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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 Four—Circle the Wards

            “Harry, you know that I’m always ready to help.”

            Harry smiled tiredly into the heart of the fire. Hermione’s face hovered there, and even through the green cast that the Floo powder gave to everything, she looked genuinely worried. He yawned before he could reply. “That’s great, Hermione. Thank you. I know how much of an effort it must take you to do something for Malfoy.”

            Hermione sighed a little. “I don’t like it, but in a little while, you’ll share his name for at least five years. If I want to see you, then I probably need to get along with him as much as possible.”

            “I think it’ll be longer than five years,” Harry reminded her quietly. “He said we could get—divorced then. I don’t know if you use the term divorce for a demi-marriage.” He hurried on before Hermione could say anything, since he knew she would get distracted by the question and it had only been an idle speculation on his part. “But I would still have his name. I would still be a Malfoy.”

            “That’s what’s so bloody depressing,” Hermione muttered, and stared at her hands. “I’m sorry, Harry. We should have spent more time researching that ritual we used to destroy the Dementor ghosts—”

            “I could have spent more time thinking about how I would manage it if the life-force I got from the three of us wasn’t enough,” Harry reminded her. “And questioning it when suddenly I had everything I needed, where before I didn’t. We have to stop talking about that now, or we’ll be sitting here and apologizing to each other for a year.”

            Hermione’s lips quivered, and then she nodded. “I’ll look up the rituals that create a charmed circle around the house. It shouldn’t take me more than a few hours to find one, although longer to perform it. And I’ll need your help.” She paused and eyed him. “And in return, I want you to get some sleep, Harry Potter.”

            Harry let a yawn slip through before he could stop it. Someone talking about sleep seemed to do that to him. “I will, I promise,” he muttered. “But there was so much to be done first. Owls to be sent and friends to be talked to and all.”

            “But after this?” Hermione demanded.

            Harry cast a quick glance sideways. The house-elf, Ossy, had taken Harry up to the bedroom where he was apparently going to sleep and showed him the fireplace and the bowl of Floo powder that he would use to talk to Hermione, but he stood there with his arms folded and stared at Harry the whole time, and it was hardly comfortable. At least Harry thought that Ossy would insist he get some sleep so that he could be fresh for Ossy’s master in the morning.

            “Yes, I will,” he said, and turned back to the fireplace. “I do appreciate this, Hermione. If I didn’t say that before.”

            “You’ve said it enough,” Hermione said, and smiled at him. “I think I know the first book to look in. If Malfoy wants to look it over, I’ll owl it to him.” She paused one more time. “I’ve already looked up some of the demi-marriage ceremonies, Harry. And I don’t like the sound of them.”

            Harry shrugged. “I don’t, either, but what choice do I have?”

            Hermione’s expression said there were lots of choices, but she knew better than to argue that side of his principles with him. She continued grimly, though. “The descriptions of the ceremonies said that they’re meant to bind someone to the family. That’s the word they all use, bind. They can’t force you to take on the same beliefs; the books specifically said that your soul and mind aren’t affected, I suppose because they want to do that themselves.”

            Harry smiled faintly, both to acknowledge the grimace Hermione was making and urge her along past the moment she was stuck on. “But they affect you physically?”

            Hermione nodded so vigorously it looked like her neck hurt. “Yeah. They tie you into the family’s wards. They give you—I don’t know how to describe it, a connection to the house, so that you feel differently when you leave the property.” She hesitated again. “And when it’s an adoption ceremony done later in life, they can affect your looks. The old families were into passing down the stamp of their bloodlines, I think.”

            Harry closed his eyes. He hated the thought of losing the way his hair looked, or the color of his eyes, or even having his eyes fixed. Those were all connections to his parents, and he’d treasured them as a teenager the way he’d treasured his scar when he was a child. The scar, though, was valuable to him before he knew the real story. The way he looked mattered because he knew the story.

            But he’d come this far, and he couldn’t back out now. And he’d already decided that what his parents might potentially have thought about that, and the extinction of the Potter name, didn’t matter.

            “Thanks for looking that up, Hermione,” he said, opening his eyes. “But I think I’ll have to live with it.”

            Ron would have urged him to reconsider again, but Hermione was wise enough to tell when her doing that would only make Harry unhappy. She held out her hand as if they could touch through the fire, and then pulled it back. “I’ll look for those books,” she whispered. “Good-bye.” The Floo Connection faded.

            Harry leaned back for a moment in the chair, and found the room going dark as his head spun and his eyelids drooped. He shook his head and sat upright with an effort, his hands clenched on the ornate, gilded arms of the chair. He needed to get some sleep, and he couldn’t fall asleep here.

            “Master Harry will come this way.”

            Ossy had already marched over to the bed in the center of the room. It looked like a mermaid’s wet dream, Harry thought, staring at it. It was blue-green, in the sheets and the pillows and the curtains that netted it, and it shifted in the middle in a way that suggested it was made of water, or at least had water in it.

            “Master Harry will be sleeping.”

            Yes, definitely like Trelawney, Harry thought, shuddering a little as he lay down in the bed and pulled the covers over his head. He speaks as though everyone must do everything he says at once. It’s as bad as prophecy. He closed his eyes and sighed. At this point, he was tired enough to sleep on the pavement.

            Ossy said something else, but sleep came in and drowned Harry, and he discovered that he didn’t have to pay attention to anything besides that.

*

            Draco received the thick book from Granger with nothing more than a blink. This was the kind of joke that his life had become, taking help from Mudbloods when he should have been able to rely on his own power and intuition.

            But he had read up on the demi-marriage ceremony, and he knew how to change things so that he and Potter were more balanced, less dependent on life-debts, more dependent on Potter being a Malfoy.

            Draco leaned back and considered the list in front of him. It was a side-by-side comparison of the adoption ceremony and the usual demi-marriage ceremony, the one that could be performed with a cousin who knew the family and was becoming an heir, part of the direct line, in truth. Draco drummed his fingers on the table and wished there was a cousin. Then there wouldn’t be the need for this scrabble.

            But the idea had come to him as soon as he understood what Potter had cost their family, and he was going to continue with it no matter what. Because no one else would help them, and because Potter had been the reason for this, and because Potter should pay. Because Draco could guilt him.

            There should be better reasons than that, said the echo of his father that always seemed to hang about the study.

            But there aren’t, Draco answered back, and then stood and shoved away from the desk, striding out of the study in a dazzle of shelves, and along the corridors in a dizzying blue of blue-and-white. This wing was his mother’s favorite, with the softer colors, and he didn’t stop walking until he came to her door. And then he only knocked before he entered out of courtesy, not because he thought his mother would hear him.

            She lay quietly in bed, eyes shut and breath heaving her chest. Draco took his seat on the stool next to the bed and stared at her.

            She still had comfortable sheets and delicious food and all the help she needed with getting to the loo or eating; Draco had assigned Affy to see to her, and only to be available to him when she was sleeping. But she had lost most of her hearing, and her sight was blurred, and her heart labored now.

            Draco clenched his hands on his knees and looked at her slack face, the hanging lips that couldn’t close all the way anymore, the ruffled white hair that tangled around her ears. He thought he could have accepted his mother coming to look like this if he, and she, had had years to grow into it. She would still be someone he loved, someone he had become used to seeing transform.

            But not this. Not this sudden blow of fifty years at once.

            Draco leaned forwards. He couldn’t crumble, he wouldn’t cry, because then it would become animal howls like the ones he had uttered when he first saw Narcissa. He had only managed to stop that because Ossy had told him all the wards were down, and he had had to think of what he would do for his only remaining family.

            Not the only one, soon.

            Draco straightened and stared at his mother again, reaching out to take one hand that had gone so slender her fingers felt like bones. Narcissa stirred but didn’t wake. Draco nodded, each movement feeling as weighty as a clock’s chime.

            Yes. He would do what was necessary. He would do well by his family.

            And if that included Potter soon, well, Draco could put up with that, and treat him well, too. He would be the one who knew the most, Potter the helpless child in the face of all the accumulated Malfoy knowledge, and Draco could use Potter’s money as he saw fit and wield his strength.

            Because it’s our strength. What we gave him. He’s only returning it to us, but he stole it in a moment and he’ll return it across years. That’s the way it has to work.

            He looked at his mother again, and then sent Affy for the book lying on his desk. For Narcissa, he could do far worse things than touch a book a Mudblood had sent him.

*

            “You know it will not be that simple.”

            Harry stepped back when he saw the way that Ollivander looked at him. He had come when Harry sent the owl, but he had come in a wheelchair pushed by a young woman who had the same bright yellow eyes and long fingers he did. She handed the wands over and said nothing the whole time, but Harry saw the way she looked at Malfoy, and could guess what she would have said.

            “To match a wand with Malfoy?” Harry inclined his head. “I know. But he has to have one, and we’re going to match him.”

            Ollivander either cared more about his business than he was acting like at the moment or had simply wanted Harry to know that he was unhappy with coming up with wands for someone who had once imprisoned him, because he grunted and opened several boxes at once. “Come here, young Mr. Malfoy.”

            Malfoy did it, glaring at Harry the whole time. Harry stepped back with his arms folded and ignored that. Malfoy was in the kind of mood that involved glaring at everybody and everything. When Harry had come into the dining room that morning, the place Ollivander was meeting them, Malfoy had been trying to drill holes in the table with his eyes. And the table had certainly done nothing to him.

            Malfoy tried wands of hawthorn, and oak, and holly, and ebony, and maple, and on it went, with nothing matching his hand. Most of them, Ollivander took away at once with a shake and a mutter, and sent his assistant to fetch more from the enormous tumble of slender boxes they had brought with them. She did it each time, and each time, her face deepened and her lips parted a little more.

            She’s hoping he won’t find anything that suits him, Harry thought, and shook his head. Before that happened, he would take Malfoy to the shop under a glamour, and they would try it there. He didn’t want the burden of the whole defense of Malfoy Manor to fall on his shoulders, because, among other things, he knew that he would never be good enough at it.

            Malfoy threw down the last wand and turned away from Ollivander with a hiss. Ollivander leaned back and looked his assistant in the eye. Her fingers tightened on the back of the wheelchair, and she said something that snapped and popped like ice.

            “No, we have to,” Ollivander said. “I told you, Maria. Professionalism in all things is the first virtue.”

            Maria did some more glaring, and then finally seemed to realize that she couldn’t convince her grandfather—or was he her great-uncle? Harry thought—to give this up. She grunted and stalked off towards the door of the dining room. They had put a few boxes down there, but they were bigger than typical wand boxes, so Harry hadn’t thought much about them.

            Now he saw Ossy hovering next to them, and raised his eyebrows. Ossy and Maria had a silent staring contest that Harry had to bite his lip to keep from grinning over, and then Maria sniffed and turned around with the box safely cradled in her hands. It was made of cherry, Harry thought, or some other rich, deep red wood, and she put it down as gently in Ollivander’s lap as though it were crystal.

            Or as if it would explode. Once he made the comparison, Harry couldn’t restrain a flinch when Ollivander snapped open the clasps on the lid.

            But inside lay what looked like an ordinary wand, if more like a tree branch than some of those Harry had seen. Ollivander touched it gently, fanning out his fingers as if he assumed that it would snap at anyone but its matched master.

            “We can but try,” he said, perhaps to Maria, perhaps to Malfoy, and then held it out to him.

            Malfoy picked it up. The wand flared with a white light, and then died down again. Malfoy blinked, regarded it from the side with an expression that reminded Harry of the one he had worn when Harry actually won their Quidditch games, and whispered, “Lumos.”

            Harry flung a hand over his eyes as the light stabbed into them. Malfoy quickly calmed it down, but when Harry could see again, he was holding the wand in both hands as if it was a club, looking at it with eyes that had more than a little dazzle in them.

            He’s glad to be able to do magic again, Harry thought, and then shifted his shoulders in irritation with himself. Well, of course Malfoy was. Wouldn’t Harry be, if he had been in a situation where the ability was taken away, however temporarily?

            “That is the one,” Ollivander said, his head bobbing. From the sharpness in his eyes, however, Harry knew better than to think that was an attack of senility or something similar. “Birch, with basilisk heartstring as the core. One of the rarest wands I ever crafted, and the only wizard it chose had it a week before he died.”

            “Because of the wand?” Malfoy’s voice held no emotion, but Harry knew from the way he touched the wand to his lips that he had no thought of giving it up.

            Ollivander shook his head. “He was in a duel, and the wand killed his opponent. But he was so shocked and so magically exhausted that he had a heart attack, and his family was superstitious. They sent that wand back to me.” He unfolded one arm to point straight at Malfoy with a crooked hand. “Don’t waste it. Don’t make it so that it needs to come back to me.”

            Malfoy nodded. His eyes were wide. Harry imagined him making plans, basing it on the first response of the wand to his first spell. Perhaps he would have to spend less time picking up magic again than he had assumed was the case.

            He saw Harry looking and snapped his head sharply to the side, a sneer working its way across his lips. Harry was the one who stepped forwards to pay Ollivander, which made sense, because it was his money anyway.

            He was watching Malfoy walk from the room when he felt a cool hand on his wrist. He blinked and glanced down at Ollivander, who met his eyes and said forthrightly, “Do you think that you will make peace with him?”

            “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t know what that means. I think of us as allies,” he added temperately, because if Ollivander was about to ask Harry to get back at Malfoy for his imprisonment, Harry wanted him to know he couldn’t do anything.

            “Watch him,” Ollivander whispered. “Someone with a wand that has a core of basilisk heartstring might do anything.” He began to cough, and Maria came up and pressed something thin and pink into his hands. Ollivander swallowed it dry.

            “Well,” Harry said, and smiled a little, waiting for the moment when Ollivander glanced up at him. “I did kill a basilisk when I was twelve.”

            Ollivander smiled, and Maria reached out and briefly squeezed Harry’s hand. He couldn’t tell if it was a sympathy clasp or a good luck clasp, since she had reasons to dislike Malfoy that had nothing to do with him, and they were gone before he could ask. Harry walked thoughtfully upstairs to find Malfoy.

            He didn’t find him. The door that Malfoy had told him led to Narcissa’s private room was shut, and there was the sound of steady chanting from behind it. Harry hesitated, and then went to firecall Ron and Hermione. Both of them had a better idea than he did of what Healers from St. Mungo’s might be trusted, or how to find private ones if they didn’t think it was a good idea to contact Healers there. Harry had spent too much time in the last few years with his head up the Ministry’s arse.

*

            Draco leaned towards his mother and swished the wand. He had to concentrate, and he had to whisper the spell aloud, which was ridiculous, when he had been able to do it nonverbally for years.

            But there was something new here. Not the steady, confident feeling he had had when using his other wand. Only a weak pulse of something fluttery up his hand, down his arm, and down to the wand.

            “Wingardium Leviosa,” he whispered.

            One of Narcissa’s pillows floated into the air, and rearranged itself behind her head. Narcissa opened her eyes with a faint moan, but closed them again when Draco whispered reassuring words and clutched her hand.

            Draco leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and his chest going so fast that it hurt to breathe.

            Two spells. He could do two spells.

            Pathetic. Not the kind of thing he would have to have to fend off their enemies, as soon as they moved again.

            But better than it had been two days ago. Which meant that his plan to go after Potter had worked after all. Because now he was in a stronger position, in relation to both Potter and everything else.

            They were going to live.

            The thought seemed to have tossed him down from some great height, and he sat there with his mother’s hand in his until Potter called out to him that Granger had arrived, and they had to go out and establish the wards. Draco stood up, smoothed his shirt down, and stroked the end of his wand across his face to remove the tears that might have collected in the corners of his eyes.

            Potter had given him back a little of his strength. Draco owed it to both of them to appear calm and composed, both so that Potter wouldn’t think a little gift like this could undo him and to hold off thoughts of attacking him, should Potter have any.

            I am starting to doubt that he will.

            Draco shrugged as he shut and locked the door behind him. That wasn’t the point. He could trust in his magic, and he might be able to trust in Potter after they got the wards lifted and Potter secured into the family. Assuming they finished lifting the wards with the ritual Granger had found by the end of today, Draco would like to have the demi-wedding tomorrow.

            He had no idea whether that would be possible. But the wand in his hand shouldn’t have been possible, either. Keep his eyes fixed on the future, he thought as he walked around the corner and down the stairs, and more things than he hoped right now might indeed be possible.

*

            Hermione frowned at Harry and shook her head. “The Ministry says the same thing they always say, Harry. That they can hold them, but they don’t know their names or who they were working for. These mercenaries have those spells that remove every trace of their magical signatures, you know that.” Her lips clamped shut on a snarl of disapproval. “And wizards can’t take fingerprints.”

            “Damn it,” Harry sighed, turning away to watch Malfoy come out the front door of the Manor. He knew that the Ministry didn’t usually have much luck in tracking down the origins of the mercenaries, who did disguise themselves under multiple layers of glamours and Memory Charms and lies when they went rogue, and it probably had nothing to do with what Malfoy had said about the Ministry hating his family. But he would have been happier with concrete answers about why they had attacked the Manor just then, and who else knew about the wards being down.

            And why they hadn’t come back in the two days since then.

            Well, in a few minutes it won’t matter, Harry thought, and nodded to Malfoy. “Hermione found a ritual that she can cast from the outside. You and I need to walk in a circle and hold hands. Imagine the new wards as hard as you can. Tell us what you want them to look like first,” he added, when Malfoy widened his eyes and stared hard at both Harry and Hermione. “I’ll be the one who casts.”

            “What will Granger be doing?” Malfoy’s voice was a little hoarse. Harry deliberately didn’t look for tear tracks in the corners of his eyes.

            “Making the actual ritual preparations that will create the huge circle around the house in the first place,” Harry said, holding out his hand. “That will expand the wards I create to the circle. Ready?”

            Malfoy hesitated, but let Harry take his hand. It was sweaty and damp. Harry turned his head to watch Hermione, waiting for her signal to begin. “Tell me what you want the wards to look like,” he whispered.

            Silence, to the point that Harry had to wonder if Malfoy would rather die after all, now that he had a new wand, rather than cooperate with Harry and his friends. Then he said in a dry voice, “I want blue shields. Transparent, but strong.”

            Harry closed his eyes. “All right. I’ll start raising them, and you tell me if they’re right when you see them.”

            He began to cast when Hermione called his name, taking the usual ward spells that Aurors would use to shield a temporary headquarters or other post where they were planning a raid, and then changing them in his mind so that they would fit Malfoy’s specifications. Blue, transparent, and shield-like wasn’t that huge a jump from red, thick, and opaque, as long as he kept the classifications in mind. Easier to change something into its opposite than to build something entirely new, really.

            When he opened his eyes, the blue wards were shifting past him, piling up like translucent mountains, while Hermione’s magic tugged at them. Harry nodded, and turned to face the south quadrant, lifting his wand again.

            Malfoy hissed, and almost broke away from him. Harry whirled to face him, ready to snap. Did Malfoy understand how delicate this ritual was, and the risk that Hermione was taking, to raise them from the outside this way?

            Then he saw the dragon stooping down towards them, and decided that Malfoy might have a point. Grimly, he threw Malfoy behind him and raised his wand in preparation for the battle.

*

            SP777: Well, Draco’s not wrong about some things.

            I do! Other than, you know, the whole slavery thing.

            polka dot: Not necessarily. Draco wants control, but he doesn’t have it. That might make Harry more in control in the end.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee