Harry scowled at him. He wasn't as smart as they were. He wasn't a Slytherin. He hadn't grown up like this.
"I'll try to be happier," he said. "I will be happier that you aren't abusing them anymore. But I can't promise that I'll be happy in exactly the way you want me to. I'm not a Slytherin. I don't turn my emotions on and off like that."
"Fair enough." Mr. Malfoy nodded and then glanced to the side. Harry looked around, wondering if another elf had appeared.
But Mrs. Malfoy was still sitting there, and she straightened her shoulders and said, "We can stop scolding the elves when they make a mistake."
"What about not telling them to punish themselves?"
"Is that rather what you would want instead?"
"Why not both of them at once?" Harry clenched his fists, but he did it under the table, although from the way Mrs. Malfoy focused on him, she might have noticed. "Why are you bargaining with me like this?"
Mrs. Malfoy sighed. "Because we have overrun the boundaries, I think. We have assumed that you would be exactly like the son we lost—our stories of the son we lost. You are not." Harry eyed her suspiciously and wondered if she'd been talking to Healer Letham. "And you are assuming that we would be more like your Muggle captors. Neither assumption has worked. I think it would be more productive to lay out these boundaries and discuss them as bargains we're making, artificial as it seems. It ensures that we know where we stand, and what barriers are still in the way."
Harry nodded. All right, he understood that. And he would rather that they not go around telling lies to him about Dobby and evil plots in Hogwarts again. He turned to Dobby. "Dobby, if you had to pick, would you rather avoid being scolded or being told to punish yourself?"
Dobby lifted his head and let his eyes dart back and forth between Harry and the adults before he dropped his head again. But his voice was still audible. "Dobby and the other elves does not wants to punish themselveses. It hurts."
"Very well," said Mrs. Malfoy. "I ask that you continue your sessions with Healer Letham in return."
"But I thought you would make me do that anyway."
"I do not want to make you do anything," Mrs. Malfoy said, so passionately that Harry stared at her. "I want you to be part of our family, Henry. I want to help you recover. I want to bring you home."
"I'm here."
"But only in body, not in mind or spirit. If we can have you here, then all other sacrifices are worth it and we will learn a new way."
Harry bit back the words that said they shouldn't have been abusing their house-elves anyway, if they were good people. That would just start another argument that he didn't want to start at the moment. "All right. You don't order the house-elves to punish themselves anymore, and I'll continue the sessions with Healer Letham."
"Done." Mrs. Malfoy smiled at him in relief so radiant that Harry had to look down and fiddle with his silverware for a second.
"And what do I get?" Draco asked, sounding exactly as petulant as he had when complaining about all the things his father would hear about.
"Draco," Mr. Malfoy began, his voice stern.
"No, wait," Harry said, and turned to Draco. His brother still looked like he had something shoved up his bum, but he had looked that way so often that it wasn't anything new. "I want to bargain so the house-elves don't get scolded anymore."
"Yes." Draco nodded as if he was perfectly happy to agree to that, although Harry wondered how many times he had screamed at the house-elves in private. Then again, Harry had never seen the Malfoys interact with any elf but Dobby, so he didn't know. "And in return, you stop telling them to call you Harry."
Harry shrugged. "All right."
Draco squinted at him. "Just like that?"
"It's a small price to pay to make sure that the elves are safe."
Draco looked as if he had swallowed a lemon. Harry grinned at him. He knew why. Draco probably thought that was the most Gryffindor sentiment he'd ever heard.
"I mean," Draco went on in a dogged way, "it must matter a lot to you if you told them to call you that. And now you're giving it up. Just like that?"
Harry sighed noisily and ran his hand down his face. His parents were watching him across the table. He tried again to think of them that way, his parents, before he looked at his brother.
"I was Harry Potter for twelve years," he said. "It was hard to give that up, sure. And I was only sometimes Henry Malfoy at school, you know? Around you, and around the professors who called me Mr. Malfoy. My friends all called me Harry. I just—when I want to feel more like the person I thought I was, I think of myself as Harry. It's hard to give your whole identity up and hear that you were someone else. What would you do if you found out that you were actually a Weasley?"
"But I'm not!"
"But what if you were?"
"But I'm not!" Draco turned to Mrs. Malfoy. "Mum, tell him I'm not a Weasley."
"I believe that Henry is making a special point known as a hypothetical," Mrs. Malfoy murmured, so dryly that Harry gaped at her. She didn't speak like that to him
Because we're different. And she knows that.
It was such an unexpected thought that Harry swallowed a gasp, and noticed Mr. Malfoy studying him for a second. But Harry only shook his head, and Mr. Malfoy went back to looking at Mrs. Malfoy and Draco, who was insisting in a low voice that he wasn't a Weasley and getting it explained to him that Harry hadn't thought he was a Malfoy, either.
Maybe they're not exactly good people, Harry thought as he studied the Malfoys. Maybe it would be better if they changed on their own instead of me having to bargain with them for it. But they do want to treat me right. They're not as awful as I thought, either.
That thought left him oddly able to breathe again, and when Draco finally got over his snit and glanced at him, Harry nodded at him. "So you don't scold the elves anymore, and I tell them to call me Henry. Deal?"
"Deal," Draco said fervently. "And also, you come and fly with me this afternoon."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You don't need to bargain with me for that."
....
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