CH 46

Together, he was sure that they could get Rabastan to where he needed to be and he hoped that he was enough to help Rabastan; was he enough of an incentive for the man to get better? Would he want to get better for their potential future family? Would that be enough of an incentive for the man? If he wasn't enough, then would the thought of their future children be enough of a drive to help Rabastan recover as fully as possible? He didn't know the answer to that and it drove him crazy. He just wanted Rabastan to get better and recover from his awful ordeal. He wanted them to be a proper, normal family. He wanted Rabastan to get better so that they could love one another and so that they could have and love their future children. He wanted that so badly that he was willing to do absolutely anything to make it a reality.

On the other hand though, even though he knew that Rabastan's body would mostly heal from the damage that had been done to it over the decade and a half he had spent in Azkaban, he was also sure that as he spent more time with Rabastan, talked to him more and got to know him a little more, then he would find some very dark secrets; after all, he himself had nightmares from what he'd gone through in his life…he would be incredibly surprised if Rabastan didn't have some nightmares of his own.

Life for Harry was going well as October came to a slow end with him taking the Thursday evening, Halloween night, to remember both of his parents and their sacrifice for him. He really hoped that they would have approved of his choices in life as he really was trying his best. But he'd had no direction at all as he was growing up and all he had to go on was the Dursleys and how they had acted and behaved and yet, despite them being the only role models that he'd had, he knew that they were the worst sort of intolerable people imaginable and that he didn't want to act or turn out like them.

He had needed someone like Lucius to take over and steer him onto the right path, otherwise, he had no idea where he was going to end up or how he was going to look after himself after he graduated when he was seventeen and Vernon kicked him from the house. He had the money, but he'd had no idea how to use it or what he'd need to do to get his own house set up and running smoothly until Lucius had actually spent his time showing him and teaching him. Perhaps if Sirius had been alive then things could have gone differently, but he wasn't alive and he hadn't told him about his lordships while he had been alive either. Though, now that he'd seen and spoken to Rabastan and Rodolphus, who had also suffered more than a decade in Azkaban, he had to wonder if Sirius had even remembered the lordships. The two brothers were scatter-brained at times too so perhaps Sirius just hadn't remembered and couldn't have told him. It comforted him a little to think that Azkaban had just destroyed Sirius' memory rather than the thought of his godfather keeping something like that from him purposefully. He really hated Azkaban and he wanted it closed down, though he would settle for banishing the vile Dementors from being near humans as they really, really should not have ever been allowed around people, regardless of what said person had done. He would change the way that the prison system was run, he was already researching everything that he could get his hands on and the little that he'd already found out was very disturbing and greatly concerned him. Things really needed to change…and quickly.

November had arrived cold and bitter, dragging with it Gryffindor's first game of the season. He'd had a little over a month to get his new team up to scratch and the other teams were openly laughing at him because he had such a young team and an even younger reserve team. He refused to rise to any provocation and he just ignored Draco, who was the Slytherin team Seeker, and Blaise, who was one of the Slytherin Chasers, when they pressed him and teased him about it.

He had a good, solid team, despite their young age and if his worst fears came to be realised and his young, inexperienced team fell apart under the pressure of an actual official game, then he was still the best damn Seeker in this school and he would catch the snitch before they were completely pulverised. Not that he expected them to be, of course, that was just in case the worst-case scenario came to pass, but he had every faith in his team. They would win this game, and this entire season and the Quidditch cup too, and show up all of those people laughing at them. That really would show them all up rotten.

But, it was currently breakfast time and Harry had been told to go to the headmaster's office once he was finished with his meal by Professor McGonagall. Harry had a very good idea of what this meeting was going to be about too.

It had taken another few weeks, a little over a full month later, but eventually, his idiot dormmates' had gone after his trunk yet again, as if they thought that he wouldn't protect his things after the first time that they'd targeted him. The second time they'd managed to destroy his things had been a bit of bad luck on his part and some poor timing due to extenuating circumstances, but a third time? No…they hadn't been able to get into his locked trunk, nor could they lift it from where it was placed by the end of his bed and all of his dormmates' had taken it in turns to try and lift his trunk like the idiots that they were. They'd gone back to sleep, frustrated and planning to talk about something else that they could do to him the following day…only to wake up in agony late the next morning with their hands blistered and leaking pus and clear, sticky plasma and in some places, even blood. Half of the school had seen Ron, Dean, and Seamus rushing through the corridors, still in their pyjamas, and running with their leaking, grotesque hands out in front of them towards the hospital wing, as the other students made their way to the Great Hall for their breakfasts.

Harry had caught up to Draco and Blaise, who had only just heard about the incident from a Ravenclaw seventh year, who had had the good fortune of waking up early to send off a letter, and he had insisted that he'd passed three Gryffindor boys screaming and running towards the hospital wing on his way down to the Great Hall. He had followed them curiously and he had found four boys in the hospital wing all in agonising pain due to a spell that had affected all of their hands.

"What did you do?" Draco had immediately demanded when he'd first seen him that morning.

Harry had laughed happily. "I did say that the curse on the trunk would make them think twice about coming near my things again."

"Did it really make their hands fall off?"

Harry's eyes had widened comically at that. "No! Where on Earth did you hear that? It just blistered their hands to teach them a lesson for stealing. They'll be bound up with healing paste for a few days, but they'll be just fine." Harry had been so satisfied when he'd seen his dormmates again, it had been no less than the lot of them had deserved; though he was very surprised to see Neville with bound up, blistered hands too. He hadn't been in the dorm room when the others had woken up, so Harry had assumed that he had had nothing to do with the attacks on him. He had been wrong and Neville had just woken up earlier than anyone else and had made his own way to the hospital wing before the other three had woken up and started screaming bloody murder. That had saddened him, he had thought that even if Neville hadn't wanted to be his friend anymore that he wouldn't sink so low as to damage his stuff. It seemed that he was wrong about that and he hardened his heart, blocking out the pain he felt at that particular perceived betrayal.

At least he no longer felt torn in half about being in a betrothal contract with one of the men who had tortured his 'friend's' parents. If Neville had stayed out of all of this and had remained amicable, if a little distant, towards him then Harry might have had a harder time getting over what Rabastan had done fifteen years ago in his youth to Frank and Alice Longbottom, but now that Neville had been revealed as one of the people who had stolen from him and as one of the people involved in damaging all of his possessions he brushed aside such consideration for their previous friendship. As far as he was now concerned, war was war and there were always two sides and casualties and tragedies on each.

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