Be Careful
3: What You Admit To
By Anne B. Walsh
"Great Merlin—" Andrea Tonks darted forward and caught the strange boy as he collapsed. "Who in the world is this?"
"I wish I knew," Reynard said from behind her. "He just appeared in the house this morning. Claimed it was his house and we were trespassing."
"He says his name is Draco," Hermione added. "He's a little rude, but I think most of that is because he's afraid."
Andy looked back at her sister. "Did he call one of us ‘Aunt Bella’?" she asked.
"I believe he did." Cecilia Black came forward, kneeling beside Andy and laying a hand on the boy's cheek. "And since the last time I looked, I bear no resemblance to our late and unlamented sister…"
Andy let her own hand run down the boy's bare right arm and scowled. "You can sort that out at your leisure. Remus, don't you teach your children to feed their guests? This boy hasn't had anything to eat for nearly a full day!"
The patriarch of the Beauvois raised an eyebrow at his oldest son and daughter, who both flushed. "I'm sure we'll discuss it at some point soon," he said. "In the meantime, what will you need?"
"A quiet place to work," Cecy said immediately. "A house-elf to fetch supplies. And Meghan and Susanna, if we may borrow them?" She half-turned, addressing this last to the girls’ mother.
Aletha Black smiled. "I assume that wasn't a serious question," she said, shooing her daughters forward. "And don't you dare," she added to her husband.
He pouted. "You're no fun."
"You've been saying that for twenty-five years," James Potter pointed out.
"It's still true!"
"All right, everyone quiet down," called Remus’ wife, her voice rising above the tumult of chatter. "I'm sure Reynard and Hermione and Abigail will be very happy to tell us what they know about our… unexpected guest." Her eyes flickered over the three named children. All of them, Andy noticed, looked a bit worried at their mother's use of their full first names—as well they might; Gertrude Beauvoi seldom deserved the nickname by which she was universally known, but when she did deserve it, she did so with a vengeance.
Enough woolgathering, Andy. This boy needs care, and you won't give it to him by sitting here thinking about your friends.
She got to her feet and conjured a stretcher under the strange boy, making her wand motions a bit bigger than usual for the benefit of Meghan and Susie, both watching eagerly. Molly and Alice shooed people back from the stairs with the finesse of trained sheepdogs, and Cecy opened the door with a wave of her wand. "Where would be best, Remus?" she asked, looking up at him.
"The blue guest room on the second floor," Remus said after a moment's thought. "Abby can show you where it is."
Abby brightened and ran to Susie, and the two girls vanished into the stairwell hand-in-hand. Meghan followed, her practiced older-sister look of strained tolerance firmly in place, and Andy and Cecy brought up the rear, the blond boy lying still and pale between them.
Strange, so strange, what I'm feeling from him. Andy laid her free hand once more on a white-skinned wrist and let her magic work. We share blood, I'd be ready to swear on that, but from where? How much? And who in Merlin's name can he be?
She looked over the stretcher at her fine-boned, blonde sister, walking with head held high and lips tightly pressed together, then down at the boy again. Presented with only the two, an impartial observer would have concluded that it was possible they were related, entirely possible they were exactly what the boy had called them.
Andy was far from impartial.
He can't possibly know how much that hurt her to hear, with all the troubles she's had. Though I doubt he meant to hurt anyone. He's starving and exhausted, he's been through several nasty shocks very recently—what they are and how he'll handle them is Cecy's business, but what they've done to his body is mine—and his magic has itself in a knot in his left forearm for reasons I can't wait to discover.
She smiled to herself and increased her pace. Whatever else she might be or do, Andrea Tonks was a Healer who truly loved her work.
It was, after all, in her blood.
He drifted, halfway between waking and sleep, hearing words without listening, feeling rather than seeing shadows which fell across his closed eyelids. Four voices speaking around him, about him. All were female. All were calm, soothing to his ears. Occasionally a hand touched him. Cool, soft skin against his own. Nothing to fear. Nothing to hide.
Draco opened his eyes.
"Hello," said the girl standing in front of him. She was about his own age and wore her dark hair in small beaded braids. Her eyes stood out brightly even in this dim room, incongruously silver-gray in her brown-sugar face. "Are you feeling better?"
"I… think so." Draco flinched inwardly at how weak his voice sounded. "What happened?"
"When was the last time you had anything to eat?" asked a woman's firm voice from behind him. "No, don't answer that, I'll tell you. Yesterday, well before noon, that's when." Her footsteps marked her passage around the bottom of the bed. "And you barely had anything to drink between then and now either, did you?"
"I don't remember," Draco began, then saw the woman's face and broke off, eyes widening.
The woman smiled ruefully. "Please, forgive my atrocious manners." She shooed the girl back from the bed and took her place, going to one knee beside the bed, bringing her face into close proximity with Draco's. "It's just that I suspect you've been doing this to yourself for quite some time, and I'm none too happy with the results. How are you feeling now?"
"Better. Some." The words came out automatically, most of Draco's mind being busy categorizing the differences between this woman and his aunt. Brown hair, not black. Fewer wrinkles. And let's not forget she looks sane. Why was I so stupid?
"I should hope so, after what we've been up to." The woman touched his wrist and nodded in satisfaction. "You're not ill, not yet, but you are very worn down. You need rest and good food and not to worry yourself for a week at the very least, or this will happen again. Do you understand me?"
"Yes. I think so." Over the woman's shoulder, he could see the girl standing by the wall, her hand on the shoulder of a smaller version of herself, and there was at least one other person in the room if the soft breathing behind him meant anything. "Who are you?"
The woman laughed. "Once again, manners. I do apologize. I'm Healer Andrea Tonks, Andy for short, and the young ladies behind me are Meghan and Susanna Black, my cousins and informal apprentices. Meghan will be a true apprentice next year, after she's finished school, and I'm sure Susanna will do the same when it's time. And my sister, Healer Cecilia Black, is about to come around where you can see her and say hello to you." She lifted her head. "Aren't you, Cecy dear?"
Andrea, Cecilia—I thought Potter said something about his Aunt Andy and Aunt Sissy, but I could have heard him wrong, he could have said Cecy instead—Mother has a sister Andromeda, they used to call her Andy, and she married a Tonks, it was her daughter who married Lupin—
Another woman stepped hesitantly into Draco's field of view, looking at him with worry verging on fear. His thoughts shattered at the sight.
"Andy, take the girls downstairs," Cecilia Black said quietly. "You had best go enjoy yourselves. I will be here for some time."
Feet pattered and thumped across the floor, a door opened and closed, but Draco saw nothing but the woman in front of him. She returned his regard with equal intensity, seeming to search his face for something. After a few seconds, a flicker of emotion passed through her eyes, too quickly for him to identify. A moment later, she was smiling, masking any true feelings under a Healer's professional manner.
"Do you feel well enough to sit up?" she asked.
"I don't know." Draco experimented, pushing against the mattress with one arm. His elbow wobbled a bit, but held, and he pulled himself into a semi-sitting position with his back to the headboard of the bed. "I guess I do."
He remembered vaguely, as though from another life, a time when he would have been angry and ashamed to be seen so vulnerable, and would have sworn or made snide remarks at anyone who dared to help him. Now…
Being angry takes strength, and I don't have any to spare. And I'm just too pathetically glad that someone gives a twig about me to be ashamed of it.
He hadn't meant to think it quite that bluntly, but there it was. He'd put it into words and there was no way to take it back. The only people in his entire world who cared about him at all were his parents, and they were too busy trying to keep themselves alive to do anything for him except keep him the same way.
"What are you thinking?" the soft voice broke in.
Draco looked up and met pale blue eyes. How could he know where the similarities ended and differences began? "It's… complicated."
The Healer smiled. "I am a good listener."
"I wouldn't even know where to start."
"Start with yourself." She reached out and touched the back of his hand, her fingers cool against his skin for a moment before she withdrew. "Most people enjoy talking about that subject."
"People enjoy talking about me? Well, I'm not surprised." Draco posed for a moment, but his heart wasn't in it, even when he heard the Healer chuckle and knew she wasn't faking. "I don't really know what you want me to say," he admitted.
"Start with your name and your birthday. Then your family. If you can't think of anything after those, I can keep making suggestions."
"All right." Draco punched the pillow behind him into a more supporting shape and began. "My name is Draco Malfoy, and I was born on the fifth of June, 1980…"
What felt like several hours later, he finally ran out of things to say. The Healer had poured him a cup of water from a pitcher on the bedside table partway through his reminiscences about his childhood, and he had drained it and two others in the course of talking. She had a cup of her own, from which she had sipped quietly as she listened.
She was right. She's a good listener.
"How do you feel now?" she asked when he had been silent for several moments.
Draco spun the empty water cup between his hands. "Tired."
"Not surprising." The Healer tapped a finger on her own cup. "You have drained yourself more than you knew, Draco."
A flash of anger shot through Draco. "Oh, so fainting in front of just about bloody everybody wasn't enough to tell me that?"
"You fainted because of physical weakness. Because you had not eaten in too long."
"That wasn't the only reason," Draco said, almost without thinking.
"No?" The Healer collected the cup from his lax hands. "Tell me the other one, then."
"It's stupid."
"I promise not to laugh."
Draco squirmed, looking away. "You look like my mother," he said under his breath. "And your sister looks like one of my aunts. A lot of people here look like people I know at home—a lot of them even have the same names—but…"
"But this isn't your home," that calm voice finished for him. "You fell asleep in your own bed, and awakened in a strange one, and nothing makes sense."
"Yes."
"Do you want to go home?"
Yes, yes, of course I want to go home, what kind of stupid question is that? Why would I want to stay here? I don't understand this place, no one acts the way I expect them to, my family doesn't even exist…
"I don't know."
It took him five seconds to realize the voice was his own.
"Will you let me help you?" The bed dipped from the weight of someone sitting on it. "Help you decide, and then help you carry through with your decision?"
"I don't need help," Draco muttered. "I'm seventeen, I'm adult, I can take care of myself."
"Can you?"
The question hung in the air between them. Draco's chest felt tight, as though he were trying to breathe too deeply, and his throat tensed until swallowing hurt like a knife.
"I should tell you what I did while you were unconscious," Healer Black said into the silence. "There is Healing magic in my family. Going back a thousand years, to Lady Ravenclaw herself."
Draco jerked his head around to stare at her. "Ravenclaw? You're—"
"An Heir of hers, yes. As is Andy, as is our cousin Sirius, though his power works differently than ours." Pale eyes darkened. "As was our eldest sister Isabelle, but her Healing turned to hurting when she decided evil held more potential than good."
Isabelle—and what's the betting they always called her Bella?
"With this power, I can know a great deal about you just by touching you, my skin to yours." Healer Black held out her hands and regarded them. "My specialty in everyday Healing is the mind and the emotions, so my magic has become focused on those aspects of a person rather than their physical body."
Draco stiffened in shock and outrage. "You read my mind? When I didn't even know about it? That's—"
"Hear me out, Draco," Healer Black interrupted calmly. "I did not read your mind. I brushed its surface. I learned what you were feeling, but not why. I learned the general trend of your thoughts, not their specific content. Anyone who spent time with you, talking and listening to what you have to say, could do something similar. My magic allows me to do it more quickly and more easily, and to be more sure of the results."
Draco slumped back against the pillow. "So tell me," he said with all the sarcasm he could muster. "What am I feeling these days?"
"Pain." The Healer's voice was matter-of-fact. "Pain and fear and hopelessness, a desperate longing for an escape from a life turned into torture. I also sensed a recent occurrence which uprooted everything you believed about yourself and turned it on its head. Something which made you look into a mirror and truly see the person who looks back, and wish he were not the way he is." Her eyes met his and held them. "Tell me I lie."
Sudden memory surged over Draco. Kneeling before the Dark Lord, staring into hypnotic red eyes—snake-dry hands within his mind, ruthlessly drawing forth every shame and failure, dwelling especially on the ones caused by Harry Potter or his followers, finishing with the fiasco on the Astronomy Tower—groveling afterwards, begging for his life, for his parents’ lives, hearing the laughter of the Death Eaters around him, and feeling seventeen years of pride crumble into dust, leaving nothing but a vast emptiness within.
He had cried, there at the Dark Lord's feet, sobs of terror and pain tearing free one after another, shattering the person he had believed he was. Draco Malfoy should never have cried. He should never have needed to cry. He should have been on his feet, proud and strong, victorious. But no amount of "should have" changed the reality of knees, humiliation, weakness. Defeat.
He was crying again now, but this time was different. This time, arms held him close, a hand stroked his hair. "Let it out," a voice whispered, "let it out… no one will ever know but you and I, and I will never tell…"
"I don't know who I am," he whispered back, shaking with the admission as much as with the tears. "I'm not who I thought I was, and I don't know who I am."
A moment of silence. Another. Another. Then—
"You are my son." Arms tightened, released. "If you wish to be."