Pet

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TWENTY-FIVE
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Harry rubbed his eyes as he fingered one of the control bands, feeling the familiar texture of the runic symbols etched in the precious metal. He opened a book on wizarding etiquette in the Malfoy library and paused to take a sip of tea. He stretched his back, hearing it pop, as the first pink rays of dawn were visible through the window. He knew he would find no answers in the books stacked around him; his answers had to come from deep inside and he was not yet ready to listen to his traitorous heart or his traitorous mind.

“Potter, what are you doing?”

Harry looked up to see Draco, uncharacteristically rumpled in his dressing gown, standing at the doorway. He strode in and Harry felt no danger from him. Draco picked up several of the books, glancing at their seemingly unrelated subject matter. He set them back down and examined a tray of tea and baked goods left behind by a house elf. He picked up a scone and looked at it curiously.

“Why is there a candle stuck in this scone?”

Harry looked up, a little embarrassed. “Today is my birthday. The house elves must have remembered.”

“Oh, Happy Birthday,” he said distractedly, conjuring a second cup and pouring himself some tea. “What are you looking for? I don’t remember you being quite so bookish at Hogwarts.”

“At Hogwarts…” Harry paused and let out a breath. “At Hogwarts I had Hermione.”

Draco unexpectedly placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. She was a clever witch.”

Harry looked into Draco’s face, a bit uncertain. Draco looked as if he, too, had not slept. The traumatic events of the past few days had left a mark on him; the death of his mother weighed heavy on his heart.

“Thank you for saving Rose…for not letting her hit the marble floor.”

“Potter, I didn’t place that protective charm on my sister, you did.”

“I what?”

“Somehow in the midst of my mother’s attack, you must have managed to erect a wandless protection charm on Rosamond. My focus was on my mother…not on you.”

“Oh,” Harry sank into the library chair, spinning one of the bracelets. “I couldn’t have done it…not wearing these.”

“Pippi,” Draco said suddenly.

“Pardon?”

“She was my nurse when I was growing up. I remember her placing a charm on me when I was very small and unsteady on my feet. Pippi must have place the same charm on Rosamond.”

~*~*~*~
Draco closed his eyes, the memory of the events in the main foyer fresh in his mind. Drawn by the screams, he was halfway down the staircase before he realized what his mother was doing. Having heard her repeatedly threaten to harm Harry, Draco was not totally surprised to find her casting the Cruciatus Curse on the defenseless near-Squib, but he was angered to discover Harry was still holding his daughter in his arms. Intending only to cast a protective spell around his little sister, Draco’s blood froze when he heard his mother begin to cast the killing curse.

A quickly cast “Expellaramus” knocked the witch off her feet. Draco deftly caught her wand and swiftly approached her. Harry was convulsing on the floor under the effects of the extended curse, and Rosamond was hovering a mere hands breadth from the floor in a protective bubble, glowing faintly the same acid green as the killing curse.

He looked into her pale blue eyes and did not see the same madness that had haunted his Aunt Bellatrix reflected back at him. Madness he could understand, but he saw only hatred and malice. His mother was not acting from insanity, but pure rage. Rosamond would never be safe from this woman who used to be his mother.

Coldness spread through Draco as he stood above Narcissa. Using his mother’s wand, he cast the killing curse.

~*~*~*~
“So,” said Draco, abruptly changing the subject. “You’ve been here all night, haven’t you? You never even changed your clothing from yesterday. What are you looking for?”

“Master…your father gave me the choice of remaining his concubine…or being named his consort.” Harry watched Draco’s expression, but it did not change. Obviously, this was not news to the young Death Eater. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to choose.”

Draco tossed the candle aside and bit into the scone. “And you think books are going to do what? What is there to figure out? As consort, Father gives you respectability…you have a place in polite society…you get to be a wizard again. But as concubine…”

“I get to wear this pretty jewelry and be a whore.” Harry spun a control band. “I miss my magic.”

“Then why are you having such a hard time making a decision? What is it that is really bothering you?”

Harry took another sip of tea as he formulated his response. “As concubine, I can deceive myself…tell myself that I am being forced into an intimate relationship with your father, but if I accept being his consort, I am admitting I want an intimate relationship with your father…What will my friends think of me? Won’t they think I’ve betrayed…”

“Why do you care what other people think? Ginerva Weasley and Neville Longbottom were given no say in who they married. In three months, I am getting married to a witch I met on the day of my engagement…I keep forgetting you were raised as a Muggle…Old wizarding families have always believed in arranged marriages, not something as illusive as love. View this as one step shy of an arranged marriage, because that’s exactly what it is.

“Father will fuck you whether you are his consort or his concubine. For Rosamond’s sake, choose the path of respectability.”

~*~*~*
From the window Harry could see the thestrals soar above the treetops before disappearing back into the foliage only to appear once again in another part of the forest. He watched their graceful dance and wondered if Blix was one of them.

The cooling breeze caused his deep green under robe to billow around him. It was going to be a bright, clear day; the perfect sort of day for a picnic, not a funeral. Harry closed his eyes, feeling the breeze caress his face.

He sensed rather than heard Lucius approach. The white blond wizard leaned in and placed a pattern of kisses from his shoulder to the hollow of his throat. Harry gasped as Lucius nibbled at his bare throat, careful not to leave bruises.

Lucius straightened up as a deep, almost gong-like bell tolled twice through the manor. He reached for Harry’s mourning robes, hung neatly from the door and slid them over the slender shoulders.

“The mourners are beginning to arrive. It is almost time for Rosamond’s public unveiling.”

Lucius adjusted the robe so that it draped perfectly on the thin frame. He reached for a black ribbon and swiftly tied an ornate bow to the back of Harry’s neatly pulled back hair. Harry wanted to comment on how “girly” the bow looked, but realized just in time that his master was already sporting a match for it in his white blond tresses. Lucius opened the small box containing the heirloom cloak pin. With precise movements, he pinned it to Harry’s mourning robe.

“You remember your instructions, Pet?”


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