Harry Potter The Long Lost Malfoy

"Does it count that you broke the rules and lied to a professor for our sakes?" Harry said, holding Hermione's gaze. "Because we came and rescued you from the troll? You chose people over principles then."

"I chose principles most of the time!"

Hermione's eyes were shiny with tears, and Harry winced. This wasn't the way he wanted things to go. He held up a placating hand and stepped back. "All right, Hermione. We can discuss this later."

"Are you going to reject them?"

Harry scowled at her, as something he hadn't known was fraying in him parted with an almost audible twang. "For what? The Headmaster who thinks that I should have stayed in the school when I'd fucking killed someone?"

Hermione turned and walked away.

Ron hesitated for a long moment. Then he sighed and sat down on the seat next to Harry. Harry swallowed. He had thought Ron was going to walk away with Hermione, and it would have hurt, a lot, if he had.

"Idiot," Draco muttered. Tonks nodded.

"She's not an idiot," Ron snarled, because apparently not walking away with Hermione wasn't the same thing as defending her. "She knows very well that your father wasn't under the Imperius Curse in the war."

"You know what?" Draco drew himself up and glared at Ron. "No, he wasn't. He was a Death Eater. He was a horrible person. He's made that clear to me."

Ron blinked.

"But now he's had his left arm chopped off and the Dark Mark removed so that the Dark Lord can't force him to act against Henry. He's getting the Minister to be on the side of Muggleborns and reject some of the bigoted people who would have been high in his esteem otherwise. He's researching ways to destroy the Dark Lord. At what point does he get to have the past ignored, Weasley? At what point do you decide that he's not secretly plotting to kill Granger? Because if nothing matters and nothing can change what he did, then he might as well just keep doing what makes sense to him, which is protecting Henry and me, and not give a shite what Granger thinks."

Ron blinked several times. Harry felt as if he had been hit over the head with a hammer. He gaped at Draco, who turned pink when he saw the way Harry looked at him. Tonks was grinning.

Draco cleared his throat and shook his head.

"I just wonder, is all," he muttered.

Ron found his voice. "That doesn't change what he did in the past. In the first war. It doesn't mean that he doesn't still believe the wrong things even if he's acting the right way."

Surprisingly, Draco relaxed and shrugged. "All right."

"All right?"

"You can believe that, and I'll believe that he's changed his mind and really wants to help Henry. I suppose we can see which one of us is right in the long run."

Ron flushed bright red. Harry sat back on the seat and watched people rushing into the train through the windows. Honestly, this doesn't sound like an argument he should interrupt, and he wasn't sure what he would have said anyway. Tonks caught his eye and firmly nodded, so she must have thought the same thing.

"It's not all right! He should apologize! Or Harry should come with us and not go back to your house, because Mr. Malfoy is wrong!"

"Ah." Draco's eyes glittered. "So once again it comes down to Henry abandoning his family. And going with whom? Your parents, I assume?"

"They don't hate Hermione! They don't hate Harry's moth—" Ron stopped, and flushed harder.

"The woman everyone thought was his mother," Draco said. "The woman who knew Henry was a kidnapped child and took him away anyway. The woman who knew he came from somewhere, and didn't care."

"The woman who died for him!"

"And wasn't his mother."

Harry took a deep breath and intervened. "Listen, Ron, I'm not going to walk away from my family, okay? If Hermione wants me to do something else, she can tell me, and I'll think about it. But I'm not—no, I'm not going to abandon my family because she thinks my father is wrong."

"I think it might be the only thing she'll accept."

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head, miserable. "And what if her dad turned out to be a horrible person? Would she abandon her family? Or would she be horrified to even hear us suggest it?"

"He's not a horrible person, though, mate."

"I'm asking."

"Yeah, fine, she wouldn't," Ron muttered. "But—your dad hated people like her. He murdered people like her. Do you see how that's different?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "And I see that it's a problem I can't solve, because she won't accept the only solution I could offer. She probably won't accept any solution, because my father cutting his arm off wasn't enough." He felt very tired. "You can go tell her that I won't walk away from my parents, and that I still want to be her friend."

Ron folded his arms and gave Harry a mulish look. "You have that conversation with her."

Harry shrugged and leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes. He felt as though someone had draped a blanket weighted with lead over his shoulders. It always came back to this, he thought. Always. His family was terrible, no matter which family it was. The Dursleys had hated him and abused him. The Potters had been kidnappers. The Malfoys were bigots and terrorists.

So he had to choose the ones who loved him. And that wasn't Dumbledore or Sirius Black.

....

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