And also, um, this chapter features the guest appearance of the Evil Cliffhanger. Sorry, but otherwise the chapter would have gotten too long to let me update today. It's already the longest chapter so far.
Chapter Fifteen: A Very Malfoyish Christmas"But you can't," said Connor, for the twentieth time, as if he hoped to wear Harry down by simple repetition.
Harry had to admit he was close to that. He tossed the last of his clothes in the trunk and turned towards Connor with a sigh. "I have to," he said. "Draco called a life debt on me. I don't have any choice." He had told his twin what had happened in the forest—for the most part. Having Connor know the extent of his magic was dangerous. Having Connor know that he'd had an argument with Draco, chased him into the Forest, and rescued him from centaurs was not. Of course, it would have meant more if Connor had paid the least attention to anything his father or Sirius said about pureblooded wizarding rituals. "I promise that I'll come back safe from Malfoy Manor, Connor. I can't do anything else."
"But you'll miss Christmas with me," Connor whispered. "We've never missed a Christmas together."
Harry felt his mouth curve in a genuine smile. "I know," he said quietly. "But I promise we'll spend next Christmas, and all the rest of them, together. All right?"
His twin looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded. That will and iron determination that Harry usually saw focused on the Snitch shone in his hazel eyes as he said, "But if you don't come back from the Manor alive, then I'll hunt down and kill the Malfoys myself."
Harry let his brother hug him, and then leave the bedroom. He ignored the stares of all the Slytherins on the way, masterfully—better, Harry thought, than he himself ignored the Gryffindor stares when he visited the Tower. Of course, he'd been to the Tower many times, and this was Connor's first trip to the dungeons. Perhaps he was just less self-conscious.
"Finally! The prat is gone."
Harry rolled his eyes as Draco came out; he'd been hiding in the loo, refusing to be in the same room as Connor without insulting him. "He's not a prat, Draco," Harry snapped, tossing his last jumper in his trunk and then looking around. He couldn't see anything else that needed to come with him. There was the large pile of letters by his bed, the ones that had arrived from his parents, his godfather, and Remus almost immediately after he wrote them that he was going to Malfoy Manor. Harry hadn't opened any except the Howlers, which he had no choice about opening. As long as his parents didn't actually come to school and force him to go to Godric's Hollow—and they couldn't, not when a life debt was involved—then he was safe, and he'd deal with the letters after Christmas.
"Yes, he's a prat," Draco insisted, drawing Harry's attention back to him. "The first thing he did when he entered the common room was insult our color scheme. He's a plebian."
"Draco," Harry said with great restraint, as he charmed his trunk to levitate behind him, "if you went to Gryffindor Tower, you would insult their color scheme."
"Yes, but their color scheme deserves to be insulted."
Conscious that Draco would see absolutely nothing hypocritical about what he was saying, Harry gave up. "Come on," he said, curling his scarf around his throat. "We'll have to hurry if we want to catch the carriages to Hogsmeade."
Draco, of course, discovered that he was only half-packed, and flew around the room getting things ready. Harry leaned on the wall and watched. Draco hummed under his breath as he packed clothes, books, pictures, and small items that Harry could see no use bringing. He folded all the clothes neatly, and wrapped the more breakable things in cloth. He would have been every inch the Malfoy heir—
If it weren't for the humming.
Harry closed his eyes. Draco hums. If he can do that, I can survive a few weeks at Malfoy Manor.
"Come on, Harry!"
Harry winced as Draco's shout drifted back to him. The other boy darted ahead like a child, laughing and kicking up the snow behind him. Harry walked after him much more decorously, his trunk so tuned to his movements that it bobbed and floated up in the air when he raised his foot to step over a snowdrift that was higher than it appeared. Harry had learned that was a good method for making himself walk more slowly, and for making himself learn patience.
He had assumed they would take the Express to King's Cross Station, where Draco's parents would meet them, but Draco had laughed at the thought of going to London for a holiday. No, he'd told Harry loftily, they would walk to the outskirts of Hogsmeade, beyond Hogwarts's anti-Apparition wards, and his mother would come to Portkey them back to the Manor.
Harry had asked Draco why he rode the Express to get to school, then. Draco had gone off into a long spiel about tradition that Harry paid absolutely no attention to. He would either already know the pureblood traditions that Draco referred to, or Draco would have made them up.
This wasn't bad weather for a walk, Harry thought. It was cold enough to make his breath plume in front of him, but not so cold that he could feel the winter digging through his clothes and making his marrow freeze. Draco's laughter wasn't as loud from a distance. The wizards and witches that passed them bore Christmas colors on their scarves and robes, and the Hogsmeade houses themselves had decorations, mostly snowflakes charmed into not melting and pinecones enchanted to glow different colors, hanging from their eaves and windows.
"Harry!"
Harry snapped his head forward, blinking. For a moment, he couldn't see where the cry was coming from, but then Draco put his head around a house and motioned frantically to him. Harry sped up, and rounded the house to find Draco tightly holding the hand of an incredibly beautiful witch.
"Harry Potter," said Draco proudly, "this is my mother, Narcissa Malfoy. Mother, may I present Harry Potter?"
"You may," said Narcissa, and took a step forward, one hand held out. It was white, Harry saw, nearly as pale as the tumble of thick hair that she wore loose around her neck. The glow of warmth charms from the silver necklace clasping her throat explained her lack of a scarf or hat. Her face was fine-boned, the features elegant, in a way that reminded Harry of Sirius, or at least would have if Sirius ever looked like an adult. Her eyes were blue, very clear, and did not blink as she met his gaze. "I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Potter."
Harry bowed from the neck instead of taking her hand, using the delay to scan her hand for signs of a hidden Portkey, poisoned ring, or amulet. A silver bracelet on her left wrist radiated power, but had the pink glow of latent defensive magic; he would have to worry about it only if he was attacking her. He saw no signs of anything else threatening, and willingly pressed his lips to the center of her palm.
"Mrs. Malfoy," he murmured. "It is a pleasure to meet you. I come as a guest, willing to become a friend, and to abide by the laws of hospitality."
He stepped back. Draco's face was blank. Harry wasn't sure what that meant, but thought Draco probably hadn't recognized the courtesies he used.
Narcissa Malfoy's face was a different matter entirely—alive, her blue eyes holding the fierce, intent gaze of a predator. She had a faint smile on her lips, one that Harry was almost sure meant appreciation and admiration. "No one has used those words to me in a very long time, Mr. Potter," she said. "I believe the last one was my great-uncle Black, and he died when I was a child."
"I prefer the old ways, Mrs. Malfoy," said Harry. His adrenaline was up, thundering in his veins. He forced his hands to spread in front of him, intent and relaxed, fingers loose to show that he couldn't be gripping a wand. Of course, he didn't need a wand, but he doubted that he would have to protect himself if this gambit worked. "I understand that you are going to take us to Malfoy Manor with a Portkey. Do I have your word that this Portkey will land us outside the threshold of the Manor, so that I may accept your personal invitation inside?"
"Harry," Draco scolded. "You're being nonsensical."
"Hush, Draco," said Narcissa. She didn't say it loudly, or warningly, or with much of a tone in her voice at all, but Draco was instantly quiet. Narcissa didn't look away from Harry as she pulled a pebble out of her sleeve. "I swear to you that this Portkey shall deposit us outside the threshold, Mr. Potter. When we land, I shall invite you in. I swear that no harm shall come to you during the journey, or on arriving if you do not trust my promise of hospitality."
"Thank you," Harry said, and waited until both Draco and Narcissa gripped the Portkey before putting his own hand on it. Narcissa smiled at him in the moments before the world whirred, someone grabbed Harry around the waist, and they leaped forward through the twisting nothingness that a Portkey generated.
They arrived in a field of snow, unprinted and unmarked in three directions. Harry could feel the hum of enormous magic at his back, and was not surprised when he turned around and saw the Manor.
The house did not sprawl, for all that it was big enough to do so. Every part of this building had been carefully planned, Harry had learned when studying the Malfoys, and it looked like it. The windows pointed in all directions, but the ones looking in the same direction were always of the same size. The gray stone that made it up varied in careful, beautiful patterns, washing from a dark shadowy color near the foundations to one that was almost silver at the eaves, making it look as though the Manor were caught in a cresting wave. The manor's door was painted a faint color that Harry knew mimicked the most ancient Malfoy crest, which had simply been a silver serpent on a field of blue-gray.
And the wards were everywhere, massive and linked to blood and intent and power of magic and half a dozen other safeguards that Harry could not untangle in the moment before Narcissa spoke.
"By blood shed on the earth," she said, and Harry turned back in time to see her spilling three drops of blood on the snow with a tiny silver dagger, "I welcome you to our home. You shall have free use of the stone of our floors, the cloth of our beds, the fire that burns in our hearths. You may eat freely of our bread and our meat. And if any harm comes to you under our roof, then I will ask that the earth itself feel the treachery in my blood and rise up to destroy me."
Harry swallowed. It had not been the oath he would have asked for from her, being the most formal instead of the second most formal, but evidently he had impressed her enough to warrant it.
Of course, if he broke one of the guest-laws, or attacked a Malfoy, then he was fair game.
"In the name of Merlin," he replied, "I accept your claim. I promise in turn to leave the stones as clean of blood as I found them, the cloth as unstained with any foulness, the fire undamped by any mistake. I honor the bread and the meat, and the hands that made them. And I will ask that the earth reach through my own blood and congeal it to rock in my veins, do I break my word on this."
Narcissa's wound sealed with a white light, and she inclined her head. "In the name of Merlin," she said, "I accept your claim."
"Good," said Draco, stamping a foot. "Now, can we go inside? It's bloody freezing out here."
"Draco, language," said Narcissa in the same mild tone she'd used before, and Draco murmured an apology before scampering ahead to the door. Harry followed. He didn't think he was ready to be alone with Draco's mother right now.
He could feel the wards closing in around him, accepting and evaluating him. Most of them gave way at once; they were the ones designed to keep Muggles or Squibs away, or to search for hostile intent towards the family. Others lingered on his shoulders like suspicious snakes, at least until they realized the strength of his magic and the blood-promise which guarded him. Then they relaxed and melted away, and left Harry, blinking, to follow Draco.
The door opened before they reached it. A tall, slender man stood framed in it, staring out at them.
"Father!" Draco shouted gleefully, and raced towards him, arms spread wide.
Harry set his shoulders and tilted his head back. He was about to have his first formal introduction to a Death Eater. Of course, he had met Bellatrix Lestrange in far more intimate circumstances, but he hadn't been introduced.
He should have been laughing. He was not. The formality mattered. The purebloods had used games like this—or dances, as Sirius had once told him they thought of them—for centuries to cut out the less intelligent, the boorish, the less magically talented, and the rebellious, and to keep peace between and within families. This tune of strict manners had to be heard, had to be moved to, or the other dancers would turn vicious.
Draco turned and presented Lucius to Harry just as he had his mother. Harry barely listened. He was too busy meeting Lucius Malfoy's eyes.
Lucius looked like his son would look if Draco had first grown older and then frozen. Pale hair and gray eyes, yes, but Harry thought that he must have put on a mask of ice during the first war with Voldemort and never taken it off. Or perhaps this was his special mask for unwanted guests.
Harry frowned slightly when his eyes went to Lucius's left arm and a corresponding twinge traveled through his scar. Yes, I know that he was a Death Eater. There's no need for me to have prophetic dreams about that.
Lucius, however, surprised him. After that cold stare, he bowed and said, "I am glad that my son suggested a way we might meet, Mr. Potter. I have heard so much about you from him, and look forward to a beneficial exchange."
Harry breathed in deeply. There were traps in those words. He knew how to dodge them. "Your wife has been kind enough to grant me guest-right with a blood-promise, Mr. Malfoy." I'm safe here. "And I assume that your son has told you of the reason I agreed to come in the first place." Draco's life debt protects me. "With those in place, I see no reason why we should not speak in cheerful amicability." I know that you might try anything, and I am prepared for it.
With a slight smile on his lips, Lucius moved out of the way and used his cane to gesture into the house. "Welcome to Malfoy Manor, Mr. Potter."
"Thank you, sir," Harry responded, and stepped inside, his trunk bouncing behind him. Draco had already darted ahead, yelling glorious, incomprehensible nonsense about what room Harry would have. Harry made his way after him, beneath the gaze of disapproving portraits.
It wasn't actually the size of the house, Harry thought the next evening, nor even the presence of ancient and powerful artifacts, that made this place so different from Godric's Hollow. It was the dance—that unheard formal music playing in the background, except when Draco and Harry were alone, that guided everyone's movements and made him or her hyper-aware of every little gesture, every glance, every word.
Harry had expected to find it wearying. Much to his surprise, he was enjoying it.
He'd slept in a beautiful room without portraits, clearly kept for guests, with windows that faced east for sunrise-watching and a small panel of enchanted ceiling that showed any constellations he asked it to. A house elf had awakened him with pumpkin juice that morning, and he and Draco, after a breakfast so solid that Harry was amazed Draco wasn't as heavy as Vince or Greg, had raced out to have a snowball fight, sled, fly on the now-buried Quidditch Pitch, and argue constantly about small things that they forgot five minutes later. Draco had laughed and laughed, hard enough to crack his lips and turn his face red with exertion, and Harry had found himself smiling back, unable to miss Connor or his parents that much with someone who so clearly enjoyed his company.
Lunch had been much the same as breakfast, and then they'd sat and listened to Narcissa play the piano and sing old history songs while wind and snow flew around the Manor. Harry had read the songs, the ancient method of keeping wizarding history alive before the common spread of literacy, but had never heard them, and he sat shivering harder than he had outside while Narcissa sang, beginning to end, the tale of Hogwarts' Four Founders—their childhood, and how they decided, together, to create a center and heart of wizarding education. The song ended on a triumphant but lonely note, with Salazar Slytherin standing outside the school after the creation of a mighty spell, just before his legendary quarrel with Godric Gryffindor. Harry closed his eyes and immersed himself in the last lingering notes of the music long after it had ended.
Harry had bowed his head when the song was done, and chosen his compliments from the long list of formal ones approved by pureblood wizards down the generations, and the Black family in particular. Narcissa had accepted them with an enjoyment keener, Harry suspected, than if he had made up his own original words to praise her in. Narcissa appeared, in her own way, to appreciate his presence here as much as Draco did.
Lucius was—more of an enigma.
Harry lifted his head. They were sitting in the Malfoys' gathering room, the place the family would use for meetings specifically with invited guests or trusted relatives whom they didn't wish to bring into their most private counsels. The portraits on the walls were all refined enough not to stare at Harry, and the walls were crowded with books. Draco was sitting in the chair on the left side of the hearth with a book on the theory of wandless magic, Harry in a chair on the right side with a book on the history of Slytherin House that Draco had shoved into his hands with a glare that promised death if he objected. Narcissa sat opposite Draco on a divan, waving her wand and casting nonverbal spells that Harry didn't recognize into a silver necklace.
Lucius sat in a chair opposite Harry, heavy enough to be a throne, and stared at Harry the entire time.
Harry met his gaze for a moment. Lucius took a sip of his wine. He nodded to Harry, as though some point had been scored or some matter resolved, but he didn't stop staring.
Harry shrugged and turned back to his book. He knew the confrontation between them would not be long in coming, but for right now, he was going to read, and accept, even thrill to, in a strange way, the feeling of cool, appraising eyes on him.
"Harry, wake up!"
Harry blinked his eyes, groggily, and lifted his head. It was dark beyond his window, but someone was pounding on his door and calling his name.
"Wake up, Harry!" came Draco's muffled voice. "It's Christmas morning! Come on, Harry!"
Harry cast Lumos wandlessly, so that he could see where his wand was, and then used that to catch up his glasses. The room became a little less blurry after that, but it was still dark, still around five in the morning, and still early enough that the portraits grumbled and shifted in their frames.
Harry opened the door, and Draco promptly grabbed his hand and dragged him down the stairs.
"Draco," Harry tried to protest, as Draco tugged him towards the room they hadn't been permitted to visit yesterday, "shouldn't we wait for your parents? I don't think it's proper to go in at this hour—"
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter," Narcissa's voice said softly. Harry looked up and saw her leaning out of the door ahead of them, wearing a smile that would have done credit to a dragon.
"They're already here," said Draco, and shoved Harry ahead of him. "We do Christmas early at the Manor."
Harry shrugged helplessly, and then caught sight of the tree in the center of the room. All the breath left his lungs at once.
The only light came from the Yule log roaring in the hearth, and the tree itself. Captured snowflakes hung on its branches, charmed, as in Hogsmeade, not to melt, but also glowing with a dazzle of silver and golden sparks that traced the outer edges of their patterns, shining and then vanishing again. Others, or perhaps other spells, twinkled from beneath the needles. Harry saw garlands of pure light dodging and ducking around the snowflakes, changing their positions from moment to moment. On top stood a star, a snowflake made up of many smaller ones, the middle a dizzying maze, the outside fed with silver fire that seemed to coalesce from beyond the star, making it shine like the moon.
"It's like Slytherin come again," Harry whispered, the only compliment he could come up with at the moment, and the one most in his mind as he recalled the equally cold, beautiful song from yesterday.
"Thank you, Mr. Potter," said Narcissa, and then nodded to the enormous pile of presents beneath the tree. "The three near the outer edge are from us."
Harry blinked. "Mrs. Malfoy, you didn't have to—" He had brought gifts for them, as was a guest's duty, but they were absolutely traditional ones: silver rings that would glow when someone hostile was near. He had given them the first evening he arrived, and the Malfoys had accepted them with grave thanks. He had received his gifts from Connor and his parents before coming, and had given Draco his gift, as well, a jumper that would warm him up or cool him down on command. He had not expected anything from the Malfoys, simply to observe and be in the same room with them.
Narcissa bent near him. "And we would not have," she said softly, "if you had not impressed us so much."
Harry nodded hesitantly, and then joined Draco, who was already ripping heedlessly at the paper of his first gift. He let out a cheerful yell when he uncovered it. "A book on wandless magic! Thank you, Father!"
Lucius, sitting on the other side of the tree, nodded his response. Harry, looking back and forth between his cold face and Draco's beaming one, finally made out the answer to something that had been puzzling him—how Draco could come from a home where the music of the purebloods' formal dance played so strongly and yet act like he did around his parents. He could do it because he knew, with perfect confidence, exactly where he stood. He was enthusiastic about things he was allowed to be enthusiastic about, and otherwise proper. When he strayed over a boundary, as he had with Narcissa two days ago, she would correct him at once, and Draco obeyed at once.
It was nothing like the relationship Harry and Connor had with their parents, but Harry suspected it might work just as well.
"Well, Mr. Potter," said Narcissa, "please open your gifts."
Harry turned his attention to the first gift, which, when he opened it, proved to be from Draco. He held it up and caught his breath. It was a glass ball, and inside the ball floated a miniature model of the solar system, the sun a dazzling speck too bright to look at it in the center, while around it surged the nine planets and their moons. Harry gently touched the glass, and the rotation sped. He took his hand away, and it dropped back to the same stately dance it had been before, for every planet except tiny Mercury, which went on zipping around the sun like a Seeker after the Snitch.
"Thank you, Draco," he whispered. He had no special interest in Astronomy, but it was the beauty of the gift that counted, and it was very beautiful. Draco, in the middle of opening yet another gift, grinned at him.
"Now mine, Harry," said Narcissa, and Harry registered the change in name, the slightly greater warmth in her voice. She knew how impressed he was with her son's gift, and that had earned him points in her eyes.
Harry, filled with an eerie contentment, unwrapped the gift with the neatest silver paper. He smiled as he found a copy of the book he had been reading yesterday, on the history of Slytherin House.
"Draco told me that you had almost no prior knowledge of Slytherin, since you'd expected to be Sorted into Gryffindor," Narcissa explained. "I thought you might like this book."
"It's very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Malfoy," Harry said. "Thank you." He turned to the final gift, aware of Lucius's eyes on him.
He unwrapped what seemed a blank piece of glass at first; he thought it was a mirror, but when he moved his hand in front of it, nothing happened. Then he made out a shadow in it, located towards the side nearest the tree, and far more distant and shadowy figures located in what seemed to be the back of the mirror.
Harry blinked, and then shivered a bit as he recognized it. It was a Foe-Glass, a mirror that would show him his enemies. As they came nearer, it would show their faces.
"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy," he said slowly, and lifted his eyes to meet Lucius's. "I am sure that I will find it useful."
Lucius inclined his head, and said nothing.
"Oh, Mother!" Draco exclaimed, starting up suddenly. "I forgot! The sun is almost up."
Narcissa blinked, then stood. "Excuse us, Harry, please," she said, with a nod. "Draco and I always watch the sunrise on Christmas morning. It's a family tradition." She cast the Summoning Charm, and a pair of jackets, one large and one small, streaked into the room. She bundled Draco up, and then herself, and they left the room, hand in hand. Draco half-leaned towards his mother as he walked.
Harry watched them go, imagining what they must look like as they watched the sunrise together, and then turned as he heard a faint sound behind him. Lucius had risen to his feet.
"I find myself in need of some more light," he said. "My study has candles that light themselves. Will you not come with me, Mr. Potter? We have not yet had any private time to talk, and I would appreciate it."
Harry nodded slowly. He was alone with Lucius Malfoy, and he could guess some of the things that would happen in this conversation. Lucius had so far kept his claws sheathed, for the sake of his son and his wife. He was about to extend them now.
Harry noticed, with a sort of distant amusement almost hidden behind all the memories of pureblood customs he was marshaling, that the shadow in the left side of the Foe-Glass acquired a face as Lucius swept past him and towards the door.