NOVEL NEXT Chapter 25: CH 25
Last Time "I think we can leave it here for today." Lucius said. "The both of them seem to be receptive to one another and that's really all the first meeting looks for between the betrothed."
Xerxes Lestrange agreed with Lucius and Harry said a soft goodbye to Rabastan, honestly sorry to see him go. They hadn't interacted much, but there was a smothered vulnerability to the youngest Lestrange that Harry couldn't help but notice and it made him want to protect the older man and nurse him back to health. He hoped that he got to see more of Rabastan before he had to go back to Hogwarts; he had genuinely enjoyed his company.
Harry had finished all of his sixty-three books by the third week of August, including three apiece on Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, which Lucius and Draco were helping him with.
He'd been spanked again twice, once for throwing his book in a fit of anger (it had gone through a window and had hit one of Lucius' prized albino peacocks) and the second had been for fighting with Draco. It had gone from duelling practice to a full out fistfight in which Harry had gotten a busted lip and Draco was sporting an imprint of Harry's teeth on the side of his ribcage…indents that had broken the skin and had welled up with drops of blood. Draco had been called uncouth and had gone over his father's knee. Harry had been called a barbarian savage and had gone over his father's knee. They had been further punished by being forced to stand in opposite corners of Lucius' study, facing the wall while Lucius worked at his desk behind them. They had stayed there, silent and unable to move or even fidget, for forty minutes. Which had seemed like an eternity to Harry, who had wanted nothing more than to stretch his legs out.
They'd been made to apologise to one another and shake hands 'like civilised men' before they'd been allowed to leave Lucius' study.
Harry had met with the four Lestranges a further five times since his first initial meeting and he was now a little more comfortable talking to Rabastan and his older brother, Rodolphus, but he still did not like or trust Rhadamanthus at all. The man, and Harry used that term lightly, made sure to insult and belittle him as often as he could without letting on that that was what he was doing. It was almost like he was trying to ruin the betrothal without letting any of the others know. As if he was waiting for Harry to blow up and break the betrothal himself so that it looked like Harry's decision and not as a result of his own actions. Harry swore that he would not forget a single instance where Rhadamanthus had insulted him and he would repay him back in kind once he was in a better position to do so. He would bide his time and he would get his own revenge on the vile man.
Allegedly his and Rabastan's betrothal meetings were going very well; Harry didn't know what was happening, so he just went with it and agreed. The next time that he met with Rabastan, they were going to go on a chaperoned walk around the gardens of Malfoy Manor. Harry had almost laughed himself sick at that and had earned two hexes to his head for lack of composure and he had still been wiping away tears of laughter afterwards.
He still got a barrage of owls daily from the Weasleys, from Dumbledore, from Hermione and from Remus. He even got letters from members of the Order, some of them he'd never even spoken to before …but Harry was now required by the betrothal contract to reply to letters from Rabastan, so he could only send half the amount of the letters he had been sending to Remus previously because his 'mail allowance' was being eaten up by required letters to Rabastan as his betrothed.
He was surprised to find that he actually enjoyed receiving letters from Rabastan, the man was a little hare-brained in his letters and his cursive needed a lot of work because his random twitches meant that he had huge score marks through his parchment, leaving behind blots and scrawls of ink that made it difficult to read, but once Harry had deciphered the words under the scratches and blots, he found himself laughing and smiling at the letters. Rabastan was able to make him laugh at just a letter and it always made him wish that their next meeting was that much closer, so that he could see him sooner.
It was very, very difficult to place Rabastan, and hell, even Rodolphus, into the mould of Bellatrix. Though they had been in Azkaban for the same amount of time, Harry reasoned that Bellatrix had had to have been insane before she'd gone to Azkaban, or at the very least she'd had to have been mentally unhinged. He remembered how she was from the Ministry, how she acted and spoke, the irrational mutterings and the gleam of insanity in her dark, hooded eyes.
Comparing her to the Lestrange brothers, it was like comparing a pair of wolves to a manticore. All of them were dangerous, but the wolves were more likely to back away from a fight and a manticore never would. It was incredibly violent and dangerous and would not give up until its prey was dead. He understood that the Lestrange brothers were no saints, of course, he did, but after everything he was finding out about people he had thought he'd known, people like Dumbledore, he was beginning to think that no one in the wizarding world was wholly good.
He was also sure that Lucius Malfoy was drugging him with potions or something. A few drops of calming draught in his breakfast, it's not like he couldn't buy them easily enough, or even get them made for him, he was friends with Snape after all, but Harry just couldn't bring himself to care anymore, especially not as he suspected that Draco was receiving the same treatment. They had been getting on better in recent days as they'd both mellowed at the same time, out of the blue. Everything that he had once known was a lie, his world had been turned upside down, what was he supposed to do now? He hadn't wanted to stay with the Dursleys, he didn't want to impose on the Weasleys and, frankly speaking, there was nothing he could do about his adoption. He was the legal ward of Lucius Malfoy whether he liked it or not, so why shouldn't he take advantage of what that offered to him while he could? He was having lessons, he was learning two new subjects, he had all the books he could wish for, he was being taught what he needed to know about his lordships and his estates and he was learning things that he knew Dumbledore would never have taught him. Why shouldn't he accept all of that for himself, even if it was from Lucius Malfoy?
He was taking all of this a lot better than he thought he would have, especially after his blow up in Gringotts bank and the icy anger he'd been carrying around with him, which is why he suspected the involvement of potions, but he really did not care. He would learn everything that he possibly could, he would set up a name and a life for himself and he would marry Rabastan Lestrange. The man was too influential to pass up, having his name added to the Lestrange family would give him considerable clout and a certain level of respect and he could then pass that on to his future children. Plus, he knew that Dumbledore would hate him marrying a Lestrange, which was part of why he had accepted the man in the first place; so that he could spite Dumbledore and his fucking plans. But seeing Rabastan, so hurt and lost and utterly ruined from Azkaban, a skeleton of a man, Harry found that he wanted to marry Rabastan to help him, not to abuse him further. He didn't have it in him to abuse a man who was already suffering so much. Who was he to kick a poor man who was already down on the floor and hunched over?
No, he would marry Rabastan and he would make a life for himself and even if he had to spoon the potions into his mouth, soothe him through nightmares in the middle of the night and massage his muscles through the painful twitching and cramping, he would raise and nurse Rabastan back to full health. Or as much as he possibly could as he was almost sure that Rabastan would never be fully recovered from his long years spent in Azkaban. A place like that with so much exposure to the Dementors had to cause permanent damage in one way or another, but he would do his utmost best to help Rabastan. He would get the life that he had always dreamed of, he would have a husband and he would have children and he would live as peacefully as he could. No Dumbledore, no Dursleys and no war, just him, Rabastan, and their children. That's all he wanted and he was going to do his all to get that, even if he had to take orders and spankings from Lucius, if he had to take elocution and posture lessons from Narcissa and even if he had to let Draco stare down his nose at him and teach him Arithmancy and Ancient Runes in that haughty drawl. He would sit and take it all without a murmur of complaint because he was learning what he needed to know to advance himself. He would make a name for himself and he would make Lucius and Narcissa proud of him, because it's all he'd ever really wanted and now that he was free of the Dursleys and free of Dumbledore and his responsibilities towards the wizarding world regarding the war, he was going to do everything that he wanted to do and what made him happy, starting with learning as much as he possibly could, making his adoptive parents proud in the process and he was going to start the budding of his future marriage to Rabastan, he would get what he wanted because he wasn't going to give up until he had his dream come true.
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