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Part Five

"No, Draco. You don't need a Firebolt."

"No, but I want one."

Harry bit back a smile as he sat eating the Christmas morning meal that Dobby had made for him. It was mostly porridge, but drizzled with cinnamon and covered with at least half a dozen different kinds of berries. Most of the time, Mother would have said that it was too unhealthy for him to eat. But Harry didn't think he could have asked for anything during this holiday that he'd be refused.

He still didn't ask for everything he could have, of course. For one thing, he felt uncomfortable doing that and knowing the Malfoys would just…give it to him. Maybe because he had grown up with the Dursleys, and they wouldn't have. But whatever the reason, he wouldn't ask.

For another, he thought Mother and Father had quite enough to cope with, having one Draco in the family.

"We already destroyed the broom," Father said, his voice on the line between cold and exasperated. "Why can't you be more like your brother, Draco? See, he's perfectly satisfied with the gifts he got already."

Harry grimaced. Yes, he and Draco were brothers, sure, even twins, but he could still wish their parents wouldn't compare them.

"But he grew up poor! He just doesn't know how good he could have it."

The cheerful mood of the morning froze in an instant. Harry glanced up and saw Mother staring at Draco with a face as pale as marble, and Father shutting his eyes and taking a long, deep breath. Draco frowned, but he still looked back and forth as though someone else had caused the problem.

"What? I'm only saying what all of us should be saying. And I'll ask the questions that should be asked, too." Draco leaned forwards. "Have you punished them? The ones who abused Henry and locked him up behind bars?"

"I do not wish to speak of them," Mother said. "Particularly today."

"We have to, though. No one tells me anything! I mean, maybe you punished them, but you never said anything to me. And I think Henry would like to know, too." Draco looked at Harry, who glared at him and tried to mouth Don't drag me into this, you moron. That only made Draco smile. He probably wasn't good at lip-reading.

"We have wanted to do certain things to them," Father said. "Henry did not approve of those things. We have agreed that some of the vengeance must remain up to him."

"So they're just walking around free, like they're innocent?" Draco demanded. "Henry, how can you stand for that?"

"What Father wanted to do was torture or kill them!" Harry snapped. "I don't want my cousin—I mean, the boy I thought I was my cousin to grow up an orphan just because I thought I was! I don't want him to suffer because I did! That's not the way you get justice."

"It would be fine. It's not like you would ever have to see him again. So why would it matter to you if he suffered like that?"

Harry hissed and pushed his porridge bowl away. "I'm not feeling very hungry," he said, and turned and looked at Mrs. Malfoy. "Can I be excused and go to my room, please?"

"But it doesn't matter," Draco said loudly. "Come on, Henry, you know it doesn't."

"It would still be happening even if I wasn't right there to witness it! Merlin, you're a little shit sometimes, Draco."

"Henry! Do not swear at your brother."

"Then can you tell him not to say that everything would be fine if I'd agreed to let Father kill the Dursleys for what they did to me? Can you stop him from acting like only the family is important, and no one else?"

Mother blinked a little. Harry wasn't sure if she'd expected him to ask for something different, or what. The fact was that things were stretching out, and Draco still stood there with an intolerably self-satisfied look on his face.

"You really think swearing at him is worse than saying it's fine to torture or kill some people?" Harry asked.

"Your abusers." Mother stared at him, the air around her brilliant for a moment with magic that looked as if it was reflecting off water.

"Muggles," Draco added.

"Wow," Harry said. "So I still don't fit into this fucking family." He ignored the next admonition about swearing and stomped out of the dining room. He would go up and sit on his bed and stare at the wall anyway. It was probably no worse than the punishment than they would have given him.

"Henry!" Draco yelled, but Harry didn't turn around. There were some things he was learning better about, and some things he was willing to compromise on, and some things the Malfoys were right about. Harry could even admit that it was useless to ask them not to hate the Dursleys or the Potters.

But murder was not okay, no matter what the people in question had done. Harry wouldn't have wanted to murder Voldemort if the man suddenly appeared in front of him and handed him a knife to do it with.

Murder was wrong.

"Henry? May I come in?"

Harry lifted his head from his folded arms. He'd been lying on his bed with his eyes closed and his face buried in his pillow most of the afternoon, but he hadn't fallen asleep. His mind was whirling too much for that. He stared at Mr. Malfoy, who was standing in the doorway of his bedroom and tapping his cane on the floor with something that might have been nervousness. Maybe. Harry had to wonder if he was reading that wrong, too.

"Okay," Harry said finally, and sat up and moved over a little in case Mr. Malfoy wanted to sit on the bed. He stared out the window, and watched a white peacock running on the grounds. Everything from the way that the peacock spread its shimmering tail to the fact that white roses were blooming around it, distinctly out of season, screamed wealth, the kind the Dursleys could only dream about.

With all that wealth, you'd think it would be a little easier for my parents to afford compassion.

"I understand that you were raised with a different set of morals," Mr. Malfoy began, taking one of the chairs that stood next to Harry's bed. Harry had just asked for them to be comfortable; Dobby was the one who had found chairs with elegant, carved wooden backs that still felt, leaning against them, as if they had Cushioning Charms. "But I would ask you to try and be sympathetic to us, as well."

"I can be sympathetic to you hating them," Harry mumbled. He looked back at his father with reluctance, and saw the agonized expression on his face. Harry sighed and kicked his heels against the bed. "But I'll never be sympathetic to you killing them. Or Draco thinking that Muggles are less than human. Or the choice you made to get that on your arm."

He could see the Dark Mark poking out from under his father's sleeve, for the first time. He supposed Mr. Malfoy had been thinking of other things than carefully arranging his shirt to hide it, the way he usually did.

Mr. Malfoy reached down as if to cover it up, and then sighed and raised his hand again. "I think that our response is exaggerated, as well," he admitted. "Every time you find fault with something we've done, it's as if we're about to lose you all over again."

Harry tamped down his outrage over the idea that it was exaggerated to think Muggles and wizards were equal or dislike murder, and simply shrugged again.

"We have to get past that initial reaction," Mr. Malfoy continued in a musing voice. "And you have to, as well. Unless you do intend to declare that you're rejecting us as your family and go off on your own again."

"I never made that choice in the first place!"

"But you can understand why we feel that you might?"

"And you?" Harry demanded. "How can I have faith in you when I think you might turn right around and hand me to Voldemort when he comes back?"

Mr. Malfoy caught his breath so sharply it sounded like he was choking. He stared at Harry with wide eyes, and the cane fell from his hand as he stretched it out towards Harry, then hesitated and pulled it back again. "You—you know we love you. You know that we would never betray you."

"Would you? You haven't really talked about what's going to happen when Voldemort comes back."

Mr. Malfoy looked down and away from him. Then he said, "I made the choice to become a Death Eater without ever thinking that it might endanger my children."

Harry swallowed the impulse to say that he was a bloody idiot, then, and listened.

"Why would it? I was marrying Narcissa, who came from a family almost universally devoted to the Dark Lord. Any children we might have would be precious, pureblood, highly valued members of the society that the Dark Lord was intent on making. When you and Draco were born, all I could see in your future was protection. Spoiling. Defending you from the harsher realities of life."

Harry said nothing. If he could have been completely honest, he would have said that he would rather turn out the way he had than to have turned out like Draco, even if it meant that he didn't grow up with his real parents. But he couldn't say that, so he listened.

"And then we lost you." Mr. Malfoy flexed his hands and looked as if he might like to pick something up and throw it, but he didn't. "And I learned that I couldn't protect my children well enough."

Harry couldn't think of anything to say. Sometimes it was weird, hearing his family talk about this, because it made Harry want to comfort them, and then he remembered that they were talking about him, and felt strange again.

"I never thought that my dedication to the Dark Lord was part of the reason," Mr. Malfoy whispered. "Why would I? There wasn't an answer as to why our son had been stolen, until we learned who had taken and adopted you. And I don't know that it would have been better for us if you have been stolen by someone on our side of the war."

"I don't believe the prophecy is true," Harry said carefully. "You know that. But I do believe one thing Dumbledore said. That Voldemort thinks it's true, and he's still going to come after me with everything he has."

Mr. Malfoy flinched when Harry said Voldemort's name, and nodded. "Yes. And so, I have made my choice."

"What's that?" Harry breathed it out through his own hope. He didn't know what Mr. Malfoy could do, with the Dark Mark on his arm, but he wanted to be told that his father was doing something anyway.

"Putting my son before my other allegiances." Mr. Malfoy tugged his sleeve back, and Harry saw the Dark Mark fully for the first time. He flinched back before it. Mr. Malfoy smiled grimly. "Yes. An ugly thing, isn't it?"

"Yes," Harry whispered. He would have had to say that no matter whose arm it was on, no matter how much he loved that person. If Ron or Hermione had got it, it would still have been ugly.

"There are ways to get rid of it," Mr. Malfoy said. "Ways I never considered, because, as I said, I could see no reason that I should reject it. It didn't put my family in danger in any way I could perceive." He shut his eyes. "Now I've chosen, and so I'll make the right arrangements with the Healers at St. Mungo's."

"What do you mean, Healers?" Harry asked. "Can they just—remove it? Spell it off?"

"No," Mr. Malfoy said quietly. "The Dark Lord designed it to be resistant to such things, although he was thinking of people capturing and torturing his loyal followers rather than those followers wishing to change their status. I will need to have my left arm amputated below the elbow, and then regrown. It is possible, although painful and expensive. But we can more than afford it."

Harry stared at him, appalled. Then he shook his head.

"Henry?"

"I—I never wanted you to amputate your arm. That's too much."

"I am the one who made the wrong decision, secure in my pride and arrogance that nothing outside my family could affect my family." Mr. Malfoy sighed. "I am the one who will pay that price."

"But how can you?" Harry worried, distantly, that he probably sounded like a little kid, the way he was wailing, but this had hit him with a hard blow. "That's too much for you to do for someone else. I don't care who you are."

Mr. Malfoy got up and came across to sit on Harry's bed beside him after all. He stroked Harry's cheek, and smiled at him. Harry didn't know what to make of the mixture of triumph and happiness and pain shining on his father's face.

"I would do anything for you," Mr. Malfoy breathes. "Worse than this. Kill. Torture. Maim. Suffer. Get my arm amputated and not regrown, if that's what it takes." His hand slid into Harry's hair. "Take down the Dark Lord."

Harry shivered and burrowed into his father, grabbing him around the waist. Mr. Malfoy hugged him back, his hold as tight and possessive as Mrs. Malfoy's could sometimes be.

That's the reason he wanted to hurt the Dursleys. Not just because he wants to torture Muggles all the time—although maybe he did, maybe that's the reason he signed up for the Death Eaters, I don't know. But he wanted to hurt them for me, because he's desperate to prove that he loves me. The same reason he gives me gifts.

It didn't make him some perfect father of the year. Harry still didn't want his father to torture or kill other people for hurting him. But it let him understand his father as more than just some monster.

"You still don't need to cut off your arm," Harry whispered, when he felt he could trust his voice.

"Without removing the Dark Mark, I am vulnerable to being called back to my Lord's side," Father murmured. "And I am vulnerable to pain through it, as well, and tracking. I might have suffered from those already if he had any kind of strength in his present form." He hesitated. "It will hurt me, Henry, I won't lie to you about that. But this pain is much less than what I would suffer if I was forced to raise my hand against you. Beloved son."

Harry leaned closer and hugged his father again. It felt like something he needed to do, just then. And something that he wanted to do so he didn't have to look in Father's face right now.

His heart was too full to do anything else.

"But someday you're going to want the Dursleys punished."

Harry rolled his eyes. They were in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, going back to school, and Draco had barely waited through Harry's game of chess with Ron and a conversation with Hermione about how woolly Divination was to ask Harry if they could talk alone. Harry had the impression that there had been other people in this compartment until a short time ago, probably some of Draco's Slytherin friends, but Draco seemed to have chased them all out.

"Someday isn't today." Harry looked out the windows, at the grey clouds and the countryside rushing by. At least he could feel fairly sure there weren't any Dementors on the Express this time. Minister Fudge had agreed to withdraw them from the school until after the Easter holiday, if they didn't catch Sirius before that.

I have to do something for him.

"But when you want them punished, will you tell me?"

"Would you hurt them for hurting me, or for being Muggles?"

Draco frowned at him. Harry saw the frown in his twin's reflection in the window glass, but didn't turn around to look at him. "I don't see why my motivation makes a difference."

"There's a difference between vengeance and justice. And a different between justice and torturing someone because you think they're inferior pieces of shit."

"Gryffindor hasn't been good for your language. Mother would scold you so much if she could hear that."

"Answer the bloody question, Draco. Did you think that I wouldn't notice you're deflecting?"

Draco squirmed in place on the seat. "I just don't see why it matters! I want to hurt them either way. And I don't know which motivation it is. Okay? Does that make you happy? That after everything, I don't know if I would take more pleasure in hurting them because they hurt you or because they're inferior?"

"They're not inferior!"

"They don't have magic!"

"They have vehicles that can go twice as fast as the Hogwarts Express and fly hundreds of Muggles through the air! They have cures for diseases that don't rely on potions! They communicate with each other faster than any owl alive!" Harry waved his hands in exasperation. "If you just want to talk about things you can do, even. I know plenty of people in our school who have magic, and it's not like they really do anything with it!"

Draco hesitated. Then he said, "They can't really communicate faster than we can with owls. You're bluffing about that."

"Of all of those, you pick that one?" Harry demanded, but realized a second later that Draco might actually know about Muggle vehicles, and maybe even the disease cures. Hadn't he said once that he'd nearly bumped into a plane or a helicopter or something when he was flying on his broom?

And Harry, strangely, knew exactly how he wanted to handle this, too. He leaned back on his seat and smirked at his brother.

"I don't suppose you know what a telephone is?"

"Why would it matter if I didn't know what your bloody Muggle invention is?" Draco muttered, and kicked the floor.

Harry smiled. "You don't know. Just admit you don't know."

"It's not important that I don't know! It's not like you not knowing about Hogwarts and magic and Quidditch before two years ago!"

Harry widened his eyes. "But I didn't know about those things because I was kidnapped. Are you saying that was all my fault? That I should have known about those things when I didn't even know I was a Malfoy?" He made his lip quiver.

Draco stared at him, aghast. "Henry—I didn't mean—of course it's not your fault!"

"But you're acting like it is." Harry turned and stared out the window again, trying for tearful, but not too tearful. He was going to burst out laughing if he went much further, or just alert Draco to the fact that all of this was a put-on. "I didn't have any means of learning about magic among the Muggles. Most of them don't know about it, unless they have Muggleborn family. And the Dursleys knew but didn't tell me. Whereas you could have looked up anything you wanted to. You had the giant family library—and you had our parents—and—and—"

Draco abruptly jumped up, crossed the compartment, and wrapped his arms around Harry. Harry, startled, sat there for a second before he hugged him back. He felt a little bad that he had upset Draco enough to hug him.

But not bad enough to confess that this an act.

"I know," Draco whispered, his head lowered so that his hair seemed to blend with Harry's in the reflection in the window glass. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't remind you of the awful time you had to spend in prison with them. And of course you tried to get by the best you could. Of course Muggle inventions seem amazing to you, and they don't seem inferior. They were all you knew. You thought you were one of them until a few years ago."

Harry nodded against his shoulder and pretended to sniffle a little. Then he sat back and sighed. "So. Telephones are devices that most Muggles have in their homes. They connect Muggles to each other with a system of wires—"

"What do they have to do with it?"

Harry wasn't about to admit that he was a little shaky himself on the concept of exactly how telephones worked, so he just shrugged. "They vibrate with the sound of someone's voice, and transmit that voice. Pretty neat, huh?"

"But these wires can't go everywhere."

"I don't see why not. Some of them go over mountains and under water." Harry was pretty sure about that, anyway. "They don't have to fly for days like an owl could if it was taking your message to another country."

"They sound like Floos," Draco said. "Calling someone on the Floo would be faster than using this—tellyphone."

"But what happens if the person on the other side has their Floo blocked so you can't access it?" Harry asked. He knew that could happen because he'd seen Father try to Floo someone a few days ago, and heard him growl in displeasure when the Floo on the other side turned out to be closed. "Telephones ring if they're working at all. Maybe someone isn't there to pick it up—"

"You pick them up and hold them? Why?"

"They have more than one part," Harry said patiently. "You have to put the part that transmits the voice to your ear so that you can hear the voice on the other end. And that's a lot more convenient than a Floo. Even Father has to get down on the floor and put his head into the flames to speak to the person on the other side, doesn't he? You can stand when you're using a telephone, or sit."

Draco was frowning a little now. "We could build a fireplace higher so that we didn't have to kneel down if we wanted," he muttered.

"But you don't, do you? All the fireplaces in the Manor are the normal height and shape. And I don't think all of them are capable of Flooing someone else, anyway. The Floo is a pretty open security point, when you think about it."

"It can be dangerous to leave them open to access by just anyone!"

Harry held up his hands. "I'm not saying that it wouldn't. But telephones aren't dangerous that way. All they transmit is the sound of someone's voice, not their whole body if they decide that they want to attack you."

"So you can't even see the person on the other end? Then the Floo is superior."

Harry snorted. "Oh, yeah, when it turns your face green, and prevents you from reading expressions half the time." That was something else Father had complained about in the last few days.

Draco hesitated, then scowled at him. "Okay, maybe some Muggle inventions are better some of the time. That still doesn't mean that I'd want to go and live in the Muggle world."

"Of course not. I wasn't trying to convince you to. I was just saying that Muggle inventions prove that they're not inferior, either. They don't have magic, but that just means that they make do with what they do have. The way that wizards put up with Floos because they do have magic, and they think the advantages of the Floo are enough for them to be going on with."

Draco nodded slowly, reluctantly. "So that means that they're human, like us. And we can't just kill them."

Harry beamed at him. "Exactly."

"Unless they really hurt someone. The way the Dursleys hurt you."

Harry groaned a little. Slowly, slowly. I'll have to convince him of these things slowly.