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Chapter Sixty-Six: Malfoy, a History
Draco followed his father steadily towards the back of the Manor, not surprised that he could feel a low buzzing in the walls now. He hadn't noticed it before because he hadn't been that connected to the Manor. Now he was truly the accepted son of its master, and the building was taking an interest in him that it would otherwise have reserved until Lucius died. Signatures on a piece of paper meant little next to acceptance from magical artifacts, Draco knew.
He wished for a moment that Harry could know this sensation, then shivered. He's Voldemort's magical heir. I don't think that Harry would really like the sensations that Voldemort's house would give him, assuming that he even has a house.
Lucius halted in front of a door that Draco had tried to open about twice a year, each time getting a nasty, twitch-inducing shock for his troubles. Lucius opened it effortlessly, and stepped into the room beyond, motioning for Draco to enter when he hesitated.
Draco did, and felt the difference at once. The room was so heavy with wards that it entirely shut off perception of the outside world; the rest of the Manor could fall off the face of the earth while he was in here, and he'd never notice. The room was circular, with blue-gray walls and floor, and no decoration to soften the bleak stone. Draco heard a rustling murmur of many voices, rising and falling in his ears as if he stood in the middle of a vast, invisible crowd. He couldn't quite distinguish what any of them were saying even when he listened, though. But he knew instinctively that they were Malfoy voices.
"This is our room, Draco," said Lucius softly. "This is the heart of the Manor, the part where the first stones were laid, and the one room into which neither our enemies, nor the house elves, nor anyone not of Malfoy blood, can enter. It was built as a sanctuary for the family heads and their children, if anyone ever invaded the Manor itself." His mouth tightened for a moment. "Wives and husbands not of Malfoy blood were not included, because they might have been the ones who betrayed the family in the first place."
Draco nodded. He could feel the difference in the stones here. They were the color of the Malfoy crest, and they gladly accepted him, now. But he would not be able to bring even Harry here to hide, perfect as the hiding place would be. If and when he adopted or had an heir, then he could bring him or her here, and no one else.
Lucius held out a hand, and Draco was startled to see a staff made of what looked like blue light extending from it. He knew his father hadn't been holding that when they came in. Lucius stretched his arm out to its furthest extent, and the end of the staff brushed the far wall.
"I come," said Lucius softly, "with my son and my magical heir, sealed in the blood, sealed in the bone. I accept him as magical heir of the Malfoy family. I confirm him as my magical heir."
The stones rumbled, and the room seemed to grow tighter. Draco sucked in his breath. Had the walls actually drawn closer? Maybe not, but it seemed like it.
"I ask," said Lucius, and this was the only time Draco had ever heard his father sound humble, "for my ancestors' approval of my choice, and for their confirmation of my son as heir, if they will give it." He dropped his hand, the staff vanishing, and then knelt, his long hair falling around his face. Draco had seen him make the gesture in front of Narcissa before, but then, Lucius had always used one knee, rendering the submission less than complete.
This time, he knelt on both knees.
Draco swallowed.
"Down, Draco," Lucius said, and Draco felt abruptly that it was close to blasphemy to be on his feet in this room. He knelt, using both knees. His hair wasn't long enough to fall around his face, but it extended to his shoulders, and he hoped that would work. He bowed his head, and waited.
The pressure of watching eyes and voices grew greater, and then Draco felt as if someone drew blood from his arm. He looked that way, expecting to see a knife and a cut, but he wasn't losing blood. He was losing a thin trickle of blue-gray light that he didn't understand.
And then he did, and fear cut through his awe. He was losing magic. He tried to scramble to his feet.
Lucius's hand shot out and clamped on his knee, squeezing so hard Draco was sure he heard the joint grinding. "Still, Draco," he snarled. "It will be returned to you. But it must be drawn out of you and examined, first. This is why we hold this ceremony in this room, so that our enemies may not attack us while we are at our most vulnerable. Our ancestor who enchanted this room for the confirmation ritual was an absorbere. Kneel. Be still."
Draco dropped his head and was still, though his body vibrated with pain and discomfort, and he thought he could feel himself growing gradually weaker and weaker. And then he was in the middle of a deep, motionless, almost emotionless state, and he wondered if this was what it was like to be a Muggle.
If so, he wondered why in the world Lily Potter hadn't killed herself, and he felt sorry for Dumbledore for the first time.
And he felt a frisson of fear he had never contemplated before about Harry. He had the power to do this. Of course, so did Voldemort, and Draco wondered that he could have so witlessly charged into battle against the Dark Lord. He would be more cautious in the future, that was all.
Assuming he got his magic back.
He glanced up to see a corona of blue-gray playing around his head, widening and then spinning back in towards him, as the magic of the room considered his magic. Draco held his breath. He had never heard what happened if the ritual didn't work, if the child was judged unworthy of becoming the magical heir. Would he stay a Muggle for the rest of his life? He could see why some of his ancestors would have thought that a fitting punishment.
He bowed his head, and tried to ignore his cold shivers. This was bringing him face to face with weakness. Draco couldn't say he liked the sensation, but he needed to know it, as well as his strength.
The corona abruptly brightened until it was strong enough to send shadows bouncing on and spinning off the walls. Draco squinted, and then the voices returned to his conscious notice for the first time since he entered the room. This time, he could hear what they were saying. They didn't seem to be commenting on him, but to be living and playing out dramas that must have been real at one time. He suspected that some of them had been translated from French or Latin or even other languages into English.
"…never should have trusted a Saxon to keep his promises."
"My son, I will say this one more time. If you do not unbind me from this altar this moment, you will not live to see the moon rise."
"Never to be parted, no, never."
"Of course he is your son, brother."
"And how can I think that love is less than complete here, in this wonderful place, beside the slow-flowing river?"
"Will you please tell me how a daughter of mine got herself transported by the Muggle authorities, however briefly?"
"I do not think—" That one ended in a death gurgle, which might have been made by a knife plunging into a throat, and Draco shuddered.
"I will rise again. The phoenix does not stop burning because you kill it once."
"It was only Muggle-baiting, Mother! Only a bit of fun! How was I supposed to know that she was my Squib cousin?"
"Because, Mother, you aren't stupid, and you know I'd make a better magical heir for you than any of the other children you've got, lazy bastards that they are." Draco grinned briefly at that one, thinking he'd like to meet the Malfoy who'd said it.
The voices rose and danced around him, and then the corona shrank, his own magic spiraling back into his body. Draco opened his arms to welcome it, and into his body he took the memories the voices had been speaking of as well.
Images rushed and blurred through his head. The effect, oddly enough, wasn't of a stream, but of a few images that he isolated from the rest and remembered. They seemed to be in no chronological order. He saw a woman he recognized from her brilliant eyes and serene countenance as Julia Malfoy cradling a baby and singing to him. That would be her son, Draco supposed, the one she'd borne her own brother when she decided that he needed an heir.
Then came a vision of his father entering this room beside his own father. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, and his face had been cold even then.
Further back the visions reeled, and further back, and Draco caught a glimpse of a young woman on a horse pounding through broken, rocky ground and soaring mountains, bent so far forward over the saddle that he only caught a glimpse of her face because the wind tore her long white-blonde hair back. Behind her came three men who all looked like her, probably brothers or cousins. Draco could feel her desperation, and knew she was thinking that if she could only get to the border of Spain, then she would be safe from the disgusting things they wanted her to do.
Then he was in a soaring room, a cathedral of some sort, and with a young Malfoy man who knelt among the chanting Muggles and sneered. Let them chant, if they would. His Dark Lord was coming soon enough, and he would cause destruction here of the kind that would be remembered for a thousand years.
He caught a glimpse of a lovely, dark-skinned woman whirling beside a river, dancing because her captors made her do it. She looked completely different from a Malfoy, her hair black and her skin brown and her eyes a deep brown, but the defiance and the sternness in her face was the same as that in Julia Malfoy's, in his father's face, in the face of the young woman escaping desperately through the Pyrenees.
Forward again, and he was riding a horse with a Malfoy man who thought being among Muggles and pretending to be one of them was fun, and especially when you came across the sea with a brilliant commander and had the fun of seeing if he could actually conquer the man who had tricked him out of a throne and settle his Norman French on this irritating island.
Lightning raked across a deep sky, and Draco stood on a pile of stones beside a Malfoy Dark Lord, who was laughing as he grabbed the storm out of the air and hurled it at his opponent, a Light Lady who fell before him. He laughed again, and then he grew alert and snapped to the south. A storm of Light was brewing there, rolling golden up the sky. The Malfoy, who called himself Lord Lightning, braced himself. The rumors were true, then; the Lady had had a brother of equal strength, and he was coming.
Draco saw weakness and strength and defiance that could have been either. He saw endless faces, endless fates, endless incarnations of the Malfoys, sometimes in a large family, sometimes in a small, mostly marrying purebloods, sometimes sneaking off and marrying Mudbloods or even Muggles, born to Lord-level power and born Squibs. The one thing that thrummed between all of them was that they did not give up, and they reached endlessly for what they wanted, even when they did not achieve it.
Draco nodded. This is what I am heir to. I can handle this.
And then the room wheeled back into his view, the parade of images ending, and he felt the magic draw in a breath. He had been tested in his weakness, and he had seen the strength that he was heir to. What now? Draco asked silently, panting and wondering what else the room had in mind.
A voice answered him like the tolling of a bell. You must face your own weakness.
Draco frowned slightly. He knew he was magically weaker than Harry. Was that what was meant?
No. This is not the weakness in the magic itself, but the weakness that may prevent you from using it.
Knowledge slammed into his mind like the crack of Lord Lightning's storm. Draco saw himself in many ordinary moments: arguing with Harry, putting aside homework when it was too hard, turning away with a sigh from a spell that he knew he could learn but which required such fancy wandwork that he didn't see why it was worth it.
Laziness, said the implacable voice of the room. You are capable of great things when you push yourself to be. Most of the time, you will not push yourself. You lapse, you do not work, you allow yourself to be conquered. That is intolerable.
"It's hard!" Draco burst out. "I don't see why I should have to put in the effort when I don't have to!"
Then you will never become better, said the room. There was no sympathy in its voice, only judgment. You will never achieve as you could have. You must ride the storm in all times and places, not only when you truly want something or want to save your beloved's life. The only way to become better at magic is to do magic. Determination means nothing if it is not sustained.
Draco's skin crawled at the thought of living like Harry did, pushing himself all the time, barely knowing the meaning of relaxation. Harry had said that he lived most of his life by enduring. Draco could not imagine it. He liked enjoying himself.
You are still making a mistake, said the voice, steady as the iron clump of hooves in the vision of the fleeing Malfoy heiress and horse. This does not cut out enjoyment. It cuts out uselessness, and that is something very different.
Draco admitted, reluctantly, that the room was right. When he enjoyed himself most, it was by doing something, whether that was dreaming up punishments on people who annoyed him or kissing Harry. He also liked lying around and doing nothing, but apparently the room thought he could be using that time to master his magic and become a more useful and productive Malfoy heir.
Wanting does not bring your triumphs to you. Working for them does.
Draco blinked in spite of himself. "I think some of my ancestors didn't know that," he had to point out.
But your father does. Very well. And none of your ancestors who did not know this were magical heirs.
Draco bowed his head. He had called up his determination, hadn't he, and screwed it to the sticking point? He still didn't know if he could do that all the time—it would be both easier and more pleasant to lapse back into the selfish child he liked being, because even trying to see what others thought or meant was hard—but he would try, because he wanted to be magical heir more than he wanted to be anything else at the moment.
And he had had fun in confronting his father, he thought suddenly. The sense of motion, of not knowing what would happen until he actually spoke the words that blossomed in his thoughts, of skipping from rock to rock in a general downrushing fall, had been fun. He could probably learn to find opportunities for that in the rest of his life, if he just looked.
The room let him go. Draco stumbled, and fell forward, kneeling in silence for a moment as the magic withdrew into the walls. He sucked in a breath and blinked several times, then touched his throat, expecting it to be raw with screaming for some reason. He was slightly surprised to find it wasn't.
"That wasn't fun," he muttered.
Lucius's voice startled him; he had almost forgotten his father was there. "Such rituals never are. That is not their point." Draco turned around to find his father regarding him with narrowed eyes, kneeling on one knee now, his face cool and utterly composed again. "So your greatest fault is your laziness."
Draco's face flamed. "What was yours?" he asked, and then wondered why in the world Lucius should answer.
But being in this room, and having his vulnerability bared, was making Lucius do odd things, apparently. He said quietly, "My sense of direction. At one time, I had a horrible temper which caused me to search for someone to fix blame on, and I was always finding the wrong person—or I misunderstood simple concepts because I could not understand their source, and continually committed or wasted my personal resources in the wrong direction. So now I track misunderstandings and crimes and new social forces to their source, and understand them."
Draco thought privately that his father had overcorrected for that fault, but he was not going to say it now. This ritual, too, was ending. He'd come face to face with his weakness and survived. They were returning to positions of relative strength, and in this position, Lucius's was greater than his.
"Shall we go tell Mother the good news?" he asked.
Lucius smiled, the smile that only Draco and his mother ever got to see. "We should. Merlin knows what she imagines is happening."
Narcissa watched her owl wing away, and sigh. In the end, her very confused letter of apology to Harry had proved easier to write than the one to St. Mungo's. They would want to know why Linden Gillyflower needed to know about the consequences of broken threefold oaths, and so far no excuse that Narcissa had come up with sounded convincing to her own ears and brain.
She turned back to her table. Thoughts of Draco and Lucius tried to intrude. Narcissa confronted them with the image of a polished mirror, the one useful trick she had ever learned from Bellatrix, and threw them into the trunk at the back of her thoughts. She picked up her quill again.
Someone knocked at her door. Narcissa dropped the quill, and then cursed at herself. She sat back in the chair, and made sure that her shoulders were perfectly aligned and that her blonde hair fell precisely past them to frame her face.
"Yes?" she called. Her voice did not shake, she was pleased to note.
The door opened. Draco and Lucius stood on the other side of it. Lucius's hand rested on their son's shoulder, and Draco's face shone as if a great fire had passed in front of him and left its reflection in his eyes. He stood taller than Narcissa had ever thought he could at this age. No matter how she scanned him, she could see no sign of a deaging spell.
"He passed," Lucius said simply. "He is now acknowledged as my magical heir."
Narcissa's anxiety burned into joy so fierce that she laughed aloud. She flung herself into motion from around the table and came to stand before her son, staring down into his face. Lucius withdrew gracefully to give them a short time alone.
Narcissa realized for the first time that she didn't have to stare down so far at Draco. He had not completed his growth yet, but he did reach her shoulder, and he looked back at her with such complacency that Narcissa thought he could intimidate several fully adult wizards of her acquaintance.
"How was it?" she asked, even as she lifted her hands to cradle his face and bent down to give him a kiss on the forehead.
"Difficult," said Draco. "But I passed. And I'm going to start courting Harry with the full formal ritual on Walpurgis, assuming he accepts."
Narcissa felt her joy flare brighter and brighter. She had to step away from Draco, to drink in the full sight of him again and understand what this meant.
She had subtly mixed her own influence with Lucius's in the raising of Draco. She had known from his birth—Lucius could call it mother's intuition in a contemptuous voice all he wanted, but still, it was real—that the son was different from the father, that Draco would never survive unbroken if Lucius tried to constrain him to the harshest of the pureblood rituals. So Narcissa had at once worked in partnership with her husband and waged a subtle war against him, to insure that Draco could pass his earliest childhood unconstrained by anything, knowing what love was, before the dances had to begin. Even that had been a risk, though. Narcissa had doubted herself often enough, and had had to return to that original intuition for strength, because this was a harsh world that Draco was growing up in, with the next war between Light and Dark on the horizon, and the countless other, less fatal perils that had always threatened a young wizard's life and wholeness swimming around. Theirs was a world that could break or splinter the heart. Sometimes Narcissa had thought that Lucius was right. Draco might have been broken in childhood, but if he could rebuild himself and survive, surely that was better than his death?
But now she could see the son she had hoped for standing before her, and she knew her high risk had paid off. Draco had taken his father's and his mother's lessons, Malfoy and Black, and blended them, instead of becoming so hard he could not feel or so soft that he would smash into pulp at the first harsh experience. He was much better than either ice or pulp, Narcissa thought. He was alive.
"Thank you, Mother," Draco said, as if he could sense the trend of her thoughts, "for all that you did for me, and tried to do."
Narcissa clasped him close in her arms, and shut her eyes. At the moment, her world was perfect, and complete, and she had nothing else to hope for.
Harry blinked, and looked again at the letter that Narcissa's owl, Regina, had just delivered to him, to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. The letter remained stubbornly the same.
Dear Harry:
There is no good way to say this, and there are no good words to carry my feelings. I will simply say that I am sorry for what I accused you of four days ago, and say that I know you did not violate my oath on purpose.
I have been unable to learn the consequences of broken threefold oaths, and that makes me uneasy. Generally, they were achieved, and though certain books speak of terrible consequences if they are broken, they do not specify what those consequences are. I think the authors themselves did not know. Perhaps the knowledge was so common that it was not seen as worth the writing down. I will write St. Mungo's. They may have treated a patient in the past for the consequences of one, and have more knowledge than the books in the Malfoy libraries (a sentence that would shock Lucius nearly to death if he had seen me write it).
I hope that you are well, and that things will soon grow well between you and Draco, and you and your guardian. I also know that you are heir of the Black fortune and houses. Please assure Regulus that I approve entirely.
Narcissa Malfoy.
Harry frowned, folded the letter, and laid it on the end of his bed. Then he looked at Regina and shook his head. "No response."
Regina hooted at him in disapproval. Harry could feel his lips thinning with irritation. "No response, I said. I'll have to think about it a little while."
That seemed to partially content the owl, as did the treat he fed her next, but she still gave him a disapproving look as she launched herself from his bed, through the open bedroom door, and down to the common room, where she would stare meaningfully at someone until they opened the door for her. Harry turned his attention back to the letter he'd been contemplating before Narcissa's arrived.
Scrimgeour had certainly heard quickly about his declaration in favor of werewolves' rights, and he was letting Harry know, regretfully, that they weren't on the same side in this matter. If Wolfsbane Potion were less expensive to make and able to be distributed to every werewolf in Britain, he told Harry, he might change his mind, but it wasn't, and that was that. He did agree that some of the laws were restrictive and needed to be changed, but he was not in favor of ending such things as the registration of werewolves. He argued that if the law-abiding ones were registered, then when an attack happened, they would know it came from one of those who refused to accept the rule of law.
Harry growled to himself. Scrimgeour didn't see the very concept as degrading, probably because he wasn't a werewolf. Harry would just have to write back and try to make him see it from that point of view.
He'd reached for paper and quill to make that happen when Draco entered the room. Harry started and turned towards him.
Then he froze. Draco had a smile on his face, but that wasn't unusual. He was walking with a step somewhere between a swagger and a strut, but that wasn't so unusual, either.
Something had changed, though. Harry thought it was a combination of subtle things—the way he carried himself, as if both the jerky angles and smooth motion that made up his gait were more themselves; the look in his eyes, as though he had heard some grand and terrible news and had to accept both parts of it; the impatience for the future in his face. Harry couldn't remember Draco looking that impatient for the future before, except when he was discussing something he wanted. Now he looked as if he wanted it to come for its own sake, so that he could see what would happen.
Harry knew he was staring. He realized he didn't care, and from the smirk Draco sent him, he surely didn't care, and might even approve.
"I—you went somewhere other than Hogwarts?" When he'd come back to Slytherin after dinner and Draco still wasn't there, Harry had assumed he was in the library or perhaps an abandoned classroom, sulking. He had stifled the urge to go after him. Yes, in one way he'd wanted to, but Draco was likely to take the gesture entirely the wrong way at this point, thinking that it would mean Harry was admitting he was right about pureblood superiority.
"Yes." Draco dropped onto his own bed. He was still staring at Harry with that odd combination of expressions on his face, and Harry still couldn't look away. It was annoying. "I went home."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "There was something you needed to speak about with your father?" He supposed it was too much to hope for that Draco had talked his father into accepting Muggleborns as equals and Lucius was coming to Hogwarts tomorrow to make an announcement about his conversion.
"Yes." Draco leaned forward. "I'm magical heir to the Malfoys now."
Harry found himself speechless. Draco had let him know last summer that Lucius was still angry about him attending Walpurgis Night, and that he'd refused to make Draco his magical heir as a consequence. Harry had expected that Draco would wear Lucius down eventually, but not this soon.
"Why?" he asked finally, and wished he knew what part of the question he was asking.
"Because I went to my father," Draco said simply, "and faced him, and forced him to respect me. He didn't really do it before, Harry, did you know that? He thought of me as this weak creature. It's the only explanation for why he put up as little resistance as he did." Then his expression, which had dropped away from a smile to something more intense, became a full-fledged smirk again. "I was ready because I wasn't ready. I just acted from moment to moment, the way I did when we attacked Dumbledore together, and Lucius thought it was part of some careful plan and tried to dismantle it, and he couldn't, because I didn't know what would happen next. It was rather fun, actually."
"I don't—" Harry said, and then stopped. There were so many things he wanted to say that that he didn't know how to choose among them. He was going to say that that didn't sound like Draco, but now he suspected that he had seen this Draco before, killing Whitecheek and kissing him last year for the first time and facing his father in second year as well as attacking Dumbledore. He wanted to ask more about what it felt like, but he wasn't sure Draco would understand him. He wanted to ask about the confrontation, but he wasn't sure Draco would tell him. He wanted to say that if Draco was now in favor of impulsive actions, had he changed his mind about Harry going to Durmstrang with Rosier? And that would spawn nothing good.
Draco turned and whispered a locking spell at the bedroom door. It slammed shut. Harry raised an eyebrow. "Blaise won't like that," he said, grateful that had come spilling out of his throat all on its own.
Draco turned around, and Harry swallowed. This wasn't going to be put off by distractions, he realized, any of it.
"Blaise can sod off," said Draco impatiently. "Right now, Harry, I want to have a conversation that doesn't involve yelling, or insults. It can involve apologies, but only if we both mean them." He eyed Harry. "Is that acceptable?"
"Did you plan this?" Harry managed to ask.
"I'm going to ignore the tone of that remark," Draco said pleasantly, "since I could consider it an insult if I wanted. But yes, as a matter of fact, I did. What I was going to do, anyway. Not what I was going to say." He leaned forward. "So I find the first thing I want to say is that I don't like fighting with you. So I want to stop."
Harry wished for a moment that he were in the lynx form he wore in his visions of Voldemort. He would have liked to flatten his ears. "I'm still angry at you," he said. "I'm not going to stop fighting just like that."
"And what are you angry about?"
"That you thought I endangered my life on purpose," Harry said. "You still seem to think that, and so does Snape. I told you, I did the best I could under the circumstances. And I can't alter my response to events that easily. People would rightly despise me if I became the kind of leader who let other people die instead of risking his own life."
Draco shook his head slightly. "I got angry out of worry, Harry. I do think, now, that you probably couldn't have done anything else right then. But I think you could plan a little more for some situations."
"Rosier is utterly unpredictable," Harry reminded him.
"Not Rosier," said Draco. Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that of course Rosier wasn't someone Draco could confront, and listened. "But these situations in general, Harry. Concentrate on learning more healing magic, for example, so that you won't have to feel utterly helpless when an enemy throws a Severing Curse. Work on strengthening your own magic; you have powers, but you prefer to rely on your old training rather than learn anything new." Harry tensed, but the tone of his voice was largely neutral, analytical, so Harry let it slide. "Look through the gifts you've been given and the artifacts you have now that you're Black heir. Look at them, not just see if they can be useful later."
Harry nodded. All of those suggestions made sense, really, and he could think of one Draco had neglected to add, maybe because he didn't know about it. Harry supposed he had to find out what the hell it meant to have Fawkes's voice, sometimes, and phoenix fire, sometimes. If those had been gifts from the wild Dark, Harry would have accepted that they had no laws or rules, but Light magic was much more about order and control, and phoenixes were magical creatures who lived by natural laws.
"Why haven't you done more things like that?" Draco wound up his list of suggestions.
Harry looked away from him with a grimace. "Because I feel as if I'm stretched thin enough as it is," he said shortly. "The more time I spend training my own powers, the more time I have to take away from something else. There's been the Durmstrang crisis and Dumbledore and the wild Dark in the past month alone—" he shuddered a little as he realized how fast those had come, one right after the other "—and before that, there was my parents' trial, and more work to try to determine how to undo the lightning ward. I haven't even had a meeting of the dueling club in a month. I need to get back to that. Every time I start thinking about how many obligations I have, they start overwhelming me. I know I'm splayed about as far as I can go right now and still accomplish schoolwork, sleep, and eat. Start training my powers, and something else would have to end."
"And do you think that most of your allies and friends would mind that?" Draco asked.
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Well, yes. Charles and Thomas certainly minded their children being trapped in Durmstrang."
"But most of these obligations aren't as urgent as that." Draco leaned nearer to him to make the point. "And Charles and Thomas were willing to work on that particular problem themselves, while you did other things. Harry, you can delegate. You can tell people that certain things will have to wait while you try to become stronger. What you did in front of the school today was wonderful, though why you gave the money to the Weasleys like that I'll never know—"
"So that no one would accuse them of stealing it," said Harry. "So their parents would know they got it perfectly legally. Now you know."
Draco smiled faintly, but that still didn't lessen the utter determination in his face. "I was referring more to giving money to Weasleys in the first place, but never mind," he murmured. "But you've only committed yourself to a fight for the werewolves' rights. You didn't say that you were going to knock the unfair laws down by next weekend and have a werewolf Minister in place by June. And I don't think that anyone expects you to."
"Who are you and what spell have you put Draco under?" Harry demanded.
"I had to learn a few home truths today," said Draco, and for a moment he winced. "Some things about myself I didn't really like. This morning, and then again this afternoon." The next moment, his gaze was steady again. "And I think it's time you did the same, Harry."
"I've been through that," said Harry.
"Only one set. Did you really think that was the end?"
Harry ground his teeth. "No," he said at last. Sometimes he hated it when someone else made so much sense that he couldn't duck and dodge and offer excuses any more. "But with the way crises have been piling up lately, I was hoping to put that off for a little while. I have to be ready and open to respond to any problem that comes this way, as Rosier showed me. Dedicating so much of my effort to training and delegating and so on would—"
"Not change things fundamentally," Draco interrupted calmly. "Except that you'd be working with an eye on the more distant future than next week, this time. You're holding yourself open for crises already, but you still did research on the lightning ward and found time to arrange that account for Professor Lupin." He looked on the verge of asking Harry why he'd done that, too, but refrained, as he probably knew. "I think you can do this, too, Harry. And if someone asks you why you've changed, explain. Most of your allies and friends would be thrilled to know that you're trying to become a stronger leader instead of simply losing yourself in the small problems."
Harry had to snort a little, at the sound of someone calling the wild Dark a "small problem."
"Understatement," said Draco. "I know. I'm sorry. I've got to stop doing that." While Harry gaped at the casual apology, he forged ahead. "But things have got to change, I think, Harry. Even if you're still angry at me and Snape, know that."
"I am," said Harry. "Still angry, that is."
"But you're sitting here and talking to me quietly enough." Draco gave him an inquiring look.
Harry scowled at nothing and tried to think of words to voice the realization he'd come to during History of Magic, since he'd nothing to do but think about his argument with Draco that morning. "I—the anger isn't enough, by itself, to keep me from talking to you. It was the idea that you still didn't see the sense of anything I was talking about that irritated me so much, that you still wanted me to give in about everything. And that's not the way it works. That's not the way it can work. Everything's got to change all the time, Draco, from argument to argument, maybe even day to day. Sometimes I will be completely wrong and unreasonable. Sometimes you will. And I thought that was the way you were acting right then." He raised his eyes to Draco's, hoping he could convey what he meant.
Draco said nothing for a moment. Then he said, "Being compared to your mother hurt, you know."
"I know."
"Do you really believe that?"
Harry shook his head. "Only in the heat of anger."
"Then why say it?"
Harry raised his eyebrows. "In the heat of anger, Draco. If we're going to try as hard as we can to understand each other, then you should understand that I say things I don't mean, too."
"And you still haven't apologized for it."
"And you still haven't apologized for anything you've said!" Then Harry hesitated. "Unless saying that you think I was right to do what I did in the Rosier situation was an apology."
"It was supposed to be," said Draco. "All right. I'm sorry for doubting your competence and your morals, Harry, and I'm sorry that I acted as if you had to become a different kind of person to fight this war."
Harry nodded. "I'm sorry for comparing you to my mother," he said. "The rest, not really. I do think that I'll have to change certain things about myself, the training, like you said, but not the rest. I'm never going to alter myself that much."
"I know," said Draco. "I wouldn't want you to. I'm thinking of you changing the things you concentrate on so you can protect what's most important about you." He leaned forward and captured Harry's lips in a brief kiss, before settling back again. "Now. What you said about changing from argument to argument…it'll have to happen all the time, won't it? And just going back to being lazy, the way I was before, won't work."
Harry blinked. "I wouldn't call you lazy."
Draco laughed dryly. "That's because you haven't been inside my head. I was, Harry. I knew sometimes that I could have achieved better marks or more attention or even heroics like you, but it's so much easier to demand it, or throw a tantrum, or just not do anything than get it. It's hard. I think it's even harder than the putting your head down and pushing you told me about, because here I'm fighting my way uphill, not accepting what comes." He tilted his head at Harry, and his eyes shone. "But I'm good at dancing on a rockslide. I think I can do that. This. I think I can change from moment to moment, day to day, and not just in our arguments. All the time. I know I can; it's just been my own reluctance that's kept me from it." Harry wondered privately if that was really true, but Draco certainly sounded as if he believed it. "I can do this, Harry. Merlin, I can do this. And I know that you can, though I have to teach you some things about enjoying what you do and not just getting it out of the way, and you have to teach me some things about continuing, not just flaring once and then dying down."
Harry had to lower his eyes at the vision those words prompted. He and Draco, ever-changing, ever-whirling, ever in motion, achieving so many things that the times when they would slide back and make mistakes were beggared in comparison, because they would know that they wouldn't make those mistakes and get stuck in them forever. The future didn't end, wasn't cut off, and things would always change. So long as they could remember that, then they would avoid most of the pit traps Harry had seen other people fall into.
"Harry," said Draco. "I want you to think about this. Now that I'm magical heir to the Malfoy family, I can court you with a full ritual that no one but a magical heir is allowed to use. It takes three years."
Harry stared at him. Even with the vision in his head, to hear that Draco wanted to take this kind of step to make the vision a reality was—odd. Perhaps it was easier to think about than to do.
But Draco had taken a risk. The least Harry could do was meet it. He cleared his throat. "Go on."
"It's a joining ritual," Draco said. "Or a marriage ritual, but you are definitely not a girl." His eyes had a lazy, appreciative look in them as he ran them over Harry's body. "It takes place four times a year, so there are twelve rituals—or thirteen, really, but the final ritual is the joining itself. Walpurgis is one night, and then the holiday that used to be called Lammas, on August first." He grinned. "I think we can use your birthday for that one. Then Halloween marks the third ritual, and then the old holiday of Imbolc, on the second of February, is the fourth. Rituals will happen on those days, if you agree." He cocked his head at Harry. "I hope you agree, obviously, but take some time to think about it."
"Is that why you're not starting this Imbolc?" Harry asked wryly, when he'd recovered his breath.
"Right," said Draco. "So that you can have some time to think about it. Besides, all the best rituals like this one start on Walpurgis Night. Everyone says so."
Harry nodded absently, and rolled back on his bed. He had time to think about it. He really did. He could trust Draco to let him take that time.
And now he had a different kind of vision of the future, one that spun him dizzily around and made his breath come short and fast.
It didn't need to be totally separate from the world where he trained people in dueling and worked for werewolves' rights, either. Harry suspected that that was what Draco was most trying to show him.
"You're thinking about it?" Draco asked.
Harry closed his eyes. "I'm definitely thinking about it."
"Good," said Draco happily, and they leaped over a bit more of the argument between them, and into a new whirl of motion.