Harry blinked at Dobby, and Dobby held out his hands with a pleading expression. Harry understood that well enough, at least. It was the way he had sometimes looked when one of his primary teachers noticed something out of the ordinary at the Dursleys' and tried to help him. Dobby didn't think Harry could do anything, and he was begging Harry not to get him in trouble.
"Boys, what is the matter?"
And now Mrs. Malfoy was climbing the stairs from the bottom, her frown faint and reminding Harry of the kind that Aunt Petunia would wear when someone mentioned Harry in public. Dobby squeaked and bowed and began to wring his ears. Draco sighed as if he thought that meant the problem was solved and darted over to stand at his mother's side.
Harry folded his arms.
"You were the ones who were going to do something evil at Hogwarts and mistrusted Dobby?"
Mrs. Malfoy reached out a hand. "Henry, darling—"
"Did you mistreat him?" Harry backed up and away a step. He glanced over his shoulder, quickly, but then quickly back towards Mrs. Malfoy, because he had figured out what happened when he removed his eyes for too long a time from someone in front of him. "Dobby said that his masters would punish him for warning me, and that they were cruel. What did you do to him?"
"Nothing," Mrs. Malfoy said. "Truly, Henry, my word. House-elves are—formed such that they punish themselves when upset. What Dobby got upset with, I don't know. Why he would have sought you out in the middle of a Muggle neighborhood…" She shook her head.
Harry narrowed his eyes. Last year, the subtleties of what she was saying would have passed him right by, but not anymore. "Just because you don't know doesn't mean you can't guess. And you didn't actually finish the sentence about why he would have tried to find me when I lived with Muggles."
"Henry—"
"Dobby," Harry said strongly, staring past Mrs. Malfoy's shoulder at the elf, "can you answer me now that I'm a Malfoy? What was the evil plot?"
Dobby slowly stopped twisting his ears and looked up at Harry. His eyes quivered as much as the rest of his face, and then big tears slipped out of them and down his face. He flung himself on the ground and started wailing, beating his fists on the carpet.
Harry grimaced. That hadn't been what he meant to do, and he hurried down the steps and caught Dobby's fists. Dobby nearly kicked him in the jaw before he seemed to get control of himself and stop moving, but then he sniffled and stared at Harry in tragic silence.
"Are you still under orders not to speak about it?" That was the only thing Harry could think of that would make Dobby behave like this now that Harry was part of the same family.
Dobby nodded, looking relieved. "Dobby wishes he could to the young Master Malfoy, who was the Great Harry Potter!" he said, and then made a motion of locking his lips with a key. "But Big Master Malfoy—"
"Dobby."
That was Mrs. Malfoy's voice, and Harry shivered a little from how cold it was. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Malfoy staring at Dobby, her hand clenched down on Draco's shoulder as if she thought that she would have to keep him from moving and going to Harry. Harry didn't think Draco would actually try, though. He looked frozen with shock.
"That will be all, Dobby. You may go."
Dobby bowed his head and vanished from his lying position on the carpet. Harry turned around to face his mother and brother again.
And yeah, they were still his, even though Harry could feel a sick, dizzying spiral in the middle of his chest and head. They weren't good people. He should have known that no relatives of his could actually be good people, he told himself. The Dursleys weren't, and the Potters were kidnappers, and the Malfoys hurt house-elves.
He should have known. He was cursed. He was tainted. Nothing good ever came his way.
"Henry," Mrs. Malfoy whispered.
"Narcissa? What is going on?"
Mr. Malfoy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, a tense frown on his face. Harry glared at him and said the first thing that came into his head. "So how often do you make the house-elves punish themselves?"
Mr. Malfoy twitched a little, but only a little. They were all so alike, Harry thought. All the Malfoys. The other Malfoys. Cold and frozen and beautiful.
Not him. He wasn't like that, no matter how much he might look like it. And again the sick spiral threatened to dump him on the floor.
He'd wanted a family. And that didn't work out, of course, because it never did.
"I do not often need to do so," Mr. Malfoy said. "Many of our servants anticipate our needs perfectly and never need to be punished."
"Dobby, though," Harry said flatly. "You told him to not to talk to me about whatever evil plot he wanted to report to me—which means there was something. He's not just making it up. What was it, Mr. Malfoy?"
"I had hoped you were past the point of childish behavior in which you attempted to distance yourself from me with that name, Henry."
Harry laughed wildly as the house spun around him again. "Harry. It's Harry. I should have known this is what would happen. You still aren't answering my questions, and you hurt the people who cook and clean for you—you're like the Dursleys!"
A stormcloud came and went over Mr. Malfoy's face. Then he said, "If you come into my study, I will tell you all about it."
"Why do you mistreat house-elves?"
"House-elves are servants. They are meant to—"
"That's what the Dursleys said about me."
A wave of something pure and cold seemed to move through Harry, and then struck out from him. The stained-glass window that overlooked the staircase abruptly shattered, shards of red and blue and green flying through the air and scattering around them like the petals of an unfolding flower.
Mr. Malfoy shouted something incoherent and jerked his wand up. There was a dome of blue light over his head in half a second, and then it extended over Harry and Mrs. Malfoy and Draco. Harry watched the shards of glass falling around them in soft pattering twinkles of dust, and felt nothing.
"Henry."
Mr. Malfoy's voice was frozen, again. Harry looked at him, and felt none of the apprehension he would have felt that morning if his father was angry at him.
"With me."
Mr. Malfoy walked towards his study. Harry knew, because Draco had told him, that it was the room where punishments were assigned and scoldings took place. Draco had made it sound like the scoldings were worse than the punishments.
Harry walked behind Mr. Malfoy, and felt nothing at all.
....
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