Harry Potter The Long Lost Malfoy

"You owe me something nice for keeping my mouth shut while she was shrieking at you."

"Hermione doesn't shriek."

Henry's response was mechanical, dry. He sat down in a chair near the fire and stared into the flames. Draco came over and sat beside him.

Henry was his twin, of course, but besides the fact that he was shorter than Draco because of what those Muggle beasts had done to him and he had the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, he almost never had the same expressions Draco did. Right now, Henry looked impossibly tired, and upset, and he kept rubbing his hand over his lips. Draco had seen that before, but never as much as he was right now.

"You're upset with them," Draco said at last.

"Yeah," Harry whispered. "I can see why they would believe I was shut up here, because they hate you and Mother and Father. But I told them that wasn't the case, and Hermione just wouldn't let the idea of me seeing Dumbledore go. What information could he possibly have? We know all the pertinent information about Moody escaping. Or, well, not Moody. Whoever he really was."

Draco nodded. Part of the problem was that while they knew now that Professor Moody hadn't been Professor Moody, the real man hadn't been able to provide them with any hints. He'd been taken off-guard and Stunned, and then kept unconscious for months while the imposter used his hair in the Polyjuice Potion. He had probably only survived because a dead person's hair would have been useless.

So now there was a Death Eater out there somewhere, helping the Dark Lord, and they didn't know who to watch for or guard against. Draco knew his parents had been using blood and darker things to strengthen the wards, and it had been hard for them to lower them for the few hours that Henry had wanted to visit with his friends.

Looking at Henry, still pale from the argument with Granger, Draco wished fiercely that the visit hadn't happened.

"Did you get any enjoyment out of that?" he finally asked.

Henry jerked his head down. "Yeah. Ron just stayed quiet and asked questions. You saw him. He learned from last year when I called him a prat and said I didn't want him around if he was just going to get upset all the time." A small smile crossed his face. "And we had that half-hour near the end there when I got Hermione off the scolding and lecturing and we managed to talk about other stuff."

"How can you stand her?" The question burst out of Draco, and he ignored the way Henry turned and glared at him. "I despise her, and it has nothing to do with her blood status. She nags and picks and scolds and assumes she has the right to do that! She doesn't! How can you just—I would murder her inside three weeks if I had to put up with that!"

Henry laughed, unexpectedly. Draco blinked and shut up. That sound had become so rare in the past few weeks that it was something to savor.

"Hermione is honestly great most of the time," Henry said, a gentle tone in his voice. "She's brave and loyal and knows that she doesn't know everything. But when she gets worried or upset, she reverts to this. I think she believes that if she can just nag me into taking care of myself better, than nothing bad will happen to me."

"That's nonsense."

"I know. But it's the way her worry manifests." Henry laughed again, but it trailed off into a sigh. "The other thing is that she's very certain Professor Dumbledore's a great man. He's the reason she wanted to go to Gryffindor."

Draco blinked. "What? Did he visit her when she got her letter or something?"

"No. But she read all about him, and Gryffindor seemed like the best House to her because that was where Dumbledore was."

"Please tell me you weren't that appallingly stupid and didn't choose Gryffindor for that reason."

"No." Henry looked at him, his eyes glinting in a way Draco had already learned to dread. "I didn't choose Gryffindor. I just didn't want to go to Slytherin because the arsehole who murdered the Potters was there and because this stuck-up blond wanker on the train insulted my first friend."

"Wanker," Draco muttered back, flushing. It hurt to remember that he had done that and had probably prevented his family from finding his brother a whole year early. Surely Henry would have spoken Parseltongue in Slytherin, if only because the common room was covered with carved snakes, and that would have meant Draco and then Mother and Father finding out.

"Yeah, whatever." Henry turned and stared into the fire.

....

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