Draco's mouth actually dropped open, and Harry blinked again. Draco had really thought he wouldn't get what he wanted unless he asked for it as part of a deal.
"You're such an idiot," Harry said in awe.
"Henry! Do not call your brother an idiot."
Harry put up with the scolding from Mrs. Malfoy, while he watched Draco from the corner of one eye and Dobby from the corner of another. Dobby had lifted his head from the carpet and was watching cautiously, although he ducked back whenever he apparently thought the Malfoys were glancing at him, too. But he gave a huge watery smile when he caught Harry's eye.
Harry didn't think it was fixing everything that had gone wrong. But it was a start.
....
"Father is acting strange," Draco complained out of the corner of his mouth as they soared on their Nimbuses across the Quidditch pitch at the back of the gardens. It was probably the part of Malfoy Manor that Harry liked best, huge and green and surrounded with low trees and shrubs that were there to make more hiding places for the Snitch.
Harry just nodded. Mr. Malfoy had come out to watch them fly, which Draco said he didn't do all the time. He was sitting in a conjured chair on the far side of the pitch, a glass of water on the arm of the chair and a stack of parchment in his lap. Apparently he answered letters from the Ministry on a regular basis and offered them "advice."
Advice on evil, Harry had thought, from force of habit, but he didn't know that for certain. And Mr. Malfoy had said they were trying to shift away from Voldemort.
For him.
It was a strange thought, and Harry got rid of it by pulling himself back in a flip that turned him head over broom bristles and made Draco yelp. Mr. Malfoy was also standing up, when Harry started flying forwards again and saw him, but Harry waved to him and he sat down, his face watchful.
"You're mad," Draco muttered to him, shoving at him with one hand.
It hadn't been hard enough to knock him off his broom or anything like it, so Harry avoided it easily and snorted at him. "Draco, do not call your brother mad," he intoned.
"You aren't going to tell Mother, are you?"
"No. I'm making a special point called making fun of you, you git."
Draco shoved him again for that, and then Harry pulled away and dived towards the ground. Draco chased him, laughing so hard that he sounded a lot younger than he was.
Than we are. Having Draco as a twin wasn't the strangest part of the whole "being a Malfoy" thing for Harry, but it was still sometimes something that showed up in the corner of his mind and made him jump when he thought about it.
Harry pulled up out of the dive, and Draco followed, and then they were looping in and out among the trees and over the sides of the pitch and back. Draco kept laughing, and Harry glanced over his shoulder and grinned. This way, Draco was just a regular kid, one who was happy to be having fun with his brother.
And Harry was happy, too.
He dived again, and threw himself to the side so that he was skimming sideways above the grass. Draco flew overhead, shrieking about how Harry was mad and he would say that in front of Mother and he didn't care.
Harry twisted out of the dive in time, and glanced to the side.
There was a huge black dog sitting on the edge of the pitch, staring up at him with eyes that seemed to shine unnaturally even from this far away.
Harry found himself shivering, even though the dog wasn't doing anything threatening. Draco hovered beside him and stared around. "What is it? What are you—"
Then he saw the dog, and shrieked. "Father! It's a Grim!"
Mr. Malfoy was immediately moving across the pitch, his wand snapping out. The spell he cast was a long one like a chain of blue lightning that Harry didn't know, but luckily, it missed the dog, which hopped back and then turned and ran across the gardens. Harry flew down and towards Mr. Malfoy, landing in front of him and shaking as if he was scared, so that Mr. Malfoy couldn't fire any more spells after Black.
"What's a Grim?" he whispered, leaning against Mr. Malfoy for a second. Mr. Malfoy wrapped a protective arm around him. "Why was it here?"
"They're magical dogs that some think of as death omens." Mr. Malfoy's voice was calm and reassuring. "I have never found any sign that they actually are, however." He twisted a little and looked around as though waiting for something, and then Draco came running over. Mr. Malfoy embraced him, too, sighing.
"However," Mr. Malfoy went on, "one of them should not have been able to cross the wards. I am going to strengthen them. And—I am afraid that I have bad news, Henry. It hasn't been announced publicly, because the Ministry was hoping to capture him without causing a panic, but it will have to be tomorrow."
"What?" Draco breathed the word. Harry found his breath stuck in his throat.
"Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban." Mr. Malfoy hugged Harry tighter, and probably did the same to Draco, too, but Harry couldn't look up to see. "He has not been seen anywhere near the Ministry. They think his more likely goal, given all the newspaper articles about Harry Potter being discovered to be Henry Malfoy, is to find you. Perhaps to kidnap you again. We will be taking every precaution with your safety, Henry, be assured of that. But Black is still dangerous."
Harry felt as though someone had stabbed him with a cold knife, even though he'd known perfectly well that Sirius Black was out of Azkaban. He cuddled closer to his father—he was his father, Harry wanted more now to get used to thinking of him that way—and glanced over his shoulder. He didn't see a sign of the dog, the Grim. He hoped that that meant he was out of the gardens, and that Mr. Malfoy's strengthening of the wards would mean Black couldn't sneak back in.
Harry didn't want Black to be hurt or killed. He didn't even think that he wanted him to go back to Azkaban. From what Draco had told him about the Dementors, they sounded pretty awful.
But he also didn't want to be kidnapped again. He probably would even have told the Malfoys about meeting Black before, except…
Things were so nice right now. He didn't want them to get upset again.
From the way Mr. Malfoy kept his arm around both of them as he led them back to the house, Harry didn't even think it was that bad. It wasn't like there would be a chance for Sirius Black to get so close again.
....
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