26. Art

"What precious thing are you making fast
in all these silken lines?
And where and to whom will it go at last?
Such subtle knots and twines!"

It had been a long time since Harry had retreated away, somewhere high off the ground, flipping through the worn thin pages of his mother's old book. He had stopped needing to hide inside its printed words when Draco had spoken words of friendship, Narcissa had spoken words of love, and Lucius words of ambition. He'd grown so much from the small boy hiding in dusty corners of libraries, high up on shelves, dreaming of a mother long dead. But he had not forgotten who he'd been or where he'd come from.

As a child, he believed family was only a temporary thing. He'd lived in a home where children were discarded like toys people had outgrown. His mother and father had outgrew him and gave him to an aunt and uncle who'd threw him away at the first opportunity. Every week, people had come to the orphanage and looked at him and the other children like perusing through the secondhand bin of a shop. More than once a child they'd taken home with them like a shiny new toy had ended up returned the moment they'd looked close enough to see the chipped paint or missing pieces. How could they promise a family when they didn't even realize they were buying people and not toys?

Back then, Harry hadn't wanted a family. He'd only wanted a quiet place to read.

And then Lucius Malfoy had come. He hadn't promised Harry love or family. He'd been looking only for a playmate for his favored son. He'd been shopping for a toy and he'd made that clear. He hadn't taken Harry away under false pretenses. Hadn't let him expect more than he would receive.

Harry had gone with him with few expectations. He'd expected to once more be used and discarded. He hadn't expected to care for Draco or for Draco to care for him in turn. He hadn't expected Narcissa to treat him as a son and to grow and love her as a mother.

He hadn't expected Lucius and Narcissa and Draco to become his family and to teach him that family wasn't meant to be a temporary thing, teach him that children weren't made to be cast aside, or that love wasn't taken away the moment you showed the broken parts of you.

He'd grown to believe that family was forever. And he held on to this belief as weeks passed in summertime and Lucius did not choose his side. He held tightly to this belief out of fear of being proven wrong. Fear of once more being outgrown and discarded.

And at the same time, he wanted to be proven wrong, because if family was a forever thing and Lucius chose to stand against Harry, Draco and Narcissa would stand at his side because he was their real family and Harry was just some stray they'd brought home one day.

Harry feared that he would end up back the way he'd started: all alone. But he didn't know to be alone anymore. From the time he was six years old, he'd had Draco and Narcissa and Severus and Blaise and even Lucius at his side teaching him he didn't have to be alone. Even when he was away somewhere by himself, he'd never been alone.

He didn't want to, but he felt he had to, relearn how to be alone. So climbed up to the roof of the Bordeaux estate and he sat there alone with the one thing that had always been by his side, his most prized possession: his mother's book.

The ink was faded so much that he couldn't read it in some places, and the pages were ragged and falling out, the cover was hanging on by threads, and he could have fixed it all with a simple reparo but he would not simply because that would have been too easy.

When he was a child and had found the book huddled with it alone in a cramped cupboard under the stairs, his life had felt like a book with the words smudged out, and he could not fix it with a reparo. When we was a child crouched on a high shelf hiding from children who wished to beat him down in order to elevate themselves, he felt like a book with the pages ripped out, and he could not fix it with a reparo. When he was a child alone in a glamourous room after being told to his face that he was unwanted, he'd felt open and raw like a book with the cover torn off, and he could not fix it with a reparo.

"Harry!" Draco called.

Maybe his past would always be pages of smudged out words, and his future pages ripped out all together, and his present open for the whole world to see, but there was a story there still worth reading. He would always be someone's most prized possession.

"I am tying up all my love in this,
with all its hopes and fears,
with all its anguish and all its bliss,
and its hours as heavy as years."

In the second week of July, Sirius left them. Harry had passed on Dumbledore's message about "the old crowd assembling" and Sirius had been debating whether or not he should go to him. He knew that Harry did not trust Dumbledore, and for that reason he was hesitant to go, but Harry knew Sirius did trust Dumbledore, and for that reason he told him he didn't have to stay.

"I just want to know what he's planning," Sirius had said before he left. "I'm not going to make him any promises and I'll come back and talk it over with you before I make any final decisions. I won't tell him where you are, either."

Harry had hugged him tightly, feeling as if he was losing yet another father figure to the coming war. "Be careful, Siri," Harry had mumbled passed the lump in his throat.

"Don't worry about me, Pup. You look after yourself." He'd released Harry and turned to Draco. "And you look after him, too." He'd said.

Draco had huffed. "As if I'd let anything happen to my boy."

The summer passed quickly. Harry dutifully looked through both Wizarding and Muggle for any sign of Voldemort's activities. He'd unfortunately learned nothing of what the Dark Sect may be up to, but he did discover that the Daily Prophet seemed to have decided to run a smear campaign against him. They were so determined to deny the Dark Lord's returned, they'd even implied that he'd used dark magic to compel Cedric Diggory to "go along with the ravings of an attention seeking madman."

Trusting that if the Dark Lord did make a move, he'd know soon enough, Harry spent the summer as any teenage boy would. He got all his assignments done during the first week, and used the rest of his free time exploring the Bordeaux estate Draco and Blaise, running through the attached vineyards, and feigning off Draco's playful advances.

Draco had taken Harry's "no sex while we're living with your parents" in stride, but had made a game of trying to steal as many kisses as he could from his childhood playmate while Narcissa's back was turned. Harry had taken that in stride.

But not all their time was given over to childish pursuits. There was a war coming and they needed to be ready for it. They started seeing their old martial arts teacher twice a week. It was actually a kind of awkward occurrence. Their teacher hadn't been given the secret of the Fidelis charm, so the man was aware that he was teaching two students, but it was like his mind didn't even register Harry's presence at all. He would only ever give direct instructions to Draco, on occasion he would tell them to spar with each other, but his eyes would drift over them unseeingly as they did so.

Along with continuing their physical training, Harry and Draco (and Blaise as well, on the occasions when he was visiting) worked on dueling and spell-work as well. With the way underage magic was tracked, it was easy for students who resided within the Wizarding World to bypass the restrictions, it was really on those who lived among Muggles that had to worry about it.

Harry expanded his repertoire of both light and dark spells with the aid of the estate's library and their frequent trips to the French Diagon Alley. He practiced his dueling against Draco, Blaise, and even Narcissa a few times.

Draco usually beat him during their martial arts sparring matches, but Harry won most often in their magic duels. Only Harry and Narcissa could see the irony in that.

"I am going to send it afar, afar,
to know not where above;
to that sphere beyond the highest star
where dwells the soul of my Love."

In the first week of August, Harry received a letter from Dumbledore asking him to spend the rest of the summer with the Weasley family. He also received letters from both Charlie and Sirius urging him to accept the headmaster's invitation.

Summer was drawing to a close and they still hadn't heard from Lucius or seen any sign of dark activities. Despite his wish not to leave Draco and Mother Narcissa, Harry agreed to meet up with the Weasley family in Diagon Alley and spend the rest of August with them.

It was the day before Harry was to leave when Lucius finally made an appearance.

Harry and Draco had just come inside to escape the worst heat of the day. They were smiling and laughing with their faces sticky with the juices of grapes stolen and eaten straight from the vines. They were breathless from chasing each other across the lawn and their stolen kisses in the shade. It was the last day they'd be seeing each other for almost three weeks, and they'd wanted to make the time count.

The moment they stepped inside the house, one of the elves popped into existence in front of them. "Mistress Narcissa asked the young masters to join her in the lady parlor right away."

"Thank you, Loathed," Harry said, mentally wincing at the poor elf's name. He and Draco shared questioningly looks, but made their way to the appointed place. If it was an emergency, Narcissa would have sent Loathed out to the vineyard to fetch them instead of waiting for them to come inside, but the elf's statement that she wanted to see them "right away" implied some degree of urgency. It could be that Narcissa just wanted some time with Harry before he left.

Neither of them were expecting to find Lucius sitting in the lady's parlor with Narcissa, having tea. Both Harry and Draco hesitated at the doorway, but Narcissa waved them over to sit down next to her. They did so silently.

Lucius waited until Narcissa finished making the boys cups of tea before speaking. "I'd thought," he began, "with the Dark Lord's return, it would only be a matter of time until someone ran and told him that I was sheltering Harry Potter. I figured as soon as he knew, I would be summoned and ordered to either hand you over or die. I thought that, in the moment I had to choose, I would know without a doubt which way my loyalties lie.

"I've spent this entire summer both waiting for and dreading that moment of clarity. But the Dark Lord never summoned me and with each passing day, I wondered why. Surely someone has told him by now? Surely he would see my actions as a betrayal and would wish to punish me for them? Why hasn't he summoned me yet? And then, today, it finally happened. The mark on my arm burned and I thought to myself 'this is it, this is the moment I must choose between my son and my lord' and as I had that thought, I realized my decision had already been made."

"Did you go to him?" Narcissa asked.

Lucius nodded. "I did. And I found that I had not been summoned for the reason I had thought. No one had told him anything."

"That because they can't," Draco said. "Harry made it so."

"What did you do?" Lucius asked Harry. There was no accusation or anger in his tone, just genuine curiosity.

"I wanted to protect you all," Harry answered. "I knew my presence would endanger you, but I wanted to protect you."

"He crafted a new spell," Draco said, voice filled with pride.

"I'd hoped to buy you time to make you decision," Harry told Lucius. "But I also made it so that if you decided to side against me, you would be unable to hand me over to Voldemort yourself."

"How did you do that?"

Draco answered for him. "He concealed it in a secret. As long as he around anyone who carries that Malfoy name, Harry might as well be invisible for all the attention anyone outside the secret would be able to pay."

Lucius nodded. "You don't trust me."

"I love you like a father," Harry said.

"But you don't trust me, and understandably so. But you still wanted to protect me."

"I want to protect my family."

"So do I," Lucius said. "That's all I ever wanted."

"But in vain, in vain, would I make it fast
with countless subtle twines;
forever its fire breaks out at last,
and shrivels all the lines."

~James Thomson