But his head was spinning so badly that he didn't really listen. It was—it was so terrible. The Potters had loved and kidnapped him. Black had thought he was saving him and he'd kidnapped him. The Malfoys would have used him as a status symbol and they'd missed him.
Nothing made sense. He didn't know what to do.
He must have said something like that aloud, because Mrs. Malfoy bent down and whispered in his ear, "You don't have to do anything, Aldebaran. Just be yourself and let us love you and teach you how to be with us."
"You're my little brother," Draco added. "It doesn't matter who you were before or that you got stolen when you were little. That's not your fault."
Harry opened his mouth to argue that he was who he was and that he wouldn't change, and not to call him Aldebaran, but then shut his mouth again. Honestly, he was tired of arguing. He was tired of standing here and listening to Black. He just wanted to leave.
Mrs. Malfoy seemed to sense it. She stood up and murmured, "Lucius?" Mr. Malfoy turned in the middle of asking another question and looked at her. "I am going to take the boys back to Hogwarts. Aldebaran needs to rest. Draco has agreed to field the questions for right now."
Mr. Malfoy nodded and locked eyes with Harry. He gave him a fierce, proud smile and murmured, "You are handling this incredibly well. I am so glad you are home."
Just a few words, but they felt as if they were the strongest ones Harry had ever heard. He let Mrs. Malfoy lead him and Draco to the door. Draco still had his arm around Harry's shoulders.
Harry managed to ask a question when they were in a lift going back up through the Ministry. They weren't going to take the Floo back to Hogwarts, for some reason. "What's going to happen to Black?"
"He'll be in prison for the rest of his life," Mrs. Malfoy said quietly. "We thought about having him go through another trial, but there's no point. He already has the best sentence he can have. A Kiss from a Dementor would be too quick."
Harry assumed the Kiss was some kind of execution or something. He said nothing, though. His stomach was roiling, and he didn't know how to feel.
Black had done what he'd done for love of his best friend. The Potters had loved Harry. The Malfoys loved Harry, or they had loved the little baby they'd had and lost.
And then Black had betrayed the Potters, which maybe proved that love wasn't so deep after all.
Harry didn't know how to think, what to feel.
Mrs. Malfoy kept him close to her as they headed back through a huge space with a fountain in the center of it, whispering to him. "We'll go as slowly as you need to. We have the rest of your life, Aldebaran. Twelve years is going to be nothing to it."
Harry wanted to ask a million questions. Like how Mr. Malfoy had supposedly fought with Voldemort, and how he was going to make that work with Harry being Voldemort's enemy.
But it was too much for one day, and he got back to Hogwarts and walked up to Gryffindor Tower when he could finally get away from the Malfoys, and went up to his bed and drew the curtains to get away from the Gryffindors.
It was so much simpler, at last, to just be able to fall asleep.
….
"This is your suite of rooms, Alde."
"Don't call me Alde," Harry muttered as he stared at the door Malfoy was holding open. Or, Draco, really, he supposed. He'd had to get used to calling the boy by that name because he threatened to tell his parents when Harry didn't. Plus, there were just too many Malfoys around for comfort if he kept trying to call them all by their last name.
Draco rolled his eyes. "You're my little brother. I'll call you whatever I want."
"Oh, then I can call you Firebreath?"
Draco's look of extreme horror was entertaining, but Mrs. Malfoy popped up behind Harry before he could bait Draco into continuing. "Aldebaran, you shouldn't fight with your brother. You don't know how deeply he's longed for you to come home."
Harry snapped his mouth shut. So this was going to be just like the Dursleys', he thought, with a pang he was surprised to feel. His "relative" got away with insulting him and Harry just had to bear it. He supposed he shouldn't have thought things would be different. The Malfoys had magic, but that was the only thing that really made them separate from Petunia and Vernon.
His thoughts went back to Ron and Hermione, who had been horrified and—well, horrified was still Ron's reaction, although Hermione was doing her best to support him. She said Ron would come back at some point and say Harry was still his friend. For now, though, that wasn't true.
Harry wished no one had ever discovered he wasn't Harry Potter.
He silently walked into the bedroom and stared around. It was too big and too bare. The walls were marble, he thought, but why did that matter when they were cold and empty? The windows looked out over a garden that was probably pretty in the summer, but bleak and barren now that it was almost Christmas. Professor Dumbledore hadn't been able to block the Malfoys when they filed for custody, but he had ensured that at least Harry didn't have to visit Malfoy Manor until the winter holiday.
Now, he had no choice.
"Aldebaran? We wanted to know how you would decorate your suites."
Harry sighed and turned to look at Mrs. Malfoy. She kept telling him to call her "Mum," but how could Harry, when half the time she was snapping at him about politeness and manners and posture and the way he ate and his background? He avoided it by just not calling her anything at all. "I don't know. I don't know anything about this."
Mrs. Malfoy frowned a little. "Well, of course this is very different than a Muggle—dwelling." Harry suspected that wasn't the word she'd been about to say. "But how did you decorate your room where you lived?"
Harry couldn't keep himself from tensing up at the question, which he knew she would notice. Still, the Malfoys knew nothing about the Dursleys except that they had been Lily's relatives and had given up custody of him without a protest. Harry would make sure it stayed that way.
"With shelves," Harry said, which was true. He said nothing else, and Mrs. Malfoy stepped into the room and gave Draco a little frown.
Apparently, that meant something Harry had no idea of, because Draco immediately left and shut the door behind him. Mrs. Malfoy sat down on the empty, sheet-less bed, and beckoned Harry towards her. Harry went, trailing a foot in the carpet. It was silver-colored, and so thick that he left a trail like someone crashing through a forest.
"Aldebaran, dear one," Mrs. Malfoy said, and then lifted him into her lap. Harry was so startled that he didn't fight, and then he was sitting there with Mrs. Malfoy's arms around him and her anxious face a few inches from his. "I would give anything to make you more comfortable, to make the kidnapping not have happened, but it did." Her hand smoothed his hair back, the straight, tameable white-blond hair Harry still couldn't get used to. Draco insisted on slicking his back with some potion, but Harry refused. "But how can we help you fit in better if you don't tell us what you're thinking?"
Harry just stared at the floor. Then he said, "Look. I know you love Draco more, because he's been here all along—"
He was going to explain how Draco being allowed to insult him however he liked was making him feel uncomfortable, but Mrs. Malfoy uttered a sharp sound of distress and tightened her arms around him.
"Oh, Aldebaran, not that, never that," she breathed into his ear, while Harry sat frozen, because things like this didn't happen to him. "I can see how you came to the conclusion that—oh, but it's not true. You were always wanted, always loved, always missed. That you came back…it's the greatest piece of good fortune we've ever had. I go to bed smiling every night now. I love you."
Harry just stared at her face, the face that looked like his but didn't know him. He swallowed and then said, "You love who I used to be. You love who I was for a few weeks. You don't know me now."
"Then help me know you. Tell me what's wrong and I'll light the stars on fire if I have to to make it better."
Harry gave a strangled gasp and slipped out of her embrace. He had the feeling that Mrs. Malfoy just barely kept herself from reaching after him. Harry paced slowly in circles, glancing back at her. Mrs. Malfoy bit her lip and clasped her arms to her sides.
"I like Muggles," Harry said. "The ones who raised me weren't the greatest, but I don't hate them. I won't hate them. And Hermione Granger is my friend." She was the only Gryffindor, other than Neville and the twins, who was still on his side, he thought. "Mal—I mean, Draco called her a Mudblood. I won't stand for that. And you act like all I have to do is look like the rest of you and get yelled at a few times about my manners, and I'll be a perfect little copy of you. I can't. I won't. I can't change who I was for twelve years!"
There was a silence after that. Mrs. Malfoy blinked a few times, and Harry thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. He turned away and said nothing. He hated to make her cry, but it was still true no matter what she said.
Mrs. Malfoy stood and came around, kneeling in front of him. Harry glanced at her reluctantly. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in and kissed his scar. Harry didn't flinch, the way he sometimes did when she tried to kiss his head or his cheek, or Mr. Malfoy put a hand on Harry's shoulder. Having someone touch his scar when most people tried to act like it didn't exist was…nice.
"I promise," Mrs. Malfoy whispered, "we won't try to make you hate Muggles. Your father is—unusual in his virulence. I don't hate Muggles myself, in general. I hate the ones who raised you for keeping you away from us. But I detest my cousin Sirius, and I detest the Potters, and I detest everyone who would come between me and my family. You can go on being friends with Miss Granger. She seems to be a good influence on you."
"Yeah, and are Draco and Mr. Malfoy going to agree to that?"