Title: The Value of Family
Author: Aislinn Carter
Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, do you think I'd be sitting around writing fanfic and baby-sitting my way through grad school? Not likely.
There wasn't much she could say to her great-grandfather anymore that hadn't already been said a million times. She knew he knew who she was, and yet he still denied her, and would deny her for the rest of her days. His mind was filled with days of wars that began and ended, burning bright and furious before flaming out in their bitter glory, decades before she was even a glimmer in her parents' eyes. His mind was filled with a blood supremacy that no longer had a foothold in their world, filled with his glory days of superiority and grandeur. He knew who she was, but he didn't want to.
He stared out the window of his rest home, the best money could buy, purposely avoiding her gaze. She came to see him every week, and he rarely acknowledged her presence there, and even less frequently engaged her in conversation. Most days she sat silently with him for at least an hour before saying good bye and going back to her life among the living. His room was filled with relics of old times, faded pictured with their occupants avoiding the weathered edges, one picture in particular of an icy blonde who stared out in radiant hauteur, and another of the same blonde smiling softly down at a wriggling bundle in her arms. Books lined the walls, most in languages she would never know, some bearing titles she understood of pure blooded hysteria and ancient dark magic. She knew why he wouldn't acknowledge her, the same way he wouldn't acknowledge her father. He knew who he saw whenever he looked at her.
Today, he was in one of his more talkative moods. He waxed poetic about his days at the ministry, his glittering parties and the politicians he'd kept firmly in his pocket. He spoke in boastful tones about his beautiful wife and brilliant son, a son so brilliant he had brought the family back from ruin. And then he surprised her. For the first time that she could remember, he looked her straight in the eye.
"Do you know why my family needed to be brought back from near ruin?" he asked her, his silky tones deceptively calm. She kept a firm grip on the wand in her pocket, all her senses on high alert. He wasn't often prone to violence, but it had happened.
'Yes," she said simply. "Yes, I know."
"Care to narrate, then?"
"I'll leave it to you."
He sneered at her before looking once more out the window. "That Potter brat," he said softly. "He kept my son out of Azkaban, and my wife, and for that I suppose I should be grateful. An entire community, clamoring for our imprisonment, can you imagine? After all the donations I made, after all those whose pockets I lined and whose careers I created, they meant to destroy my family! The insolence," he hissed. "How dare they?"
She knew better than to remind him of why the community had demanded their imprisonment, knew better to remind him of the deaths that had inadvertently been caused because of them, knew better to remind him of the taint that still remained on the family name, that even after joining one of the greatest families in their community, still remained in some form. Knew better than to tell him, it was his fault, his alone.
"He kept them out of prison, and sent me instead, which I knew, I knew I deserved. I was weak, I'll admit, my one weakness, ah but in the bloom of youth, we are all foolish, hmm? Dreams of glory and power and world domination! I should have made my own glory, but instead I followed a madman who was defeated, twice by that brat! Twice! I should have taken my family and ran after his first fall…It was my one failing, I admit."
She knew better than to echo one in disbelief.
"Ten years in Azkaban…I had a grandchild already by the time I was released. I had missed my son's wedding, my grandson's birth and infancy. I missed my wife, growing old and withering without me. She was barely the woman I knew when I came home, barely a shell…they had taken the life from her, you see…taken life, along with everything we held most dear."
She knew better than to question what it was he held most dear, if his wife and son were safe.
"It was that brat's idea, that my family should pay restitution to the victims. My family! When my wife saved him from death, when my son in the end fought on his side, when we knew we were wrong and admitted it…they still took from us! And they continue taking, that Potter and his ilk. They took my grandson, took him from his proud lineage and bloodline, diluted the Malfoy line with their poison and weak blood!" he stared at her now, fire in his eyes. "And now you…" he drew out the word, tipped it in venom. "You sit before me with his face, you evil, wicked, muddied child!"
She stared back at him, his face contorted with fury. "I am a Malfoy, Grandfather. I am not muddied."
"You are a Potter, a Weasley…your blood traitor muddied blood destroys the purity of my bloodline, my only heir destroying the Malfoy name!"
"Grandpa doesn't seem to have a problem with it," she said coolly.
"Draco doesn't have any sense left, if he can't see this desecrated union for what it is."
"Don't you think it's a little late to continue this? My brothers and I are full grown; my parents have been married for thirty years this autumn. I'd think you'd be used to the idea by now."
"I will never accept this desecration of my blood," he said softly, menacingly.
She sighed. "The times are not what they were, sir. All blood is equal now."
"There are others who think as I do. There must be separation!" he shouted suddenly. "Separation between the pure and the dirty!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way."
He stared at her again. His lip curled. "You…you with those eyes and that hair…slap a scar on your forehead, you may as well be him."
She pursed her lips. Her father was platinum blonde with gray eyes; her mother a fiery redhead with brown eyes. She alone of her siblings was the odd duck out. One brother was a strawberry blonde with blue eyes; another brother had dark blonde hair and brown eyes; the third brother had gray eyes and pale blonde hair, very much like their father. She alone was an anomaly, her sleek hair a dark tumble, with just the hint of red, her almond shaped eyes a brilliant green. From pictures she knew she was a brunette version of her long dead great-grandmother, and she knew that anyone would know to look at her which side of the family she favored, and it wasn't the Malfoys.
And it drove Lucius insane.
Her brothers he would barely tolerate. Sometimes he would hold borderline pleasant conversations with them. Her brother Orion, who favored the Malfoy side the most, was his favorite, if he had one. Leo, with their mother's eyes, was further down on the list. Sirius – named after an important, long dead distant relative – was his least favorite great-grandson.
And then there was Lyra.
Lyra was the very embodiment of his hatred, the one who was a walking advertisement of the "desecration" of his bloodline. For Lyra's mother was the daughter of Lucius' most hated enemy, the man who – in Lucius' mind – had single handedly brought down his world and his wealth and his position…Lyra's mother was the daughter of Harry Potter.
That Potter brat.
Lyra's grandfather Harry held no ill will towards the Malfoys, not anymore, at least. He respected her grandfather Draco – his school time enemy – for picking himself up from the shambles the second war had left his family in. He had buried any grudge he'd had long ago, for the sake of his only daughter. He and Draco would never be considered friends, but they shared grandchildren together and for that they were civil.
Lucius, on the other hand, had no such qualms, shared grandchildren or not.
Lyra knew from her grandparents what Azkaban had done to Lucius, even without the Dementors. She knew that her great-grandmother Narcissa's death, a scant year after his release, had damaged him in ways no one could understand. She knew a terrible case of Dragon Pox while in Azkaban had addled his brain, and the intervening years had only made it worse. He was more than a hundred years old now, and Lyra often wondered what unmerciful fate kept him alive with a continually deteriorating mind.
"I'm sorry my appearance aggravates you so much, Grandfather. I wish you'd love me on the basis of being your great-granddaughter – your only great-granddaughter –and not on what I look like or some decades old grudge," and for the first time during her visits with him, Lyra felt hot tears prick her eyes. Horrified, she let them fall, afraid to draw attention to them by wiping them. But Lucius saw.
"Do you…do you weep? Like an infant?" he asked, astonished.
She turned her face, embarrassment flaming her cheeks. "I am unhappy with your treatment of me. I've been a good granddaughter, coming to see you every week when no one else will. Even Grandpa Draco advises me against it, and still I come. I don't know why. A misplaced sense of duty, I suppose. I worry that you're lonely, and Grandmama Narcissa's portrait pleads with me to show you compassion…but what compassion can be had for a man who wants none? For a man who refuses to let old ghosts die? Voldemort has been dead for more than half a century…his ideas all but died with him, yet you insist on clinging to them. Why? What happiness does it bring you?" She turned her head to face him now, her green eyes blazing just as her mother's and grandmother's brown eyes did when they were angry. He looked startled. "Do you think Narcissa wanted you to die alone? Estranged from your only child and grandchild, hated by your progeny? Is that what she wanted for the man she loved? Your time may not be long, Grandfather. I suggest you make peace before it's too late." She stood up and picked up her cloak, turning on her heel to leave the room.
Her hand was on the door when he spoke. "You…you speak to Narcissa?"
She hesitated. "I keep her formal portrait at my flat. It was my favorite, when I was a child, and Grandpa Draco offered it to me when I moved out on my own. He knew how much I love talking to Grandmama."
"And she…she enjoys talking to you?"
Why had it never occurred to her to bring up her friendship with Narcissa before? The long hours she had spent in conversation with her dead great-grandmother had been loving and pleasant, and she knew without a doubt that Narcissa would have loved her just as much in life as she did in death. "Yes, I believe she does. I regret never having known her…only knowing her through a portrait. It would be a kindness, Grandfather, for you to tell me about her. About what she was like in her youth…when she was my age."
There was a long pause. Then:
"I'll expect you the same time next week, Lyra Andromeda."
A faint smile crossed her lips, and she nodded her head. "Of course, Grandfather."
Once outside, the bespectacled man waiting across the hallway looked up. He gave Lyra a crooked grin.
"How was he this week?"
"The usual. I may have made a tiny breakthrough, I'm not sure. I wasn't able to share my news with him. Next week, maybe."
Her companion grinned again. "I don't know it there will ever be a good time to tell him you're marrying Neville Longbottom's grandson. That's one blood traitor too many in the family."
"Grandpa Draco didn't have a problem with it."
"Yeah, well Grandpa Draco is seeing sense in his golden years."
Lyra snorted. "I'd hardly say you're in your golden years."
The familiar green eyes crinkled as he laughed. The lightning bolt scar had faded and been written over by other scars, souvenirs from his days as an auror, but it could be seen if one was looking for it. The messy dark hair was no longer dark, but certainly messy. He was what his father would have looked like if he'd been given the chance, and no longer the boy-who-lived, but the man-who-conquered.
"We're hardly schoolchildren, Lyra."
"Maybe I'm just trying to suck up."
"I don't play favorites."
She snorted again. "Please. I at least have to be your favorite granddaughter. Or your favorite grandchild in general. Uncle James' and Uncle Al's kids are stodgy."
Harry laughed again at the picture of his son's children – all grown now and some married with children of their own – as stodgy. A further description couldn't be found, but then, Lyra was too young to remember the bedlam they had caused in their heyday.
He sobered at he gazed at his granddaughter, the only grandchild with his eyes, with his mother's eyes, and for that, maybe he did favor her, just as he may have favored Al. It was a part of the woman who gave him life, and then her own life for him, that would always live on. No one alive now remembered Lily Potter. The Weasleys – who had been as good parents to him as his own would have been – had passed on recently, and everyone else had been long gone. Aside diaries he'd found of his mother's in the ruins of the Godric's Hollow house (when he'd been brave enough to venture back and examine what was legally his), he had nothing but pictures to remember his mother by. Pictures, and the eyes staring away from him now.
"I know you're sad, Lyra-Lu. I'm sorry. I wish he was different. I wish he knew the value of family."
"I think he does, in his own way," she said thoughtfully. Then she smiled and hooked her arm through Harry's. "Well, Grandpa, I know I'll always have you."
Harry grinned. "You keep me on my old, stodgy toes, munchkin."
She swatted him for the childhood nickname and they walked down the hall of the rest home, arm in arm, laughing.