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The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42129 -:- 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 Three—To the Gates

            “I’ll have to Side-Along you.”

            “How, when you can’t Apparate?” Harry asked, keeping his gaze straight ahead. Malfoy had walked a short way from the entrance to St. Mungo’s before he stopped. Harry thought it made more sense to go further, to ensure that as few people as possible knew that the wards had fallen on the Manor. “It would be more likely for me to Side-Along you.”

            Silence. Harry turned around, his hand on his wand. He didn’t think Malfoy would attack him, but then again, he thought of all those reassuring comments Malfoy had tried to make to himself. Maybe he wasn’t as confident as he pretended, and clinging instead to the first plan he had come up with, the one that he hoped would make everything better. That meant he might lash out if Harry contradicted him enough.

            If he does, then I don’t have to become part of this. I want to help him survive. Helping him kill me isn’t part of that.

            Malfoy stood there with his lips almost bloodless where he pressed them shut, and his head shaking slightly. Harry waited, and Malfoy finally opened his eyes and looked at Harry bleakly, silently.

            “I forgot,” he whispered. “I don’t want to think about it, and I managed to make myself forget that I don’t have to be there for you to get past the wards.”

            Harry shrugged a little. “All right. I remember the location well enough.” He held out his arm. “Do you want me to take you just outside the gates?” He hoped Malfoy would say yes. While venturing onto the Manor’s grounds was technically possible now, a location where wards had just vanished didn’t sound safe to Harry. A remnant of magic might linger there, enough to attack enemies who tried that way of coming into the Manor.

            Malfoy stepped up next to him and took his arm, never looking away, the way he first had when confronting Harry in George’s hospital room. Harry raised his eyebrows back, and then shut his eyes to concentrate on the Apparition. He knew Malfoy hated having to depend on him, but nothing about this would actually repair Malfoy’s wand. For that, their best bet was to start the demi-marriage and mingle their names and fortunes as soon as they could.

            As they vanished, Harry noted with a distant wonder that he didn’t feel tired anymore.

*

            They came out of the Apparition with a hard stagger that made Draco want to vomit, both because his stomach was churning and to show his contempt. He would never have done anything so graceless—

            If he’d had a working wand. If Potter hadn’t stolen his magic from him and made it impossible for him to do anything like this for at least a year.

            Draco turned and stared at his home for the moment. He’d looked Potter in the eye to show that he wasn’t afraid of him, that he knew Potter was in the weaker position to him comparatively because Potter had agreed to make up for his stupid mistake, but right now, he couldn’t.

            Yes, the wards were tattered, but at least it looked as though no one had attacked the house while he was gone. The windows remained whole, and the gates hadn’t been forced. Draco touched the sapphire that hung on a slender silver chain around his neck a moment. It would raise illusions, if necessary, a toy of his father’s that Draco had found among his papers after Lucius went to Azkaban. He had used it to create glamours of wards nearer to the Manor. One couldn’t see them from this far away, though.

            Instead, one saw exactly how undefended it was, how much at the mercy of Potter’s agreement they both were, Draco and his mother.

            This dependence would turn the air in Draco’s throat to ashes before long. He had to hurry the demi-marriage ceremony before Granger came up with an alternative or Potter got over his fit of guilt.

            “Let’s go,” Potter said quietly.

            Draco wheeled on him, because what did Potter think they had come here to do but enter the Manor?

            Then he saw the way Potter was crouching, his head turning back and forth, his hand on his wand as though he would break the wood with his grip. Draco relaxed and cocked his head to the side.

            “You think that someone’s going to attack you simply because you’re here, Potter?” he asked. “If they haven’t come out to go after my mother yet, then they’re unlikely to attack simply because you’re here. No one but your friends should know about the agreement that you’ve made with me yet.”

            “I think that someone’s going to attack because all your ridiculous peacocks are gone from your lawn, Malfoy,” Potter said, his voice solid as an iron bar. “Or didn’t you notice that?”

            Draco turned, blinking. It was true that the grounds were empty of large moving shapes, but it wasn’t something he would have expected Potter to notice, since he hadn’t often been to the Manor. “They were probably frightened by the way the wards snapped out of existence. Come on, Potter.” He put a hand on his shoulder, and tugged.

            Potter came with him, but he was turning his head from side to side still, and his mouth had set. “You can’t assume that,” he said.

            “I can,” Draco said. He felt flame prickling up his spine, and he knew his mind was spinning, but he also understood the impulses in his brain, and the words he spoke. He didn’t want to depend on Potter any more than he had to. He wanted to change the balance of power in the situation as soon as he could. And Potter’s warnings probably came from Auror paranoia more than true observational skills. The papers were always talking about it, how the war had scarred Potter and left him permanently suspicious of the motives of people who only wanted to spend a little time with him. “The peacocks are used to the wards humming around them all the time. They would go and hide if they suddenly vanished. Peacocks are stupid birds, Potter. They can make good guards, but they—”

            Then a Disillusionment Charm dropped on the far right side of the gardens, and three wizards came into view. All of them wore hooded cloaks that mimicked the way the Death Eaters had dressed. Two of them turned towards Draco and Potter, and the third set off at a dead run for the house.

            Draco began to run in response. He knew even as his heels drummed on the earth that it would do no good, that he had no wand to stop the man, and that the glamours of the wards could only buy a few seconds at most. But he had to go, because he was hearing in his head the cries his mother gave as she lay on the floor and stretched her hand out to him, and she was still in there, all he had left—

            A bright orange beam of light stabbed over his shoulder and caught the man ahead of him in the back. His arms flew out, and then he fell to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.

            Draco skidded to a stop and turned around. Potter was whipping his wand back and forth in front of him, creating a dazzling barrier of yellow streaks of light that looked as if it might at least slow down the attackers who hammered at him with curses and hexes.

            It could have been a stray spell. Or one of the people fighting Potter could have decided to turn traitor and taken him down.

            But Draco knew the truth. Potter had acted to protect Draco’s home and mother before they had more than the barest agreement between them, before he was constrained by the bonds of the demi-marriage.

            Draco shivered. He hated the feeling that was settling over him now, the obligation that would tie him to Potter.

            But that would change soon. And in the meantime, Draco had to do something to change this balance of power.

            Without a wand. When even Potter was having trouble handling both opponents at once, although that could be because he had taken a moment to remove the furthest threat from the fight.

            Draco shook his head and bore on. He would think of something when he got there.

*

            These two men were probably mercenaries, and unless something happened, Harry thought he would lose.

            He had done his duty, though, taking out the wizard who could have murdered Narcissa Malfoy and stolen the Malfoy treasures. So no one could say that he wouldn’t die in defense of his new family.

            Hermione wouldn’t like that, if she heard you saying it.

            That caused a distraction, when one of the wizards Harry was fighting threw his wand forwards, and with it a hex that nearly got inside his defenses. Harry shook his head, cursed silently, and returned to the struggle.

            He had met mercenaries several times in the years since the war, former Death Eaters or Death Eater supporters who could find little satisfaction in brewing illegal potions or kidnapping wealthy pure-bloods or acting as contract thieves. They needed other people to tell them what to do. They needed to belong to a group, and do Dark magic for money. It was the only thing they were good at, the only skill they had.

            And these two worked together better than most he had met. Their spells reinforced one another’s; their shields overlapped. Harry knew he could have battled them to a standstill with Ron beside him, but he still didn’t know if he would have won.

            Again that weird peace flooded him. He hadn’t died because he was doing nothing, he thought, as one spell caught him on the wrist and the other above his left eye, sending the blood flowing down. He had died because he simply wasn’t good enough. And the Dementor ghosts were gone. It was all right.

            Then Malfoy, like the idiot he was and could be, crashed into the wizard on the left from behind and bore him to the ground in an awkward wrestling hold that Dudley would have laughed at.

            His partner swung around and gaped. And Harry Stunned him without a pause, because while he would have been all right with dying, he wanted to live.

            Malfoy had rolled away from the other wizard the minute he knocked him down, which showed that he wasn’t insane, just trying to do something without a wand. The man he had hurt started to struggle back to his feet, panting, hair hanging in his eyes.

            Even half-blind as Harry was, he made an easy target. Harry murmured another Stunner, and then the red light hit him, and then he was down.

            And, just like that, the fight was over, and Harry heard the calls of the white peacocks in the distance as they started to come out of hiding. He grimaced and rolled his eyes. Bloody stupid birds. They probably think everything’s all right because they could feel magic being flung around and it reminded them of the wards.

            His legs wobbled, and he sat down hard, mopping at the blood on his face. He did manage to cast Incarcerous on the two wizards in front of him, and then touched his wand to his wrist, only to find that his hand was wobbling so badly he couldn’t keep the wand tip straight. He grimaced and leaned forwards, his forehead on his knees.

            “Why don’t you heal yourself, Potter?” From the sound of it, Malfoy had knelt down beside him. “You must know that I can’t do it for you.”

            “Too—much magic in too—short a period of time,” Harry said, and he hadn’t planned on those breaks in his sentence, either. He grimaced and shook his head, making blood and sweat fly. “I battled the Dementor ghosts and unleashed that magic, and then I came back home and collapsed into bed, but I didn’t rest long enough before Hermione woke me up. The battle wore me out.”

            Malfoy said nothing, but his hand drummed the ground. Then he said, “Why didn’t you cast Incarcerous on the one near the house?”

            Harry snorted and wished that he had a banquet in front of him and a bed behind him. “Because he won’t be waking up until I say so. It’s a curse that imitates the Draught of Living Death.”

            “And you invented it, of course.” Malfoy didn’t sound all that happy, as if he thought adding a spell like that to the Malfoy repertoire when it had been invented by someone named Potter in the first place was too much.

            “No, Hermione did,” Harry said, and grinned at him, and then bowed his head again with a little gasp. Shudders were working their way up his spine and into the bottom of his stomach. It had been like this during some of his times in Auror training, when he had spent too much energy on spells, trying to impress his teachers.

            Well, and because he was young and dumb and spending too many nights drinking with Ron and going without sleep. But he was used to doing that for days before a reaction this bad happened. He wondered idly if he was already aging, or if the spell to get rid of the Dementor ghosts had drained him more than he knew.

            “Well, come into the house,” Malfoy said, his voice dropping another notch in coldness. “Sitting out in front like this will tell our enemies that our strongest defense is weak.”

            Harry looked up. “I use more magic right now, and I’ll rupture my liver,” he said. “Maybe my lungs.” Malfoy leaned back from him, lip curling, and Harry laughed breathlessly, because now he was sure that Malfoy’s disgust came from the notion of blood and inner organs everywhere, rather than the thought of what Harry might suffer. “Why don’t you call one of your house-elves and ask it to help us inside?”

*

            Draco’s throat constricted the way that it looked as if Potter’s were doing, and he wanted to slam a fist into something. Preferably Potter’s solar plexus, so that he would get all the pleasure of tearing pain whether or not he used more magic.

            He should have been the one to think of that. He should have been the one to take control of the situation when he rushed back to help, rather than simply distracting one of the attackers so that Potter was able to bring down both of them.

            He twisted to his feet and called out for Ossy, not taking his eyes from Potter. Potter didn’t seem to notice. His face had fallen on his knees again, although Draco could still see a corner of his cheek under all that dark shaggy hair, and he hadn’t known that human skin could be the color of ivory.

            The house-elf appeared in front of them, the old blue towel around his waist fluttering as he stared, and then he began bowing over and over again when Draco told him what he wanted done. A moment later, pillows streamed out of the house and arranged themselves in a nest beneath Potter’s body. They lifted off the ground, and Potter sighed and sagged back, his eyes shut and his hands clasping his stomach.

            “And food,” Draco said. He should have thought of that before—

            No, Potter should have thought of that before. If he knew he was that dangerously exhausted, why hadn’t he insisted on eating something before they left hospital? Draco would never understand the combination of selfishness and self-neglect that Gryffindors exhibited.

            “Yes, Master Draco,” Ossy said, and bowed before he vanished. Draco took a deep breath and shook his head. At least the house-elves were bound to his service by blood, which couldn’t change unless someone managed to spill all of it out of his veins and replace it with the blood of another family.

            It probably runs deeper than that. Or someone would have done it by now to some other pure-blood family, and I would know about it.

            Draco straightened, turning to face the bodies of the Stunned and bound wizards. He had to deal with them somehow, but the solution of twenty-four hours ago—waving his wand and floating them into the Manor after Ossy and Potter—wasn’t available to him.

            He did create a faint glamour with the sapphire to make it seem as if nothing but bright grass lay there, in case some of their friends were looking for them, and then clapped his hands and called for Affy, the other house-elf. Affy came out, bowed when he saw Draco, and nodded gravely when Draco told him to take all three of their enemies into one of the small sheds at the back of the grounds that his mother used for storing old flowerpots. Draco would alert the Ministry about them, if Potter wanted, but he wasn’t going to risk taking them into the house when there were no wards to prevent their escape or mask what they would really see.

            Then he plodded into the house himself, his hands still tightening automatically towards his wand, before he remembered and snatched them back.

            He would heal this wound soon, as soon as he could. He would study day and night once he had his new wand, so that he could repair the cracks in his façade.

            With Potter, though, he would have to do it in different ways. Potter wouldn’t lose sight of the fact that he had a wand and access to his magic and Draco didn’t. He wouldn’t forget that he had saved Draco’s life again, and created another debt between them.

            Draco had to study the demi-marriage ceremony again, and see which words he would have to alter, since this wasn’t a wedding of blood cousins. He would study the adoption ceremony at the same time, and make sure that he knew how to combine them.

            That would happen as soon as possible, because it was only when Potter’s name was Malfoy that Draco would find himself back in the superior position again.

*

            “Master Harry must eat.”

            Harry sat up on the soft couch that Ossy had placed him on, and eyed the house-elf. There was a low table in front of him with cups of coffee and tea and chocolate and milk, and sweet rolls and small rounds of gleaming cake and bowls of ice cream. Apparently Ossy felt it was better to get as many calories into Harry as soon as possible.

            He’d never met a house-elf like this one. Ossy was silent and intense and not at all prone to speaking long grumbling sentences, like Kreacher, or excited sharp ones, like Dobby. He stood there and stared at Harry, and now and again he repeated what he’d already said. It was unnerving.

            “Master Harry must eat.”

            Harry shivered a little. He could imagine, with a voice like that, that they would find him some morning face-down in a huge bed in Malfoy Manor, his mouth stuffed full of chocolate crumbs and his eyes pierced with butter knives.

            “All right,” he said, and grimaced as he reached for one of the little cups of hot chocolate. The silver of the small cup gleamed, and the handle was so delicate that it looked as if it was made of a shell. He really didn’t trust Malfoy’s claim that his family had no money when they could have made a lot of it by selling this. “But I need some meat, okay? And some sandwiches. Things that are ordinary.”

            Ossy stiffened as though Harry had asked him to put on socks. “There being no ordinary things in Malfoy Manor,” he said. “Least of all Master Harry.”

            Harry stared at him a few seconds more, then shook his head. It was probably best not to anger a house-elf as strange as this one. “Fine, whatever,” he said. “But could you bring me something a little more substantial? Swan stuffed with larks’ tongues, or whatever unordinary meat you have.”

            Ossy turned his head slowly from side to side, giving Harry the gaze from first one eye and then the other. “Master Harry must learn the truth,” he said, and vanished.

            Harry gave up and lay down on the couch. He reckoned he shouldn’t be surprised that Malfoy had a house-elf who sounded like Trelawney. All their house-elves were probably unusual in some way.

            Dobby.

            Harry closed his eyes. He would have to get over those memories twitching in the back of his head that were trying to remind him Dobby had died to help them escape this place, and Hermione had been tortured here. That was true, and it would never go away, it would never stop being true, in the way that the past didn’t.

            But so what? He was going to have to live here, and if Malfoy found out that he avoided certain rooms or wouldn’t go down in the cellar, then he would start making fun of him. They might be allies in the sense that they were working for the same goal, but Harry had heard the tone in Malfoy’s voice when he said their strongest defense was weak right now. Harry had to go along to get along, but he didn’t want to be weak.

            Instead, he would just keep going.

            There was a whirling, rushing noise, and something came down on the table in front of him. “Master Harry’s lunch is being here,” Ossy said, as though “being” was a verb more like “jousting.”

            Harry turned his head, and gaped. There was a whole silver tray, wider than the table, sprawling across it, and on it were plates of chicken falling off the bone, and slices of ham that were pink like roses, and something soft and rich and steaming that Harry thought must be lamb—the Dursleys had had it sometimes—and pieces of beef with delicate black edges, and juices rolling around on the plates that could almost be a meal by themselves. Harry sat up, and Ossy handed him a fork and knife, and Harry started eating.

            He didn’t know when he became aware that Malfoy was watching him. He looked up and nodded to him.

            Malfoy crossed the green carpet with a delicate, stalking motion, like a jaguar in the jungle. He sat down on the far end of the long couch, which was a pale yellow, and which probably went with the green in some way that Harry was too uncultured to understand. “We need to perform the ceremony as soon as possible,” he said.

            Harry nodded and swallowed the chicken in his mouth, nearly burning his tongue, so he could answer. “Yeah, I know. You got those wizards who attacked us out of sight?”

            Malfoy’s eyelashes flickered. “There is only one idiot in this room, Potter.”

            Harry shrugged. Some of Malfoy’s insults were going to sting him, but that one was too generic to do so. “Good. Then I think I need to write a letter to Gringotts, to get my vaults transferred into yours, and we need to send an owl to Ollivander to arrange a private appointment. It would be too much of a risk if someone saw you going into his shop when you don’t have a kid or anything.”

            Malfoy spent a moment doing that staring thing. Harry got on with his meal, because a moment Malfoy was doing that was a moment when he wasn’t insulting Harry or expecting him to respond.

            Then Malfoy said, “That’s a good idea. Thank—you.”

            Harry grunted. “Can I start rebuilding the wards before the ceremony, or do I need to wait until after it?”

            Malfoy took a breath that inflated most of his chest. “After. We’ve never hired ward-crafters from outside the family. All of ours are blood-linked.”

            Harry grimaced. “All right. Then we need to do something in the meantime, to give you a temporary measure.” He finished the ham and moved on to the lamb, which was good enough that he had to restrain himself from gobbling. “I’ll owl Hermione. She knows some rituals that we can set up outside the grounds, in a big circle around them.”

            Malfoy’s stare seemed as if he’d like to carve bits of bone out of the sides of Harry’s skull. “What makes you assume she could do anything? That I would permit her to?”

            “Because right now you need protection so badly that you can’t choose your allies,” Harry said, and pointed the knife at him. Malfoy’s eyes darkened. Harry remembered that the git didn’t have his wand, and dropped the knife back to rest in his lap. “She can help. I can’t do anything until I get some proper rest and my magic starts flowing again. She’s our best bet.”

            Malfoy nodded, head bowed so his hair concealed his eyes. Harry went back to eating. Leaving Malfoy to make his peace with this was something he could do.

*

            Draco was breathing in tight, controlled bursts, and he forced down all the many things he wanted to say, scream, shout. Soon enough Potter would be a Malfoy, and then there would be less of this nonsense. It was only temporary, yes. It would work.

            But then he would have Potter in a situation that meant Draco was in control, because he knew more about being a Malfoy, and that would make him Potter’s teacher and mentor.

            I don’t want to be that. But I’ll take it over being his helpless debtor.

*

            js: He is, although his friends are doubtful about that right now.

            Unneeded: That would actually be pretty difficult for him. He can concentrate on practical things and go along to get along, but he will still react to insults that sting him, and he cares about different principles than Malfoy does.

            polka dot: He’s not happy about it. He just would be unhappier with anything else.

            kain: Thank you! Harry’s friendship with Ron and Hermione will be an important part of this story.

            thrnbrooke: Harry will want to know about any important sacrifices he needs to make, for sure. Though his definition of important sacrifice may be different from many other people’s.

            moodysavage: Draco is desperate at this point, more than anything else.

            SP777: It’s to make Harry his heir. A typical spouse wouldn’t be. On the other hand, an adopted heir might or might take the last name. Draco is trying to get him coming and going.

            If I told you about them, they wouldn’t be unexpected, would they?
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The Name I'll Give to Thee