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.
.....
"Are you all right, Harry?"
Hermione's eyes were warm and sympathetic. Harry smiled at her and sat down next to her in Transfiguration. Ron was on the other side of the classroom saying something forceful to Seamus. Apparently he'd played some kind of prank on Ron at breakfast this morning, and Ron was saying he already had enough pranks from the twins to deal with.
"I am," Harry said, and opened his book. He'd done his Transfiguration essay over the Christmas holidays, and had Mr. Malfoy read it over and Mrs. Malfoy give him some tips that he could add in. He didn't think it was perfect, but it was better than a lot of the essays he'd written in the past.
"Why did you leave the school like that yesterday?"
"The remark Ron made in Potions," Harry said, lowering his voice. The last thing he wanted was to have the other students who seemed to have forgotten about it staring at him again. "Draco figured out from it that I'd been abused, and he went and told his parents. Then they wanted to talk to me, and, well, I got to spend the night at Malfoy Manor."
"They're your parents, too, aren't they?"
Hermione just meant the question to help him think, Harry knew, but he found himself pausing and staring down at his Transfiguration essay again. The words that Mr. Malfoy had read over with him. The information that Mrs. Malfoy had helped him add. The reminder of the chapters that Draco had talked about while sitting next to him.
Were they? Did he think of them that way?
He wanted to, was the answer. While at the same time he wanted to remain Harry Potter. He wanted to have a family and a brother and a home, but he also wanted his old name and his old looks and his old friends.
It seemed like he would get to keep "Harry" and his friends, if not the way he used to look. But what would happen with the family and the brother and the home, if he kept pushing them away? If he never got used to them?
Maybe, just like he needed to hear "Henry" more often to get used to that name, he needed to think of Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy as "Father" and "Mother" and Malfoy Manor as "home" to make them more familiar.
"Harry? I didn't mean to upset you. I know it's really fraught—"
"No, Hermione, it's okay," Harry reassured her, touching her shoulder. "You just gave me something to think about."
He watched Professor McGonagall sweep into the room. She began calling the roll just as she always did in the first class after a holiday, and she met his eyes and pronounced the name "Mr. Malfoy" without hesitation.
Could he do the same thing?
I want to try, Harry thought, and looked across the room to where Draco was sitting with the other Slytherins. Draco caught his eye and nodded, although Harry doubted he knew what he was really agreeing to. His brother just supported him because he was his brother, and Harry probably seemed to be looking for reassurance.
Maybe Harry would start relying on him for that reassurance.
Maybe, the next time a stranger introduced themselves to him, Harry would say that his name was "Henry Malfoy."
Maybe, tonight, he would write a letter with the names "Mother" and "Father" in it, and mean it.
He would try it. And see what happened.
....
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