Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

This chapter is rather strange. Of course, that could be because it's all Malfoy POV's.

Chapter Three: He Stands Not Alone

Narcissa rubbed her fingers gently over the back of the small wooden dog she held, and watched her son embrace Harry. Harry embraced him back, and Narcissa supposed that was a good sign.

His cheeks still bore the red-brown traces of dried blood, and his eyes were glazed and stunned and staring. But even those could be cleansed; even those could be healed. Narcissa's concern was whether he would recover in enough time to meet the Dark wizards who had agreed to ally with him, or at least the first seven, who had all grown subtly more pressing in the last few weeks.

I do not know if he will. Narcissa gave a little shiver of mingled excitement and disquiet as she thought about what Harry had done in the past, and then about the memories that Severus had sent her. But living in uncertainty like this is more exciting than I would ever have given it credit for.

Harry at last gently pushed Draco away from him, and faced her. "Did you come to take us to the Manor, Mrs. Malfoy?" he asked.

Narcissa watched him for a moment. His eyes didn't lose their glazed look, but neither did they waver. So. He was not yet letting himself collapse and relax, but neither was he curled up and shaking against his will. She would follow his cues, then, and not say everything that she wanted to say until they were back at the Manor.

"I did," she said. "But I also found this. I thought you might be interested in it." She extended the toy with a solemn look.

Harry took it with a confused expression at first, but then, awkwardly manipulating it with the fingers of his single hand, managed to turn it over. When he read the letters carved on the belly, he took a quick breath and looked up at Narcissa.

"This is him," he whispered. "It has to be. Thank you."

Narcissa nodded, smiling. She had thought to look at the toys she fetched from Wayhouse herself, to see if the Dark Lord might have left any distinguishing marks on them, and encountered the dog with R.A. B. carved on its belly. Perhaps the Dark Lord had done that for his own amusement, perhaps simply to be able to find the toy again, but it was too great a coincidence for one of the toys to have Regulus's initials. At least they could begin the work on re-Transfiguring there.

"I'm not that good at Transfiguration," Harry was saying regretfully, rolling the dog in his fingers now. "I'll have to take this to Professor McGonagall—" He paused as though remembering something. "No," he said softly. "She's Headmistress McGonagall now, isn't she?"

"She would be, yes," said Narcissa carefully. The more she saw of Harry, the more concerned she became. She was not sure how much taking him to the Manor would help. He looked like a fragile collection of glass shards held together around an iron rod. She was not sure if he would let himself collapse. But if he fell apart against his will, or if he met Henrietta Bulstrode so obviously weakened…

"Then let's go see her, and congratulate her on her new position," said Harry, with such a straight face that Narcissa didn't recognize the morbid joke until her son smothered a stunned laugh. Her worry grew as she followed Harry out of the hospital wing and towards the Headmaster's office.

He needs rest. How to convince him to take it?

Yet he didn't look as if he needed rest with his face turned away from her, Narcissa noticed. His stride was firm and strong, and he walked with his head held high. He glanced at the walls they passed now and then, as if he were estimating the strength of the wards and protection spells that crawled over them. Narcissa wondered if he was only acting.

Or perhaps they trained him to change his own weariness into strength, to keep going even when he was on the brink of collapse.

The anger that had been burning in her since she read the scrolls Severus sent tried to roar up again. Narcissa took a deep breath and carefully placed a lid over the embers. The anger could do her no good right now; she stood a chance of breaking in a different way, but no less disastrously, than Harry if she tormented herself with those thoughts. They would wait.

They reached the gargoyle, and Harry murmured the names of several sweets before it leaped aside. Narcissa wondered if McGonagall hadn't had the time to change the password yet, or if the old Head of Gryffindor House also preferred the same ridiculous ones as the former Headmaster.

The former, child-abusing, deceptive Headmaster…

Narcissa banked the fire again. In the end, it would burn longer and hotter, and be put to better use, for having been balked for a time. She rode the moving staircase up behind Harry and Draco, and watched the way her son leaned towards Harry, and wondered. Lucius was assuredly right in what he planned to do about Harry's abuse. She did not think he was right in the observations he had made to her on Draco the other day.

They knocked on the door of the office, and a tired voice answered, "Yes, I'm here. That's you, isn't it, Harry?"

Narcissa flicked a suspicious glance at the ceiling, and only then saw the glow of the green watching spell in the corner above her. She shook her head. She really should have seen it at once. She drew her wand and held it loosely at her side as Harry opened the door. Her last meeting with the old cat had not been pleasant.

The office looked strangely altered, though Narcissa had only been in it a handful of times as a student, and only once as a parent. And anyway, it had only been a few hours since Dumbledore was arrested, as Draco had told her when he firecalled; why would McGonagall make her first priority changing the decorations?

Who knows why Gryffindors do anything? Including abuse their children—

This time, Narcissa told herself, firmly, that she simply wouldn't think about it until they returned home. This anger felt creeping, insidious, worse than anything she'd experienced before. In fact, it felt more like the madness that sometimes ran in the Black family and which her mother had warned her about than any normal anger. She had to ignore it, and therefore, she would.

McGonagall stood up from behind the desk when she saw them, though Narcissa thought that was less a gesture of courtesy and more so that she could have her wand out and freedom of movement if she needed it. Her eyes fixed on Harry's face first of all, and she made a faint noise of distress.

"Mr. Potter," she said softly. "Your face is covered in blood."

"My scar bleeds when I dream about Voldemort, Headmistress," said Harry, ignoring the way McGonagall started at the title. "I came to ask you for a favor." He held up the wooden dog. "This is Regulus Black, Sirius' brother. He betrayed Voldemort, but he got caught and Transfigured, and no one knew what he got made into until just a few days ago. Can you work on changing him back?"

McGonagall was blinking and staring throughout this, but to her credit, Narcissa thought, she took the dog from Harry and gently smoothed her fingers over the wood. Then she closed her eyes, and her face altered, becoming the sharp, focused expression that Narcissa remembering seeing in countless Transfiguration classes as she examined botched student work. Narcissa had never been that good at Transfiguration.

She shook her head, telling herself that she was no longer eleven, and she should no longer let that look intimidate her.

"Yes, this is a Transfigured human," McGonagall was murmuring. "But the spell is hooked to several powerful Dark Arts curses that would affect anyone who tried to undo the change, and there are preservation spells, too, I assume to keep him alive while they tortured him. If I don't pay attention to keeping them intact, he'll come back wounded and bleed to death." She set the dog gently on the desk before she opened her eyes. "I can change him back, Mr. Potter, but it is not the work of a few days, or even a few weeks. It will take months."

Harry paused, and then said, "That's all right, Headmistress. I can live with that. I'll bear it."

McGonagall took a deep breath, and Narcissa recognized what she was going to do, but not in time to prevent it as she leaned forward and said, "Just as you have borne everything else that happened to you so far, Harry?"

Harry stiffened. Then he said, "Not in the same way, Headmistress. We found Regulus after a long quest and looking in several other places. I got resigned to it taking some time."

"That is not what I meant, Harry," said McGonagall. Narcissa would not have thought a Gryffindor could be so merciless. "I have read the memories Severus wrote out. You have been ignoring much of what happened to you. If you had told me in your second or third year what the Headmaster had done, I would have helped protect you. I swear it. He lost my respect almost two years ago now. I would have helped."

"That's not the point," said Harry. His voice had gone high and strained. "Please, Headmistress. I appreciate your concern—" Narcissa snorted; no, he didn't. McGonagall's gaze flicked to her, but went back to Harry as he continued. "—but there's really nothing anyone could have done before this point. And I know that you're busy with the school. That's another reason I'm not going to be impatient with your changing Regulus back. Merlin knows you have a lot to do." Narcissa leaned forward in time to catch the edge of a bright, brittle smile on his face. He was fighting back the emotions that wanted to rampage across his body.

"Harry," said McGonagall softly.

"I don't wish to speak of it," said Harry. "Isn't it enough that I'll have to do so in public in a few months, whether I want to or not?"

McGonagall looked stricken, but Narcissa felt a tiny flicker of relief, both at the words and the way that Harry edged closer to Draco, reaching out one arm for support. At least he can admit that the trial is going to happen. I would be worried if he thought he could somehow turn the juggernaut Severus has released aside.

"You are right, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall stiffly. "Where are you going for the summer, if I may ask?"

"With the Malfoys," said Harry. "I know that Connor is going with the Weasleys. I'll visit him soon. I have—lots of things to say to him." He stared at her for a moment, then said, "And I feel like I should have more to say to you, too, Headmistress, but I don't. Not right now."

McGonagall simply nodded. Then her eyes looked up and caught Narcissa's over the boys' heads. Narcissa sneered at her. It was infuriating that this witch—no longer young, no longer pretty, and not even of the Dark—could make her feel as if she had four legs and a hairless tail with just one look.

"If you hurt him," said McGonagall softly, "I will Transfigure you into a mouse and set you loose in the castle."

She didn't need to say that she would find Narcissa in that form, or that Mrs. Norris would. Narcissa simply nodded, and then waited for the boys to pass her before she left the office. She wanted to remain between them and the Headmistress, just in case.

She studied Harry's back worriedly the whole time. Already, he had let the strain fall from his shoulders and moved a bit away from Draco. He was chattering animatedly with her son, but, like his smile in the office, that mask shone too brightly and was liable to shatter.

What should I do?

Put off the others until Harry is ready to face them, of course. Until he's had at least a few days to recover.

Narcissa felt much better once she had made that decision, and a little ashamed that it had taken her so long to make it. Of course her family came first, and Harry was important to her family, and important to her in and of himself, and half-adopted already, with the linking to the wards that Lucius had given him at Christmas. The other wizards and witches were pressing, Henrietta Bulstrode in particular, but she could dance around them and make excuses for at least a few days longer. And she would do so, until Harry was soothed, or had shattered and then drawn himself back together again.

What most worried Narcissa at the moment were two things: that she did not know how long it would take Harry to work through his emotions, and that she did not know how to get through the wards into the Ministry to punish Harry's parents and Dumbledore as they deserved.

In some ways, I wish Severus had not gone to the Ministry. It would have made it easier to kill them.

On the other hand, perhaps that was the exact reason Severus had done it.

Narcissa fixed her eyes on the two boys walking ahead of her. I promise, Severus, I will guard Harry as if he were my own. In many ways, he already is.

"Draco. I would like to see you alone."

Draco stood up at once from the chair in the library where he'd been reading the book about basilisks, and put the tome down on the table beside it. He followed his father out of the library without a backward glance, because Harry wasn't in the room with him. Harry was asleep in his bedroom upstairs, exhausted from another day of researching every subject that occurred to him—means to get the last few remaining Dark spells off the stump of his wrist, ways to counteract basilisk poison, powerful glamour incantations.

The interrogation techniques that Aurors used with abused children.

Draco had bitten his lip when Harry found those books, but he'd said nothing. He'd had a lot of practice at silence in the last few days, since Harry returned from the graveyard. He helped Harry when Harry let him, and when Harry asked to be alone, he left him alone, and when Harry reached out for him—more and more frequently now—Draco was there. It was three days now since they had come home to the Manor, and Draco had done all those things multiple times.

It was for Harry, of course it was, Draco thought, as he followed his father into the study where Lucius and Harry had spoken the first Christmas they met, but it was also for himself. He'd had the sensation, over the last week, of watching pieces of his mind and soul shift and float and lock into new places. It was—rather strange, like watching an outside force change him, but Draco knew this wasn't Harry's magic, or even the news of Voldemort's return. It was the events around him interacting with what made him who he was, and the most magical thing about it was his awareness of the process and his determination to hold back and watch it rather than interfere and consciously change his mind.

"Sit down, Draco."

Draco took the high chair that Lucius waved him to, noting with a distant pleasure that his feet reached the floor now, where they would have dangled a few inches off it last summer. His father paused with the most mild and fleeting of disconcerted expressions on his face, as though he had found himself caught by surprise at the same sight, and then went smooth-faced again and sat down in his own chair.

Draco calmly fixed his eyes on his father. Lucius was tall and imposing. He was the man Draco had loved and adored and been in awe of and feared since the days when he first became aware that he should keep silent around some people and talk to others. He had always been closer to his mother. She was more prone to let him know when he crossed an unbreakable boundary, but always treat him as if he behaved well otherwise. Lucius, meanwhile, often looked as if he were waiting for Draco to break one of those unwritten laws of good manners and pureblood behavior.

The thing was, Draco was fifteen now, and he no longer feared his father.

"You made a request of me some little time ago," Lucius began. He always did this, too, approaching most subjects so obliquely that an outsider to the family might have blinked in confusion as he listened. But Draco was not an outsider to the family. "I find myself moved to grant it, as long as you tender me an apology for the argument that we had at the same time." He sat back and put his fingers gently together, watching his son.

Ah. I'd thought so.

Draco tilted his head. "I find myself not much inclined for either the giving or the receiving of gifts at the moment, Father."

Lucius's nostrils flared, the only sign that Draco had just taken him by surprise. He remained silent for a short time. Draco knew this tactic. It was meant to fluster and disconcert him. But he didn't have to be flustered and disconcerted if he didn't want to be.

He'd always been stubborn when he thought he was in the right, but then, that had been a kind of frantic stubbornness, similar to Harry's at the moment. The shifting of his soul in the last week had taught him patient stubbornness, rather like a stone. Panic and fear did no good when you were sitting by the side of the man you loved and watching as he slept off massive trauma.

Lucius said at last, "I was under the impression that you rather wished to have the request you made of me granted."

"I did," said Draco, letting his father hear him emphasize the past tense ever so slightly.

They watched each other. Lucius could easily have broken the dance and asked him outright what had changed, and then Draco would have told him. But his father had started this waltz, and no matter what he might say about pride getting in the way of accomplishing one's goals, the fact remained that Lucius Malfoy was proud and stubborn and far too used to getting his own way to ask an honest question when he'd begun obliquely.

Draco could move the waltz ahead, though, and he did. "Was there anything else that you wanted of me, Father? If not, I should go back and research basilisks. Fascinating creatures, basilisks."

His father's mind was obviously searching and sorting through his words, looking for some way in which they could be a threat. Then he gave a slight, sour smile, and tilted his head.

"Yes, Draco, by all means," he said. "Did you know that in some of the legends, basilisks have green eyes, and in some, golden?"

"Then I've been in a room with both kinds at once," said Draco, standing and striding out of the study. "How fascinating."

His thoughts briefly swirled and stormed, representing the Chamber of Secrets to him, before he shoved them firmly back down. He had things to do.

He went to Harry's bedroom and eased the door open. The sound of soft breathing from the bed didn't stir. Draco liked that, liked that he was the only one who could approach Harry without waking him up. His mother had tried it a few times, but even she made Harry turn his head and at least regard her before he went back to his book or his nap.

Draco sat down in the chair next to Harry and shook his head. Harry still hadn't allowed himself to heal. He was ignoring every mention of his parents and Dumbledore, slipping Narcissa's every attempt to talk about the memories she'd received from Snape, and simply refusing to acknowledge why he was researching the common signs of abuse and how people found out about them.

But that was what Draco had expected. He knew Harry better than any of them did, after all. Harry faced many other things bravely, but from things like this, he went on running until he could run no more. Last time, he had run until Hawthorn Parkinson forced her way past his barriers and he collapsed in exhaustion. Everything else so far—Draco's attempts to hold a conversation with him, the unicorns, the soothing atmosphere of the Manor—was only a temporary relief. He would have to fall further before he could land. Draco knew it.

Draco closed his eyes, and reached out gently towards Harry with his empathy. He wasn't here to confirm things that he knew already, but to take note of a change that had happened in the past few days.

Yes. He was right. There was still the stinging sensation of pain from Harry, but it was muted, compared to what it should have been. Draco had likewise noticed that the emotions that represented winds from Harry had changed to breezes, and that he didn't know the meaning behind some of Harry's minor expressions or quick changes of mood at all anymore.

His empathy was changing, just like everything else about him.

Draco opened his eyes and regarded Harry thoughtfully. He had more sympathy for the person Harry had been during second and third year than he had ever had while the transition was actually happening. How did you go through a transformation like that and keep your sanity?

Of course, it helped that Draco wasn't fighting his change and trying to stay the person he had been the way Harry had, and that he could step back from his emotions, thanks to his training in the dances, and regard himself as an interesting object. He did not think that would have been possible for Harry, who either tried to ignore himself entirely or followed well-worn paths of guilt and self-loathing.

Whatever his empathy was mutating into, Draco did not think it was altogether a different form of magic. He had noticed that, while he caught fewer emotions from his mother and father and Harry, he seemed to sense their selves better. He had known, the other day, just what book his father was looking for, and that his mother was sitting in her room and reading over the scrolls of memories from Snape again when he wondered where she was, and that Harry was going to take a step to the left before he actually did so. It was odd, and interesting, and Draco was looking forward to seeing where it went. At the moment, he thought it too caught in flux to give him any useful information.

He closed his eyes, and thought about the settled things, the things he did know.

The past week had brought home to him how firmly he was not Harry, for all that he loved Harry and would have given his own left hand to save his. He would not have dealt with these losses as Harry had done. He would have let Madam Pomfrey see the wounds the moment he got back to Hogwarts. He would have wept to express his grief, which Harry had very rarely done so far. He might have had trouble denouncing his parents as abusers, if that had happened to him, but he would be more accepting of the reality than Harry had shown himself even now.

He was different.

And—perhaps this was another part of the change that had started in his soul when he saw Harry coming up the path next to the lake with Fawkes on his shoulder—he found that he wanted to know himself, his own motives for doing things. Just loving Harry wasn't a good enough reason any more. Yes, he loved Harry.

And?

Could he actually become a good fighter, an asset in a fight for his own abilities, rather than just someone Harry had to protect or someone who learned Dark Arts and dueling spells to protect Harry? Could he become interested in magical creatures for their own sake, and not just because Harry worked to free them? Could he find some way to share Harry's life that didn't involve subsuming himself in him?

He had wanted so badly to achieve equality with Harry, so that Harry would never overshadow him and they could stand on equal footing. But why should he worry about that, if he was simply going to drown himself?

He had one point at which he differed from Harry. He would find others—or he would find points of similarity and work from there. He wanted to have his own life, just as Harry did, even as they shared a life.

Draco didn't plan to tear himself from Harry, of course. Far from it. He would know himself, and he would know Harry, and he would be conscious what they shared and what they did not. He thought it would be the most interesting study of his life so far.

And when he was ready, he would break free of the cocoon of silence that had held him for the last week, and start pushing—both against people who might try to do things that shoved at him, like his father refusing to acknowledge Draco as a magical heir of the Malfoy family until Draco apologized for attending Walpurgis Night, and at Harry, from whom Draco had the right to demand some consideration, too.

He thought he would be ready soon.

He rather suspected that some people would be surprised when he opened his wings.

Wings. That's right.

Draco stood, brushed his hand over Harry's shoulder, and then turned and strode from the room. He had a letter to send, to confirm the order for Harry's birthday gift, that he had nearly forgotten about.

Lucius shook his head as he finished his letter. The owl he used for delivering ordinary messages, Octavius, waited patiently in the corner of his private study as he bound the note to his leg.

"To Ollivander," he said, and Octavius spread his wings and soared out the window.

Lucius watched him go, his hands folded behind his back. His right hand was clamped down on the left, that was true, pressing until Lucius could hear the bones grind together, but someone else coming into the room would only have seen him standing calmly. That was as it should be. Lucius put on a performance for an invisible audience most of the time, so that he could put on a faultless performance for a visible one when he needed to.

He had read one more scroll of the memories Snape had recorded. He read one a day, and had almost reached the end.

His right hand pressed down further, and Lucius knew there would be dents in the skin afterward. He would cast a glamour to cover them.

Some years ago, during the first war, the Dark Lord had sent Lucius and two other Death Eaters to capture Ollivander, wanting the wand-maker to himself. Unfortunately for the Dark Lord, those were the days of chaos when his attention was mostly occupied elsewhere, and Lucius had had a long-running grudge against the Death Eaters assigned to accompany him—one neither of them knew about. He had waited until they had entered the shop and he was sure that all their attention was on Ollivander, and then had dispatched them smoothly with a Killing Curse to the back of each.

Ollivander had thought Lucius had done it to save his life, and therefore he owed him a wizard's debt. Lucius had hardly wanted to discourage the impression, keeping it in reserve as a favor he might use someday, and had even helped the wand-maker make it look as if he had fled before Lucius and the others arrived. The Dark Lord had just fought a battle against Dumbledore, and had accepted the report. Compared to destroying Dumbledore, Ollivander was a low priority.

Lucius had never found a use for the wizard's debt.

Until now.

His right hand pressed down insistently, and Lucius felt his lips part in a slashing smile. Acceptable, now that he was alone, and he had wards on the study that would have chimed in a moment to let him know if his son or wife had entered the hallway outside the door.

He had wanted vengeance when Narcissa told him about the loss of Potter's hand, but he had wanted to think his target over carefully. Narcissa had claimed her sister, as she had the right to do, and planned to keep her alive, torturing her delicately, drawing out the kill to give her as much pain as possible, inflicting more and more debilitating wounds as time passed. Lucius approved. He would do the same thing, but he had to figure out which one of his former comrades would give him the most pleasure.

Then had come the memories, and the news, from Snape, that Potter's parents and Dumbledore would be arrested for child abuse.

And Lucius's rage had shaped itself into a knife pointing straight at his targets.

Lily and James Potter.

There were some things one did not do. Lucius supposed some of his enemies might have laughed at the thought of a Death Eater having morals, but he did, of course. He honored his family, and he knew that older blood was better, and he disdained murder and torture that did not serve a cause.

And he knew that child abuse was wrong.

One did not torture one's children. Love for the children argued against it. Magic argued against it. The most basic common sense argued against it. Perhaps a Muggle could get away with abusing a child—Lucius did not really care to know what Muggles did, and for all he knew, abused Muggle children were as common as doxies—but not a wizard.

The family would be shattered. The family was supposed to be inviolate.

The children might react by losing most of their magic, if they were harassed and suppressed so much that they became quiet and cringing. Many supposed Squibs in the pureblood lines centuries ago had come fully into their magic once their abusive parents died, their power roaring up in them when they had the time and space to breathe. The laws against child abuse had originally come about for that reason.

Or the child might lash out, turn, turn dangerous. Wizarding parents should never forget they were raising potential wizards and witches. Lucius had seen the remains of parents whose children did not turn meek and cringing. Narcissa herself had been called home to help her cousins Capella and Canopus, Sirius Black's parents, when their son turned on them at last. She had come back white-faced and silent, but, once she could speak, gleeful. Lucius had listened to the description of their wounds with the keenest sense of justice imaginable.

And now…this.

That someone would abuse a child with Lord-level power was beyond comprehension. What would happen if he turned on them? For that matter, what would happen to the rest of the wizarding world if once he lost his temper, or even came into his power unexpectedly, late in life, uncontrolled?

From the information that Lucius had silently collected on Tom Riddle's background in the last few months, he could guess at the answer—and Riddle had been more neglected and not thought of than abused. It was a wonder that Potter had not become a monster.

And the waste, the sheer and utter waste. When any Dark pureblood family would have welcomed a child like Potter with rejoicing, would have lorded it over their friends and relatives with constant smugness, and would have snapped up the chance to adopt him and make him their own son if he had been free before this, the Potters had turned their backs on him and tried to interfere with the natural expression of such rich, deep magic. It was enough to make Lucius sick with fury.

Lucius was not unconscious of the fact that his son loved Potter, and that the boy could easily become part of their family, and that he already half was, with his links to the Malfoy wards. But that only made what he had chosen to do all the sweeter, since he could claim the privilege of revenge for himself. In any situation, at any moment, in any way, this would have been something Lucius would have risen against in his mind.

He would get one chance at Lily and James Potter, he thought, and no more, rather than the multiple ones that Narcissa planned to give herself with Bellatrix. The risk was too great to enter the Ministry many times. He would have to make it count. Rather than giving them one wound, and then returning to give them an even more devastating one, he would have to concentrate many rounds of torture into a few hours, and then finish things off with a curse that would kill them slowly, undetectably.

He knew how to do it. The books on medical magic waited patiently next to his chair.

He would need them, he found with mild surprise when he turned from looking out the window again. He had broken his left wrist with his pressing on it, and so great had been the haze of his anger that he had not noticed the pain.