Black abruptly shrieked, and then fainted in his bubble. Harry blinked at him, then at Dobby, who was sitting on the floor and breathing hard. Harry knelt down next to him. "What did you do, Dobby?"
Dobby beamed at him. "Dobby be taking the Black madness away! Now Mr. Black be being sane, and not able to cross the wards!"
Harry stared. "Thank you, Dobby," he said at last. His head was reeling. Were house-elves really that powerful?
Who's ever asked them?
"Please put him somewhere far away from the Manor," Harry said faintly. Dobby jumped up after a minute, nodded so hard that his ears hit him in the face, and then walked over to the window. The bubble floated in front of him, and after a minute, they both disappeared, the bubble dodging out the window and Dobby popping away.
Harry stood there a second longer, thinking about the choice he'd made, holding it to him.
Then he turned around.
And saw Draco sitting up in bed, staring at him.
"Um," Harry said, feeling as awkward as hell. "Hi. How long have you been awake?"
"Long enough to hear Black say that he was innocent of the one crime, but not the worse one," Draco said quietly. He went on studying Harry.
Harry breathed out hard, and tried to ignore the fact that Draco thought that killing a dozen Muggles and running away was less bad than kidnapping him as a baby. Harry hadn't thought of the Muggles part very hard, either, except to think that it meant Black didn't deserve to be in prison. "Yeah."
"And you chose not to go with him." Draco's voice was slightly warmer now.
"Yeah." Harry looked his brother in the eye. "My place is here."
Draco smiled at him, and jumped out of bed to hug him. Harry hugged him back, a little surprised. He'd thought Draco would be more upset than this and demand some sort of reckoning, but it didn't appear that he would.
The door opened then, and Harry looked up, half-convinced it would be Dobby, even though he would have just appeared in the room. But it was Mrs. Malfoy, holding up her lighted wand and frowning at both of them.
"Henry? Draco? One of the house-elves woke us and said there was an intruder that your Dobby took care of?"
"There was," Harry said, and braced himself to look at her, stepping gently away from the hug Draco still wanted to give him. "Black was here."
Mrs. Malfoy looked ill. "And what did he want?"
"He wanted to take me away and use a necromancy ritual to make me into Harry Potter again."
Mrs. Malfoy actually swayed. Harry ran over and grabbed her arm tightly, and then turned her around and made her sit on the bed. Mrs. Malfoy licked her lips and focused on him. "And you chose to not go with him?"
"Henry resisted him, Mother," Draco said proudly. "Even when he was talking rot about being innocent of the crime of killing the Muggles and betraying the Potters. He said he wanted to take Henry away and give him a 'real life,' but Henry said he wanted to stay here."
Mrs. Malfoy looked intently at Harry, her eyes glimmering with soft light. "Is that true, Henry?"
Harry nodded slowly. He wondered for a second if he should tell her about the wards and Black not coming back anymore and the fact that house-elves could probably cure her madness, too, but he could do that later.
There was something more important he wanted to do right now.
He said, "Yes, Mother."
Mrs. Malfoy's eyes were as warm as her arms when she hugged him.
Harry leaned against her, and hugged her back.
He could try. He would try.
.....
"You'll be having weekly sessions with Healer Letham, of course."
Harry blinked as he looked up at his mother, who was floating robes into a trunk for him. The trunk had been a surprise, new and gleaming proudly in the middle of his bedroom when he'd woken up. Harry had accepted it—it was brilliant, really, with a lock that only he could touch—but he didn't think he needed that and the new robes Mrs. Malfoy had bought and the eagle-feather quills she was adding to his supplies with a thoughtful curve to her mouth.
"I didn't think that was allowed," Harry said.
"Someone told you that children at Hogwarts can't see Mind-Healers? Who?"
Harry winced a little. Mrs. Malfoy sounded far too interested in that, and he knew that she would pry and pull and treat him like a nut that had to be cracked open if he spent too much time letting her. Healer Letham sometimes felt as if she was doing that, too, but she was allowed.
And Harry didn't have the same confused reaction to her that he did to his family.
"No one. I mean, I didn't think students were allowed to leave the grounds to meet with their families or anyone else during the school year."
Mrs. Malfoy smiled at him and stepped forwards to smooth his hair out. Harry had noticed that her touches had got lighter for a while over the summer, but now they were getting heavier again, as if she wanted to memorize what he felt like before he left for Hogwarts.
Harry wasn't sure if that was an insight he would have had before he started having sessions with Healer Letham. It was—sometimes he didn't like to think about. About the way he was changing from the person he used to be.
"Of course, most of the time that is true," Mrs. Malfoy said. "Hogwarts is meant to teach students some degree of independence from their families and promote friendships within the House. But the Malfoys are not an ordinary family."
"You mean Father bribed someone," Harry said, resigned.
Mrs. Malfoy's eyes still went a little misty when he referred to Mr. Malfoy as Father. Harry didn't know if that was also something he noticed because of his sessions with Healer Letham, or if he would have noticed it before. "Of course he did. He would do anything for you, Henry."
The name flowed easily from her lips now. More and more, Harry had the feeling that she saw him, and not the little boy that Healer Letham said the Malfoys had told stories about to each other and dreamed of when Harry was kidnapped when he was a baby.
By Sirius Black. Who was sane now.
Harry shook his head. Sane, but still running around somewhere, and he hadn't come to the Ministry to try and tell them the truth about Peter Pettigrew. Harry thought he was still trying to hunt Pettigrew down.
Harry himself had written a secret message to the Ministry about Pettigrew that he'd had Dobby smuggle to them. But even though Dobby had assured Harry solemnly that he'd delivered the message, and Harry was sure he had, there'd been no response. Harry wondered whether someone had thought he was lying or mad.
"Henry? Are you listening?"
Harry sighed and blinked up at his mother. "Right. Father bribed someone. So I can go and see Healer Letham on the weekends?"
"Of course. And we'll take you to Hogsmeade for sweets afterwards."
Harry tensed. "Is Draco going to be all right with that?"
"Why wouldn't he be?"
Mrs. Malfoy seemed genuinely bewildered, so Harry tried to explain, even though he wasn't sure that he had the right words. "I mean, my cousin Dudley—the boy I thought was my cousin Dudley—he would be really upset if someone else got something he could have. Draco might want to come for sweets, too. He might want to leave Hogwarts on the weekends, too. And he might be upset if I'm spending time with you and he's not."
His mother's mouth twisted into a hard line. "Draco had us all to himself for twelve years, Henry. I think that he will realize sometimes we want to spend time with one of our sons, not both."
Harry thought what Dudley would be like if he had a brother, and how much Draco had reminded him of Dudley the first time they'd met in Madam Malkin's shop. But he also thought of how much Draco had changed in the last little while, along with their parents, and he didn't say anything.
What did he know about having a brother?
....
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