"You tried to keep the fact that you treat house-elves horribly away from me." Harry stared at him, and his eyes were bright and tearless, and he spoke the words without knowing he was going to speak them. "Instead of changing the way that you treat house-elves, or your opinion about people who are half-bloods or Muggleborns, you just tried to keep me away from the elves and took the object, whatever it was, out of the school. You didn't really change at all. I should have known, I suppose."
"I am turning away from the Dark Lord. For you."
Harry kept talking, while Mr. Malfoy's words were like a blow that he stepped aside from. "It doesn't really matter. I never had anyone who loved me growing up. It turns out that my parents, I mean, the people I thought were my parents, were my kidnappers. And now you don't really want to change. You're making the smallest changes possible. That's okay. I can live with this."
"Henry. Please."
Mr. Malfoy sounded agonized, but Harry just looked at him and shook his head. "I'm not important enough to make the big changes for."
"That is not true." Mr. Malfoy reached out and put his arms around Harry, but this time, it didn't feel like a father hugging him. Nothing could get through the bright shell that had wrapped around Harry. "I love you. I have always longed for you. We told Draco stories of you when we thought that was all we would ever have, so that he could get to know you, too."
"You loved the person you thought I was," Harry corrected him. "Someone who was a pureblood and would be happy to live with the way you treated house-elves and whatever plot you were cooking up to put in the school. Something to do with Heir of Slytherin, I suppose?" he sighed, disappointed with himself for not seeing it earlier. "The Petrifications stopped after Christmas. When you took whatever it was out of the school."
"Henry."
"Are you going to treat house-elves better?"
Mr. Malfoy hesitated.
Harry stood up, and shrugged Mr. Malfoy's arms off him, and walked out of the room.
...
"You can't stay in there forever, Henry."
"Watch me."
Harry said the words flatly, staring up at the ceiling of his room. He hadn't decorated it with all the things he would have liked, but so what? The Malfoys weren't his family, not really.
"You have to eat something."
"I'm using to doing without."
From the sound of it, Draco had kicked the door. Harry entertained a brief fantasy of Mrs. Malfoy getting angry at him for the dent he had probably put in the door, and then snorted to himself. Who said it would last? The house-elves would come along and magic it away, and if it did stay for some weird reason, then Mrs. Malfoy would blame Harry.
Because they did. They blamed him for seeing Dobby and caring about him, instead of blaming themselves for not treating Dobby the right way and trying to hide him from Harry.
Footsteps down the corridor said that Draco was going away, and Harry tried to close his eyes and sleep, even though he was hungry. But a loud pop sounded in front of him, and Harry scrambled over and reached for the wand under his pillow.
Dobby was there, bowing, holding a tray full of what looked like bowls of soup and a covered platter that smelled like chicken. Harry licked his lips and said, "I'm not hungry," while his stomach growled.
"Great Master Harry Potter is being hungry," Dobby said, in a voice that sounded like experience, and set the tray down on the table next to his bed. "Perhaps Great Master Harry Potter can be eating something? For Dobby?"
House-elves sure had big green teary eyes when they wanted to use them, Harry thought grumpily. He lifted the cover off the platter and swallowed when he saw the chicken sitting there, in delicate bits draped with some kind of sauce that made them smell like a few meals he'd cooked for the Dursleys that he never got to eat.
"Do you swear that they haven't put any curses or potions on the food?" he asked Dobby without taking his eyes from the chicken, or the fork that had materialized beside the platter. He was sure that it hadn't been there a second before.
"They are not putting anything in the food! Theys never come in the kitchens."
Well, at least that made sense, Harry thought as he picked up the fork. Preparing food was probably beneath a Malfoy.
And didn't that prove that he wasn't one?
Harry sighed, but he was hungry enough that he ate some of the chicken and a small piece of the treacle tart. As soon as he'd eaten enough food that he didn't think his stomach would grumble, he put the fork down.
"Great Master Harry Potter is not wanting more?"
Harry shook his head as he turned to Dobby. "I have to show them they can't manipulate me this way. And why are you calling me Harry Potter?"
Dobby froze and then clapped a hand over his eyes. "Does Great Master—does he not wants me to?"
"No. Right now, I prefer it." Harry sighed and looked off at the wall, at the enchanted window that showed a vision of the ocean. He'd set it that way thinking he might find the roll of the waves soothing, but it hadn't happened.
"Dobby, what do they do to you?"
....
Do you want to read ahead by more than 60 exciting premium chapters?
Then join my p*atreon right now.
Link: p*atreon.com/Sonic_Spectre (Remove the *)
Free members can unlock upto 2 chapters.