Redeem Me

DISCLAIMER: Warning! I make no claim to any property of J.K. Rowling's, and am in no way profiting by this. I do offer her my sincerest thanks for allowing us this garden of the mind in which we play. Further Warning! This story...and likely any I ever write…are dominated by gay themes and characters. That's how it is, if this in any way makes you uncomfortable...do not read further.

Redeem Me…by Samayel

Chapter 2: Harry’s Rage, Molly’s Hope


“Malfoy.”

Harry spat the word like curse. The boy in front of him bore little resemblance to the one he’d seen in the Ministry a year ago. Draco Malfoy was no longer pale, but almost ghostly in pallor, and the blond bangs that jutted out from under the hood of his jumper were greasy spikes that looked as if they had been hacked short at some time in the recent past. The dark hollows under Draco’s eyes looked more like sullen bruises than anything else, and Draco appeared to have difficulty focusing his eyes.

Draco’s hands were shoved under his armpits for lack of gloves, and the chill of October winds was biting at both of them. Harry had outrage to keep him warm, but apparently Malfoy had nothing but several thin layers of Muggle clothing more fit for late spring. Even beneath layers of clothing, Harry could tell that Malfoy was too skinny to be healthy. Draco wiped his nose on his sleeve, and broke into a muffled fit of coughing that left his eyes watery, and the noises that rattled in his lungs sounded decidedly unhealthy. Harry really didn’t care, but he was dumbfounded as to why Draco Malfoy would have the nerve to seek sanctuary here…and from him!

“Sanctuary? You want sanctuary, Malfoy?” Amused sarcasm dripped from Harry’s tongue. “Sure…come on in…invite your pals to join in and kill a few more people I love. FUCK YOU! I can’t believe you have the balls to show up here and ask that!”

Harry stepped through the wards, feeling the faint crackle of their power right through his skin. Anyone not keyed to the wards he’d built would be fried to a crisp in a heartbeat, and Harry liked it that way. Malfoy was still silent, unfazed by Harry’s outburst, but he did have the grace to hang his head and back up a step. Malfoy wobbled, sniffling before Harry heard him speak again.

“I…’m sorry. N-need…help. P-please, Potter.”

“You’re fucking daft! Shove off back to whatever hole you crawled out from under, before I kill you on general principle. In fact, I think the only reason I’m letting you live…is because it looks like that would be crueler! Now piss off!”

Malfoy looked up with eyes that pleaded even in the face of no hope, and seemed briefly lucid. “You…you h-have to help me. Th-there’s nowhere…no one else. I…I don’t have a wand. I’ll swear an oath. I j-just want sanc-sanctuary.”

Malfoy started to break down completely, and his face twisted into a grimace while he tried to keep from coming apart completely. Harry was unmoved, and to be completely honest, more than a little pleased by seeing Draco in such a state. He couldn’t just leave the pathetic little bastard out here, though, and eventually he’d have to chase Malfoy off…if the prat wouldn’t go of his own accord. Harry bit back the curses and hexes on the tip of his tongue, and smiled pleasantly for show.

“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything, Malfoy. I owe you a world of hurt, and I think I’ve been generous enough so far, but I’ll indulge this just a little longer. Nowhere to go? What about St. Mungo’s, they’ve got a free ward for the sick and down on their luck? What about your precious clique of Slytherin schoolmates? Wouldn’t at least one of them look after you? There’s always a job or two out there. Considered getting dirty hands for a living yet, or have you just scuffed around sponging off others until I’m the only person left who hasn’t already thrown your arse to the curb?”

Shaking from standing still in the cold, Draco’s lower lip trembled, and then he broke into another coughing fit, doubling over while his lungs racked. Harry was observant enough to see the tiny smear of vermilion in the spittle that Draco wiped from lips a second later. The harsh croak was back, reedy and grating on his ears.

“N-nobody will let me stay. St. Mungo’s recognized me and they…they threw me out. Everyone else…is…is scared of you. I…I tried everywhere…Hogsmeade…Diagon Alley…but no one will even talk to me. Then I…” Malfoy shivered and paused, and Harry suspected that something was off. “I g-got robbed. They t-took my wand, my s-signet ring, everything…everything I had. Everyone else is afraid of you. I‘m sick…I’m cold…I need help…so I c-came to you. Please…please help me. I’ll do anything you ask, Harry.”

The sound of his first name being spoken by Malfoy struck a nerve in Harry, coming alongside the reminder of his darkening reputation in the wizarding world. Harry felt his temper cresting fast, and snarled out his response.

“It’s Potter to you! You haven’t got the fucking right to call me anything else! Wanna know why no one will help you? I don’t think it’s me that keeps them from bothering…I think it’s that, under the surface, there isn’t one fucking thing about you worth helping. You’re a miserable, murderous little shit, and we’re all holding our breath waiting for you to just die and get out of our sight. Besides, if you lost your wand, how did you get here without someone’s help? Answer me that, fuckwit!”

Draco cringed a little, stifling a cough. “There was an old, half-blind witch in Diagon Alley. Didn’t recognize me. Sh-she hailed the Knight Bus for me. I walked fr-from t-town. I just thought…I don’t know…I…I thought you might help me, because Dumbledore would have.”

At the mention of the former headmaster, Harry exploded into action. A booted foot to the chest sent Draco sliding across the ground, retching and gasping for air, and a second later, his right arm was being wrenched until the pop of dislocation could be heard. There was no way to even scream, since Harry’s boot continued to slam into Draco’s stomach and ribs, and only vague gagging sounds came from the skinnier boy, who began to vomit strings of bile, and passed out cold seconds later.

Harry punctuated his kicks with shouted curses. “YOU…MURDERING…FUCK! How dare you mention his name! You got him killed, and I watched him die, because of you! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

Harry’s eyes were bulging, and veins in his face and neck throbbed heavily while something almost like a growl formed in the pit of his throat. When Malfoy stopped struggling, and appeared to be unconscious, Harry pulled the hood from Draco’s head, and grabbed hold of a thick handful of greasy blond hair, dragging Draco’s limp body toward the wards, talking to himself in blind rage as he went.

“It was a fucking accident, right? The pathetic shit tried to cross my wards. Another dead Death Eater…no big deal. Who’d even care? Had this coming since-”

“HARRY JAMES POTTER! Put that boy down this instant! What do you think you’re doing?!” Molly’s incredulity and outrage snapped Harry back to reality, and he dropped Draco to the ground. Arthur and Molly were just inside the wards, staring in shock at Harry’s treatment of the stranger at the edge of their property.

“Just taking out the trash! It’s Malfoy…the arrogant little ferret came begging for sanctuary! Sanctuary…here! Can you believe that?” Harry looked down at the motionless form on the ground beneath him, and snorted in contempt.

Molly looked soberly at Arthur for just a second, then pursed her lips, as if making a decision that deeply disagreed with her.

“Bring him in.”

Harry stood with mouth agape, shell-shocked by Molly’s declaration.

“But…but…it’s Malfoy?! You can’t be serious! He let those bastards into Hogwarts and…this…this piece of shit is why Dumbledore’s dead!”

“Harry Potter, you know I love you dearly, but don’t you make me repeat myself! Sanctuary is a tradition since the days of witch burnings, and no Weasley OR Prewett has ever turned away a wizard or witch seeking sanctuary! This family will not break with a centuries old history of kindness, and we will most certainly not attack a person who comes in peace. If you don’t pick that boy up this instant and bring him inside…then I will!”

Harry hadn’t been on the receiving end of one of Molly Weasley’s tirades since he and Ron had made use of Mr. Weasley’s flying car. Flabbergasted past the point of being able to maintain anger, Harry slumped his shoulders with sullen and poorly veiled outrage…and cast Mobilicorpus with an irritable flick of his wand, raising Draco Malfoy into the air. Harry towed Malfoy along behind him as he trudged back to the Burrow, silently willing the wards to permit his onetime childhood rival through without harm.

Molly Weasley watched sternly as they walked the path to the house, ignoring Harry’s muttered complaints as they went. Harry was already rallying a chain of logic that would support his position, hoping that as soon as she’d had her fill of healing Draco up, she’d let Harry send him on his way as soon as possible. It was inconceivable to him that Mum Weasley, however sweet she was, would allow the boy who got Bill maimed into her house. He’d bide his time, then bring it up later, using his most reasonable tone of voice, and hope she saw reason.

Harry followed Molly upstairs and into the room next to Harry’s, once used by Percy. When he ended the spell while Draco was a half foot over the bed, letting him flop gracelessly onto the sheets, Molly bristled, and gave Harry a glare so menacing that even Harry…who had faced and slain a Dark Lord at the peak of his power…quailed a moment and backed down.

“I’m sorry. I really am, Mum. It’s just…I don’t want you in danger. I don’t trust him, and if anything happened to you two…God, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know how I’d live. He shouldn’t be here, and it isn’t safe, but…it’s your call.”

Molly’s features softened, touched by Harry’s concern for her.

“Harry, I know there are a lot of reasons to not help someone who’s done the things that this boy has, but Arthur and I didn’t fight that war just to live out our lives in hiding, turning away people in need. We’ve never lived that way, and we won’t now. Bring my supplies from the cupboard in the kitchen. I’ve still a few basic potions left from patching up my boys, and a few tidbits left from when the war was still on. If I need more, I’ll Floo Poppy Pomfrey and see what she can send me.”

Harry nodded assent and headed down the stairs as quickly as he could, not wanting to leave Molly alone with Draco, conscious or no, for more than a few minutes.

Molly Weasley set about casting a few diagnostic spells to sort out the sickly boy’s precise condition and ailments, and almost dropped her wand in shock and repulsion. The mental list of problems was so long as to stagger her memory, and much of it suggested things...dark, ugly things...that she almost dared not speak aloud for fear that they would be made true and certain.

Aside from a high fever and the beginnings of pneumonia, Draco Malfoy had been the victim of many injuries, long before Harry had attacked him. Some of the harm done to his body was long-healed, and there was evidence of multiple magical Healings to sustain his life while he was repeatedly tortured. There were ribs that had been broken more than a few times, and had just been broken again by Harry, scarring of a lung that suggested a past puncture…now agitated by the same rib poking inward once again, the shoulder just dislocated by Harry, and multiple surface scars from cuts, abrasions and burns. To top that off, there was faint scarring in…other places…which implied severe and continual sexual violation, and infection with two separate, but not uncommon or incurable, Muggle social diseases. Last, he was suffering the effects of prolonged malnutrition, in the form of scurvy. A sentence to Azkaban would have been a far gentler punishment than what this boy had suffered since the war’s end.

Draco Malfoy was lucky to be alive, but Molly could scarcely call surviving such things ’luck’. Whatever debt the youngest Malfoy may have owed for his crimes had certainly been paid in full, and it was beyond her to hold hatred of others past the point of reason. Molly sat in the chair beside the bed, horrified by what she’d learned in the past minute. She was determined to do what she could for the poor thing, but it might well be that some of this was beyond her skill. This boy needed real Healers. All she could do was manage with the supplies at hand and try to stabilize him until he could be sent on, and that would just have to do.

Harry returned, satchel of potions and herbs in hand. He placed the bag on the desktop and turned to Molly. “You alright? You don’t look well…what’s wrong?”

Molly weighed her options. Even if she wasn’t a mediwitch, it was a betrayal of another’s privacy to share details as serious as the ones that surrounded Draco‘s injuries. Harry’s help would be needed, and perhaps, just perhaps, a little bit of knowledge might open his mind to the possibility of forgiving Draco.

She’d watched Harry brood and darken for over a year, and it broke her heart each time he left at night, and the Prophet later reported another round of suspicious killings. All that loss, all that suffering. It had all but snuffed out the happy, shy little boy she remembered running about with her Ron. Certainly, the people he'd killed deserved Azkaban, or some punishment, but not death. Harry would refuse to speak about the subject when approached, and there were details that leaked back to them through the Ministry, tales of what Harry might have done, that were so terrible in aspect that Molly honestly didn’t want to know if their Harry had done such things.

It might be too much to hope for, but this act of sanctuary seemed a plausible way to make Harry confront his loss and move forward. Anything to break the spell of sadness and anger that hung over Harry’s heart and mind. Molly made up her mind, and sighed deeply before looking Harry in the eyes.

“I’m fine, Harry. No worries...I was just a bit tired, love. Thank you for fetching my things. Harry, before I start, we need to talk.”


TBC!!!