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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 Thirty--To Handle An Enemy

            "Blaise Zabini is being here."

            Harry blinked across the table at Draco. Draco blinked back at him. They'd had a late breakfast that morning, talking about Healer Bowman's last visit to Narcissa and plans that might flush out the person who had stabbed Draco at the Ministry. Harry had thought they'd have a nice, leisurely day of planning vengeance on their enemies.

            Instead, it seemed their enemy had come seeking them.

            "What is he acting like, Ossy?" Draco asked, turning away from Harry to lock eyes with the little elf. Ossy stood in the dining room doorway, Harry noticed, and seemed to be doing his best to look impassive. But it was difficult when his eyes flashed fire.

            "He is seeming angry," Ossy said at once, his ears flopping as his head tilted from side to side like a Muggle toy Harry had once seen Hermione holding. "He is be trying to seem penitent, but he is not succeeding."

            Draco nodded. "Then this is a visit to try and defuse our suspicions," he told Harry. "I wonder which one of us should handle him?" He was drumming his fingers on the table in front of him, his eyes nearly as bright with a certain kind of fever as Ossy's.

            "I think I should," Harry said, putting aside his food. Ossy disappeared from the dining room doorway and landed next to him, staring. Harry leaned back in his chair and fairly successfully ignored Ossy, stretching his legs out. "He knows that we're on to him. There's no reason for deception and dancing around the issue. And directness is my strength."

            "You think I'm lacking in directness over the last few days?" Draco's voice was pure power, as was his glare.

            Harry shivered a little as he remembered the hands that had pinned him to the pillow and moved over his body with a master's courage. "No," he said, and it came out hoarse. Draco smiled. Harry cleared his throat and tried again. "But Zabini might be more confident if he thinks he can persuade you around, or draw on your old friendship. We might as well show him there's no reason to be confident."

            "If we can draw more secrets out of him--"

            "He's going to be on his guard no matter what. We might as well let me handle him."

            Draco watched him thoughtfully, then nodded. "And, of course, this fits your apparently burning need to handle all the danger yourself."

            Harry felt himself turn pink. "That's not--that's not the only reason. I know you can handle yourself, Draco. But so far, you've been wounded more severely in these attacks than I have, and we still don't know how far you can trust your basilisk wand. It makes more sense that we should send the brute force in to meet the attack."

            "I don't appreciate you referring to yourself as brute force, when you know full well that you and I are equally intelligent," Draco said casually. "As long as we understand and agree on that, then I'm satisfied to let you handle Blaise. With me observing from nearby, of course. Perhaps under your Invisibility Cloak?"

            Harry opened his mouth to continue the argument, and then shut it again. Why? What Draco said was reasonable, and Harry wanted Draco to respect the reasonableness of his arguments, so he should do the same thing.

            "All right," he said. "The Invisibility Cloak. It's one of the Deathly Hallows, and it's one of the best protections you could have."

            Draco nodded, and leaned back in his chair with a faint grin. "We can keep Blaise waiting as long as we want, so will you please eat something before Ossy's head explodes?"

*

            Draco stood under the Invisibility Cloak near the shelves in the library, and watched as Blaise came out of the fire, glancing around. Only Ossy was there to receive him at the moment, with a silver tray loaded with glasses of water and ice.

            Draco, seeing through a thin, faint film that looked to be made of starlight, saw Blaise's face change when he glimpsed the water. Well. He knows that he isn't welcome. Did he come actually expecting to be made welcome?

            The door banged open--making Draco conceal an instinctive wince for the wood of the shelves it hit--and Harry strode in. He had adopted the robes that he'd worn to the Ministry party, or a variation of them, on Draco's and Ossy's suggestions. They were deep blue, and silver near the collar, Malfoy colors once upon a time, though not generally worn for years. Blaise would recognize them, though, and the particularly florid and serpentine version of the Malfoy crest above Harry's heart.

            Harry just stood there, and looked at him, and said nothing.

            Blaise said nothing for some time, either. Then he moved over and picked up one cup of water from the tray, filling it with ice. Harry's head turned to follow him. Draco was reminded of the way Harry had watched the serpent in second year that Draco himself had conjured, at least until Harry knew for certain he could control it.

            Blaise sipped the water and met Harry's eyes. "Not as good as wine," he said casually. "But I've always found the water taken from Malfoy wells particularly good anyway. Did you know that all the water drunk in the house comes from wells on the property?"

            "No," Harry said. "And I wish that you would stop trying to put off the inevitable, Zabini. You're a Slytherin. You must know that we saw your reaction in the Atrium yesterday."

            Blaise's face had always become most handsome when he was in trouble, Draco thought, and anticipating punishment by a professor. It did the same thing now, although Blaise did nothing but put the water glass down on a table beside him. "And you think that you have the right to say that to me?" he asked. "What does Draco say?"

            "Draco is the one who saw you, prat."

            If Blaise hadn't expected the accusation, he definitely hadn't expected schoolboy insults. Draco saw him blink and stare at Harry some more, but then he shook his head and murmured, "I would appreciate the chance to talk to him and set this misunderstanding right."

            "It isn't a misunderstanding, and you're an idiot," Harry snapped. Draco winced. He wouldn't have gone that far. "We know that you're behind at least one attempt to get me killed. The way you reacted when you heard Aurelius Shepherd's name was too great a coincidence."

            "I know that he's a cousin of Draco's, and that he's talked continually about how he wants the Malfoy properties," Blaise said. "That's a far distance from putting myself in league with him."

            "Then I suppose the name Madeline Robbs means nothing to you either?"

            Blaise turned grey. Harry might possibly have missed it, but Draco knew, and he felt a fluttering little stab in his chest. Not a real friend or not, he had known Blaise for a long time. This was like losing an old scar.

            "You don't understand the many, many business contexts in which I move," Blaise said, cocking his head to the side and striving for an expression of nonchalance. From Harry's snort, he was unimpressed. "I could easily have met someone named that. I meet so many people, even Draco's cousin once. I am uninterested in having anything further to do with them, most of the time."

            "You met someone you hired to kill me," Harry said. He had his arms folded, but considering it was a position that would allow him to easily go for his wand, Draco decided that was all right. "Did you really think that Draco would marry you after that, when he'd refused you once before?"

            Draco saw the moment Blaise decided that he might as well respond, that pretending ignorance would serve no one. He put his hands on the table, in a position that would allow him to push well out of the way before Harry attacked, but kept his head turned towards Harry. His smile wasn't pleasant.

            "He would have married me already, if he had thought to ask me," Blaise said quietly. "He thought I was too proud of my name to give it up, but I have little family pride. And I would have asked nothing of him except what he's already shown himself willing to give you." His eyes ran up and down Harry's robes, stopping on the Malfoy crest.

            "I give him other things," Harry said. "You would only have taken."

            Blaise didn't shrug, but Draco saw a little ripple up the middle of his body that might have been intended as that gesture. "Draco understands how this bargain works. He was weak. He needed help. Why he chose you, I still don't understand. It'll serve the immediate need, but it'll weaken him in the long run."

            Had it been a few days ago, Draco might have seen Harry stiffen with doubt. But they were more than that to each other now, and Harry only sighed. "Your efforts to put dissension between us are pitiful, Zabini. We have a working marriage. We have money and goals that we can share. Destroying you is one of those, now."

            "Draco would never agree to destroy one of his oldest friends."

            "What makes you think he calls you that, now?"

            Blaise paused. Draco could only use that word for it, although the full-body stillness that accompanied it made him want to choose something else. But Blaise looked as if he had been leaping at a target and had someone push it out of the way at the last moment.

            "This is the way things are done," Blaise said calmly a moment later. "Draco understands that. I didn't strike at him. I tried to be rid of a rival. That's more than acceptable, under the old codes that guide the way pure-bloods do things. I wouldn't expect you to grasp it, of course, but that's the way it is. I didn't weaken Draco. I would have made him stronger in the end by ridding him of a liability. I was protecting his strength."

            Draco tensed a little. They hadn't discussed what would happen if Blaise took that tactic, and it was the kind of argument that might be superficially convincing to someone who felt himself out of place in pure-blood society. If Harry--

            But Harry laughed, full and free, and proved that he had absorbed some of the lessons that Draco wanted him to learn, after all. "You strengthened him by trying to weaken his family? Because ultimately it's his family that you struck at." He touched the Malfoy crest again, and Draco didn't think it was his imagination that Harry's fingers fluttered in a caressing little stroke above it. "Draco told me over and over that bearing the Malfoy name is more than merely being called that. I didn't believe him before, but now I do."

            Blaise fell back a step. Draco rose to his feet under the Cloak, his blood humming. It was one thing for Blaise to do that in the middle of the Ministry, surrounded by people who might keep his enemies from noticing him, but in the middle of an open room and with the eyes of an enemy on him, it was practically suicide.

            Which meant Blaise couldn't control his reaction. Which meant he had never thought that Harry would speak those words, or at least not with the note of belief that rang in his voice.

            It was wonderful, to know they might have conquered Blaise at last, and in the way that he had tried with Harry, introducing a crack into the flawless bell of his heart.

            "You don't understand what you're saying," Blaise chose at last, his voice low and gentle. "You don't understand how blood endures, while someone adopted into the family and given the name isn't counted the same. Ask Narcissa Malfoy if you don't believe me. Ask her if she had all the privileges that someone born to the name did."

            "That's interesting that you suggest I talk to her, after what I did to her."

            Draco started and nearly intervened, but then shut his mouth again. No, Harry knew Narcissa had awakened from the coma at least once even if he hadn't had the chance or the courage to talk to her himself yet, and as far as Draco could make out, he wasn't consumed with guilt at that anymore. He had another, different reason for saying this, and Draco was curious enough to want to know what it was.

            Blaise remained still, in a pose that was probably meant to be impressive but which Draco knew meant he didn't know what to say next. Friends know these things about each other, he thought to himself, and clenched his fists in the folds of the Cloak again.

            "I know what I am now," Harry said, and his voice turned into a low hiss Draco thought could have intimidated the Dementor ghosts, if he had chosen to speak to them that way. "I know who I am. I know that Malfoys have certain rights and privileges even when adopted into the family, and your pathetic attempt to convince me otherwise won't work. Why did you come here, Blaise? Did you think Draco would welcome you with open arms when he already rejected you once before?"

            Blaise's face went more than slightly grey. Draco wanted to chuckle aloud, but kept it to himself. It was much better to allow Harry this initial triumph; Draco's would be the protracted revenge, of course.

            "I know more about what Draco needs than you do," Blaise said, and his voice sounded raw, as though he had abandoned the polished marks for the same directness Harry was using with him. Draco would have rolled his eyes, but it was true that Blaise had no reason to suspect this wouldn't work with Harry. "If you care about him, you'll leave him now and let him marry someone who can benefit him more in the future."

            "And what do you suggest I do about the demi-marriage and the scandal dissolving it would cause?" Harry stood with his arms casually folded, smiling at Blaise. "That's another reason not to leave Draco to anyone as selfish as you are."

            Blaise did some more staring. Draco half-smiled. Part of his revenge, perhaps the best part, was seeing Blaise have to face someone who knew what he was and would leave no opening available to him to better his position.

            But I will come up with something else. And as much as I'm enjoying watching Harry push this conversation, I do want to do something to him myself.

            "There are options to handle all of this, Potter, and you know it," Blaise said, apparently deciding refuge now lay in a combination of deliberate insult about Harry's last name and mysterious, lofty knowledge. "The pure-blood laws have as many exceptions as there are rules. We can do this. We can come up with some way to end the demi-marriage. If you want to be free, that is, and not simply preying on Draco for the rest of your life."

            Harry laughed. The sound was one that Draco had never heard before, deep and genuinely amused and yet mocking. Perhaps the sound Harry would have made at school if he was Sorted into Slytherin.

            I wish he had been.

            "I was the one who contributed the new Galleons to the Malfoy fortune, the one you're so eager to take over." Harry shook his head. "I was the one who brought at least half his strength to his family, and now you insist that I'm the one preying on him? Zabini, half these arguments might have worked before I really understood that the demi-marriage adopted me into the family, but half of them wouldn't have. You might have tried which half was which out on yourself before you tried this pathetic scene." He turned his back and began to walk towards the door of the library.

            Blaise lifted his wand.

            Draco flung back the Cloak and intervened with a shield that zipped forth from the basilisk wand before he finished thinking about his desire. The shield spread out between Blaise and Harry, glittering like the starlit folds of the Cloak, but far stronger, and able to send curses back at the caster. Draco knew that the same way he knew the basilisk wand was singing in his hand.

            Blaise turned to him, and his fingers sagged on the wand. He had his hand up again a moment later, of course, because he wasn't stupid enough to give Draco the chance to attack him without answering back. But his eyes were duller than they would have been if Draco hadn't overheard his conversation, Draco knew, and his gaze was divided now, between his two Malfoy enemies.

            "I wish I could forgive you for some of the things you've said," Draco told him. "And it would be easy if you had simply wished harm on Harry for taking something you wanted. But you've wished harm on my family." He shook his head sadly. "By all the laws of the pure-bloods, Blaise, that's something you don't do."

            Not unless you're in a position where you can back up the threats and convince others you have the right to make them. But Blaise never had been. His mother was a powerful witch and a skilled murderer, but she had made her life for herself as an individual, not as the head of a family. Draco was surprised she had had a child at all.

            "The appearances are against me," Blaise said, with a little flourish of his wand and a little bow of his head. "But I think you'll see that there are advantages to putting up with me."

            "Name three." Draco kept the basilisk wand leveled. "You know that I wouldn't overlook what you've done for anything less than that."

            Blaise twirled his wand between his fingers, and said nothing. Draco didn't take his eyes from him, because that would be stupid, but he did glance at Harry, and Harry was frowning fiercely.

            "Stalling," Harry said suddenly, and vanished in an Apparition straight past the wards that opened and slammed shut behind him.

            Draco wanted to join him and the outside attack that Blaise had apparently been giving time to let happen, but he wasn't stupid enough to leave an armed enemy in his home and trust him to depart peacefully. "Ossy!" he called, and nodded to Blaise even before he heard the crack that signified the elf's appearance. "Make sure that Mr. Zabini is comfortable, immobile, and senseless."

            Blaise opened his mouth, but Ossy had already sprung into action, and in moments Blaise was snoring, bound on a conjured bed. Draco was glad to find that the sight aroused not a spasm of regret or relief in him, only impatience. If Blaise hadn't been here, then he and Harry could have met the attack together.

            Draco Apparated in turn, the wards opening and closing behind him. He could undoubtedly have done the same thing the day Robbs attacked Harry by the gate, but he had fallen into the old habit of thinking that the wards would prevent Apparition anywhere in the house, and hadn't brought his mind up to date.

            Then he put the thought out of his head. What mattered was that he and Harry were going forth to battle side-by-side.

*

            Harry landed near the front gates of the Manor, not because he knew the attack was there but because he thought it might be there as well as anywhere else. Besides, it was the most familiar part of the grounds to him, and from here, he could see most of the gardens and the house. He crouched there, scanning the Manor in silence.

            His heart pounded in his chest, his ears sang, and his blood and adrenaline coiled up like a giant snake, ready to drive him forwards at anything that appeared. He wouldn't miss being an Auror if his life was like this all the time.

            Of course, it being like this all the time would be rather hard on the Manor.

            Then Draco was at his side, and they were pressed together hip to hip, leg to leg, and when Draco turned and watched in the opposite direction, back to back. Harry's lips curled back in intense pleasure despite himself.

            "Do you hear anything?" Draco whispered.

            Harry shook his head. "The wards haven't told you anything?" Despite the connection to them that Draco would probably say any member of the Malfoy family shared, Harry couldn't help thinking there should be some advantage to Draco's position as head of the family rather than the tendency to be blamed for everything by outsiders.

            "No." Draco shut his eyes and sniffed, deeply. Harry wasn't sure what to make of that, but kept still. Then Draco snapped his eyes open and said, "I can smell fire. The same sort of scent I smelled before the dragon showed up last time."

            Harry immediately glanced at the corner of sky that the dragon had come from, and then told himself not to be stupid. Their enemies wouldn't send the dragon from the same direction. Perhaps there would be two dragons this time.

            I ought to contact Charlie and ask if he knows any Dragon-Keepers who would let them off their reservations, Harry thought, turning a full circle. Someone has to notice when dragons disappear, and since they can't be tamed, it makes the most sense to hire Dragon-Keepers to handle them.

            The sky seemed to split open, in the reverse of the spell that Harry had used to destroy the dragon last time. Harry braced for two dragons to drop down on their heads, and reminded himself that at least the wards were up now and they could retreat behind them if they needed to--small comfort though that seemed with dragonfire possibly sweeping in to devour them.

            But what came out of the sky wasn't a dragon. It was pure and radiant fire, blooming straight down at them, moving so fast that Harry could feel the hairs rising and singeing on his arms before he saw the flame as flame.

            Draco spat a single word, and the world disappeared.

*

            I don't think this is my cousin, or at least not just my cousin acting alone. Someone wants to destroy Harry, and me, and the whole Manor.

            The thought snapped through his mind at the same time as another thought seemed to run through his body, down his arm, to the basilisk wand, and he hurled them into the cold and the darkness.

            It took Draco a moment to understand what had happened, how he had reacted, the same way it might have taken him a second to understand pulling his hand back from a hot bowl. The basilisk wand had conjured a sphere of blackness that surrounded them, and from the feel of it, chased away the fire. Or maybe froze it, or simply made it cease to exist. It was extremely hard to tell, with that wand.

            Most impressive, Draco thought, wondering if it counted if he talked to the wand in his head. At the moment, though, he didn't want to open his mouth for fear his tongue would freeze off. But can you let us see what's going on?

            The sphere turned transparent but thick and fuzzy, as if they stood inside a black tent, looking out. Draco could see singed grass all around the fence of the Manor, but the wards remained intact around the outside of the grounds, guarding.

            And arrayed in front of them were five wizards, hoods tossed back, the leader staring at the sphere as if he didn't know what to do with it. That one had blond hair and features that were a poor copy of Draco's.

            Draco found Harry's hand, and trusting that he could speak normally now, murmured, "My cousin is here."

            "Then let's drop this, and go confront him," Harry responded instantly.

            Draco nodded, and with a thought to the basilisk wand, the thing was done, and they stood before Aurelius Shepherd.

*

            delia cerrano: Maybe! Right now, he has no plans to go back or listen to them in the future.

            SP777: I sometimes get tired of answering questions, but I like them most of the time!

            Diana: Here's the next chapter.

            CareLessLover: Yes, Harry isn't as worried about Ron as he would otherwise be for exactly that reason.

            polka dot: Yes. Or the extremely rare times when someone becomes successfully self-employed.

            Dust in the wind: Thank you! I appreciate the compliment.

            Seiren: Well, right now he has to survive the latest danger! Hopefully he gets to do something else soon.

            moodysavage: Thanks! Glad you liked it.

            nightlo: Arthur will certainly know about it.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee