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Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24374 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
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Chapter Forty-Four—Stormy
Harry knows he has to be careful. He could say some things that would really upset Draco. He wants to avoid that. Draco doesn’t need to hear everything. He doesn’t deserve to yell and turn red and—whatever would happen when he hears what Harry’s life with the Dursleys was really like.
But he also needs to tell some of the truth, or Draco will just accuse him of lying and get worse and worse.
“All right. They didn’t want me there. They didn’t tell me I was a wizard—”
“So—wait. You’re saying that you got on the train to Hogwarts completely ignorant?”
“No. But Hagrid only took me to Diagon Alley a month before. So when I saw you in the robe shop, I’d only known I was a wizard for a day.”
Draco doesn’t seem to hear. He’s nodding and trying to look wise and only looking stuck-up. “I wondered why you didn’t come and find me. But it was because you didn’t know any better. You sat with Weasley and refused my hand because you didn’t know any better—”
“Stop it,” Harry snaps, and watches Draco flinch. He’s not going to feel bad about that, though. “You’re degrading Ron. I refused to shake your hand because you were insulting and a git.”
“Weasley insulted my name first!”
“You insulted him right back. And he was the first friend I ever had. I’d do it differently now, but that was me then. And you’re the reason I wasn’t in Slytherin in the first place, so you should blame yourself for that. Not me not knowing anything.”
Draco gets distracted, the way Harry knew he would. His face turns so pale that he looks like he’s going to fall off the bed. “You—you made your whole decision based on me? Or, wait, how could you make the decision? The Sorting Hat just puts you in one place and it’s done!”
“It did that for you and Ron and some other people. But I know it offered me Slytherin, and I told it I didn’t want to. Because of you and because I’d heard that all evil wizards came from Slytherin. I didn’t want to be in the same House as the man who killed my parents.”
“That was Weasley telling you that nonsense about evil wizards, though, wasn’t it?”
“And Hagrid.” Harry’s happy with the way this is going. He won’t have to tell Draco about the Dursleys if he can just keep him talking about the Sorting Hat and being in Slytherin until the others have to go to bed. “But now I know it’s not true. And I don’t have anyone telling me Slytherins are evil anymore—”
Except Sirius.
Harry winces, but Draco has, unfortunately, turned back to the beginning of the question. “So why did you relatives keep you so ignorant? You can’t tell me that’s normal. Muggleborns’ parents don’t know, but that’s sense. Your family had to know since your mum was a witch.”
“Aunt Petunia hated my mum.” Even now, after Aunt Petunia has been dead for months, it’s not easy for Harry to talk about. It’s strange to think about how much his aunt must have hated his mum. She was dead for years, she didn’t live, she didn’t get saved by her magic, and Aunt Petunia still hated her and wouldn’t talk about her. “She didn’t want to tell me anything because she wanted to pretend there was no such thing as magic. And my uncle was the same way. They thought I wouldn’t ever be able to be a wizard if they just didn’t tell me anything.”
“That’s abusive.”
Harry flinches. Then he tries to keep himself from flinching, because Draco will spring on that, too, if he notices. “Fine, it was. But I thought you wanted to hear about how they treated me, not talk about it yourself.”
Draco frowns. He makes a little swirling “go-ahead” motion with his hand, though, and Harry goes ahead.
“They yelled at me all the time. If I used the word magic, I got yelled at. If I used accidental magic, I got yelled at. I didn’t know it was accidental magic, of course.”
“What did they tell you it was?”
“They didn’t tell me it was anything. They just didn’t want to acknowledge it happened. I shrank one of my cousin’s jumpers so I wouldn’t have to wear it and my aunt decided her washing must have shrunken it. I Apparated onto the roof and they thought I’d climbed up there to get away from my cousin and his friends—”
“You accidentally Apparated? You must be really powerful!”
Harry hates the look in Draco’s eyes. Hates it so much that he yells at him. “I’m not powerful! I didn’t know what I was doing! I haven’t ever done it again! I just did it, okay? And anyway, I turned a teacher’s hair blue and made all my hair grow back after a bad haircut, too. That’s not powerful.”
*
Draco blinks and says nothing. Harry seems to be sensitive about this, and after a second, Draco thinks he knows why.
He’s powerful, but this doesn’t make him feel powerful. His relatives were awful and they were in control of his life for a long time. So he feels weak when he talks about them. And he reacts with scorn to people saying that he’s not weak, even though that’s the truth.
Draco tries to smooth his face down into calm acceptance. Later, maybe, he can convince Harry that he really is strong, and that he should use that fact to his own advantage instead of just waiting around for someone else to use his magic for him. “Okay. What else did they do?”
“Insulted me. They called me ‘freak,’ and I didn’t know why. Well, I mean, for things like my magic and my scar, but I didn’t know that then. And my cousin might not even have known about my magic. He just called me ‘freak’ because his parents did.”
“I don’t like your cousin.”
“I don’t care whether you like him. He’s probably living with his Aunt Marge now, and he’s just a kid like me, and I don’t care if I ever see him again. But he wasn’t as wrong as my aunt and uncle were.”
“You said he chased you with his friends! How can you forgive him?”
“The same way I forgave you, even though you insulted my friends. And that’s something you’ll have to apologize for, you know.”
Draco opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. He knows Harry is trying to get him off-track, and he’s not going to let him. This is fascinating, and it’s frustrating to be told he has to apologize to Weasley and Granger, but he needs to hear more.
“Did your cousin beat you up?”
“With his friends.”
Draco nods. “And your aunt and uncle didn’t stop him.”
“They thought it was funny.”
Draco swallows. Those words tell him a lot about what Harry’s life was like, and he knows Harry would probably be mortified that he knows. But honestly, he doesn’t think that it’s bad. Harry doesn’t seem to talk about this much with anyone else, except maybe Professor Snape. It’s good that Draco knows.
“What else did they do to you?”
“Not give me a bedroom until I started getting Hogwarts letters and they thought someone was watching them.”
“Did they make you sleep on the kitchen floor or something?”
“Why so horrified, Draco?” Harry’s voice is smooth and his smile is sharp. Draco has never seen a smile like that before and he doesn’t ever want to see it again. “You probably made the house-elves sleep there, right? And you thought it was a perfectly fine bed for them. My relatives thought of me as a house-elf. They thought the same way. You ought to think it’s perfectly okay.”
Draco understands, again, in a way that he doesn’t think he would if he didn’t know about his parents, or his father. Harry is lashing out because he wants to hurt Draco. He doesn’t want to answer the question. He wants to make him back off.
Draco shakes his head. “I treated Dobby badly, and I’m sorry. But that isn’t the same as what your relatives did to you. Where did they make you sleep, Harry?”
Harry glances aside, his smile fading. Draco’s glad. “In a cupboard.”
Draco feels as though all the pudding he ate in the Great Hall is going to come out his mouth. He waits until he knows he isn’t going to vomit, and then he nods and says, “I’m sorry they did that to you.” Harry stares at him in silent, stunned astonishment. It hurts, a little. “And they made you do all the chores, since you were their house-elf?”
“Yes.”
“Things like cleaning the house? Weeding the garden? Cooking the food?” Draco has to know. He’s throwing out all the ones he can think of, and he expects Harry to stop nodding any time now, but he just keeps on doing it, and Draco is discovering that you can’t really kill people who are already dead.
“Yes. And some other things. Washing the laundry and cleaning up after my cousin and things like that. And washing the car—the things the Muggles drive. Maybe you saw them in King’s Cross Station.”
“I didn’t see them. I’m glad I didn’t.” Draco makes his voice flat. He knows there’s something else missing, too, although he honestly doesn’t know what it is. “Did—did they do anything else to you?”
“It would be a more satisfying story if I got beaten, right? Or if I learned to hate all Muggles because of that?” Harry tilts his head. “No, there’s nothing else, Draco. They never really beat me. Once my aunt swung a frying pan at my head. My uncle shoved me around. Dudley is the one who beat me up with his friends. But I didn’t get abused in the traditional way.”
“Shit,” Draco whispers, feeling but ignoring the fact that his parents wouldn’t want him to say that. “It—what happened to you is enough. You don’t have to act like it’s not.”
Harry just gives him a sort of twisted smile. “I wondered because you’re sitting there like it’s all too overwhelming or something, but I promise that this is what happened. I’m not exaggerating. I probably shouldn’t have told you everything, anyway. You look like you want to cry or murder someone.”
“I do not want to cry,” Draco snaps. “Except maybe for you, because you went through that. And you’re still sitting here and lying to me!” He’s sure about the lying. Just not sure what it’s about.
“I told you everything.”
Harry’s looking at him with big, guileless eyes, and all Draco can think is that he’ll never trust anyone who tells him that Gryffindors aren’t good liars again. Well, maybe Harry in particular is a good liar because he was supposed to be in Slytherin House all along, but Draco has to wonder about Granger and her big eyes now.
“No, you didn’t. You have to tell me everything. You told me about the insults and that they kept you in a cupboard. What could be worse?”
*
Harry hesitates. Now that he thinks about it, he should have fought to keep the cupboard from Draco before anything else. That’s definitely the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him, and it makes Draco look at him in an embarrassing way. Next to that, what does a little starvation matter?
“Okay. Sometimes they didn’t give me as much food as they should. They would shut me in the cupboard and tell me I couldn’t have any meals. That happened when I was at the zoo with my cousin on his eleventh birthday and I vanished the glass accidentally and let the snake out when he was taunting it.”
Draco stares at him. Then he turns around and casts a spell that Harry has never heard before. He tenses up, then blinks when it just makes a crystal vase appear at the side of the bed. Draco picks the vase up and hurls it against the wall. Harry jumps at the crash.
He watches Draco clean up the pieces with an angry wave of his wand, and then he says, “Um. What was that?”
“A Malfoy spell. We’ve got all these ugly heirlooms that we can’t get rid of. That spell pulls a breakable heirloom to us and then we can break it any way we like.” Draco takes a deep breath, like he’s about to describe the spell some more, and then he turns to face Harry. “I cannot fucking believe they starved you. Is that why you’ve always been so small and skinny?”
And now Harry really wishes that he’d kept that secret to himself. “You asked the question about the Dursleys, and I already told you a lot,” he says firmly, instead. “I’m not going to tell you anymore. If you want to know about other things, then you’ll have to use another question. Do you want to use another question?” He almost hopes Draco does. Then he can burn through two of them in one evening and get them out of the way, with all the shame and embarrassment.
Infuriatingly, Draco just shakes his head. “No, I think I’ve learned enough for tonight,” he says, and he stands up and walks to the door. He hesitates there, like he is about to ask something else, and then he walks out and shuts the door behind him.
Harry wastes no time washing his face and brushing his teeth and changing into his pyjamas. He knows that Blaise and Theo might want to come in and ask him something else, and he needs the time alone. He knows he needs to think up a good lie.
Because, after seeing the expression on Draco’s face, there’s no way he can tell them what Sirius means to him, or why he needs family of his own.
*
Tarquinius pauses when he sees the color of the bird flying towards him. It’s the first pink owl he’s ever seen.
Of course, that tells him who it must be from. He’s glad that he’s managed to sculpt his face into an expression of relative calm by the time the owl lands on the perch next to his window. It watches him doubtfully for a moment, from eyes the color of garnets, as if it assumes that he can’t possibly be who it’s looking for. Then it extends its leg.
Tarquinius casts all the usual detection spells over the letter, which is the first thing he’s done that seems to earn the owl’s approval. Tarquinius ignores that, though. He’s much more interested in unrolling the scroll and casting yet another spell that makes the sigil at the bottom, a rearing serpent in gold, glow red.
Good. This is authentic, and the message that he’s been waiting for.
And the message is short, to the point, and, more important, an acceptance of his proposal. Someone who is a Parselmouth and has a talent for serpent magic does indeed deserve to be protected and guided by the Speakers.
Tarquinius exhales. This solves several problems. His home would not be thought a fit sanctuary for a child for long. Dumbledore has had longer now to raise objections and would bring up the past in undesirable ways if Tarquinius gave him fuel. This way, Tarquinius can look innocent and noble and wise in placing Harry with suitable guardians.
It will keep Harry safe from Lucius. Tarquinius has seen the light in the man’s eyes, heard the note in his voice. He will move soon to gain control of Harry. And this is an impeccable wall placed in his way.
It will keep Harry safe from Sirius Black. Tarquinius does not understand the boy’s desire to live with a half-mad Gryffindor who can only tell tales of the past—or so Tarquinius understands from his son’s letters—and it’s best that he’s herded away from the man and Dumbledore’s influence as soon as possible.
It will frustrate Severus. In the long contest they are playing, this is not a small consideration.
And finally, it will be the best thing for Harry himself. Tarquinius believes that someone will manage to resurrect the Dark Lord eventually. There are Darker magics than the ones practiced in the Slytherin common room. The Dark Lord has probably taken advantage of them to make himself immortal already. This is the best way to combat him. The Speakers are stronger together than the Death Eaters ever were.
Tarquinius writes the acceptance and watches the owl wing away. He’s turning towards the doorway from the owlery when the coughing fit takes him.
It’s worse than the others, much worse. Tarquinius coughs until it feels like jabbing knives into his own lungs, and he forces himself to stop. He lifts his fingers to his lips, and they come away with blood on them.
Tarquinius feels a distant brush of fear, as if the owl is still there and has touched him with a plume. But he shakes his head. The Healers are confident that they have this under control. And no one could have cast a curse on him. He passes every morning through a variant of the anti-theft waterfalls at Gringotts that wash away all the magic on his skin. This is a disease, nothing more.
He will get it treated.
He will survive, and thrive, where so many others didn’t.
*
Kain: And the twisted smiles here make Draco uncomfortable Harry needs a mentor who can tell him how to use it.
Blaise and Theo are mostly afraid that Harry will never be ready to spill, and they'll need him to.
Harry mostly feels like that because it's Sirius. He thinks he could trust Blaise and Theo to understand him wanting to have all of Snape's attention, but he's also realistic enough to know that won't happen.
Theo has his reasons for being like that.
And now you get to see what Harry and Draco say...
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