"Aunt Petunia?"
"Was I not clear that you were to go straight to your cupboard when you got home?" She snapped unpleasantly as her version of a 'hello, welcome back', clearly not pleased to have to look up from the magazine she was reading at the kitchen table. He couldn't tell if she was more displeased that he'd disobeyed or interrupted her—probably being interrupted honestly.
Harry would've been content to do as she'd ordered and wait until a slightly better moment than right after a previously successful lie, however Dudley was out with his gang and Vernon wouldn't be home for another hour at least and for some reason his aunt was minding her own business for once at her kitchen table instead of fluttering around the house trying to inconspicuously spy on the neighbors or chatting on the phone to one of them. This was the perfect opportunity as she was alone and safe for the time being.
That's what his brain said at least—his heart though reminded him that the sooner he did this, the sooner he'd never have to set foot in that damn cupboard again.
He told himself it was simply good tactics to do it now, and ignored the small voice calling him a hypocrite when not four hours ago he was telling Draco that lying to oneself was unbecoming.
Shut up and focus, he scolded himself, meeting her angry muddled-hazel eyes with a carefully blank expression.
"I'm going to Hogwarts this fall, not Stonewall." He announced, his heart skipping a beat since this was a huge thing but… he had a plan.
He couldn't stop his stomach flipping as he face spiraled into several emotions at once—shock, horror, disgust, fear, and anger being the most blatant ones. His prediction as correct when she settled between a mix of fear and anger.
"What did you say?" She half shouted, half hissed, on her feet in a second.
He was disappointed, but not surprised when there was no confusion in her tone or her voice. She knew exactly what Hogwarts was… and she probably knew a lot more than she let on in her eternal quest to be 'normal', in all honesty. She'd been his mother's sister, and if Lily Evans had gone to Hogwarts… there was no way Petunia didn't know all about it. She never talked about the late Potters except to spit venom and slander, and through that Harry had known she'd cut ties when his mom had been about seventeen years old; usually Petunia was saying something loud and bitter about not having cut ties sooner than that, but even that tiny bit of information told Harry that she'd known her sister the entire time his mom was at Hogwarts. There was no way she didn't know, and that meant she'd actively kept it from him.
Calling them drunks, and freaks, and lazy vagabonds.
Harry forced himself not to yell, but he sure as hell wanted to.
"You knew, didn't you?" He demanded in a low tone.
His aunt paled, but she held her angry expression and ground her teeth together like she wanted to scream, like it all wanted to come spilling out… she looked about ready to do so too, but Harry had had enough. He knew nothing that came out of her mouth, answers or not, would be pleasant or unbiased.
He was going to Hogwarts and he'd find his own answers about who his parents were. He didn't need Petunia to fill anything in—it was clear she'd lied, that she'd known, and Harry was smart enough to be able to draw his own conclusions.
Fear, anger, jealousy—Harry knew he himself would not be very gracious if Dudley were the one to be gifted a magical chance to escape reality while he was left in his cupboard. While he and Dudley were not in the same position two once-close sisters were, Harry knew in that situation that his feelings would not be very kind-hearted… but he also knew he'd never lock Dudley's child in a cabinet for ten years out of spite either.
He took a breath and spoke before she could open her mouth and whatever vitriol she'd been bottling up for years got the chance to come tumbling out. She could keep it bottled up for eternity until it ate her alive, for all he cared.
"After this conversation we don't have to mention it ever again. I got my letter last week and thought it was a joke, but I met with someone on my way home from detention yesterday that explained the entire situation to me and I've decided to go to that school. You won't have to see me the entire year, whereas I'd still be living at home if I went to Stonewall. I will never speak of where I'm going or what I'm doing there again in exchange for you to let me go September first and then one day before then to go collect my school supplies in London. I'll hide all of it in the shed—I'll sleep out there even so no one will ever know and it won't be brought into this house. I will do my best so that you and Uncle Vernon and Dudley won't see or hear a thing of it."
She paused; anger derailed by this provided solution. The silence stretched on for a long several minutes and he watched her beady eyes flash and twitch as she considered it.
Then:
"…what of the tuition."
"Taken care of."
Another long silence… before she nodded once, a tiny movement as if afraid someone would see her even agreeing to this in the safety of her own home.
"You may go. This conversation never happened and Dudley will never know how much of a freak you really are—you will keep it all in that shed and out of this house, am I understood?"
"Perfectly."
"Then get out; take whatever filth you had in the cupboard out the shed. No time like the present." She sneered like she was taking one last kick at him, but Harry considered it a win considering that was exactly what he'd been hoping she'd do. "There will be no change in your chores and you're expected to finish them the normal way, or else."
"Yes Aunt Petunia."
000
Harry was thrilled.
The shed was not what you'd call cozy, it was… well, just a shed. It was a reasonably big shed since the Dursleys liked to show off to their neighbors how well-off they were, except there was very little actually in the shed given that they had slave-labor to do all their gardening for them and were content with letting him use last decade's tools to do it. Aside from a push-mower, a workbench covered in gardening tools, a pile of bags of dirt, a bunch of ceramic planters, some shovels and larger tools leaned up in a corner, and a basket filled with tangled hoses, there wasn't much to actually store in this rather large shed. The structure itself liked to suggest it had two riding-movers and storage for ski equipment and other large-ticket vacation items that would need storage year round that actually well-off people might have in their sheds, but the Dursleys only liked to pretend and hated exercising so none of them had ever seen a ski lift in their life much less had the equipment stored up in here.
What it resulted in was a generally empty wooden room with a steepled roof of rafters and three windows total: two on either side of the double doors that made the entrance and a small circular one at the very back center wall, no bigger than if Harry put his arms in a circle in front of him—but all three did open.
He had been the only person to enter this place in all his living memory so he knew he was generally safe here, but it'd be over before it started if Dudley got curious as to why he was in here if he so happened to spot him coming and going. Petunia would likely give her husband and son some reason like that he was getting to big for the cupboard and now he was out of the house for good, and probably make it very, very clear that Dudley was to never come in here lest he'd learn of that pesky thing she hated called 'magic'. Even hearing that rule it wouldn't stop Dudley if he wanted to know or got upset that he was forbidden from picking on Harry in here now, and if he did break in and see something he wasn't supposed to Harry would definitely be blamed for it anyway.
With this in mind he reached into his handy new bag that Petunia hadn't even noticed in her outrage and subsequent deal-making was actually very, very magical and blatantly standing in the middle of her oh so normal kitchen.
Hagrid had dropped him off back at the library and gotten a promise for him to visit once he got to Hogwarts, and on the walk home Harry had drained the last of his saved pounds from skimming of the Dursley's grocery money to invest in some key items that was going to make this whole thing work.
First, a padlock and bike chain. The shed doors were reasonably thick and could be locked from the outside (he had no idea where that key was but knew the Dursleys would miraculously find it the next time he got in a load of trouble—a joy for future-him to enjoy, he was sure) but the inside only had twin handles that he promptly locked tightly with the chain. It wasn't 100% Dudley proof but if Dudley were determined enough to break down this door (not a strong likelihood given how uninterested he was in exercise in general, but still a likelihood if he got a bunch of his friends in on it too) he'd cause a royal racket and enough of a scene in full view of the neighbors if they peered over their fences to see what all the noise was about, that even Vernon would stop his spoiled son so to save face. Petunia would stop him as soon as she heard because she knew what her son might see and do anything to prevent it, so… not 100%, but it was a damn good safety measure, more than he'd ever had before given that he was always the one being locked in.
Now he could lock himself in and he found he really liked that. That feeling that he was actually safe. It was a good one, and one he hoped he could get more of from here on out.
The next thing he did—really it should've been the first but he was paranoid—was open the cage door of his new owl friend and let her stretch her wings as she flew out and flapped into the rafters, examining her new home. He had snuck her in here before doubling back to go in the front door for his confrontation with Aunt Petunia, because she was the only thing that wouldn't fit in his bottomless bag (the salesman said live things would not fair well at all with the kind of charms he'd used) and clearly he couldn't have anyone seeing him walking around with a golden cage containing a beautiful white owl. Talk about suspicious—Petunia would have a fit and he hadn't been free from his cupboard for an hour yet.
"It's not much but we should be safe here. Don't let anyone in the house or the surrounding houses ever see you or we'll be in a much smaller location than this… in fact, if I'm ever locked in he house for one reason or another then don't come here at all." He spoke to her, her golden eyes watching him as he walked to the back of the shed. She was an owl but… he got the feeling she understood every word. "Here—this is a good entrance/exit if you can manage it… it faces a tree so no one will see you come in and out too much if you're careful. I'll leave it open for you to come and go."
She hooted low and clear as if agreeing with this arrangement and he grinned up at her. "I really need to think of a name for you… something will come to me, I'm sure." She hooted once as if saying take your time, and he shot her another grin.
Window open, he put his magic bag down and got to work.
First thing's first was a small broom he'd grabbed from the grocery store and set to work cleaning the floor from the years of dust, dirt, mulch, and grease that had settled in some places. He picked up the tools and the hoses and the planters and arranged them so they were in a neat u-shape, shoving the workbench with all his strength and after forty minutes of huffing and working up a sweat, it was placed in the middle of the room facing the doors—well, a bit closer to the back wall instead of the middle of the room, but now it looked like a nice and tidy shed that had approximately a third of it missing at the back.
Now he had to make it "disappear".
The whole shed was only about just under four meters in width but long at about eight meters. The space he'd sectioned off was the entire width but only ate up two meters of the whole length, so if he did this right he'd have a nice little 4 x 2 meter area to call his own—it was a huge upgrade in space compared to the cupboard.
Simply thrilled at this prospect, with the area clean and sectioned off from the rest of the shed he started emptying out his magical bottomless back. The first thing he was looking for: a giant swath of cloth he'd purchased from Madam Malkin's. He'd had to double back and made some flimsy excuse about wanting to make his own shirts or something and Hagrid hadn't even blinked twice since for some reason that was a logical purchase to him, and Madam Malkin herself didn't care as the color he'd asked for was so unpopular that she'd had this particular roll for two years and never even cut into it, so she'd sold it on discount which made Hagrid even happier.
Harry understood: in a world where witches and wizards wore bright emerald and neon purple robes like it was nothing, plain old wood-textured brown was boring. It was exactly what he needed though, and took his third grocery-store purchase—thumb tacks—to cut and then pin two sheets of the large fabric to the floor, along the wall, and to the rafter crossbeam marking the start of 'his' area. He doubled up the fabric for further security just in case and because he had the extra material and thumb tacks, and by the end of it the two sheets overlapped in the middle directly behind the workbench blocking the entrance, but was a stretchy enough material that he could slip through carefully and cross between "rooms".
The rafters were still all open so any light would still be visible at night, and he fixed this by using some spare fabric and creating crude curtains for all three windows that could be drawn and pinned if he needed them to be. For now he left them pinned above the window, the glass opened so let some cross breeze through since it was hot in an uninsulated shed in the middle of July.
Which is why the second his "room" was finished, he dug through his bag for his next favorite magical invention right after his bottomless bag: the atmosphere bulbs.
He stuck one below the window in the upper center of his new living space and immediately the soft, periwinkle, sparkly wonder started working, much to his relief. The increasingly hot shed magically cooled off to a slightly chilly room-temperature. He had tons of new robes and clothes and fully intended to get more on his 'day off to get school supplies' he'd gotten from Petunia, so slightly-chilly was far better than dying of heat stroke since it looked like he'd be living summers in here at least from now on.
The exposure to the elements was the main—eh, only—reason he'd not considered begging to be kicked out here instead of the cupboard years ago. Summer was one thing, he could probably melt and still survive, but winters were cold and he was only eleven—he definitely wouldn't have lived long and losing toes and fingers because he hated his cupboard wasn't a good trade, no matter how much he hated that damn thing. The game changer was these atmosphere bulbs, and Harry tucked the second safely in his handy-dandy security pouch for safe keeping. He could afford to replace almost everything, but his vault key, his brand new wand, and access to these bulbs—even temporarily he'd be in bad shape to have to sweat it out / endure freezing out here, so into the pouch his key and bulb went, before finding a safe home under a floorboard he spent twenty minutes using a trowel to pry up.
His wand he kept on him, at Hagrid's instruction. The giant man's reluctance to let go of the tiny pink umbrella he carried around with him despite technically having had his wand snapped for an undetermined reason years ago told Harry that if even Hagrid was disobeying orders to follow this rule, it was a rule worth following even at risk of what the Dursleys would do if they caught him. He'd leave it under the floorboards when he left the shed, but for now he'd get used to having it one him.
By the time that was done it was late—Petunia had not asked him to cook dinner and he didn't have anything on him to eat either, so he simply set his tiny alarm clock and set up shop on the thin mat he'd had in his cupboard he was allowed to take out here with him. He made a note to see about getting some better solution on his free day out, but would have to wait a time so that Petunia had cooled off from even this small change.
The white owl hooted above him, as if wishing him a good night, and he managed to hum happily as he drifted off.
Today had been… a good one.
000
"How about Hedwig? She was a powerful warrior in the goblin war of 1308. Don't know why, but Hedwig seems to just fit, what do you think?"
The white owl perched on his trunk beside him as he knelt and used it as a make-shift desk to flip through his history textbooks chirped lightly, accepting this name.
"Hedwig it is then." He decided, closing the book without much further ado. It read more like a fantasy novel than a history book, however even that couldn't make twelve goblin wars in a row more interesting. Goblins really liked to fight it seems and humans were great at repeating past mistakes—that poem out front Gringotts made a lot more sense suddenly.
It had only been a week and Harry was back on track with the Dursleys mostly—he still got up and cooked their breakfasts, packed their lunches, whipped up desserts, did the shopping and generally kept house while Petunia spied on their neighbors, but now he got to escape to someplace other than the cupboard when he was finished enough for their liking. Whatever Petunia had told Vernon made his face permanently purple whenever he saw Harry in the same room as him for about two days before he seemed to settle into the fact that nothing had outwardly changed in their routine and Harry himself was in no danger of randomly announcing to the room that he was a wizard.
Harry had a sneaking suspicion his uncle actually knew about magic too, but refused to comment on it since this new agreement had presented itself so conveniently. He suspected because Dudley had, predictably, put up a fight about not being able to follow Harry into the shed to bother him, and both his aunt and uncle had put their foot down with equal vehemence. Petunia even miraculously produced a copy of the shed key and said if they ever found it unlocked he'd be back in the cupboard before he could say cupboard.
Dudley had never been told no in his entire life, but the second he started banging on the shed door while Harry was inside scrubbing the kitchen floor, Petunia had run out in only her slippers and dragged him inside once more. She then did the unthinkable and told Harry not to cook Dudley a single sweet that night.
Dudley of course had a royal cow and Harry took the brunt of it, but he was for once on Petunia's side in that he most certainly did not want Dudley messing with anything in that shed so he'd held firm despite a lot of cheap shots to his kidneys and things thrown at him that he then had to clean up when they broke. Petunia never gave either, which Harry was honestly surprised by; he must have really underestimated how much she hated magic. Either way, Dudley sulked up a royal storm (and not the endearing way Draco did either) and never attempted it again. He must've figured the punishment wasn't worth the hassle of lugging himself out to the shed to even bother, when he could tell his parents to order Harry to come inside and they'd do it in a heartbeat. Win-win for him, win-some lose-some for Harry, but hey, at least he wasn't always losing anymore.
Harry finally felt 100% safe in here for once and had gotten comfy—or, as comfy as he could with his meager belongings. In his free time he could actually stand up and walk around a little bit, or stretch out and read with his booklight that wasn't too bright to risk being seen over his curtains. He could leaf through his magical textbooks and fiddle with his new potions equipment all he liked, and he'd even risked taking his bottomless bag on his grocery store trips to stock up on extra protein bars and snacks for when he wasn't able to slip enough food for himself off the Dursley's meals. It was practically paradise, really.
And now that things had settled and he'd given all his textbooks a thorough examination… he was left with his thoughts.
Ugh.
He huffed, letting his head rest on the trunk and Hedwig nipped gently at his ear curiously.
"It's nothing, I've just… been avoiding writing to Draco. You'd probably like the exercise of delivering a letter finally, but… it's complicated."
Hedwig's light chirp could've been interpreted as a question, and Harry shrugged.
"Oh, nothing. It was just a lot to figure out magic was real the same day I learn my parents were not drunks but were in fact murdered. Oh and let's not forget the part where my wand is the brother to the wand of the man who killed them and my first friend is apparently from a family who served said parent-murdering madman ten years ago. No big deal."
Hedwig didn't respond—in fact after a brief pause she flew up to the rafters and seemed to hide behind one of the beams. He lifted his head to glare at her mildly.
"You're no help, really." He responding hoot sounded like an apology and he just let his head plop back down onto the trunk with a gently thud.
The answer was of course simple: Draco wasn't his parents and was no older than Harry was when he defeated the dark lord. Harry didn't remember defeating the dark lord and that stands to suggest Draco would have no knowledge or control of what his parents did while said dark lord was still alive.
Draco was an eleven-year-old, just like him, who put up a mask of being an arrogant, self-centered, know-it-all and could easily come off as an asshole. But with just a little prodding he came unraveled at the seams and a very real, earnest eleven-year-old boy—just like him—shone through. He didn't deserve to be cast in with the lot of Voldemort-worshippers just because of who his parents were or his family's history. Harry had already promised not to hold who he was against him, in exchange for the same… and while it was hard to wrap his head around, he could live with this promise. It was unimaginable to consider forgiving and being friends with someone who may-or-may-not be inclined to worship the man who murdered his parents… but in that same vein, Draco was then befriending the boy who was responsible for his family's lord being destroyed. If Draco was still up to be his friend then… Harry could…
He groaned and thunked his head on the trunk once more. It was one thing to know logically that it wasn't Draco's fault and another to get his heart on board with the idea.
Just thinking about the wooden floor he was kneeling on in a garden shed instead of in a family home with parents who might've loved him was enough to make the very concept hard to accept. To forgive, to look past…
Eventually, he couldn't beat around it anymore. Draco was not his family history, and he deserved the chance a whole bunch of eleven-year-old were about to get to start over fresh at Hogwarts. Harry himself was really, really counting on this fresh start, so he had no reason to deny Draco his either. Harry himself was living proof that your relatives didn't define who you were, after all, so it wasn't up to him to sit here and decide who Draco would become or who he would end up supporting and try and make contingency plans accordingly. Draco had already promised to be his friend, so he was just going to have to get over this fretting about a future he couldn't control and just be friends with the jerk already.
Besides… Draco was his friend already. Against his better judgement, Harry was kind of… attached, to this cactus-like blond boy with unnaturally perfect skin. It didn't even matter at this point if he cut off ties now or waited for Draco to prove he was more like his family than Harry was hoping he was, he'd still be losing a friend and he wasn't sure it was going to hurt any more or less either way. He'd never had a friend to lose before really and he'd at least like to pretend he had one for a little while instead of losing them in less than a week.
So here's to optimism and second chances—Harry wasn't usually about those things but hey, magic was real so why the hell not really.
With a great huff he lifted his head and pulled put a piece of parchment and the ink and quill he's purchased with Hagrid from his trunk. He'd practiced little and his handwriting sucked with a normal pencil, but a quill was a whole other beast. Still, Draco would have no idea what he'd done if he wrote it in ball point or pencil and if this was how they wrote at Hogwarts he'd definitely need the practice, so might as well. He was annoyed just imagining the fact that Draco probably had perfect handwriting with these stupid feathers, and it was because of this he found himself putting far more time and effort into his letter than he would've otherwise. He forced himself to focus and get every word out perfectly.
Dear Draco…
000
Lucius was not an idiot, and neither was his wife.
Harry was not an uncommon name, especially after the dark lord's defeat there was an explosion of children named Harry here and there, and the boy Draco had met at Diagon Alley could've been the right age for how small he was. To hear that the boy was actually going to be in Draco's year was a bad omen though, given they'd always known that their son and the Potter child would be year mates.
Lucius would admit that he'd entirely been expecting a James Potter clone. Lily Evans was a talented witch but a muggleborn still and he'd never given her much thought aside form avoiding her legendary temper, which she thankfully only directed at people her own year or below—Lucius and Narcissa being upper years and barely sharing their Hogwarts years with her, she was forgettable.
James Potter though, had the Potter look that his father and grandfather and great grandfather did too, as they were an old pureblood line even if they kept creating half-bloods every so often by marring muggleborns when the fancy hit them. The Malfoys and the Blacks were aware of the Potter line like all old pureblood families were aware of each other and the dark messy hair, the build, the glasses—there was one Potter in every generation that had the look. It was like how the Weasleys were all freckly gingers; there had to be some magical inheritance going on for it to be that blatant. Lucius saw far too much of James Potter through Sirius Black and the degenerate's unfortunate connection with his wife's family, and Lily Evans had been such a non-entity to Lucius before they both died, that for some reason he was 100% expecting to pick out the Boy Who Lived from the crowd by keeping an eye out for a tiny James Potter.
To see a tiny, lithe-limbed, delicate-faced, scarlet-haired, green-eyed thing on the arm of his son was not the first impression Lucius could've ever imagined his first meeting with the boy who'd defeated the dark lord as a babe would go. The fact that Draco was head over heels smitten with this boy, clear as day in the middle of Diagon bloody Alley of all places, was not the direction Lucius had been planning his life to go. In fact this didn't rank in the top one hundred possible outcomes of his year, if he'd ever been creative enough to dream up this situation—which he wasn't, let's be clear. This was a dragon trampling through his carefully laid garden he'd been tending to and watching grow for years now; all that work, wasted in one fiery, green-eyed mess.
He'd been holding out hope that the boy—Harry—was just that, a Harry by another name and call it a day, since he never actually mentioned being a Potter, but a week after that odd incident his hopes had been shattered.
Draco (still so naïve, too-trusting Draco who never hid a thing from him) ran in to the sitting room with the biggest grin on his face Lucius could remember him having. The last time his son had smiled like that, had been when he'd first ridden a broom, and he'd been quite small then. It made his heart pang uncomfortably in his chest, at the reminder that he wasn't sure of the last time his son had smiled like he was truly happy, and not because he needed it for a mask he was portraying. It was as per his training, but it didn't mean as a father that Lucius liked it at all.
He'd showed him the letter his friend had written him… and at the bottom, signed in surprisingly neat penmanship for someone who grew up with muggles—the name Harry Potter.Just fantastic really. That boy was a dragon in his garden, and Lucius was not pleased.
He sat there pondering in front of the fireplace later that night; he didn't respond to Draco other than a calm nod, and his son was too excited to read much into it as he ran back off to respond in kind. Lucius had let him go, finishing his work for the night and enjoying dinner with his family where thankfully Narcissa took hold of the conversation to talk about a garden party she was arranging and the political consequences of that, so Draco didn't have a chance to bring up his letter. Narcissa knew of course, because she was Draco's mother and his wife and she always seemed to know these things, so he was sure she'd done it on purpose.
Draco was in bed and the fire was flickering silently when he felt his wife's presence come stand by the side of his chair, striding a step forward so that she too was gazing at the fire and the both of them were keeping an eye on each other through their peripherals.
"What do we do, Lucius? You know as well as I do that it's not impossible the dark lord could return." She intoned lowly. It was only thanks to the wards he had on this room that it was a safe place to discuss these things, and he nodded slowly… taking a sip from his drink.
Draco was clearly… smitten with the boy. Which, while the discovery that their son was attracted to men even if Draco himself didn't consciously know it just yet was a shock in and of itself, it didn't truly stop them—they were parents who loved their child long before they were death eaters or anything else. It was less that their son was getting close to another boy and more that it was Harry Potter. The dark lord would not be pleased to return and find the Malfoy heir consorting with his arch enemy.
Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose. His thoughts on being a death eater were nothing more than self-serving: he'd joined for status and power and he'd abandoned the title for the very same reason, after the dark lord fell from power. For himself, for his family--and yes he believed in wizard superiority over muggles but the torturing, killing, violence of it all was just part of the job, same as flattering the oaf of a Minister and having tea with dignitaries was part of the job now that he was playing on the Light side. He didn't care for either, in either a positive or negative way; he was a Slytherin and was fully able to act accordingly when presented with a new environment in which he needed to survive. He played up his generous, philanthropic side for the Light, and played up his utter distaste of Muggles and mudbloods for the Dark side. He was not so stupid as to think everyone was not aware that he was rather dark-sided for the Light, and rather light-sided for the Dark, but he played his parts well enough to be able to get away with it even if it wasn't flawless.
Survival was what came first, after all.
He didn't care that he'd killed and tortured before, but he also didn't actually care one bit about muggles in the first place--he never gave either of those things enough thought to truly hate or enjoy either. But certain people expected him to be bigoted just as some expected him to be cruel, and so depending on his audience he was a marvelous actor. But at the core of it all?
He just didn't care.
What he did care about, was his son. He even cared little about marrying Narcissa except for that their common goals and personalities were so impossibly well suited he found himself loving her as time went on. He'd always known she was the woman for him, even back in their Hogwarts days; he just wasn't a passionate sort of person. Prideful and arrogant, he knew, but not passionate. Their marriage contract was purely because the Malfoy family was old blood and extremely wealthy, and she was a branch descendant of the Black family so would get a healthy inheritance herself. The fact that neither of them were interested in anything but getting business done and were perfectly suited partners in every playing field was simply a bonus, and neither of them required being in love or being passionate about their relationship to be part of their marriage in any way. Neither of them were very engaged, passionate people was all.
That only changed when Draco was born, and his son, his heir, the only thing on this earth he had more pride in than he did himself, took his breath away, and he knew it was the same for Narcissa.
And so this sudden change in the plan was a little alarming; he'd raised Draco to be more dark than light because the dark had more power, and breaking the rules to get what you want was a key Malfoy trait, and he'd wanted his son to have every opportunity he'd been able to afford him. Lucius himself would keep the Malfoy name clean so that when his son grew he'd still be respected in Light communities, while raising him to be aware of their Dark connections and give him a leg up in the world. That had been the plan in any case, and Draco was always a happy, loved child so that was all that mattered.
Now that he'd veered off that path and befriended Harry Potter, there was a choice Lucius would have to make, as a father. Draco did not yet know that this boy he was smitten with will mostly likely not enjoy the darker aspects of the Malfoy lifestyle, and he was in for a heartbreaking rude awakening when that happened. Malfoy would like to avoid making his son cry in such a manner at all costs—and cry he would, for even the unbreakable Malfoys, at such a young age, are susceptible to heartbreak. It would be almost unavoidable in some ways, as the young were stupid and naïve and figuring out their emotions on their own, but Lucius thought of his old friend Severus and felt a streak of panic shoot through him.
Severus had gotten too close to the Dark when he was learning to balance between the two sides of the war and scared off his first love because of it—another red haired beauty with a Light personality who'd captivated a Grey soul and the mother of the boy Draco was now mesmerized by. Looking back at it now he wondered how he didn't notice Lily Evans' child standing in front of him before, but now that he knew he couldn't un-see a red-headed child rejecting a young Severus Snape because of his connections to the Dark. It had broken the young potions master and Severus had never recovered, especially since she died before they could ever reconcile. Not that they ever would've, as she'd gone and married someone more suited for the Light, and Severus' arch enemy at that.
He feared another red-headed child would do the same to his son, and he'd watch Draco become the miserable loner that Severus became.
Not that he did not think of Severus as a friend, but he did not want that fate for his son, by any cost. He wanted his son happy, and successful in life. Safe and situated at an advantage, at all times. He refused to be ignorant of history repeating itself, so he would learn from Severus' mistake for the sake of his child.
He gave a great sigh, having thought through these thoughts and coming to the only conclusion he, as a father, could.
"Being more Dark-sided had its advantages, however Draco will not be successful in his attempts at wooing this boy if we remain so. This connection will undoubtedly bring us trouble if the Dark lord should return, so perhaps it's time to situate ourselves as truly Grey."
Narcissa nodded, not surprised by this conclusion, probably having thought through it herself. This is why he loved this woman.
"It seems so. I do not wish to approach Dumbledore at this moment, but perhaps Severus would be a good first contact. The Greengrass family too."
"I agree." Lucius hummed, finishing his drink. "We should allow Draco time to continue to write this boy, but we will have Severus for dinner before the school year starts."
"Indeed. We should also begin explaining this to Draco, so he is more prepared for when the year begins." She smoothed the front of her skirts and turned to face him properly now. "Should we address the agreements between the Crabbe and Goyle families?"
"I suppose we must. They are truly Dark and would never understand the complexities of what we are attempting here, but I wouldn't dismiss their protecting Draco. He should be free to interact with this boy but will still need allies within Slytherin." The assumption being that Harry Potter would be a Gryffindor, without a doubt. Being friends with a Gryffindor meant his boy needed all the more protection within his own house, for certain.
"True. Very well, I will begin planning a dinner for Severus and draft a plan for Draco's education. Do get some rest dear."
"Yes dear," Lucius said politely as she ghosted from the room on graceful feet.
She knew damn well that he'd be back at his desk drafting his own plan, of which they'd discuss it over breakfast before Draco managed to pull himself from his bed. They'd come to an agreement then, and if he went to bed now and didn't prepare anything, she would have her way entirely. Clever witch.
And that was why he loved her.
He finished his drink in one last swig and stood—he had work to do.