Harry Potter The Long Lost Malfoy

Mr. Malfoy caught his breath so sharply it sounded like he was choking. He stared at Harry with wide eyes, and the cane fell from his hand as he stretched it out towards Harry, then hesitated and pulled it back again. "You—you know we love you. You know that we would never betray you."

"Would you? You haven't really talked about what's going to happen when Voldemort comes back."

Mr. Malfoy looked down and away from him. Then he said, "I made the choice to become a Death Eater without ever thinking that it might endanger my children."

Harry swallowed the impulse to say that he was a bloody idiot, then, and listened.

"Why would it? I was marrying Narcissa, who came from a family almost universally devoted to the Dark Lord. Any children we might have would be precious, pureblood, highly valued members of the society that the Dark Lord was intent on making. When you and Draco were born, all I could see in your future was protection. Spoiling. Defending you from the harsher realities of life."

Harry said nothing. If he could have been completely honest, he would have said that he would rather turn out the way he had than to have turned out like Draco, even if it meant that he didn't grow up with his real parents. But he couldn't say that, so he listened.

"And then we lost you." Mr. Malfoy flexed his hands and looked as if he might like to pick something up and throw it, but he didn't. "And I learned that I couldn't protect my children well enough."

Harry couldn't think of anything to say. Sometimes it was weird, hearing his family talk about this, because it made Harry want to comfort them, and then he remembered that they were talking about him, and felt strange again.

"I never thought that my dedication to the Dark Lord was part of the reason," Mr. Malfoy whispered. "Why would I? There wasn't an answer as to why our son had been stolen, until we learned who had taken and adopted you. And I don't know that it would have been better for us if you have been stolen by someone on our side of the war."

"I don't believe the prophecy is true," Harry said carefully. "You know that. But I do believe one thing Dumbledore said. That Voldemort thinks it's true, and he's still going to come after me with everything he has."

Mr. Malfoy flinched when Harry said Voldemort's name, and nodded. "Yes. And so, I have made my choice."

"What's that?" Harry breathed it out through his own hope. He didn't know what Mr. Malfoy could do, with the Dark Mark on his arm, but he wanted to be told that his father was doing something anyway.

"Putting my son before my other allegiances." Mr. Malfoy tugged his sleeve back, and Harry saw the Dark Mark fully for the first time. He flinched back before it. Mr. Malfoy smiled grimly. "Yes. An ugly thing, isn't it?"

"Yes," Harry whispered. He would have had to say that no matter whose arm it was on, no matter how much he loved that person. If Ron or Hermione had got it, it would still have been ugly.

"There are ways to get rid of it," Mr. Malfoy said. "Ways I never considered, because, as I said, I could see no reason that I should reject it. It didn't put my family in danger in any way I could perceive." He shut his eyes. "Now I've chosen, and so I'll make the right arrangements with the Healers at St. Mungo's."

"What do you mean, Healers?" Harry asked. "Can they just—remove it? Spell it off?"

"No," Mr. Malfoy said quietly. "The Dark Lord designed it to be resistant to such things, although he was thinking of people capturing and torturing his loyal followers rather than those followers wishing to change their status. I will need to have my left arm amputated below the elbow, and then regrown. It is possible, although painful and expensive. But we can more than afford it."

Harry stared at him, appalled. Then he shook his head.

"Henry?"

"I—I never wanted you to amputate your arm. That's too much."

"I am the one who made the wrong decision, secure in my pride and arrogance that nothing outside my family could affect my family." Mr. Malfoy sighed. "I am the one who will pay that price."

"But how can you?" Harry worried, distantly, that he probably sounded like a little kid, the way he was wailing, but this had hit him with a hard blow. "That's too much for you to do for someone else. I don't care who you are."

Mr. Malfoy got up and came across to sit on Harry's bed beside him after all. He stroked Harry's cheek, and smiled at him. Harry didn't know what to make of the mixture of triumph and happiness and pain shining on his father's face.

"I would do anything for you," Mr. Malfoy breathes. "Worse than this. Kill. Torture. Maim. Suffer. Get my arm amputated and not regrown, if that's what it takes." His hand slid into Harry's hair. "Take down the Dark Lord."

Harry shivered and burrowed into his father, grabbing him around the waist. Mr. Malfoy hugged him back, his hold as tight and possessive as Mrs. Malfoy's could sometimes be.

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