Harry's whole body ached. He knew he was in a bright, warm room, and he knew that Mother was nearby, and he'd heard Draco's voice. But he didn't want to let go of Father, and when someone tried to take Harry away so that they could lay him flat on some kind of bed, he screamed.
"Leave him where he is," Father said in that insane voice.
Harry held on, and Father held him back. Moments drifted past, came and went. Sometimes Harry was aware that Mother was hugging them, too, from the outside, and sometimes Draco stood there and was awkward, or hugged them and was awkward.
But he was mostly aware of Father holding him.
And that he was a murderer just like Father. He hadn't meant to be, but what had Father said?
It's not a matter of belief; it's a matter of action.
When it came down to it, Harry had a lot of beliefs about murder, but he had acted to defend his life.
As he clung to his father, and his mother, and his brother when they were there, he wondered how he was supposed to feel, other than cold, with jagged pieces of ice whirling through him.
He wondered if Moody had been captured. He wondered where the spirit of Voldemort had gone.
But mostly, he breathed, and knew he was alive.
And that Father was there.
....
"Is Henry going to be all right, Mother?"
Narcissa drew Draco gently against her side. Her elder son followed the motion, but he didn't lower his eyes and he didn't look away from her face. Narcissa smoothed her hand through his hair, and silently catalogued all the differences between Draco's face and those of her younger son, currently senseless in a bedroom upstairs.
"Mother?"
"Yes," Narcissa murmured. She wanted to give so many answers to that question, but Draco and Henry were different in their strengths, as well as their ability to hear those answers. "The Healers are working on him even now, you know."
"I know that Healer Letham glared at me when I tried to go in his room," Draco muttered.
"Henry does need peace and quiet right now, Draco."
"I wouldn't bother him!"
"Healer Letham considers certain things bothering that you and I wouldn't," Narcissa murmured. And that was true. For example, the Healer considered using Henry's true name to be "bothering." But after seeing the ferocity on the woman's face when she'd met them in the Hogwarts hospital wing and seen Henry lying pale and silent in his father's arms, Narcissa was grateful that she was there.
"I just want to talk to him—"
"That is part of the problem, Draco." Narcissa turned them so that they were facing each other on the couch. "Henry doesn't want to talk right now."
"But he hasn't talked for three days! That isn't normal."
He was stolen when he was a baby and grew up with abusive Muggles thinking he was a Potter. He is anything but normal.
But that was another thing Draco had no ability to hear right now. Narcissa took a slow breath that seemed to catch on hooks on its way out of her lungs. "Neither is what he had to do in the graveyard."
"I wouldn't be that upset if I killed someone who was trying to kill me."
Narcissa touched the back of his head. "I know, but remember that you were raised here, in the lap of happiness and pleasure, and Henry was not."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
This was an answer Draco needed to hear, no matter how difficult it was to explain to him. Narcissa centered and calmed herself the way she had first learned to do practicing Occlumency with Mamma long ago. "You were raised to consider that your life is the most important one in the room, and enemies are for defeating," she murmured at last. "Henry was told over and over again that he was worthless and a burden. And he was not encouraged to indulge in complex thinking either by the Muggles or once he reached Hogwarts."
"Complex thinking like killing being okay if someone's trying to kill you?"
Narcissa blinked and then smiled, pleased that Draco had seen straight to the heart of the situation. "Exactly."
Draco stared at the bookshelves in the corner of the library sightlessly for a moment. Narcissa traced a finger over his cheekbone. He had his grandfather's facial shape. Cygnus Black's portrait was a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed thing that Narcissa fully intended not to introduce her children to until they were at least fifteen, but she saw her father every time she looked at her sons.
Both of them.
Ah, Henry, she thought, heart aching, and then Draco's mouth opened and Narcissa turned back to him, relieved that at least one of her sons both needed her and was willing to say so aloud.
"Do you think he'll come out of it?" Draco whispered.
"Yes," Narcissa replied, and wrapped her arms around Draco when he shifted closer again. It was the truth. It might require more than Healers, it might require potions or the like, but the Malfoys would fight for Henry as fiercely as if he had been kidnapped all over again.
The only question is how long it will take.
....
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