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Part Two
"Harry. Let me look at you."
Harry had been gaping at all the marble and gold in the room where they'd landed. Now he transferred the gape to Mrs. Malfoy as she came forwards to meet him, hands held out. He'd only seen her when she was looking as though she was disgusted with everyone at the Quidditch World Cup. Now she wanted to hold his hand?
His hands, it turned out. She took both of them and leaned down to peck him on the cheek. "You cannot imagine how happy this makes me," she murmured. "Draco is waiting for you in the Gold Sitting Room."
Harry wanted to say that he didn't believe she was happy and that he had no idea where the Gold Sitting Room was, but he went with, "Um, Malfoy and I don't exactly get along."
"I know, dear," Mrs. Malfoy said, and gave him a weird kind of smile. As though she was sad about it? Harry didn't know. "But there is a difference, I am sure you will agree, between the Boy-Who-Lived who insulted him on the train and Lucius's godson."
"I did not insult him, he insulted Ron—"
"Such a time will be forgotten," Mr. Malfoy said, and stepped in front of Harry, crouching down. Harry stared at him. Mr. Malfoy looked nothing like he had at the end of second year when Harry had freed Dobby. Instead, his eyes were strangely bright, and he had a half-smile on his lips. "Do understand, Harry. No one will hurt you here."
"Draco might—"
"If you are afraid that we might prefer Draco instead of you—"
"Yes? Because he's your son?"
"Then you have nothing to worry about." Mr. Malfoy just kept talking as if he didn't hear Harry, reaching out and gripping Harry's hands in his, hard. "If I had known that you were my godson, I would have rescued you from your deplorable living conditions the moment I knew."
"How do you know they're deplorable?"
"My dear," Mrs. Malfoy interrupted. "Look at what you are wearing."
"School robes?"
"Underneath those."
Harry blushed bright red. It was true that he wore Dudley's terrible ugly shirt and trousers, and that he'd cast charms on them to make them not sag as much, but that did nothing about the color or the size.
But resentment still flared to life in his chest. He could have been living with someone—except that person was a Death Eater, and his son was one of the worst people Harry had ever met, who'd called Hermione a Mudblood—
"I can't stay here," he blurted out. It was like reality had come crashing back into his brain. "Draco called Hermione a Mudblood, he'll be—I don't know, he'll be nice to your face and mean behind your backs, or he'll insist that I stop being friends with her—"
"He will insist no such thing."
Harry just shook his head. He knew how it was. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon also insisted that Dudley was an angel and that he would never do anything mean to Harry, and look how that had turned out. "Mr. Malfoy, take me back to school, okay? I was just trying to see who put my name in the Goblet, I had no idea it would say you were my godfather—"
"But Draco told me that it did, using a Portkey he keeps for emergencies, and now I know James was faithful to our friendship in a way that I never would have imagined." Mr. Malfoy's hands settled harder onto Harry's shoulders. "At least think about it this way, Harry. Do you want to return to a school full of people who think you are a cheater and a liar, and who would probably see this as one more piece of evidence of special treatment?"
Harry shut his eyes tightly. No, he didn't.
"I didn't think so." Mr. Malfoy's voice had an unattractive smug tone. "Now, come, we have a new friendship with my son to establish, and we will show you over the house and to your suite."
I barely had a bedroom at the Dursleys'. Now I have a suite?
Harry told himself sternly as they moved through more corridors full of statues and busts and portraits and gold and marble and jewelry and vases and plinths and treasures that he couldn't be seduced by the promise of luxury. Mr. Malfoy was still the same person who had given Ginny the diary in second year. He was still the person who had abused Dobby. He was still the person who had been a Death Eater.
But damn, sometimes he wished he could be seduced like that sometimes.
"Harry. I wanted to apologize."
Draco Malfoy was standing in front of Harry with serious eyes and hands folded in front of him, and Harry felt as though the world had been tilted on end and would never make sense again. So he said, "You don't need to apologize to me. You need to apologize to Hermione."
Draco sneered a little, but just said, "She's not here. You are. And we're going to be spending parts of the summers and holidays together, so—"
"Wait, what?"
"It is a godfather's right," said Mr. Malfoy from the doorway of the Gold Sitting Room, which really was gold, and looked like a Niffler's dream. "I know that you would also prefer to spend time with Sirius Black, so your time would be split between us. Forgive me if this is not the case, but from what you said, I did not think you would want to go back to your Muggle relatives."
"Wait, Muggles?" Draco looked like Hermione had hit him in the face again.
"Yes. They apparently—"
Harry interrupted. "I don't like them that much, but living with them is better than living with someone who would use the Cruciatus Curse on me!"
There was a small silence. Now everyone was staring at him, and Mrs. Malfoy's eyebrows in particular were arched in a way that Harry thought Aunt Petunia would have liked to imitate. His face burned. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his school robes and stared back.
"Why did you think I would?" Mr. Malfoy asked after a moment. His voice was flat. Probably because he was upset about Harry referring to his Death Eater past, but to Harry, it sounded strangely like he was…hurt.
He would lie, you know he would. Harry took a deep breath. "Because you tortured and killed people when you were a Death Eater? It's the sort of thing Dark wizards do?"
"I was under the Imperius Curse, as I told you—"
"Oh, come off it."
There was a long moment of silence, during which everyone continued to stare at him, except that Draco started glancing back and forth between his parents. Harry wondered if he knew the truth about Mr. Malfoy or if he accepted the Imperius lie or if he'd never thought about it.
Maybe he never needed to think about it.
Mr. Malfoy sighed at last and shook his head. "You apparently will not let this go. Very well, Harry. Yes, I was not under the Imperius Curse for vast portions of the war. The Dark Lord did use it on me at times when he wanted to play puppets instead of relying on his Death Eaters' expertise, as he did on everyone."
"Father," Draco whispered. His eyes were huge.
"But you should know that I was young and stupid then."
"So were lots of people. They didn't all run around killing and torturing Muggleborns!"
"No." Mr. Malfoy frowned and clasped his hands in front of him, as if he were talking about a logic puzzle instead of people's lives. "But I allowed ideology to distract me from my own self-preservation and the good of family, which is a thing all true purebloods should watch out for. I have determined that if the Dark Lord returns, I will not go back to his side. It would not serve me or my family or my larger goals."
Harry stared at him, about to say that he didn't believe Mr. Malfoy and he would have thought someone who was a Death Eater could lie better—
But then he slammed to a halt as a voice that might have been Nott's hissed in his head, Think, you idiot!
Mr. Malfoy had just handed Harry a huge secret. Harry could have told one of the other Death Eaters—like Snape—and got Mr. Malfoy tortured or maybe killed himself. And this wasn't something even Draco and Mrs. Malfoy had known, from the way they were staring at Mr. Malfoy.
It could still be a lie. Or maybe Mr. Malfoy really believed that and then he would end up going back to Voldemort anyway because he was afraid.
But Harry still had the words. He still had the memory, which Nott had told him could be looked at by the Wizengamot. And that meant Mr. Malfoy could still be in a lot of trouble even if he didn't mean it.
"Why did you tell me that?" he finally whispered.
"Because you deserve to know that you can trust me." Mr. Malfoy took a step forwards and stood earnestly looking into Harry's eyes. "Is this the way that I would have preferred finding out that James made me your godfather? No, of course not. But now I know that my first friend still felt some allegiance to me. This has changed everything because it must."
"What about your allegiance to Voldemort?"
Mr. Malfoy flinched and grabbed his arm, while Draco just flinched and Mrs. Malfoy made a disapproving little sound like Harry had tracked mud on the floor. But Mr. Malfoy said only, "This is older."
Maybe that makes sense. Maybe all purebloods are mad for old things. "And you'll—you know that Dumbledore knows where you took me, right? So you wouldn't get away with murdering me in my sleep anyway?"
"He's dead on his feet, Lucius," Mrs. Malfoy said softly, while Harry, suddenly swaying, blinked and tried to brace himself. Had they somehow managed to slip him a potion he didn't know about? "Let me take him to his suite."
"Why am I so tired? What did you do?"
"You cast a very powerful Dark Arts spell on a magical artifact capable of great resistance, Harry." Mrs. Malfoy was ushering him towards what looked like a huge black staircase. Black marble? Harry was too tired to figure it out. Maybe he couldn't have figured it out even if he wasn't tired. "I am frankly amazed that you stayed on your feet this long."'
"Wait, Dark Arts?"
But exhaustion swept over him in a wave, and he never did get to hear her answer before he passed out.
Harry woke up and sat up and stared around the most beautiful bedroom he had ever seen.
It was probably a guest bedroom—or suite—like the room that the Dursleys kept for Marge, but it didn't matter. It was decorated in deep blues and greens, like he was underwater, and the bed was higher and fluffier than the one at Hogwarts. In the room with his roommates who all thought he was a cheater and a liar.
Harry swallowed and slid out of the bed, nearly stumbling from the height. Then he set out to explore the room.
The windows looked out on gardens full of white peacocks that were probably real, and images of deep space and beaches and forests that couldn't be. Harry found the bathroom and just gaped in silence at the white marble and silver fixtures and faucets shaped like leaping dolphins. He did have to use the loo, so he did, but then he let the door fall carefully shut, wondering if he was really supposed to be here.
Someone knocked on the door.
Harry whirled around and stared. Then he cleared his throat and said, "Um, come in."
The man who came in was a stranger, with dark hair and brown skin and a thoughtful face. Harry stumbled back and reached for his wand, which rested on the table next to the bed.
"It is all right," the man said, stopping. He watched Harry with thoughtful eyes, like the rest of him. His hair was long and dark, coiled atop his head, and a blue star hung from his ear. "I am a Healer."
"Why are you here? I'm recovered from—the spell I cast." Harry wasn't going to tell this man that it was Dark Arts if he didn't already know.
The man inclined his head in a slow gesture that might be a nod and might not. Harry didn't know anything about how evil Healers in Death Eater houses nodded. "I understand. I am here about the injuries you suffered before that."
"There were none!"
The man raised an eyebrow and gave Harry the most piercing glance he had ever seen. It seemed to go straight into the center of his chest and scrape out a cavity there. "Really? Is that true?"
Harry's face flamed. He sat down on the bed and glared at the Healer, whose deep blue robes were a match for the walls around them.
"Forgive me," the man said a moment later, without looking one inch like he was begging for forgiveness. "But I have been hired by Lucius to examine you, and I can feel the pain of your wounds from here."
"But I'm not wounded!"
The Healer drew his wand and traced it in a zigzag pattern so fast that Harry's eyes blurred trying to look at it. Strokes and curlicues of green formed in response, and white, and black, centered on Harry.
"I can feel the resonance of them," said the Healer. Now he sounded sad. "Old aches, and broken bones, and starvation, and numerous other things. Poison." He tilted his head, and his eyes widened. "The venom of a basilisk?"
"I fought one a few years ago. It bit me."
The Healer closed his eyes and stood there for a long moment, absolutely still, as if asking someone unseen for patience. Then he nodded to Harry. "My name is Healer Asharan. I thought this would be a simple task at first, that you had been cared for. Now I find that this is not the case. Please sit down on the bed."
"I am sitting on the—"
"Lie down, please."
Harry did. Somehow. It seemed—well, he didn't really want to argue with Healer Asharan, exactly. Or maybe it was as if Harry couldn't argue with him. Or he could come up with all sorts of good things to say, but by the time he thought to say them, the Healer was tracing his wand above Harry's body and shaking his head, silently, gravely, again and again.
"What?" Harry whispered. "What does that mean?"
"The damage is treatable. A few more years, and it might not have been." Healer Asharan sighed and put his wand away. "Please, Mr. Potter, tell me the truth. Who did you live with before you came to Hogwarts?"
"Muggles. Mr. Malfoy already knows that."
"And did they treat you well?"
"No."
"They denied you food?"
"Sometimes." It wasn't like it had been every day, Harry thought.
"They beat you?"
"What? No!" Harry exclaimed. "That was—my cousin, and his friends. They liked to chase me around and beat me up, and sometimes they broke my wrist or something." It had never been an arm or a leg.
Healer Asharan looked sadder and sadder. Harry found it hard to resent him, somehow, even though he had marched in here and made Harry lie down on the bed and cast spells on him and not even introduced himself until Harry had asked. "I see," he murmured. "Then we will start you on some potions, but there are other treatments that will need to proceed via spell. Breaking and resetting some of the small bones, for example, and purging the basilisk venom from your body."
"But Fawkes already did that. The Headmaster's phoenix, I mean," Harry explained when Healer Asharan looked at him. "He cried on the wound, and that's the reason I didn't die of the poison."
"It meant you didn't die," Healer Asharan corrected him with quiet intensity. "That's not the same thing as being free of the effects of the venom or living a healthy life."
"I…" Harry had never felt so lost. "Why does it matter? You were probably out there torturing Muggleborns, too."
"No," Healer Asharan said simply. "Lucius brought me here to heal you, and that is what will happen."
"Can I see him? Mr. Malfoy, I mean."
"Of course," Healer Asharan said. "I think it would be wise to discuss your treatment plan with him in any case. Given that you are at Hogwarts for most of the year if not all the time, we will have to make plans to get the right potions and spells to you. Although some of it could be done over the Christmas holiday."
"I…someone told me I needed to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday."
"Who?"
"Because I was participating in the Tri-Wizard Tournament—"
"Something that Lucius had the power to veto as your godfather, announced by the Goblet itself. An underage child's guardian can cancel the contract, which is one reason they restricted participation to adults in this Tournament."
Harry closed his eyes. He hadn't known. He had hoped that something like that would happen, but he hadn't had time to think about it with the way that he'd been bustled through the Floo to Malfoy Manor.
He was free.
It's worth it. Whatever bullying I have to put up with from Draco or whatever Ron and Ginny are going to say to me because of it—it's worth it.
"Good morning, Harry."
Mrs. Malfoy was as absurdly welcoming as ever, and she smiled at Harry as he took a seat at the table. It was smaller than the huge thing Harry had been picturing, but that only meant that he bit his lip a little as he looked down at the mass of silverware by his plate.
"I don't know how to use the right fork and stuff," he said. "Fair warning."
"It's not as though we care about that where the family is concerned," Mrs. Malfoy said, and smiled at him some more as food appeared on the plates with a soft popping sound. Harry stared at sausages and porridge and scones, and suppressed the urge to say that he'd thought they would eat fancier fare.
Well, all right, near the end of the table was a complicated fruit dish he didn't know the name of. He wondered if Mrs. Malfoy would make him learn.
"Good morning, Harry."
Harry eyed Draco as he stepped through an archway ridiculously richly decorated with gold and silver. "Good morning," he echoed uneasily. "I—you want me to call you by your first name?"
"Of course," Draco said, and managed to frown at Harry even as he smiled and took a seat next to his mother. "We're godbrothers."
"What's that?"
Draco stared at him, but whatever he might have said, Mrs. Malfoy got in the way of. She leaned over to spoon some of the ridiculous fruit dish, complete with heavy cream, onto Harry's plate, and said, "It means that your parents were each other's godparents. You are considered a sibling to Draco in such a situation, you see? Godbrothers."
Harry swallowed and said nothing. He knew the Malfoys were awful people, but at the same time, he wished he could have grown up here and not at the Dursleys', where he would never have to live in a cupboard and he could have a brother.
Both things were true at once, and sat in his head, and fought with each other. It was so confusing.
"Good morning, Harry."
But more confusing than Mrs. Malfoy, who after all he'd never really met, or Draco, who might be changing his mind just because his parents had told him to, was Mr. Malfoy sweeping through another archway and smiling at Harry with a gentle gaze that also ran all over him. Maybe he's already met with Healer Asharan and heard about everything that the Healer thought needed Healing, Harry thought.
"Um, good morning."
Mr. Malfoy nodded to Harry and gave him a little smile, and then sat down and began to use his silverware in big, exaggerated gestures. Harry glanced sideways a lot and imitated him, and he knew he wasn't imagining the way that Mrs. Malfoy's smile increased.
It was so weird. So strange.
But he sat there and he had a meal, and no one yelled at him or called him a cheater or a liar, or talked loudly about stealing Cedric's glory as if they couldn't see that he was sitting right there. No one was wearing a Potter Stinks badge, either.
Right, Harry realized with a start. I almost forgot about that. I really did.
"Harry, is there some reason that you're glaring at Draco?"
Harry swallowed the last bite of the fruit dish and said, "Well, Draco made Potter Stinks badges that he was giving out to people because he thought I cheated and put my name in the Goblet of Fire. I was just wondering if he was going to go on doing that. If he still believes that."
"Draco."
Mrs. Malfoy didn't sound too angry, maybe because she knew that they'd been enemies until yesterday, but Draco ducked his head and flushed a bright pink anyway. "Right," he murmured. "I'm sorry, Harry."
"Are you really, though? I mean—it's just—nothing's different from yesterday except what the Goblet said."
"Yes, I know," Draco said, staring at Harry now as if he were the weird one. "But that's enough, don't you see? I didn't know we were godbrothers or that you didn't cheat. Now I know."
"I don't know if that'll be enough for anyone else," Harry muttered. His voice was thick with resentment, which he winced at the sound of. But it was true. For some reason, it was enough for the Malfoys, because they seemed to take this godparent-godbrother thing really seriously, but it wouldn't be the same for everyone else.
Maybe they'll back down from believing I cheated in this specific instance. Or maybe they'll just think I was powerful enough to get past the Age Line and fool the Goblet.
"I'll announce it for you."
From the eager way that Draco's eyes shone, Harry believed he would. He would probably have fun telling people how wrong they had been. Harry smiled at him and said, "Thanks, Draco," shocked to find himself meaning it. "I just don't know if it'll be enough for everyone."
"Who are you especially thinking about, Harry?"
Harry winced a little at the thought that he would expose his friends to Mrs. Malfoy like this, but—"Ron," he whispered. "My friend Ron. He just—he thought that I cheated and was upset that I didn't share my cheating method with him."
"Weasley has always been—"
"I will make an announcement in front of the school as well," Mr. Malfoy interrupted Draco. "I cannot say that it will be enough for all your friends or Weasleys, but I will do it, and explain my belief that Barty Crouch, Junior, did it."
"But everyone thinks he's dead?"
"His father was also the Director of Magical Law Enforcement at the time, and his wife passed away under suspicious circumstances, with a very private funeral. And his son was a Death Eater. Yes, I can explain details that will make it seem plausible."
"I just bet you can."
Harry flushed when he realized what he'd said. There it was, the confusing fighting in his head again. Mr. Malfoy was helping him. Mr. Malfoy was a Death Eater. He really did seem to take the godfather thing seriously. He'd hurt Ginny and Dobby.
"Yes, I can," Mr. Malfoy said, and nothing more than that.
Harry stared down at his plate. He was free of the competition, but it was like his mind needed new things to worry about. Now he was wondering what would happen if Ron decided to never come around.
Then you'll survive, a strong, cold, new voice whispered to him. It was maybe the voice of the side of his mind saying that Mr. Malfoy was helping him.
But he's my best friend!
If he never believes you again or apologizes? Some best friend.
Harry shook his head a little, and shook it again when Mrs. Malfoy looked at him in concern. This was just something that he would have to deal with by himself. Things had changed, and they wouldn't go back to what they'd been even if he wished for it. He didn't have a Time-Turner, and he couldn't Memory Charm the whole Malfoy family.
Besides. As awful as they were, they had got him out of the Tournament, and they would announce that to the school. And Draco would stop making those awful badges, all because Harry had turned out to be his godbrother.
Despite how awful they were. How awful they had always been.
The feelings fought in his head.
