Cradling Harry in her arms feels so much like holding Draco after the war. They'd grieved and wept for everything they'd lost. Narcissa weeps openly now against Harry's unruly hair. She lets tears fall for Harry's losses, for Draco's, for her own. She mourns the world she thought she knew.
After a while, Harry's shoulders stop shaking and the grip on her knee slackens. His breathing evens out and she hesitates before moving. Licking her lips, she gathers her voice with a soft cough and shakes him. He doesn't respond. She leans down to whisper his name, a soft, "Harry" falling from her lips. At this, he winces, lifting a hand to rub the soreness from his eyes.
"Harry? Let's get you to bed." She attempts to help him up, but he rolls away. Narcissa waits before asking, "Do you need—" She stops. Of course he does. A nod and she moves toward him, helping him up with an arm beneath his own and steadying the shaky boy until his legs hold his weight.
He doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't. Harry turns lost eyes to her and she smiles the smile of a woman who's done this many times before. She squeezes his elbow and walks him toward his bed. He climbs in; she pulls back the covers and rearranges them. She breaks a little as he systematically pulls every part of himself closer, tighter until he is forgotten beneath the weight of the blankets.
Thus cocooned, Harry is quickly asleep—but he's restless.
He rolls about in the bed, searching for something, someone. Narcissa summons Tovo to watch over him while she excuses herself to her chambers. She passes Draco on the way. Her son looks about ready to question her disheveled robe and swollen face, but she dismisses him, leaving the bewildered blond in the wake of her escape.
Nearly nine hours later, Malve arrives in her chambers.
"Where would Mistress prefer to eat?"
"I will be dining with Harry," she responds. "Thank you Malve."
"A light lunch will be served in ten minutes, mistress." Malve bows and exits the room.
Given her cue, she takes a deep inhale of the air streaming in from the balcony before closing the doors. Then she makes her way back to Harry. He is still asleep, muttering and twitching uneasily, but she sees that Malve has already laid out toast and tea. She smiles absently. It's been some time since she's eaten, but her stomach is queasy and light fare will suit.
Narcissa approaches the bed with caution. One hand is out while she calls his name.
"Harry? It's time to wake now, Harry." She steps forward to place a hand soothingly on his shoulder, or at least where she supposes his shoulder is beneath the mound of blankets.
"Mrrrmmmm."
"You need to get up Harry," she coaxes. "I've brought tea."
He sits up then, moving away from her. His knees are up to his chest and he's scanning the room.
"Come, now. Let's eat." Narcissa says it calmly, but it is more of a demand than he's used to.
She walks away, leaving the decision up to him. When she sits at the table and helps herself to some toast, he feels the grind of hunger crackle in his throat and joins her. Their eyes meet across plates of half-eaten toast and steaming mugs of tea for a moment, but nothing is said. Narcissa continues to stir the milk into her tea and Harry shoves toast into his mouth, leaving a swath of crumbs in his wake.
Harry doesn't find it odd that his leg is unable to rest against the chair or that his wrist shakes each time he picks up his mug. Instead, he looks down into the swirling liquid and concentrates on how it will scald his tongue and how each time his thigh lifts, he is closer to the table, but each time it goes down, he is more grounded. It feels good to be grounded to something.
It seems an odd sort of arrangement, but Harry and Narcissa continue meeting for meals in Harry's rooms. She tries on several occasions to bring him to the formal dining room or to one of the patios, but he steadfastly refuses.
After several weeks of this, she doesn't show up for breakfast. Instead, Tovo arrives with a reserved smile and a small offering of eggs and sausage. She politely waits for him to finish, then retreats. Before he can question if Narcissa will return for lunch, Tovo disapparates. Harry withdraws to his corner by the bed. He's not been here for some days now, but he feels safe with a view of the door and something between him and anyone walking in.
Thoughts are running wildly through his mind; everything from Death Eater attacks to Voldemort's return and Harry is tapping—TAPTAPTAP against his knee caps. He starts to get overwhelmed, cocking his jaw out to the side and grinding his teeth, when she walks through the door.
"Wha—" Harry is confused, torn now.
"Harry?"
Narcissa looks around. At not seeing Harry by the window, she moves around the bed and sees him. Huddled back in the corner, she frowns.
"Harry," she says softly. "What's wrong?"
"Where were you?" His voice is small, nearly as small as he's trying to be. It's not small enough; it's never small enough. He remembers the cupboard and the looming stairs and how they held him, shielded him. Here, he's open and exposed and there isn't a space tight enough to crawl into.
"I ate with Draco." Her eyebrows are pulled together as she watches him rocking gently, trying to figure something out. "What are you doing? Why aren't you watching out the window? Reading the paper?" She gestures to the issue of The Daily Prophet he'd received that morning.
"I couldn't." She waits for him to continue, but he doesn't.
"Harry. We need to talk." His mouth opens as if he's about to start explaining everything, but she gestures him to silence. "You need to come out of your room. This isn't healthy. I'm not forcing you to leave the Manor, but you cannot stay in this room." Harry stares at her, open-mouthed once more.
"I-I-I can't. I just can't. I don't know how. If I left then it could happen. It might happen. And then what would I do. Oh…" His face falls, his entire body still for a moment before he grips both of his knees and bashes them together. "You want me to leave." He moves to crawl away, to fade into the wallpaper, but he's having trouble getting beneath the pattern.
"Harry, stop." Narcissa reaches out toward him and he shrieks. "Harry." Her voice carries all the hurt she's feeling because she doesn't know how to fix this. "Why won't you leave your room?"
He stares.
"I can't," he says simply.
"You can't? Or you won't?" She waits for an answer.
She pauses, listening to the things he's unable to say. "I can't. Too much. Down there—it's too much."
"When you were here before," she starts, "what do you remember?"
She watches as countless emotions play across his face. He struggles to start, but manages the name, "Hermione."
"So there it is." As if she's found the answer to everything, she nods. "Did her torture in this house bother you, Harry?"
All he can do is focus on his breathing, try not to panic and disappear.
"Does it bother you still?"
"Yes," he barely croaks the word out. "I can hear her pain. I feel her screams. I dream it, sometimes." He sinks back to his corner, slumping.
"You need to face that fear, Harry. You have faced a great many things, overcome challenges that would break many men." She pauses to let him think. "You will come out of this room, Harry."
"I can't."
"You will." She stands and turns away from him. "Tovo. Malve." In a moment, she is flanked by eager house elves.
"What can we be doing for Mistress?"
"Yes," Tovo squeaks. "Anything for Mistress and Mr. Harry Potter sir."
Narcissa laughs softly at their enthusiasm, then smirks as she looks at Harry. "Harry is to come out of this room. Drag him if you have to."
Tovo looks up at Narcissa with dread. "Is Mistress sure? Mr. Harry Potter sir doesn't want to be leaving; I be knowing that."
"Yes. Out of this room and down the stairs. Meet me in the great hall."
"Yes, Mistress!" Both elves reply.
As they descend on him, Harry turns in on himself. His arms come up to protect his face, but his legs flail as they get closer. One of them—he's not sure which—manages to grasp an arm and pull it back. She's strong, and this surprises him, throwing him off balance. While he's distracted, the other slips behind him and throws a shoulder against his lower back. Between them, he's hurled forward and sprawls on his knees. His mind is shutting down, so they begin dragging him by any piece of clothing they can grab. He's making the process difficult by fighting any spell they try to use.
When that fails, they resort to a tethering spell. Malve moves forward and Harry is forced to follow. If he doesn't walk, then his knees scrape and drag across the floor. The top of his feet slither back and forth with the heavy motion of his upper body. Tovo scurries beside him, hands clasped together in worry.
Harry makes it past the door frame before his breathing becomes erratic. The memories come back. He sees the staircase—not as it is, but as it was. He's dizzy because his body is going down but he's looking up and his feet are planted firmly on the ground, but he feels them swinging beneath his body. There is screaming. Hermione screams from the other room, but he also hears someone else—a man?
"Who's screaming?" he asks. "Oh gods. Make it stop. Who's screaming?" This time he says it louder. What he fails to realize is that he's asking in his head and the screams are his own. Tovo hovers like a worried mother and Malve keeps moving forward. Harry doesn't know how they don't hear the screaming.
He hears the shattering of crystal and jerks violently against the spell. Malve's steps falter. She turns back to look at him convulsing in mid-air. His arms are clutched at his ears and he's silently screaming. He's out of breath, heaving to get air back into his burning lungs. Malve frowns and cancels the spell, easing the boy to the ground. Narcissa is watching from the corner as Harry's body tries to deal spasmodically with the input of what's happening to him.
"Harry I want you to look at the room around you."
"No," he cries. "No, I can't. She's hurting her. She's hurting her and there's nothing I can do." He's weeping, clenching his eyes as tightly as he can.
"Trust me." Narcissa pauses, waiting to see if it's enough. She releases a sigh and kneels near him. "Open your eyes. I'm right next to you. Do you remember me talking to you like this that night?"
"No?" He's confused again, trying to make sense of it all.
"Then open your eyes."
He does. What he sees is not what he saw.
"But it's—"
"Different?" Narcissa offers.
Harry doesn't answer. Instead, he crawls forward so that he is beneath the chandelier. This chandelier is different, though. It has long, draping arms with candles adorning each flared end. The dark metal stands out distinctly from the glittering gold framework he remembers from before.
Narcissa stands back as Harry's head jerks repeatedly, assaulted with fresh memories as he looks around the room.
"There were paintings on that wall." Twitch. "And there was a chair," he points, "just over there." She nods.
Harry stands now, walking unsteadily toward the window. Velvet curtains drape open around large frames. "These were red before." His hands wrap in the cloth, fingering the dusky grey. "But over here," he mutters as he walks across the hall and stumbles, one foot curling under, but continuing in his awed exploration. "Over here was where…" He trails off.
Harry stops. "Hermione was here." He crumbles to the ground and runs his fingers along the wood, feeling for her.
"It's not exactly as you remember, is it?" Narcissa is next to him now.
"No." He shakes his head sadly.
"After the war, we changed a lot of things. The first change was easy. We changed the things around us. Some of our dark artefacts were sold; we changed some aspects of our home." She gestured to the room with an open hand. "The second was much harder. You see, we had to change ourselves. I think you know all about that, Harry." She is at his level now, staring him straight in the eye when he looks to her.
"I've been through here. O-on my way out to the gardens, and it looked the same as before. I was drunk. I had to have been drunk." His cheeks burn in shame and he looks down again. "I didn't want to remember it."
"Draco couldn't walk through this room after what happened. We changed, Harry. We changed because we couldn't stand to look at ourselves or this place." Harry reaches out, tentatively, and takes her hand.
He swallows before admitting, "I'd like to, but I don't know how."
The tap-tap of his thumb is rapid as he falls apart; something old—desperate for something new.