Note: I'm back! Thank you all for being patient with me. After writing non-stop for two years, I needed to rest. I can't wait to give you more of this story. If all goes well, there will be a total of three updates today, including this one. :-)
The sight of his daughter…
Nothing prepared him for that.
That sight struck his heart like lightning. His brain couldn't tell the difference. He stood helpless, seeing her all lit up like a human bulb. What he saw, was very different from what the others were seeing. All that white-haired illumination wasn't beautiful. It wasn't spectacular magic triumphing over all the dullness he'd heaped upon it. For him, it was the same as looking at flayed flesh revealing the horrendous exposure of human red meat and bone through her skin. That sight violated him more savagely, than anything Lucius had done to him. She was off limits. And yet he'd gotten to her from the inside. Harry's heart didn't know what to do with the mixed messages tearing its inner walls to shreds, sending his body into a stalemate of paralysis, fear and fury. Exactly whose ass was he going to kick in that moment? How could he help her? Save her? He shook, and never acknowledged the heart attack that would later be classified as congestive heart failure, as the tear between ventricle and aorta began to leak blood more noticeably in the coming years.
After he saw her eyes, staring so deeply into that gray wrongness, that unnatural icy silver, events bled together like spreading pools of color. Draco pulled her out of Harry's reach. Hermione's and Ron's panicked voices inflamed his loss of control. And all of his friends, using hands to restrain him, smeared those last few minutes into chaos and blame. They kept him from grabbing Iece and he hated them all for it. Here it was. The judgment. The unfit father stigma hiding behind their polite friendship all these years. He had every right to be freaked out by what he saw, but the way they were backing away from him, pulling him away from Draco, who ran with Iece for the stairs, admitted what they really thought. He was still crazy from the war. From his secrets, and ultimately no help to his daughter or to Draco. He felt helpless enough at witnessing such a horrific transformation in her. Keeping her out of his reach, only infuriated him more.
"She needs me," he insisted to Ron, who blocked his path through the door, letting everyone else pass him safely. At least, that's what he was trying to tell them all.
"You've got to calm down, mate. You're scaring everyone."
"Don't stand in my way. Don't stand between me and my daughter, Ron."
"Put your wand down. There's nothing you can do with it right now. We're getting her help."
"She needs me!"
"Look at you! You're shaking, you won't stop screaming. This is a muggle neighborhood, need I remind you? You've got sparks coming from your wand, you're going to hurt someone. No, I won't let you anywhere near that child until you calm down."
Instead of hearing the love, he only heard the accusation. He nodded. "You think I'm so damaged that I'm unfit to be around my daughter too? Well fuck you, Ron. All people see when they look at us, is the war and those bloody trials. She means more to me than that and you have no right to judge what happened."
"Harry, I didn't say anything about that. This is all about you waving that thing around right now. Just relax and you can ride with us to the hospital."
"You think I might hurt her because she…" He couldn't even say it. But that didn't stop Ron from understanding.
"No, I don't. Look, we have to go."
"I know what I have to do." He hunched his compact body, and charged like a bullet past Ron, ramming him aside. He took the stairs, skipping steps and vaulting through gravity, to the hallway below. He hit the door, springing onto Hermione's porch after Iece. He didn't know if his screams caused her to panic, to step on the gas, or what. All he saw, was the car pulling away, with Iece in the back seat. It only lurched a few inches, and his wand was casting an immobility charm to get her back.
There was so much confusion in that moment. Hermione, Draco, Ginny, and Luna must've concluded that he was out of his mind and attacking them to get to her. Everyone knew he wasn't thinking clearly. The car stopped. When they came out of it, it was with the intention of subduing him and getting him in with them. But Harry saw their wands drawn, and he knew he couldn't give them the chance to harm him.
He had to strike before being struck. Just grab her and run. How Hermione's front yard had become a battleground, he didn't know. But Draco was out of the car, yelling at them all to put down their wands and tackling him to the ground.
"Harry! We don't have time for this," He gritted his teeth. Graceless spittle hit Harry's face. "I promise, she's going to be fine. Get in the car with us or we'll immobilize you."
"She needs me."
"You're scaring us. Just get in the car. Muggles are watching us."
Another failure. "How did he get to her? You saw his eyes. You saw them, didn't you?"
"Yes, I saw them. It's no one's fault. Get up."
He pulled Harry to his feet, but Harry's eyes were glazed with vengeance. "I'll kill him."
"You'll have to wait your turn."
No, he wouldn't. They were underestimating how much he hated Lucius, and how much he loved his daughter. The need to punch all his rage down someone's throat, showed him the face of the one person he should be confronting. One wizard. His friends weren't the problem, this wizard was. It was easy to see him reflected in Draco's complexion, in his bone structure, in the scent of his pureblooded breeding. The vision of Lucius standing in front of him, smirking, instead of Draco, nauseated him and he knew exactly what he needed to do before getting in that car.
He never heard the sirens. He never saw the cops coming. He used all of his focus to keep Draco away long enough to trace an air equation. He held up his wand and began drawing quick, equilateral lines. Draco rushed at him.
"We don't have time for this."
Harry shoved him away. "I'm protecting her."
The last thing he remembered, was slicing through the air with his wand and casting a portal charm. He'd never mastered the spell, and only seen it performed by one other person. He'd read about it, saw the value of it, but knew that learning it required an acceleration of magic that could only be had at the cost of compromising his ethics. The technique was synonymous with criminal activity. It was used in crimes of stealth, especially murder, where one could be there and gone in the next instance without being traced. It also pulled vast magic from the atmosphere, draining the resources of the natural world, and left an electromagnetic anomaly that took time to dissipate. For this, the technique flirted with being considered a dark art. So instead, he cast a basic intent for the spell, knowing it wasn't potent enough to create a stable portal. He just needed a window. A view onto the object he hated the most at that moment. His magic would find a way to deliver the message. He was absolutely certain. He possessed enough rudiments to see what he wanted through a rough outline that he'd hacked into the space in front of him.
He pictured Lucius Malfoy so strongly, that his vision opened onto a four dimensional representation of the real thing. There he stood, in the glory of his arrogance. The vision was so integrated, that Harry felt a breeze lifting the strands of Lucius' hair. Saw it disturb the short-haired sable collar of his dinner jacket. He smelled stone paths of honeysuckle and trained jasmine. He smelled a recent meal of spinach omelet and orange-cinnamon tea wafting in the air around them. He felt the pull of the space, of expanded distance beyond it. There was the vague suggestion of massive granite walls and a secluded garden, but he wasn't interested in that. He saw who he needed to see.
That wizard's brick jaw and blunt nose were turned in profile. He had the nerve to be standing, reflective, in his garden. The scenery behind him shimmered with elegant white blossoms, sunlit shrubs, and stepping paths of ivory calcite.
If he saw Harry, he made no indication. The view was merely a window, not a real portal. And Harry could not be sure that it was even in real time. For all he knew, a conglomeration of imagination and memories, composed of his desire to do serious harm to Lucius, created what he saw. A real Portal Charm took time and dedication to learn. The one wizard who performed it in front of him, the night the school had been overrun with Death Eaters, had left him aching to have that kind of ability at his disposal. There'd been no time to learn after that, and no one to teach him. His pace of life, with Draco and a growing daughter, kept him moving farther and farther away from such interests. Now, the demand for it, the need for it, had him reckless to use everything he thought he knew about it.
Two years ago, after Snape had rendered him immobile on the ground the night of Dumbledore's death, he remained conscious long enough to witness him stepping through an invisible shape. He'd drawn it with his wand and walked directly into it. The mathematical equations of different shapes conjured access to different types of portals and dimensions. It got very complicated when one had to acknowledge time and space as interpretations created by a physical brain, and many more realities existed outside of that perception. To go from one destination to another in this manner, went beyond the transport magic of a portkey or apparation. That night, while Bellatrix and Draco had ran off, Snape simply disappeared. Harry had never learned the real name for the spell, but he'd read up on ones that sounded like it.
And now it wasn't enough to simply see Lucius through the window he'd created. He had to reach through. He had to make it physical. He had to kill this bastard. If all he had time for, was a swing, he had to take it. As he drew back, he relished his aim. He had one shot. Knowing his fury wasn't going to have the time or power to do justice to the punch, he let his fist have full reign. There was no room for doubt, guilt, or caution. He was willing to break bones for the payoff of cracking Lucius' skull, or at least dislocating his jaw. If he could've summoned the power to kill with this one punch, he would've.
Everything in the effort warned him that he wasn't strong enough. He wasn't large enough. Lucius must've been twice his weight. And Harry was not a puncher. At least not growing up. He'd clung to magic just like all of his peers. But the past two years, locked inside a closet with the overwhelming need to strike out at the things haunting him, had changed all of that. And with Lucius, rarely ever being touched by the uncouth bend of a fist, evened the field a bit. Harry never forgot the way Sirius had punched Lucius like it was nothing that night at the Ministry. He'd hit like a muggle who didn't have magic and so had to be really good at it. Like a pro. That. Harry wanted to do that.
His swing landed, displacing enough bone and skin that he knew the kinetic energy absorbed meant loss of teeth, loss of consciousness, and a severe loss of arrogance. He wasn't going to be happy until he saw Lucius' pearly whites turn completely red. Or better, see some of them on the ground, adding splash to all those fancy white stones. And even then, he knew it wouldn't be enough. Turned out, one good punch, was all he had time for, before his friends had him on the ground. He struggled, but mostly he listened for his daughter's cry. She'd be scared and she wouldn't understand. He'd make it up to her. He wasn't a failure.
He'd hold her and he'd even tell her why he had to do that. He'd point. He'd draw the image of Lucius from his mind and say to her, "That is a very bad wizard. You are never to trust him. You are never to speak to him. And he's never to speak to you. You let Daddy know if he ever tries to talk to you."
No. That wasn't good enough. He'd have to take her away. Maybe hide her in the United States. That scenario steamed onto the screen of his mind as a myriad of hands jerked him into an upright position.
Red and blue lights confused him. If those were his friends watching from the side, who were these people holding him? Dark uniforms. Visors. Vests and radio holsters. Muggle cops. They swarmed him. He didn't try to decipher their shouts at him. It didn't occur to him that he was in any danger against the threat of firearms because he knew the average cop didn't carry them. He didn't fight because he wasn't a danger to them. In his stupor, he understood this and waited for them to figure it out. A punch to his gut bent him in half. His breath left him, and through watering eyes, he glimpsed at the reason they all appeared so angry.
Doubled over and pushed to the ground, his eyes fell on the body of a man lying behind Hermione's car bumper. Two more cops bent over it as blood stained the concrete beneath. He was still thinking that this was all a misunderstanding that would work itself out, and he hoped there would be a picture of Lucius in the Prophet, with a blood-smeared face. A fantasy. His portal might've worked, he'd felt it working. He felt the energy he put into the punch and his knuckles hurt from it, but he had no real way of knowing. That was his only proof that the portal had been stable for a second at least.
The cops jerked him to his feet and he got a better look at the person on the ground. Peering over a shoulder, he saw that it was a dark-haired woman. A female cop, her hat lay meters away on the grass. More sirens screamed down Hermione's street, pulling his attention to the ambulance headed their way and another group of police vehicles followed.
Sick, his legs gave out from under him. In cuffs, he fell to his knees. Later, he would be told that there were two ambulances. One for Iece, and one for the fallen cop. Later, when the Petrificus Totalus Hermione attacked him with, wore off, he would be told of how she took control.
Hermione couldn't tolerate another second of the chaos unfolding. She looked from Iece, who's tiny nose pressed against the car window as she cried for either one of her dads. She looked at her neighbors standing on their porches and gathering in groups along the street. She took in the cops leaping out of their vehicles and storming across her lawn to subdue Harry. The need to act rose like a tidal force within her. But fear of reckless exposure stayed her hand. It was a mess, and would get worse if nothing was done.
She couldn't let that child be scarred by Harry's loss of control. She couldn't let Harry, in his erratic state, fall into the hands of nonmagics who thought him dangerous. She was shaking as she withdrew her wand. No one was looking at her. All eyes were on Harry. He'd assaulted an officer. A woman. Accident or not, he would not be given fair treatment. He might not even make it to the muggle station alive. He could hardly communicate to defend his actions, let alone explain his behavior. She could see in his eyes that he didn't even know what he was doing. When she saw the officer hit him, she made up her mind.
"Ron!" She shouted, counting on the police to dismiss her as irrelevant to the emergency facing them.
Ron had thrown himself out of the path of the police and their pava spray. He was shouting, "He's not dangerous! He's not dangerous." Enough backup was arriving that he knew their numbers had to contain weapon specialists, who were the only ones that could come at Harry with any kind of firearms.
He looked at her. He saw her wand. "We have to get my dad."
"It's too late for that." Her voice trembled through the threat of hyperventilation as adrenaline climbed in her blood. Her body was getting ready to fight. Language was leaving her. Her voice shook, being unable to breathe and talk at the same time. "They'll try to contain the situation before they listen to anything. He's going to attack if they attack him."
She lost track of her own thought as she saw Harry struggle with his cuffs. Before he hit the woman, he didn't seem to be aware of the two officers approaching him and he kept shoving Draco off. The movements he'd made, made no sense to her. It was like he was drawing an invisible window that required a fair bit of precision. It had confused them all. The officers, seeing no obvious danger, stepped forward, trying to talk to him. She'd held her breath, wondering what she would do the moment Harry's magic revealed itself in front of them. Seeing Harry switch his wand to his left hand and draw back to let go with a punch from his right, sent shards of ice up her spine. She did not have a second to wait.
She threw her spell before the officer screaming at Harry could deliver a second blow. Both Harry and the cop fell to the ground. She tried not to think about the woman sprawled at the rear of her car. Instead of waiting to check her effectiveness, she spun and aimed the same spell to the police behind her. They didn't know what hit them. They had no time to respond to what she already knew had to happen. With retaliation abated, she knew she'd used the spell to cover too vast an area and too many bodies, to sustain it with any effectiveness. There were muggles backing away, running away, and still others staring in shock, not knowing what to do or what they were witnessing.
Ron gasped. "Hermione!"
The spell bought her enough time to tell the others, "Everyone take a direction. Use the stun to blanket the area in front of you. Ron North. Ginny East. Luna West. Draco South. Go!"
Ron wasn't ready. "Blimey, this is all kinds of illegal."
"Ron, they'll capture Harry. He won't be treated fairly. Muggles reserve the harshest punishment for crimes against law enforcement. Harry doesn't stand a chance."
Luna's high pitch interjected, "Which way is west? There's too much cloud coverage."
"Luna, your left. Ron, everything in Harry's direction. Ginny, everything to the right. Draco, everything behind me. Now!"
All of them blasted in their appointed directions. The spell was meant to target a specific person, so no one was sure how well it would adapt to a generalized area.
She compensated by adding her cast to each direction and felt a bit of hope when even the muggles down the street collapsed, frozen mid-run, as they tried to avoid whatever they had seen taking place on her lawn.
"That's enough," she stopped the others. "No one's moving. Just make sure no one is moving." She moved out of the little formation they had all made with their bodies. "We need a shield. We'll have to contain this block." She could hardly catch her breath to talk. "Help me put up a shield. No one can enter. No one can leave. And everything in it has to be obliviated."
Ron protested. "Are you mad? We don't have the wand power to do that. And that lady needs help!"
She knew the woman needed help, she could hardly forget the pain of seeing the violence done to her. An inability to answer every need all at once, sent frustration ripping out her nerves like wires.
"Ron, I'm trying. Levitate her to the ambulance. Get it down the street. Wake the drivers up and let them get her to a hospital. Obliviate them first. And no, we don't have the wand power, but the Ministry does. If we can quarantine this area, word can't get out. We can try to use a mass obliviation at least. That will take care of everyone standing in the open looking at us. The Department of Magical Breeches and Damage Control have more powerful spells. All we can do is try, we have to get the baby to a wizard hospital and she can't go by magical means."
"Why the bloody hell not?" Ron's eyes were wild at the thought of the tasks given to him. He didn't see Draco spin on his heel.
"Because she's sick," Draco yelled at him. "Or didn't you see how unstable all that effort to hide her appearance made her? I can't believe I let you people do this to her."
Ron looked ill from disgust. "Don't you fucking dare turn this on us. Whose bloody idea was it to have a fucking beauty pageant-tea party in my kitchen? I don't see your lawn littered with wounded cops and terrified muggles. I let you and Harry back into our lives for two bloody weeks, and we're back to cleaning up your dysfunctional apocalypsis that you call lives. You are not going to blame us for this, Malfoy."
"Those are some fancy words for a person who couldn't even pass his auror training and had to settle for being a night guard in his father's Muggle Artifact Department."
"Take that back." So Draco's been checking up on him. It was a sensitive issue. It had taken three tries to pass the rigors, but he'd done it. He was certified. He was an auror, but he'd declined the post offered to him. He'd had to take training more seriously than he'd ever taken school. The struggle to keep up had taken an emotional toll and he felt he owed himself a year of light security work, and rest, before plunging into high-risk investigative work. Also, he was still grieving over his brother's death, and told no one how deeply what he'd witnessed, affected him. He still had nightmares about what was done to Harry. Sometimes he saw Fred in Harry's place at the Malfoy mansion that night. Sometimes he saw Voldemort attacking Harry instead of Lucius. He wasn't ready to put himself back into the firing line of crime. He'd gotten certified to prove to himself that he could still function. He'd needed a focus. But that didn't mean he was cut out for it. He was happy to work near his dad. He wasn't about to explain his private feelings to Draco, who needed him and Hermione more than they needed him. He didn't know everything about why the prat was bothering his girlfriend, but she'd asked him to be nice about it, and he was doing his best.
"You two!" Hermione's voice deepened with rage. "Now is not the time."
Shrill screams cut her off.
Everyone turned to see Iece still in the car. How long she'd been screaming, they didn't know. She was obviously reacting to the sight of Harry's fallen body. Plump fingers smacked at the glass that stood between her and her daddy. Redness in her face alarmed Draco so badly, he abandoned his formation and ran to get into the seat to hold her. He slipped in the grass, his feet drawing attention to how the tires of Hermione's vehicle were shaking. They all squinted to be sure of what they were seeing. Those tires were at least an inch off the ground and the back windshield had started to splinter. The child's magic was reaching beyond her, reaching for her daddy.
Draco ignored worries of what the car was doing, in favor of calming her. That was imperative. Her little limbs put up twice the fight as he gently held her arms against her and crushed her to him. He made a vice of his embrace and she squirmed and screamed in his ear until he was using his whole body to rock her and promise her that Harry was okay. "He's asleep, Nicee. Daddy had to go to sleep. He's okay, I promise. I promise."
Hermione glared at Ron until he backed down. He aimed his wand, careful to brace the wounded woman's whole body in protection as he moved her from the ground to the ambulance waiting by the curb.
The facility was one of a few, hidden within the metropolis of London. On the drive there, Ron sat up front with Hermione, while Ginny and Luna squeezed into the back with an unconscious Harry. Draco's long limbs curled in on Iece, who cried herself to sleep in his lap. During the thirty minute drive, the car fell silent as uneasiness crackled in the air.
Ron wanted to risk taking Hermione by the hand and apologizing, but all he managed was a hand on her leg. In spite of tears that she couldn't get to stop flowing, her driving was steady and sure. She knew what she had to do and he loved that quality about her. In the end, she grabbed his hand and clung to it.
"It's going to be okay. The doctor will say it's shock. The Ministry will clean everything up. I got a hold of Bank's assistant, and your dad. I'm sure they're combing the neighborhood right now. Even if we've missed some eyewitness, no one will believe them. Muggle dispatches can't be obliviated, but the Ministry will know what to do. We'll be honest. We'll tell them exactly why we did what we did. Under the new rehabilitation program, it's a Civil Desperation Act and we can't go to Azkaban for it. We'll face lighter sentencing. Low security incarceration. Thirty days to six months, maximum. We can survive that. We didn't deliberately hurt anyone. Neither did Harry."
He knew the tears were just as much for her damaged career as they were for Harry and his daughter.
Even if the Ministry cleaned it up discreetly, the incident would be considered a tarnish on Wizarding reputation and her personal ethics. Getting her license to practice would come into question. She might be barred from ever practicing law when this got out. Legalities were one concern, but as survivors of the war and the trials that followed, all of them had upended their reputations and risked investigations that would put them on trial all over again. What they did was illegal as hell. They'd attacked innocent muggles in order to keep Harry from being arrested.
"They would've mistreated him," she sniffed. "They were. We did the right thing. It's not as if he's a common criminal. We couldn't let it happen and we couldn't expose our world. We'll be fined, we'll be slapped with community service, but I'm perfectly willing to pay my debt to both societies, in order to demonstrate my honesty and morality. My clients will trust me all the more when they see that I have firsthand experience with legal disparity, and how willing I am to make things right again."
She was talking through her fears, telling herself that her career wasn't over.
Ron leaned toward her. "Forget your license. Something like this could set us back another hundred years in the public eye. Imagine the riots, the overreaction. The hate crimes and headlines. Wizards overpower muggles to keep a female-bashing Harry Potter from getting the same treatment anyone else would be given. We shut up about it and leave it at that. It's not as if this is going to be all over the news. The Minister's team will catch it in time. But if we talk, outrage will spread like wildfire."
"But Ron, you can't hide things like this. Not adequately, and not forever. When the truth comes out, I want to be able to say we endured the legal ramifications of our actions. Actions, which could not be avoided, and were done to prevent more harm to the Wizarding world itself. I don't want it to look like we got off completely. I believe in the law and I have to represent it. If that means doing time, I will."
"Look, that all sounds terribly noble and honest, but it's shit. Don't tell the Ministry any more than you have to. Confessing like that might make you feel better, but it's just going to prove that we helped Harry cover up a horrendous mistake. This is the kind of thing you can't do halfway. Either you keep your mouth shut, or everything comes out."
"If we try to keep this secret, then we'll really give people a reason to hate us. Nonmagics, especially. They already fear us. What we did back there, was unfair to them. No one would step in for them, the way we prevented Harry from going to jail. I'm supposed to be defending the very people who don't have our magic or our advantages, not using it against them. I have to make this up to myself, by making it up to the muggles and wizards who put their confidence in me."
"What are you, running for office? There's no point in trying to explain this until we have no choice. Harry will either have to do serious time for this, or fess up to why he did it in the first place. Then we're all going to get drug back into that…"
He almost said, "Malfoy hell," but corrected himself, glancing at Draco in the backseat. "And his daughter will likely go to foster care. There is no cleaning this up, Hermione. Tonight, we're the bad guys. Face it. Choose Harry or choose jail time. Think it through."
"How dare you! I've thought it through. We're looking at incarceration no matter what we do."
"Right, so we might as well keep Harry in the clear for as long as we can. If I do time because I sided with my friend, that's one thing. If I get out of most of it because I turned him in, that's something else, isn't it? There's no middle ground on this."
She kept her eyes forward, but looked like she couldn't find the right words. "Ron, I am the middle ground. I swore to be a bridge between Muggle and Wizard law. I swore to help people caught in the middle of magical laws. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing."
She seemed embarrassed by a sob that barely let her finish her words.
"Well, your expertise has certainly jumped a notch today. Muggles call it a curve ball, right? Maybe this is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. You can't help people if you haven't faced what they're up against."
He reached up and stroked her cheek, wiping her tear away. She let him, leaning into his touch. Those tears were the most obvious sign that she understood better than he, that they couldn't hide this from public scrutiny. Not for long.
Lucius's first thought, when he couldn't figure out why he was on the ground tasting blood, was that he'd fainted. He'd been surveying the West garden, taking solace in how well his family's magic maintained the five hundred year-old estate. He'd been appreciating the statues, the water features, and a quality of daylight that hit every leaf and blossom at an angle of sublime perfection. Freedom. He drank it on the breeze as if he were sipping tea by the ocean. No one knew what it meant to come back to this. To come back to his magic. To himself. It felt good for the obvious reasons, but the last few months, had him suspecting there was more to it than survival. He had work to do. He had a purpose. And that was better than happiness.
Whatever violence threw him to the ground, it had caught him off guard and dreaming. This embarrassed him, as if he were being spied upon without the advantage of knowing his attacker. But his mind had been in the middle of wondrous things. He lay stunned. It took a moment to recover from the unseen blow.
In rare moments, when he wasn't gripped by bitterness, and things that could not be changed from the past, the world appeared extra glossy. It brimmed with light and enhancements that made him wonder if he'd developed a tumor from enduring the stresses of prison. But then, in quiet moments, given spacious solitude around him, he had to admit that it was something else. Something quite unexpected. It was peace. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He didn't trust it. Yes, Voldemort was gone and he'd sacrificed a lot to keep his family alive. It made sense that he'd have to rebuild relationships from a wasteland of empty, frozen husks leftover from the war.
His home was practically empty. A son who wasn't speaking to him. A wife whose loyalty strained under his inability to make her feel cherished. And yet, all this beauty. All this potential. He'd only valued the surface before. Now he appreciated the roots that went deep into the earth, to hold this fortress for him. Most of his business associates had lost their lives in the war, so there was very little to distract him from ideas of filling the manor with renewed life. With Draco's wife and children. Sometimes, the place was so stunning in its beauty and loneliness, that he just knew he could turn it into a haven for family again. In his weakest moments, he was willing to make a deal with Draco. With Harry. He saw his little girl's silvery locks bouncing as she ran to him, down the hall, through an expanse of arched windows that lit her pretty yellow dress, right down to the tips of her patent leather doll shoes. Her tiny footfalls, along with her laughter, kept the spirit of the mansion awake and eager for all the new life she was drawing into the house. All the growth. All the men competing for her affection, competing to protect her the most and remain indispensable to her, even when her teenage years might see them snubbed for boys her age. He could do that. He could be a father. A decent one.
He once was. Voldemort's tyranny had made everything an issue of survival. It brought out the worst in everyone. He had to be forgiven for the things he'd done to his family. They survived, didn't they? If he hadn't done those things, there would've been nothing to come back to. When the estate was lit this magnificently, he felt sure he could convince Draco and Harry of this. They just needed more time. War calls for monsters. Peace calls for fathers. Why would life show him his daughter laughing through the house, if there was not a way to make it happen? To be forgiven. Yes, Harry was a little shit, but he not only defeated Voldemort, he had the one jewel that was growing more valuable to Lucius everyday.
She was worth negotiations. A truce. If he made peace with Harry, then Draco would forgive him. Draco would finally stop trying to make up for his father's sins and let Harry live his life. Let his sister live her life, and stop pretending to be some nursemaid to her. He'd marry. He'd raise his own in this house, right alongside Harry. The family could be even greater than before. These were the dreams he didn't trust, yet he roamed his grounds just to see them unfold in his mind. That's what he'd been thinking, when an invisible fist smashed into his jaw.
Some flashback, some fitful Azkaban memories, sometimes had that effect on him. Things he didn't want to remember, had a way of attacking him. Rather than face those desolate moments, where the last of his control had been denied him, he self-obliviated. It was automatic. His magic did it for him. He would rather be dead than admit to the horrors he'd survived. So death came in the form of temporary black-outs. Thank goodness he was alone today, with no one but the elf who'd served him brunch, to witness the sprawling mess he'd made of himself.
He lay on his stomach. Grass stains perfumed his sinuses with rich earth and chlorophyll dampness. He wrinkled his face in disgust. The taste of salt and metal filled his mouth. He spat an excess of it onto the ground. Bloody strings of saliva appalled him. That's when he noticed his servant, Millie, watching him closely.
"Master is awake now? Millie could not get him to open his eyes."
"What happened?" His arms shook as he lifted the bulk of his shoulders and rolled onto his back.
"You's fell. You's bleeding. Millie will heal Master Lucius, now."
"Wait." He sat up, rubbing his jaw. When his hand came away red, he stood and reached for the silver picture containing his tea. In it, his reflection startled him. All of his teeth were lined in blood and a gentle nudge with his tongue confirmed that some of them were loose. Fucking hell. He must've landed on his face. The blackouts had only happened three times since his release from Azkaban, and always when he was left alone with his most aggressive memories. He couldn't look at them. This was the first time he'd ever suffered physical harm because of them. This occurrence alarmed him, and stirred an already active worry of advanced deterioration because of what he'd suffered in prison. Six months with dementors had taken so much of his vitality, and his freedom had yet to restore it fully.
In lieu of meddling mediwizards, who reported everything to the Ministry, he relied on potions and elf magic to keep himself discreetly diagnosed.
"Scan me. Was it a seizure?" He'd see a doctor only if he had no other choice. Elves were not doctors, but Millie's magic could tell him if his brain was behaving abnormally. Damaged tissue showed up to her like dark spots. She could repair teeth, but she could not regenerate gray matter and deeper tissues. If his body was in decline, he would have to do something about that.
She shook her head. "Master's body does not betray him. It's the man. The man Master has forbidden all house elves to speak of. His magic was here, but he was not."
Lucius raised an eyebrow and looked incredulous at her. "Harry Potter was here? And nothing stopped him?"
She hunched her shoulders, bracing herself for his anger. "The same magic you take to him, the same one he takes to you. Master and the forbidden one are united by blood. He may come as he pleases. Millie and servants can do nothing to stop it. Wards don't stop it. The estate accepts the forbidden one."
"Are you telling me, that Harry is legally and magically recognized by this estate as a legitimate member of this family?"
She shrugged. "He comes through. He is angry and fighting my Master. Too fast for Millie to stop. He strikes from far away. You bleed here and now. He comes with your permission, through a door you has opened."
That was the trouble with elves. They always knew more than one wanted them to know. But their saving grace was that they kept your secrets. Besides, he couldn't be sure that his clandestine visit to Harry had actually affected him in the physical world. He'd had his suspicions when the Prophet ran that delicious tidbit of Harry looking quite assaulted in his underwear, in that hotel bathroom a few days ago. It wasn't proof. Nothing was proof. Except maybe all this blood and his loose teeth. Did he really have an open connection that allowed two-way interference with the young man? He'd have to test it. He'd have to keep Harry from using it against him.
He asked Millie, "Does he know? Does he realize that his thoughts are affecting me?"
She shook her head. "No. He strikes blind. But it will not always be so. He will see what you did when his anger subsides."
He had an answer for that. "Then lets keep him angry."
He may have been leaking his life-fluid at the moment, but this was an interesting turn of events. The child obviously afforded him a deeper connection with Harry, whether the young wizard liked it or not. That meant that both their magic honored his rights. The blood knew where it belonged. While he could not control something so unpredictable as extrasensory contact, the idea of returning to Harry to test it, had him rubbing metaphorical, greedy hands together in anticipation. The last time he'd dared to touch him in that way, he thought he'd been touching a fantasy. Fantasizing vengeance. He had sated himself on Harry's inability to fight off dream demons. He thought his imaginings unusually vivid. Unusually tactile, but celebrated his magic's ability to give him the illusion he wanted all the same. Would he have done it if he'd known that Harry might really feel it?
The connection alone, acknowledged his Wizarding rights to Harry's bed. However unwillingly, they created a child together. It was magical law, practically contractual, that Malfoy assets would claim Harry like property. Especially since his value had increased when he dealt the killing blow that freed them all. With his and Draco's intimate living arrangements, Harry was practically enveloped in Malfoy investiture. Never mind how things started. The child made him family. He belonged here. Once Lucius makes it clear to him, that he's safe, that Lucius would denounce any claim on his bed and his body, so that he and Draco could go on pretending to be the little family unit they fancied themselves to be, Harry would feel compelled to forgive. That's what his kind did. He'd do it for her, and that was good enough for Lucius.
He didn't see himself having any trouble staying away from Harry's bed, now that he knew he had other avenues to vent his temptation. He had never been motivated by sex, but by power. That's where Harry's attraction came in. While he preferred not to think about what the two boys got up to, with their scars, their curses, and their shared trauma, he was willing to tolerate the reality of emotional damage, and what they did to cope with what the war had done to them. Let them play house. Let them play with their bits, for all he cared. They were still boys. Still running. When Harry was ready to learn what it means to possess a magical bond with a Malfoy man, Lucius would be waiting.
His wife knew perfectly well what it meant, when her family's bracelet burned its Gringott identifier so strongly onto her ledger, that she had to be contacted to come and retrieve it. The thing wanted out of that vault. It had a purpose. Like it or not, Narcissa was going to have to share her husband. It wasn't about vows. It was about magic. They'd been forced to discuss it. They were ambassadors of decorum no matter how much pain was involved. She would be given certain reparations to assuage the insult to her marriage.
He'd granted her the freedom to take a lover, not that she'd wanted to, and signed over a percentage of his recognition as Head of House and Finances. On paper, they were more business partners than man and wife. But their bond ran deeper than a marriage bed and titles. Their marriage was stronger than ever. They'd withstood Voldemort, they would survive this as well. Draco was still the brightest light they had created between them. Even estranged from them, he shone. His obsession with Harry was, at times, like enduring a very costly acquisition. Tedious, but worth it. Between Draco and his sister, Harry's influence was expanding the life of the family and setting up unprecedented possibilities. Forgiveness was on the horizon. That's what waking up to the brilliance of the estate meant to Lucius, instead of waking up to dementors. Life was not a cozy sea-side cottage to the Malfoys. It was a chess game. If they weren't winning, if they weren't strategizing, they weren't living.
Now the newspaper photo took on new meaning. He'd saved it, feeling the need to keep it from Narcissa's sight. Oh, she'd seen it, commented sadly on the predictability of Harry's behavior, and frowned at the implications. But she would've had the copy discarded into a bin if he had not made a point to take it into his separate changing room. His was more of a lounge for brooding in expensive bathrobes, and looking magnificent while doing so, than a bathroom meant for efficient hygiene. He went to it to relax and to exert polite distance between himself and her. She did the same in her private part of the house, and they respected the others' need to indulge in self-centered luxury. It was how they came together so well, when they did.
How soon he could get back to testing his connection with Harry, he didn't know. His magic was still recovering and seemed to work when it wanted to, and not just because he desired it. A more pressing thought, told him that he should be looking into Gringot's archives of his assets, both financial and magical. If Harry was recognized as family, his name would already appear in those bound ledgers. And if Harry was entitled to pass through his wards on the basis of mixed blood, then he could demand a look at what Harry's vaults entitled him to. The boy did kill Voldemort, after all. Any inheritance in his blood, would only enhance Lucius' own magic. Funny, the secrets Goblins held onto. They could wait decades for the most opportune moment to barter with information.
They should've contacted him and Narcissa the moment Harry became family. But then, he would've gone to prison that much faster and precious Harry would've been found to be the liar who let Draco take the heat over the child's existence. Goblins pretended to mind their business very well, and pretended that money was their only concern. They would not be found guilty of knowing more than they did about the joined bloodlines. They were not expected to testify as expert witnesses, which would be a conflict of interest for all who do business with them. So they might be the only ones who knew the truth, besides those immediately involved.
He would get to that. Pay a little visit. For now, he turned to Millie and allowed her to fix his teeth.
Note: Hi there. I am not a British citizen, so I'm not maintaining accurate slang and terminology. I've only read that UK "Bobbies" don't carry weapons, but specially tasked officers do. I've superimposed American issues onto British culture. That's a creative choice and in no way reflects life in the British Isles. The opinions of my characters are not necessarily my opinions about anything. If people like Lucius pisses you off, keep in mind, I'm using them to extract the most drama I can. In real life, I prefer peace and equality for everyone. Thanks.
