while ago and warmed it with a touch of his wand. Then he sipped. He felt utterly content himself. Working on difficult and delicate magic gave him that feeling now, the feeling that he had once thought only working as an Auror would.
            “When you sounded like a house-elf.”
            Harry half-choked, and turned around to stare at Draco. Draco was leaning one elbow on the table, something he never did. Harry opened his mouth to say something about that, but Draco spoke before he could.
            “I’ve listened to little things you said and little things Weasley said, and put together hints.” Draco thinned his lips like someone who had to bite into a lemon choosing the right way to do it. “Your Muggle relatives didn’t treat you very well, did they?”
            Harry took a deep breath and exhaled through his mouth. “No,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t say that I was exactly like a house-elf, but I did a lot of chores and my cousin did nothing. I didn’t know about magic. I didn’t—well, I didn’t get everything to eat that I wanted. Not enough.”
            “Say it,” said Draco. Harry’s hands had ended up in his hands without Harry noticing. Draco rubbed Harry’s fingers, his eyes glinting a hard challenge, as if he would pound Harry if he tried to flinch away from what Draco was saying. “They starved you.”
            “Yes and no,” said Harry, and sighed. It was hard to disentangle his feelings about the Dursleys from everything else he felt about his childhood. And everything seemed so changed now that he knew he was magical. He could look back and find explanations not only for the weird things that had happened to him but for the sense of distance and difference that he had had from other people.
            But how much of that had been real at the time, and how much was justification after the fact? How much, for that matter, of his new understanding of the Dursleys was after the fact? He knew he would have gone after them instantly if they’d gained custody of another magical child and started abusing that one, but it was hard to think about himself that way.
            “I don’t want to hear you make excuses for them.” Draco’s voice was soft enough that Harry wouldn’t have known how strongly he felt about it if not for Draco’s hand, clamped over his fingers like an iron claw. “I’m going to walk away if you start making excuses, and you won’t be welcome in my room tonight.”
            Harry gave him a helpless smile and picked up Draco’s hand, briefly holding the back of it to his lips. “You’re not going to hear me make excuses,” he told Draco.
            “Really.” Draco tilted his head back and contrived to look at Harry from a long way above his nose.
            “Really.” Harry turned his head to the side. “At least, not any more than I made excuses for George yesterday. There’s a point when you do have to stop putting up with someone and decide that—well, that they’re going to adapt and give a little, because you’re done giving. Ron and Hermione are getting along with you well enough that Ron could come with you to guard me in that pub, and Hermione could joke with me about the courtship gifts. If George can’t manage it, tough shit.”
            Draco smiled, and for a moment, with his grip on Harry’s hand becoming caressing, Harry thought he might get distracted with more pleasant thoughts. But a second later, he shook his head and said, “And what does that have to do with your relatives?”
            “I struggled for a long time to make them love me,” said Harry. “I’ve given up on that now. I know that I could have got along with my cousin better if my aunt and uncle weren’t there poisoning the whole thing, but I didn’t.”
            “Good,” said Draco. “No excuses made for them. They had no right to mistreat you.”
            “That part, I never disputed,” said Harry, and leaned across the table to kiss him, and although it didn’t seem as if Draco wanted to drop the subject completely, Harry did manage to distract him into more pleasant thoughts.
*
            Harry rolled out of bed and onto the floor with a thud, and then gasped, feeling as if there wasn’t enough air in his lungs. Next to him, or what had been next to him until a few seconds ago, Draco was gasping in a similar way.
            That at least eliminated Harry’s immediate fear, that the Risen Cobras might have come up with a way to get his magic-tortured blood into his body after all. That wouldn’t have affected Draco. He lit his wand with a thought and sat up, shaking his head. “Draco?”
            Draco caught his breath a second later, and whispered, “They’re beginning an assault on the wards.”
            Harry nodded. He supposed he should have thought of that himself, although he hadn’t thought he was close enough to the wards of Malfoy Manor to really be affected. “Then you get Scorpius. I’ll—”
            “Be Body-Bound if you so much as think of going out there alone.” Draco’s hand closed on his wrist, not even as gently as it had earlier in the day when they were discussing the Dursleys.
            Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mother. I was going to say that I’ll Floo the Aurors and let them know the attackers are here. I know that Ron was going to set up alarm spells outside your wards, but I don’t know if they’ll pick up every single kind of Dark Arts the Risen Cobras might use.”
            As he talked, Harry was standing, shaking himself out and extending his free hand to Draco. Draco let Harry pull him out of bed, uncharacteristically quiet.
            “And then you’ll come with us to the part of the Manor where the Portkey took you?” Draco asked finally, tilting his head back so he could look at Harry. They caught their breaths again as another pounding hit shook the wards. “It’s the safest part.”
            Harry nodded. “I don’t want to fight them. I know that I can’t handle them all alone,” he added, when Draco pressed his eyebrows down as if he was thinking hard about it and whether he could trust Harry. “But I know that a Floo call from me will get through the Ministry hierarchy faster than one from you would.”
            Draco relaxed like flowing water as soon as he heard a reason that he, presumably, thought made sense. He trotted off to get Scorpius, and Harry snorted a little and rolled his eyes. Then he turned to the fireplace in Draco’s room.
            The fireplace hooked up to the Auror Department was right in the middle of the Night Duty office, those Aurors who remained on watch in the darkest hours just in case there was an emergency someone needed a lot of the Department to handle. Dawlish was there, and he jumped to his feet swearing when he saw Harry’s face in the fire. “Damn it, Potter, where are you? Weasley said that you were staying safe, but if you’re out of the wards and running around—”
            “I am behind the wards at Malfoy Manor,” Harry said simply. “The Risen Cobras are attacking, and they’re pounding hard enough to give me a headache. You’d better get over here.” He took some satisfaction in their gaping mouths as he cut the connection, and he knew they were gaping at him playing safe for once more than they were at the news of the attack.
            By the time he turned around, Draco was already back, cradling a sleepy Scorpius in his arms. Scorpius had Golden in one hand, of course, and a pillow in the other. As Harry watched, Scorpius arranged the pillow on his father’s shoulder, rested his cheek on it, and went to sleep, already so tousled that Harry’s heart ached to look at him.
            “Ready,” Draco whispered, and Harry came over and took his hand.
*
            Harry leaned his head back against Draco’s, and took his hand. Draco was flinching as the pounding on the wards grew worse. He looked at Harry for a second, startled, when Harry took his hand, and then sighed and rolled towards him.
            They were on the same bed, in the same room, where Harry had first started his recovery from the curse the Risen Cobras had cast at him. Scorpius was sound asleep between them, still clutching his pillow. Harry had taken Golden away from him and put the bird on the table beside the bed, though. The last thing he wanted to do was roll over on it and then wake up and have to repair it again.
            “How can you be so calm through this?” Draco whispered to him, curling harder around Harry and flinching again as a distant boom rolled through the Manor. At least, this far away from the outside wards and behind another layer of protection, neither he nor Harry got the breathless feeling that had woken them up.
            “I’ve been through worse situations,” said Harry softly, and bent down to drop a kiss on Draco’s forehead. “Besides, I’m not the only relaxed one here.”
            “The only relaxed adult,” Draco stressed, and stared for a second at his sleeping son. “I love him, but he doesn’t know what will happen if the Risen Cobras break through the wards. He doesn’t understand, not really.”
            Harry made a soft soothing noise and tucked his arm around Draco, pulling him close. Draco’s elbow seemed to fit naturally into the hollow between Harry’s ribs, and Harry closed his eyes and let his head droop on Draco’s shoulder.
            “I’ll tell you a story,” Harry whispered. “Something you’ve been wanting to hear about, and something that might keep your mind off what’s happening outside.”
            Draco stiffened in his arms for a second, as though he thought Harry was making fun of him, but Harry ran a hand soothingly up and down his back, and Draco finally sighed and nodded. Harry felt the move more as Draco’s chin stirring the cloth against his chest than anything else.
            “Once there was a boy who lost his family,” Harry said. “He didn’t know that for a long time, of course. He thought he was growing up with his family. But then he realized they didn’t love him, and they put him in a cupboard every day. That wasn’t normal. Parents who loved their children didn’t do that.”
            For a second, Draco’s hand tightened and curled against Harry’s chest. But Harry kissed him again and whispered, “Hush, or you’ll wake up Scorpius.”
            Draco uttered a long, shuddering breath. Finally, his hand relaxed, and he nodded.
            “Good,” said Harry, and kissed him again. “Now, this boy didn’t have much hope of an escape. His cousin had friends at school who beat him up. He thought that the whole world didn’t like him. Sometimes strange things happened to him—like the time he found himself on top of the school when his cousin was chasing him—but those things just made his family upset. He didn’t think of them as miracles. He tried not to think of them at all.”
            “Harry,” Draco whispered, and cuddled closer, the arm around Harry’s waist pressing into him as if he could make up for all those years that Harry had spent in a cupboard with wooden walls embracing him instead.
            “He thought nothing would ever change,” Harry said. It was an effort to keep his voice level, but he managed, for the sake of Draco and the soft breathing shape of Scorpius between them. “But he hoped for it anyway. He thought about someone coming to rescue him. He thought of the scar on his forehead being linked to something wonderful and mysterious, instead of just strange and freakish.”
            Draco laid a cheek that felt feverish against his.
            “And then a giant came down from the sky and told him he was a wizard,” said Harry. He pulled both Draco and Scorpius so close that it was hard to tell whose hand he was touching. “He discovered that there was an escape. He was as special as he had always thought he was. There was someone there to rescue him.”
            Draco hugged him and shivered. Harry leaned forwards and rubbed his nose back and forth against Draco’s.
            “He turned out to be more special than he wanted to be,” Harry finished quietly. “But that’s how he leaned there’s always an escape. Like a ring with a Portkey on it. Even when you don’t think there is.”
            Draco lifted his head, asking with lips and eyes and face, and Harry bent down and kissed him. It was the sweetest kiss they had shared yet, and Draco anchored a hand in his hair and combed through it hard enough to bring tears to Harry’s eyes. But they were continuing to kiss, and that was the important thing.
            Then Harry realized something else, and lifted his head.
            The pounding had stopped, and the wards still held.
*
Kain: The problem is that Harry has had ten years of trying to help George and nothing helping, and this is pretty much the last straw. Whether he phrased it differently or not, this was always going to happen. At least right now, George is more committed to the memory of his twin than to anyone in this world.
Marron: That is the way George feels. Harry really has enabled him; so this is partially Harry’s fault.
staar: Only George. Ron and Hermione are loosening up, and they do want to get help. They don’t like what they are without Harry around.
BAFan: Yes. A few more of the Weasleys will appear, as well.
SP777: I think George is suffering a pain few can understand, but at some point, if you put the dead above the living, always, then the living will stop trying to get through to you. George has told Harry that he doesn’t want Harry to try anymore, basically.
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That