"Father told you that you were part of the family, right?"
"Yes," Harry said. He had left the dining room after dinner and promptly been ambushed by Draco. And his brother was clinging to him as if Harry was about to combust, or disappear, or something. Harry patted his back. "I mean, all of you have. You and Mother and Father." The names tasted salty and sour in his mouth, but he said them to please Draco.
"What is this all about?" he added, pulling back to study Draco, because he seemed more upset than he had been so far.
"My little brother was abused."
The way Draco said it should have made Harry feel strange again, like they were talking about someone who really wasn't him, but the stormy look in Draco's eyes made it different. He was staring at Harry, and he had his arms around him, and he really seemed tormented. Like he wanted to do something to help, but he knew there was no way he could go back in time and make the Dursleys be kind to Harry, the way he probably wanted. Or kidnap him back.
"You're my little brother," Draco said in a low voice. "I'm going to protect you, and I'm going to make up for what they did, and I'm going to show you that life is better now. All right? No matter what happens."
"All right," Harry said, touched despite himself. He had sometimes wanted siblings, but not often. Dealing with Dudley was enough trouble. But a sibling like this, he could want.
Draco hugged him again, fiercely, and then said, "Mother would like to see you in the little sitting room off her bedroom."
Then Draco turned around and ran away towards a part of the house that Harry knew held the library. Harry just blinked after him. Maybe Draco was as embarrassed as Harry sometimes got because of hugging?
Maybe, Harry thought, and headed towards what he hoped wouldn't be a confrontation.
....
Harry had privately wondered since he'd moved into Malfoy Manor during the Christmas holiday why Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy had separated bedrooms, but it didn't seem like something he could ask about, so he hadn't. Now he almost wished he had. Mrs. Malfoy was sitting in the little room—"little" meaning that it was almost the size of the Dursleys' kitchen and drawing room combined—with a pale face.
Harry bit his lip. "Um, do you want me to call a house-elf?" The Malfoys kept the house-elves so strictly away from humans that she probably didn't, but he didn't know how to revive her if she fainted.
"No," Mrs. Malfoy whispered. "Please, sit down."
Harry took a seat on a huge fluffy white chair a few feet away from her. She went on watching him like she was going to faint. This was as far away as she could get from the happy woman who had taken pictures of him at Christmas just a few weeks ago, and Harry didn't know what to do.
"I am so sorry," Mrs. Malfoy whispered.
"Why? What the Dursleys did wasn't your fault."
"If I'd protected you better, if I'd made sure that the nursery was warded even against people who I trusted, then you would have grown up where you were supposed to grow up."
"It wasn't your fault," Harry repeated more strongly. "I think lots of people trusted Sirius Black, even when they shouldn't have. It was like—everything was just a joke to him." He swallowed. "And I hope that I'm not a disappointment to you because of where I was raised."
Mrs. Malfoy abruptly seemed to see him again, instead of just stare dreadfully at the wall. She gasped and got up to wrap her arms around him again, cradling him close. "No, of course not," she whispered. "Never, ever, Henry. Of course I wish you had been safe and known all along who you were and never been abused. But I could never be disappointed that you lived and that you are who you are."
Yes, she is, or she would have let me keep the name Harry.
But even that voice wasn't as strong as it would have been a little while ago. Harry leaned himself against her, his mother, and let himself feel her. The warm arms hugging him and the warm breath against his hair. The fierce way she held him.
Would Lily Potter have held him like that, if she'd lived?
Harry didn't know, and he didn't want to think about it. He hugged Mrs. Malfoy back and tried not to think about "real" families and who he "really" was and whether he wanted to be Harry Potter or Henry Malfoy more. What mattered was that he was here, and he had a mother, and she was hugging him.
It was enough, for a while.
....
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