Chapter 11
Harry is back at the Dursleys and somehow it's even more miserable than he remembered it being now that he's had a taste of his life at Hogwarts. Sure he's got a room of his own now and doesn't live in a cupboard anymore, but it's still incomparable to his dorm in Hogwarts, being lulled to sleep by Draco's even breaths every night.
He didn't think it could get any worse until it's his birthday and Harry hasn't had a letter from any of his friends in weeks. There's not even a small note to wish him happy birthday from Draco, Ron or Hermione.
And then he finds the house elf in his room.
Dobby, he says his name is, and the name sounds familiar, but Harry can't pinpoint where he heard it from.
Dobby has apparently been hiding all his letters because he doesn't want Harry to go to Hogwarts for some unknown reason and he wanted him to feel lonely and uncared for and no longer want to go back. He goes on to wreak havoc and drops cake on the Dursleys' guest, Mr. Mason, with whom his uncle wanted some kind of important deal signed. The Dursleys are so angry they put bars in his windows and starve him for days.
Harry only remembers where he heard the name when Draco shows up one day in his room alongside Dobby.
Dobby was that elf Draco was talking about; his closest friend back home.
"You haven't been responding to any of my letters!" Draco begins ranting as soon as his feet land on the floor of Harry's room. "I owled Hermione and she said you weren't answering her either. I even owled your Weasel! We've all been worried sick! Last I heard, Weasley was planning on taking those twin brothers of his to come and get you in some flying car. Hermione and I owled him all day to talk him down since I've got the easier way to do it." He gestures at Dobby, who is cowering and silent with his ears drooping around his head. "Anyway, clearly you're not dead or injured, thank Salazar the horrors that have been going through our minds—why have you been ignoring our owls?" His silver eyes narrow. "Did your relatives...?"
"No," Harry says, "I mean they didn't grow lovely over the year I was gone or anything—" His eyes inadvertently flick over to the window, which Draco notices.
"What the hell?" Draco whispers, wide-eyed.
"Yeah. But they don't have anything to do with our owls not reaching each other."
"Not reaching each other?"
"Dobby is sorry!" Dobby suddenly cries from behind Draco. "Dobby is so sorry, Master Draco! Dobby only wanted to protect Harry Potter!"
"Oh, Dobby, what did you do?"
Dobby tells Draco everything he's done and, upon seeing Draco's face turn away to hide his upset and displeasure, goes to smash his head into the wall again, which is probably why Draco was trying so hard to not show it.
"No, no, no!" Draco grabs his arm. His face is pinched, pained. "Dobby. No. How many times have I told you not to do that to yourself? You know I can't bear to see it."
Dobby stills and looks down, muttering to himself, "Dobby doesn't want his friend to cry for him, no. Draco always cries when Master Malfoy makes Dobby hurt himself."
"I'm going to have to command you to leave Harry alone," Draco says, lips pressed tight together. "Do you understand?"
Dobby nods.
"Okay. Good. Now take us to the Manor, will you?"
Draco's father won't be home for the summer, he tells Harry as he is packing his things quickly. Right as the footsteps sound outside, there is the sense of being squeezed through a tube and then they are standing inside the iron doors of the Malfoy Manor.
It's enormous inside, beautifully and elegantly furnished. Harry can't stop taking in everything all the way through until he has to stop to say hello to Narcissa. In Draco's room, he writes a lengthy letter detailing to Hermione and Ron everything that's happened and that he's staying with Draco for the summer (and to tell Ron it's okay and to not come get him on a flying car, even though he is secretly so touched at the thought that he'd go to such lengths).
*
Just like at Hogwarts, they share the bed in Draco's room, even though the Manor must have about ten other rooms. Draco wasn't wrong when he'd told him how big his house was. He shows him everything he has found so far and they go exploring all through it and still find more to be surprised by.
It is a lovely summer spent; flying brooms and catching Snitches under the golden afternoon sunshine in the backyard, and climbing up the tallest oak trees to sit on the branches, or Draco's childhood treehouse on another, carving their initials into the bark of the tree to be immortalised. They feed his father's peacocks and the ducks kept by Narcissa in the ponds of the garden. He writes frequently to Ron and Hermione and eats food he has never eaten before; a spread of fanciful dishes across the table, steak and lobsters and Merlin knows what else.
Inside the house, a piano sits to the side of the vast drawing room, and the two of them fit themselves together onto the stool and try to play in childish, clumsy attempts, giggling over how terrible it sounds.
"Would you like me to teach you?" Narcissa asks Harry one day, finding him running fascinated fingers over the keys, too shy to give it a serious go. Harry says yes.
From that day on, it becomes a thing between the three of them, Narcissa between Harry and Draco, an hour of her teaching him how to position his fingers over the keys without straining his wrists, the distinction between each note and key, how to create melodies.
She creates some of the most beautiful melodies Harry may have ever heard. He likes this one hour of their day, to sit in these moments with her subtle, expensive perfume and listen to her so kindly speak to him, telling him little things here and there with a soft, pleasant expression as her fingers smoothly shift over the keys, Draco on the other side of her with his head on her shoulder. Harry tries all he can to take it in, how she does it, until he begins to learn to do it too.
He learns ballroom dancing is a thing between Draco and Narcissa; he can imagine Draco, learning with his feet on hers, small and delighted.
Narcissa and Draco do their best to make him feel welcome and comfortable and at home, and this feels like one more thing that makes him feel as if he's a part of the unit now; getting to watch them be so at home around him, Narcissa not all done up and dressed well, Draco still in his pyjamas some half the days (which he says he can only do when his father isn't around). Draco takes his hand sometimes and tries to teach him too, whilst Narcissa stays at the piano. Harry isn't a natural and he takes a long time to get the hang of it, but he does so eventually.
One night before he and Draco are heading to bed, in the dim hallways, she kisses Draco's head to wish him goodnight (which Draco is blatantly mortified by) while Harry hovers sort of awkwardly beside him, and does not at all expect her to lower herself to his eye-level, to touch her fingers to his cheek with a small smile and whisper, "Good night, Harry."
The phantom of her fond touch follows him into his dreams. He dreams of his mother.
*
Around a month after, as they are returning from the gardens, they hear voices from the living room. Narcissa's heels click up the stairs. Draco turns a corner from the backdoor and halts with a gasp, Harry behind him.
"Ah," a voice says, smooth like the scales of a snake. "Draco."
Draco is silent, still. He is gripping Harry's shirt, hand reaching behind him.
"How very good to see you. Come on in. Come sit here beside your dear uncle." The pat of a hand to a cushion.
Draco does not move. His profile is ashen, and he is only staring at the man — his uncle. Harry can't see him. He can only see how scared Draco looks, round-eyed as a small child.
"Come on," the voice drags into a goading sort of voice, somberly amused. "And don't try to run from me this time. I can't understand why you always do."
Draco does, then, delayed and as if he has to make himself. Before he does, he presses Harry back, as if to tell him to stay where he is. He complies.
From behind the wall as Harry peeks out, the man is squeezing Draco close to his side in affection. "Why," he says, still with that amusement, his head bent low to look into his face, arm around him, "are you always so fearful of me, nephew? What have I ever done to you? Have I not always been kind?"
"Yes," Draco croaks, a dry throat voice. "Yes, Uncle Rodolphus."
"Now tell me, how's school? I hear you've managed to befriend Harry Potter. How exciting." Rodolphus' face turns, and Harry quickly hides again, back of his head to the wall and facing ahead. "Perhaps he has come for a visit?"
A too long pause. Still in that dry-throat voice, "No. He isn't here. He's back home. His... his relatives wouldn't allow it, you see."
Harry is confused. He doesn't know why he is being made to hide, or why Draco is lying, but he just knows to go along with it for Draco's sake. Maybe there are things he knows that Harry doesn't.
"I see. How sad."
Then it's eerily soundless.
"Uncle Rodolphus, where are you...?" Draco's voice is a hesitant near-whisper.
So swift that Harry doesn't realise what is happening, a tightness curls around his arm, and everything lurches around him fast and blurry, a gasp escaping him of its own accord. Only after several seconds does he realise he has been whirled out from behind the wall and around to face the room and Draco's uncle.
He feels it then, only, looking into his face; his long black hair, the hollow cheeks pulled tight over his face, his narrowed dark eyes, the cock of his head. He is smirking. The air around him is inexplicably suffocating, unsettling.
"Now why would you lie to me?" Rodolphus says, quietly, silken and deadly soft. He's speaking to Draco, but his eyes are dead on into Harry's, "You naughty, naughty boy."
When he meets Draco's eyes, they are afraid, his posture tense. Rodolphus' grip is tight around Harry's arm, not painful, but still felt.
Then the clacking of heels. Rodolphus' hand releases him subtly.
"Here it is," Narcissa says as she comes to him, handing him the parchment. "Perhaps you'd like to check."
"That's the one. I am most grateful, Cissy," Rodolphus says. Something slips quick as it comes across Narcissa's eyes. She maintains her polite smile, the rest of her face unwavering. He turns to Harry. He half-smiles pleasantly, but his eyes remain hollow. Harry represses a shiver. "Very lovely meeting you, Mr. Potter."
*
"You're so cold," Harry says, worried, massaging Draco's hand to keep them warm. He is still shaking slightly.
Later, once he's calmed down, Draco will tell him about his uncle. His name is Rodolphus Lestrange, husband of Draco's maternal aunt, Bellatrix, who is in Azkaban as of now. He is an Unspeakable at the Ministry, apparently, and he came by for some parchment Lucius was in possession of, locked away in his study. Lucius had sent Narcissa an owl to tell her where to find it and give it to him.
There is not much else known about him by Draco and his family. No one knows what his role was, where he was, in the first Wizarding War. Nobody knows how he managed to go free without any charges, despite his wife being a Death-Eater, thereby his association should have made him liable for investigation.
Every now and then, Rodolphus visits the family at the dinner parties. Draco has felt this way around him since he can remember. No one else he knows feels it to the extent he does. Theo too said he seems strange, but Draco doesn't know if he only said that to appease him because of how afraid he seemed.
Harry's heart flips into his throat when he has to ask, "Has he ever hurt you?"
"No," Draco says, and huffs, flushed. "But he scares me. Am I crazy if he scares me even if he hasn't ever done anything?"
Harry remembers the strange, disturbing air around him, his silken voice and his hollow eyes, "No. I sort of get what you mean."
"My aunt was mad," Draco says. "I mean, actually mad. It was quite clear why you ought to be terrified of her. My uncle, though... I've never really been able to explain why. Sometimes I think I'm only paranoid, but I can't seem to shake this fear off."
***
"Is that my sweatshirt you're wearing?" Draco says, with a frown.
"Yeah," Harry says, looking down at it. "I like it."
"It's my favourite one," Draco tells him, not with accusation or anything, just to tell him. His favourite clothes, or anything, change all the time, with how much he shops. This is a new one then.
Harry can't help but ask, sheepishly, "Do you mind?"
"I don't mind at all." Draco straightens, smoothly sliding his legs to turn back to the desk, continuing his summer homework. He has a very small smile. His voice is light and airy, as if in a resigned sigh, "Besides... You're the only one that's allowed to take anything from me."