Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 41050 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 6
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Chapter Seven—Inside Malfoy Manor
            “Mr. Potter! You came to visit!”
            Scorpius’s face was almost incandescent as he ran towards Harry, across the floor of an enormous dining room that had only a tiny round table with a few chairs in the corner. Malfoy had been leading Harry on a kind of tour, but he stopped now, and Harry dropped down to Scorpius’s level so he could reach out his arms.
            If that’s okay. But a check on Malfoy from the corner of Harry’s eye showed him benignly smiling, so it seemed to be.
            Scorpius surprised Harry by not only running into his arms but hugging him back, tightly enough that Harry wheezed. Then he sprinted away and grabbed Harry’s arm. “This is only the dining room, we can eat anywhere,” he said, waving his hand. “I want you to see my room! Come on!”
            “Did you ask permission to show Mr. Potter your rooms, Scorpius?” Malfoy asked, in a mild enough tone that Harry didn’t know what he meant at first, and thought maybe there were house-elves cleaning Scorpius’s rooms who needed advance notice.
            But Scorpius sighed and turned to face his father. “Please may I show Mr. Potter my rooms?”
            “Yes,” said Malfoy, after a long pause in which Harry wondered if Malfoy was trying to punish Harry or Scorpius by withholding permission. “Next time, however, please don’t interrupt me in the middle of a sentence.”
            Scorpius nodded without looking horrified, which Harry thought was probably the best outcome for all concerned, and dragged Harry towards the far side of the dining room again. Harry went with him, looking back and forth. Honestly, you could set up a Quidditch pitch in this room and only have to slow down the brooms a little.
            He presumed there was some reason for the absence of one of the fancy long tables like he would have expected the Malfoys to have, but when he looked over at Malfoy, there was a tight expression on his face that prevented Harry from asking.
*
            Scorpius’s room turned out to be more like rooms: a bathroom, a bedroom, a playroom that probably had a fancier name like “Nursery of the Malfoy Heirs,” and a wardrobe that took up more space than Harry’s kitchen. Harry noticed that everything was done in light blue and green. He wondered if Malfoy or Scorpius had picked that out, but saw that the wardrobe, which Scorpius jerked open to take out Golden, was filled with blue-green robes, too. Well, Scorpius probably didn’t mind the color, at least.
            “I know how to make him do everything,” said Scorpius, turning around with Golden in his hands. “Except fly backwards. How do you do that, Mr. Potter?”
            “You can’t do that with this bird,” Harry said, bending down to study Golden and make sure he had that right. Yes, it was. George had invented a few birds later that could do more complicated things, but Scorpius’s model was an earlier one that had only simple flight and the other tricks Scorpius had discovered already.
            Scorpius stared at him, then looked miserably down at Golden. Harry sighed. “I can get you another bird that does that,” he offered.
            “I don’t want another bird,” said Scorpius, in a deep, soulful voice that reminded Harry of how fiercely he had been attached to his own few, pathetic toys as a child. “I want Golden to do that. I want him to do everything.”
            “Let’s see, then,” said Harry, and took Golden away to look at it. Scorpius hovered nearby, and Malfoy was in the doorway. Harry knew that without turning his head. Sometimes instincts one didn’t really want lingered.
            The more Harry studied the bird, the more certain he was. He could make Golden fly backwards, if that was what Scorpius wanted, but it would involve casting a spell on the bird. He didn’t know if Scorpius would want that when he seemed to see the bird as its own independent entity.
            “How do you feel about me using magic on Golden to make him fly backwards?” he asked, one eye on Scorpius to see if there was any anger in his face.
            But Scorpius only smiled. “Can you do that? What spell would you use to make a bird fly backwards?” He glanced over his shoulder at Malfoy. “Daddy hasn’t shown me that one yet!”
            “It’s not a spell that you would need often,” Malfoy murmured. Harry, taking out his wand, hesitated a moment. Malfoy sounded almost defensive.
            Maybe he didn’t like Harry getting close to his son, either.
            But Harry had already made a promise, and he was going to keep it. “He’s right, it’s not common,” he told Scorpius, and then tapped his wand in the middle of the bird’s back, accessing the flow of magic that he and George had created in the first place to make the bird fly at an owner’s commands—as long as they were polite. The flow needed to be altered in a few places, there and there and there. Harry stepped back and extended Golden to Scorpius again. “There. Now try it and see if he’ll fly backwards.”
            Scorpius held Golden up, his eyes fastened on the bird, absolutely enthralled, and said, “Golden, fly backwards, please.” Then he tossed it up into the air.
            Harry realized he was holding his breath. He shook his head, annoyed at himself. If this didn’t work, he would just tinker with the bird until it did. It wasn’t like this was the only chance he would ever have to gratify Scorpius.
            But Golden jerked, hesitated, and then began to row in a smooth reverse circle over Scorpius’s head. Scorpius laughed and lifted his hands to catch it, but the bird zoomed faster than he’d apparently reckoned on, and Scorpius had to charge after it. Harry relaxed when he saw that, smiling.
            “Thank you.”
            Harry cocked his head. He’d been involved enough in watching Scorpius that he hadn’t really noticed Malfoy moving up behind him. “You’re welcome.”
            “You are absurdly good with children for having none of your own.” Malfoy spoke without taking his eyes off his son, his fingers flicking and dancing as though he assumed he would have to intervene and take the bird away. Harry shook his head tolerantly. Malfoy was a bit overprotective, not that Harry was going to tell him that to his face. “Or do you play with your godson often enough for that?” His gaze came back to Harry’s face as if it had never left.
            “Yes, I play with Teddy a lot, although he’s older than Scorpius,” said Harry. “And I think Teddy would like to meet his cousins.”
            Malfoy jerked as if Harry had slapped him. Then he murmured, “My mother cut off contact with my aunt years ago.”
            “So what? You aren’t your mum.” Harry paused, as a more complex and disturbing thought came to him. “Or do you still think Teddy is rubbish because his grandfather was a Muggleborn and his father was a werewolf?”
            “You have no idea what I want and what I believe.”
            “Yes, I do,” Harry disagreed. “I know that you want the best for Scorpius, and you want my friendship. I know you cling to these pure-blood customs not because you believe in them, but because they give you a structure, and advice on how to react. That’s the most straightforward explanation for what’s happening with you, and the explanation I can accept best.”
            Malfoy jerked again, stared at him, and then said, “I don’t believe in blood purity.”
            “Then what’s your objection to introducing Scorpius to Teddy?”
            “He would want to know why he never met him before. And how do I know that your Lupin would be kind to him?”
            “You’re not that much of a coward that you can’t face up to a kid’s questions, especially not if you sought me out,” Harry said firmly. “And Teddy is kind to and interested in anybody I bring to play with him. But I think that he would be especially interested to meet blood kin. He’s used to not having any except Andromeda. Even if he ended up not being best friends with Scorpius, he wouldn’t mistreat him.”
            Malfoy was silent again, watching as Scorpius caught Golden and made him fly in circles, glancing over to make sure that they were watching him. Harry nodded reassuringly to him, which made Scorpius beam and take off again.
            “I—may have lied to Scorpius more than not simply taking him to visit his relatives,” Malfoy murmured. “I may have—told him that none of his relatives on his mother’s side were left alive.”
            Harry closed his eyes. The words struck him harder than he thought Malfoy could know; they sounded like something the Dursleys might have said, if Harry had had any living family left besides them and they knew about it.
            “Are you ashamed enough of that to make good now?” he asked instead. “Teddy and Scorpius should know each other.”
            “I notice that you never contacted me and proposed this before now.”
            “Because I thought there was no way in hell that you would agree to it,” Harry said simply.
            Malfoy hesitated again. Then he muttered, “All right. Scorpius will meet his cousin and his—his great-aunt. But give me a little while to tell him.”
            Harry nodded, and squeezed Malfoy’s hand, and said no more. It had occurred to him as he spoke that Malfoy would also be meeting his aunt and one of his cousins, but he might not like to have Harry notice that, what with his touchy pride. Harry could let it go for now.
*
            Lunch was delicious, sparkling fish baked and glazed and salted in a way that Harry had never tasted before, carried in by the house-elves on platters and in different ways until Harry had to fling his hands up in self-defense. Scorpius, who was sitting at the head of the table with Malfoy beside him and watching him, laughed.
            “You can’t eat anymore, Mr. Potter?” Scorpius himself was eating from plates little by little, Harry thought, which was the reason he wasn’t full yet. And Malfoy ate enough to seem substantial but not enough to fill him up. Harry decided that was probably due to special training Malfoy had received as a child. Harry’s training as a child regarding food had been rather different.
            Harry leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly. “No, it’s too much,” he said. “But it’s very good, and I look forward to having lunch here sometime in the future.”
            He looked directly at Malfoy as he spoke, and saw Malfoy flush. Well. Hard to tell from that whether he intended to invite Harry back in the future or not, although Harry assumed he would, if only to gratify Scorpius. Malfoy toyed with a glass and looked away instead, so Harry drank from his own glass of water and tried to answer Scorpius’s questions about running a prank shop.
            “No, it’s not that exciting. We don’t have explosions all the time,” Harry finally said, and Scorpius looked so disappointed that he laughed. “Would you want to work in a place that has explosions all the time?”
            “Yes,” said Scorpius firmly. “I only saw one explosion in Daddy’s lab, but it was fun!”
            Harry couldn’t keep his eyes from darting over to Malfoy’s face, even though he had made himself that private promise to try and leave Malfoy alone. He wasn’t sure what surprised him more, that Malfoy could make mistakes brewing potions or that he had allowed Scorpius into the lab to watch them.
            “Since that explosion, I’ve kept Scorpius at a safe distance,” said Malfoy at his most formal, apparently deciding that Harry blamed him for Scorpius ever being in danger at all. “And I have told him that he cannot observe me without alerting me that he was there. I saw him from the corner of my eye and got distracted.”
            “No, that’s a good idea,” Harry agreed. “I wouldn’t want a kid too near while we were making the pranks that could explode.”
            “But why can you be in danger and I can’t?” Scorpius turned around and stared at him. “Daddy said that you were in danger all the time! If you could be in danger when you were a kid, I should be able to!”
            Harry blinked a couple of times, and wondered what stories Malfoy had been telling Scorpius. He wasn’t saying anything right now, and Harry had to be the one to answer the question, since Malfoy wasn’t stepping forwards to volunteer. “I wasn’t in danger when I was your age. And I was only in danger at Hogwarts because the Dark Lord kept trying to kill me.”
            “You mean Voldemort?”
            Harry jerked a little. He hadn’t expected Malfoy to use the name with his son. Malfoy had changed more than he’d thought.
            Malfoy gave him a tight little smile and gestured back at Scorpius, so Harry turned around to study him. “Yes, I mean Voldemort,” said Harry. “But he only started hunting me after I came into the wizarding world, you know. That was when I was eleven. I grew up in the Muggle world until then, and I was perfectly safe.”
            “Muggles?” Scorpius wriggled closer to him. “Do they have all these inventions that you can talk to? Daddy says they do!”
            So Harry spent part of the afternoon trying to explain to Scorpius how phones worked, and how they were similar to and different from firecalls, and what a telly was, and even a bit about computers, although Harry himself wasn’t that familiar with those. Dudley had only got a computer and really used it after Harry started going to Hogwarts. When he was back, it wasn’t like he got to touch it.
            But what little he could tell Scorpius seemed to fascinate him, and sometimes Scorpius said something about wishing he was a Muggle. Malfoy just sat by and listened to that without comment. Harry approved. He really had matured. He probably knew that Scorpius would never want to give up magic.
            “That sounds wonderful,” said Scorpius, when Harry had finally come up with the last bit of information he had on computers. He leaned his head on the table and sighed. “You’ve had a lot of adventures, haven’t you, Mr. Potter?”
            “When I was a kid, and in the war,” said Harry. “Not so many since the war.”
            “But you work in a shop with explosions.”
            Since that was true, Harry couldn’t really argue. He was casting around for something else to talk about when Malfoy interrupted with a soft murmur, “Weren’t you going to finish that writing practice for me today, Scorpius?”
            Scorpius jumped the way Harry had when he heard Voldemort’s name. Then he turned and looked pleadingly at his father. “But Mr. Potter came over! And I can learn how to write anytime.”
            “You’re learning how to write now,” said Malfoy. “I told you when I said you could stay at home for school that you had to keep up with your writing and homework.”
            Scorpius looked as if he would pout, but Malfoy raised his eyebrows, and Scorpius sighed and said, “Fine.” He turned to Harry and held out his hand. “It was nice seeing you again, Mr. Potter.” He paused. “Will you come over again?”
            Harry shook his hand and smiled. “Yes, I will. I have to eat lunch here again and see if I can finish it this time, remember?”
            Scorpius brightened. “Oh, right! I hope you do.” He ran out of the room, calling for “Misty.” Harry assumed that was a house-elf who was supposed to help him with his education.
            “So.”
            Harry turned back to Malfoy and stood up. “That’s my cue to leave, too, isn’t it?”
            “I do want Scorpius to work on his writing,” Malfoy said, his eyes clear but burning. “I don’t want him behind when he goes to Hogwarts.” He stood up, gracefully enough. “But before you leave, there’s the little matter of the gift you bought me. I noticed you left it sitting at my gates.”
            Harry blinked. “Yeah? It was the wrong gift. I thought you were trying to tell me that you wanted a special friendship based on talking about our health, and I think that’s boring. So I brought a gift that would tell you that while still claiming friendship, but you were trying to say something different with a silver mirror. Why would you want a mistaken gift?”
            “It creates an obligation,” said Malfoy. “This time, I am obliged to repay you for the time and energy, and perhaps money, you invested in a mistaken gift. But for that, I need to know what it is.”
            Harry looked at him narrowly, then snorted. “And you might want to see it, after all,” he said, and then Summoned the box before Malfoy could say anything. The present settled into his arms, and Harry nodded and presented it gravely to Malfoy.
            Malfoy took it and looked as if he barely resisted shaking it. Then he undid the bow on the top with shaking fingers. Harry leaned back. He was going to enjoy this.
            Malfoy silently lifted out the mechanical butterfly inside, a lot like Scorpius’s bird, but made of blue-painted steel rather than golden. Malfoy opened his mouth to speak, and the butterfly fluttered its wings and said in a chiming voice, “You’ve done a good job raising your son. But why did you never give him bacon?”
            Malfoy stared between Harry and the butterfly. “How did you do that?” he whispered.
            Harry grinned. “You forget that I make pranks for a living. It was pretty easy to enchant this butterfly to say certain phrases that applied to you instead of anyone who might purchase it.”
            “But it doesn’t sound like your voice.” Malfoy turned the butterfly back and forth, seeming to admire the intense blue and black of the wings. Harry had picked the colors because he liked them and sometimes saw them in butterflies he admired, but he hadn’t known Malfoy would like them, too.
            “No. The butterfly gets an enchanted voice, and then I spell it to repeat certain things I say.”
            Again Malfoy gave him an intense look, and then he nodded and lowered the butterfly to the table. “I’ll keep it, then. But expect another gift in a week.”
            “One with a special meaning, this time?” Harry murmured.
            “The special meaning will be embedded in what it is. Custom is satisfied by me returning the obligation.”
            Harry was grinning as he shook Malfoy’s hand, too, and left. Perhaps Malfoy could be annoying and controlling at times, but he was a pretty good father, and he might be a pretty good friend.
*
BAFan: Thanks!
And this was in some ways a test of Harry, not that Harry would ever admit it. But Harry has shown he isn’t going to put up with nonsense.
delia cerrano: Harry actually doesn’t mind if his friends don’t want to associate with Malfoy. They only bother him if they insist that he doesn’t get to.
Jester: Oh, Harry doesn’t intend to live that way. He’s content to let Malfoy live whatever way he wants, though.
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That