Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the current arc; it will pick up again with my next set of seasonal stories.
Part Five
"If you do not want to discuss it, Harry, I do not mind."
Harry sighed and leaned back in the chair that the Room of Requirement had formed for him. The Room was dimmer and smaller than it usually was when he met with Healer Letham, more like his bedroom at home. "No," he whispered. "I think I need to discuss it, and—what my parents told me they did."
"To Flint?"
"No. He's in a Ministry holding cell right now, and I don't think they would try to get him out." Harry paused, uncertain. "I don't think," he decided to stress. "They're much more likely to try and get vengeance on him when he comes out, if he's not sent to Azkaban."
Healer Letham smiled briefly. "I agree."
"It's what they did to Crouch."
Healer Letham was silent, attentive.
"Father captured him and—and did it in a really nasty way." Harry was going to tell her about the other things, but not about the necromancy. He didn't know why that part had hit him the hardest, but it had. "He put him under the Imperius to get information out of him. And then Mother went after him when they heard about Flint's attack, and."
He stopped. Healer Letham listened. The fire talked quietly to itself.
"She hit him with a spell that tore part of his soul away. And she put him under the Imperius so that she could hear him scream, because Father's Imperius was keeping him calm." Harry swallowed a couple times. "I don't—why did she do that?"
"Did she try to explain it to you?"
"She said there was a white light in her head, and she had to do it to put the light out."
"Ah. Perhaps the same way that she had to torture Sirius Black when in the grip of the family madness?"
"Yes," Harry whispered.
Healer Letham leaned forwards a little. "I want to repeat that I am in your employ, Harry. I will not say anything about what you have told me to your parents. And I will say nothing to the Ministry about what your parents did, either."
"Why, though? I—I've read a few things about Mind-Healers. They don't always keep their patients' secrets if they think those secrets are dangerous."
"Because you have suffered enough."
Healer Letham's voice was full of steel. Harry had never heard it like that. She had always been wise, always gentle. She sat back now, maybe at the look on his face, and shook her head.
"Our first credo, as Mind-Healers, is to reduce our patient's suffering. Most of the time, that would mean reporting things like this, because they would be trying to harm themselves or casting the kind of magic that could delay their recovery. Even having people in their lives like this could lead to a report, because those people are usually abusive parents or lovers, and leaving them in that situation would increase their suffering over time, as opposed to the brief pain of a report.
"But someone like you, whose family members act like this to protect him? You would suffer more if I were to report this, Harry. Your parents would likely be arrested, or at least have to buy their way out of Ministry custody."
"You—just accept this."
"You're different from other people in the magical world," Healer Letham said. "Don't make that face at me, you are. People have made you that way, and not deigned to rescue you. You told me yourself that some people were saying you had been too violent with Flint in the Three Broomsticks, and the Aurors wanted to question you as well as him. You more than him. We cannot trust the justice system to be fair and equitable when it comes to you. Even if your father would normally be treated better because of his money, in this case he might not be, because you are Harry Potter in many people's eyes. Still."
Harry blinked several times and sat back in the chair himself. He hadn't heard her speak like that. He had had no idea she felt that way. He stared down at his clasped hands and wondered what in the world he could say.
"You need say nothing."
"You're a Legilimens, too?"
Healer Letham smiled gently and shook her head. "No, although I have some training in Occlumency. It's just obvious what you're thinking sometimes." She leaned back in her chair. "You can tell me what you're thinking, Harry."
Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I can.
Harry closed his eyes. "I already knew that Mother was a bit mad," he whispered. "I need to—I wanted to have my house-elf, Dobby, take the madness away from her, the way he did from Sirius. But she said she didn't want to. I don't know why.
"And I knew Father was cold, and not that connected to his emotions or people other than us. But I didn't know he would be this cruel. He used Crouch's mother's corpse to capture him, and to lure him. I would expect something like this from Mother. Not from him."
There was a long silence. Harry let himself drift in that silence. Good. He had spoken, and whether or not the words made sense to anyone besides himself, he had said them.
And he thought Healer Letham would at least understand them on an emotional level, even if she thought Mother was the most dangerous parent of the two.
"I understand," Healer Letham said quietly. "You thought of your mother as a possible refuge from the world, and then she proved, early on, that she was not exactly as patient and steady as you had thought she was. So you turned to your father. He explained himself to you. You thought you understood him. And now you think that you have not."
Harry took a shaky breath and nodded. "That's it, Healer Letham."
For a long moment, Healer Letham thought about that, and swung her foot back and forth. Harry watched her, expecting some outburst, but there was none. Gradually, calmness settled on him, too.
"I think that you should tell your parents how you feel."
"Do I have to?"
"Is there a reason that you do not want to?"
"I—they would be upset. Especially Father. And they would think that I hated them or had a lot of objections on moral grounds."
"Are they not on moral grounds, your objections?"
"Some. Of course. But—" Harry searched through his mind for a little while, and Healer Letham waited. He finally sighed and said, "But a lot of it is just thinking that I don't know them as well as I thought I did."
Healer Letham nodded. "That is perfectly understandable. I recommend you speak to them anyway, and do your best to make them grasp that. And that perhaps your mother should have prioritized asking after you rather than torturing a prisoner."
"What about Father? He did come to talk to me and Draco. He's the reason that the Aurors didn't spend as long questioning me as they wanted." Which had made the Aurors upset and hostile.
"You can still talk to him. Explain that you thought of him as the parent less likely to be mad or cruel."
"Which doesn't even make sense. He was a Death Eater."
"But he would do anything to make you happy. He turned away from being a Death Eater to make you happy. He would be unhappy if you asked him to stop protecting you, but I do not think that his attachment to necromancy in particular is so great that he would want to continue practicing it if you asked him to stop."
"That still puzzles me sometimes, you know."
"What does?"
"That I can ask someone to stop, and they'll listen."
Harry turned red as soon as he'd said it, but Healer Letham leaned forwards and stated with soft emphasis, "Your family will stop if you ask them to. And I hope you know that I will always stop, as important as I might think it for you to listen to my words."
Harry took a deep breath. "Yes, of course." At least she wasn't going to talk about what his words meant when it came to the Dursleys. Then again, she probably already knew. "You think I should talk to them?"
"I do."
"Of course, Henry." Lucius could barely speak the words past the choking sensation in his throat. He had never once thought that it might be his use of necromancy—not the Imperius or Dark spells in general—that would upset his son. "I promise you that I will never use that spell again."
"Thank you, Father."
Henry had come through the Floo; Healer Letham had said in a brief note that he needed to. Lucius almost wished that she was here for this conversation, at the same time as he believed it best held in private. Henry was fidgeting with his hands, biting his lip again and again.
"Son?"
"I—realized another reason that the necromancy bothered me more than other things."
"Please tell me." Lucius laid his hands flat on his knees. He wanted to get up and hug Henry, but Henry had asked that they stay at opposite ends of the small sitting room for the moment. It was an impersonal room done in browns and steel-blues, with many comfortable chairs, and it had been Healer Letham's recommendation. She had thought it would make Henry more comfortable.
"It's the rituals," Henry said in a rush. "The ones that didn't happen, the one that Black wanted to do to make me a Potter and the one Pettigrew brought me to the graveyard to do. That would have been a resurrection ritual, right? Like the one I had the nightmare about?"
"Yes," Lucius said quietly. Crouch had confirmed it.
"I—Father, I didn't even realize that I had nightmares about that, or about Black turning me into a Potter again. I would wake up sometimes gasping and feeling hurt and shaken, and I didn't know why. But the nightmares have become conscious since I heard about what you did."
Lucius closed his eyes in pain. "Of course, Henry. I will never do it again."
"Why?"
"Why? Because you asked me not to, of course."
"No, not that. Father, you—told me once that you didn't really feel emotions like other people." Not long before the graveyard, in fact, Lucius thought. "But you seem really upset now. Why is that?"
Lucius stared at Henry for a long moment, and then decided it was a good thing they had their son in Mind-Healing.
"Because you and your brother and mother are different," he said. "I also told you that. And that I froze inside when you were stolen, but that I had begun to thaw since you had returned. Did you not remember that? Did you think that my using necromancy somehow negated my care for you?"
"No." Henry swallowed. "I just—sorry. I need to keep hearing it."
Lucius stood and crossed the room to his son then, because he had to. He would not touch him if Henry didn't want him to. But he needed to be closer, needed to be able to see the expressions on Henry's face from nearer to.
Henry launched himself at Lucius, thus solving the question of whether Lucius should try to embrace him or not. He wrapped his arms around his son's shoulders and brought him close, sighing a little when Henry came to rest against him.
"I will do what you ask of me within reason, always," Lucius said. "And I will never perform necromancy again. I am willing to swear an oath to the effect if you will."
"No. It's all right. I trust you, Father."
Lucius closed his eyes and made the vow to himself. In their eagerness to defend Henry and defy the Dark Lord, they must not lose him, or cross all the lines that separated them from the Dark Lord himself.
Even if they thought of those lines differently than other people did.
"You can't do that again, Mother."
Narcissa blinked. She might have expected an ultimatum of that sort from Henry, but this was Draco, not actually identical when one looked closely, leaning forwards and giving her a long, cool look through the Floo Healer Letham had set up in the Room of Requirement.
Healer Letham hadn't blinked at setting up the Floo for Draco as well as for Henry, or recommending that they both speak to their parents. Despite her occasional annoyance that Healer Letham kept Henry's secrets from her, Narcissa had never regretted hiring her.
"What do you mean, Draco?"
"Prioritize your vengeance above your children."
Now she stared at him. Draco just looked back. There was a jut to his jaw that reminded her of Lucius's when he was angry, but didn't look the same on his face. Draco was truly coming into his own.
"I did not do that."
"Yes, Mother. You did."
"Your father was there with you and preventing the Aurors from—"
"And you weren't."
Narcissa wished she had her wand. Not that she would have known what spell to cast with it. She shook her head and wondered if this was the same little boy she had comforted just this summer with a shopping trip, so that he could have some time with her and not become jealous of Henry.
"Did Henry miss me that much?"
"I think he did. But this is about me, Mother, not him."
Now Narcissa looked at Draco more carefully than ever, perusing his expression and his posture—not that she could see much of that with Draco crouched before the Floo as he was. She swallowed words that would probably have hurt someone to speak. Perhaps not Draco. "What did you find wrong with my actions, Draco?"
"You let your madness control you." Draco's words were glacial and perfectly measured. Narcissa thought she might see another reason that he was acting more like his father than her at the moment, even though she had secretly prided herself on Draco's resemblance to her many times. "You could have killed Crouch, even though you didn't intend to. And you made me feel like I was less important to you than your vengeance."
"I'm sorry, Draco," Narcissa whispered. She was shaking now, and could only be grateful that Regulus was spending a lot of time in his room since what she had done to Crouch. What he had seen her do. What he had said he wanted to stay for. "I didn't intend to."
"Then don't do it again."
"Draco, I am still your mother."
"Then bloody well fucking act like it!"
Narcissa opened her mouth to speak, but the fire in the Floo disappeared, along with Draco's face, before she could say anything at all.
She spent some moments looking down at her own clenched hands, and thought about what Draco had said and not said. He hadn't scolded her for the spells she had used, the way Henry had confronted Lucius about his necromancy. He had seemed upset by the order of events.
He would probably have been fine with it if I had checked on them first, instead of going to Crouch's room to use the spells.
Narcissa nodded slowly to herself. Yes, that was true. Very well. In the future, she would do her best to remember her children and speak to them first, comfort them as necessary, before taking measures to remove the white light from her head.
And if she could not control that white light, as she had been afraid she could not have the other night, and feared that she would say or do something to her children that they would never forgive her for…
Perhaps I should speak to a house-elf about removing the Black madness.
Sitting alone in his room, Regulus turned his holly-and-phoenix-feather wand over and over in his hands, and thought of what he had seen Narcissa do. Thought long and hard about whether his cousins had become the same thing he wanted to fight.
But what choice did he have?
The duel with Sirius still awaited him. He still needed training. And no one could provide the kind of training or ferocity that Lucius and Narcissa could. It was imperative that he win the duel and get the locket away from Sirius.
Regulus nodded slowly. So he would do what he could to get that training, and avoid calling the ferocity down onto himself. It shouldn't be difficult. He was Narcissa's beloved cousin. It would take a betrayal of monumental proportions to make them turn on him.
He would just have to make sure that there was no reason for them to see him as the enemy.
Ever.
Drunk. I'm drunk.
Sirius laughed a little as the thought wound through his head. So, yeah, he was drunk. So what? All that mattered was that he had a clear sense in his head of who his enemies were.
Wait, enemies? I thought I was concentrating on how to get Harry back.
Of course enemies. Who else is keeping Harry from you?
Sirius opened his eyes. He was sprawled on the couch in front of the fireplace, as he almost always was now, with the bottle of Firewhisky in his hands. And the locket around his neck, of course. The only valuable thing in this cursed place.
Sirius took up the chain of the locket and spun it lazily between his fingers. The gold glittered and flashed. Sirius smiled. He couldn't imagine how one of his ancestors hadn't been buried with it, but he was grateful it was here.
He took another swig of Firewhisky, but this time, the burning in his head was worse than the burning in his throat.
I'll never get Harry back if I just spend all my time lying here and drinking. But I don't know how to do it, either. I can't just use a necromantic ritual to turn him back into a Potter. He would never agree to it.
Who said that he has to agree to it?
Sirius gasped a little. His own thoughts spoke in his head almost like a different voice, and he sat up and looked around nervously before he could stop himself. "Who's there?" he whispered, his hand tightening on the locket.
Your wisdom, speaking to you at last.
"But I want—Harry is my godson. I want him back. I don't want him to hate me forever. Which he'd do if I used necromancy on him without his permission."
But is he your godson in truth? Isn't he becoming more and more like Henry Malfoy every day? Wouldn't it make more sense to turn him back into a Potter now, no matter how much he may protest, before he becomes even more corrupt?
Sirius swallowed. He hadn't considered that. He hadn't thought that he would have to ignore Harry's protests and do it for his own good.
Of course you have to.
Sirius nodded slowly, but then scowled. He didn't know how to do it. Harry was on high alert against kidnapping at all times, and so was that brat of a brother of his. And he was well-protected at both Malfoy Manor and Hogwarts.
You will have to play the long game. Pretend that you've accepted his blood, that you're pleased to be godfather to Henry Malfoy in truth. Or at least Narcissa's cousin. Plead to be included in the family. You know that she'll want to do that.
"I don't know if she'll believe me, though."
She'll accept you temporarily. She did with her disowned sister and that Mudblood's daughter, didn't she?
Yes, a Mudblood was how Narcissa would see Ted Tonks. How she probably always secretly thought of him.
She would do a lot to make her son happy.
Yes, she would. Including letting a repentant Sirius close. The only one who would be able to tell Harry the truth about Narcissa, the one that even Lucius didn't know.
Sirius smiled, and spun the locket on its chain with one finger as he began to plan.
We are planning.
Yes, we.
