Watercolors

Title: Watercolors
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Fandom: Harry Potter Series
Pairings: Harry/OFC, (past) Harry/Katie, Draco/Astoria
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3k
Warnings: EWE, forced marriages, divorce, pureblood culture
Prompt: for foccacciobread who wanted pureblood Harry in the arts.  I had several false starts with this, but I’ve taken up watercolors, so Harry has, too.

Watercolors

It was the summer before fifth year that Harry found Walburga Black’s watercolors at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.  He carefully took up his paintbrush and began to paint.  There were books in the library about how to imbue paintings with magic.  He had to breathe over the paint while it was still wet and it would begin to move. 

Sirius encouraged him.

Hermione found it silly and a waste of time. 

Ron actually ruined a few of his early paintings because he knocked them over while they were still drying.  Not that Ron cared.  He barely even apologized. 

Harry was studying portraiture when Sirius died.  Harry never got the chance to paint Sirius and so lost the last connection he had with his godfather.

Still, he pursued painting. 

During Hogsmeade weekends, he would buy paints and papers, and he had a table easel he could set up in the Gryffindor Common Room.  He would paint what he would see and sometimes what he would dream.

He painted his mother’s eyes again and again, but he never got them right.

With the Department of Mysteries, Harry received a lot more scrutiny, and giggling girls would stand around him while he would try to paint, and he took to finding remote locations on the Hogwarts grounds to paint.  There wasn’t Quidditch, after all, to distract him.

In his sixth year, he had an affair, and he painted her skin blues and purples and pinks.  He knew Ginny Weasley was jealous, but she always said his paintings were useless.  He spent Fleur Delacour’s wedding to Bill Weasley painting the guests in all their colorful robes and hats instead of dancing.  If Ginny tried to get him on the dancefloor, he didn’t pay attention, even when Hermione tried to put away his paints for him.

He had to leave his paints behind when the Ministry fell.

A year on the run meant a year away from painting.  He would draw in the dirt with a stick and left clues as to their location everywhere they Apparated.  He didn’t know the Death Eaters were tracking them that way, but they were never found.  Voldemort was defeated.

He went to find his lover when it was all over but she had died in the war.  The memory of her haunted him and he tried to paint her, but found that he couldn’t.

Harry took up his paints as soon as life settled back down.

He didn’t become an auror like everyone wanted him to.  His ears were deaf to Ron’s pleas.  Harry didn’t care that Ron couldn’t become an auror, if Harry didn’t.  He didn’t want to fight dark wizards for the rest of his life.  He also didn’t want to go into the Ministry like Hermione, and even when Ginny suggested he play professional Quidditch, he pulled a face.

He hired a curse breaker to put a password lock on Grimmauld Place so that the Fidelius no longer worked on Grimmauld Place and he could have some peace.  Ginny had a habit of finding him, even years later.

“I didn’t know you painted houses.”  Harry looked over his shoulder and saw Malfoy’s younger sister standing behind him.  She was draped in pureblood black, her white blonde hair swept into a messy braid and her ice blue eyes looking at his painting of Malfoy Manor. 

Harry had seen her at the Malfoy trial when he had spoken for Draco and Narcissa.  She had been so small, wrapped in robes that were too big for her, tears in her eyes as she held her head high.  He couldn’t remember her name.

Harry offered his hand.  “Harry Potter.”

She hesitated a moment and then her hand slipped into his.  “Lacerta Malfoy.”

“You were a year or two behind me,” Harry remembered when he turned back to the painting, making the blue on his palette a bit lighter.  He needed to get the peacocks just right.

“Two years,” she answered, leaning over his shoulder and squinting.  “Just graduated a couple of weeks ago.  It’s my wedding tomorrow.”

Harry looked up, surprised.  “Who are you marrying?”

She shifted, clearly a little uncomfortable.  “Neville Longbottom.  Draco purchased him for me.”

“Neville?” Harry asked.  “How did I not get an invitation?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Do you know Master Longbottom?”

“We were yearmates.”

“Oh,” she answered, a little stupidly.  “I’d take that up with him, then.  I can have Draco send you one before lunch, if you like.  You are painting our manor house, after all.”  She glanced over at the painting.  “I had assumed that Neville had commissioned it as a wedding present.”

Harry’s eyebrows rose.  “I’m not a professional.”

She looked suddenly defensive.  “How am I supposed to know that?  Why else would you be out on the lawn?”

He turned back to the painting.  “If you like it that much, of course I’ll give it to you as a wedding present, Lady Lacerta,” he told her, remembering the Malfoy titles at the last moment.  It wouldn’t do to accidentally call her ‘mademoiselle’ if she was a ‘lady.’  “Draco lets me wander the grounds and paint whatever catches my fancy.  I was here last year painting your lake.”

Her eyes flitted in the direction of the lake that was behind the manor house.  “Oh.”  Her brows furrowed.  “I didn’t know that.”

He looked up at her.  “I’ll take that wedding invitation, though I’ll go instill the fear of the Living God in Neville after I put some finishing touches on this.”

“Can I stay and watch?” she asked, a little fearfully, as if she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if he refused.

Harry glanced up at her again, confused by her.  “Er-sure.  If you want.”  He turned back to the painting.  “You’re my first paying customer.”

“I’m not paying you,” she reminded him sullenly.

She was certainly in a bad mood for a bride.

He picked up his brush and added some blue to an albino peacock.  “Why did Draco purchase you a husband?” he asked, curious despite himself.

“Oh,” she told him, kicking the grass with her foot.

“Don’t do that,” Harry told her, holding out his hand to stop her.  “You’ll disturb my brushes.”

Lacerta immediately stilled.  She checked her feet and took a step over to the side, closer to Harry.  He could feel her breath tickle his ear.  It was rather distracting. 

“You might as well know.  Everyone does.  No one wanted to court me,” she told Harry.  “I’m the undesirable Malfoy.  Draco’s happily engaged to Astoria Greengrass and little Io has more courting offers than Draco knows what to do with.”

“Huh,” Harry wondered, this time adding pink to a window.  He glanced up at Lacerta.  She was more than pleasant looking.  “You seem, er, rather pretty.  I don’t see why purebloods wouldn’t want to—er—court you.  They’re clearly mad.”  Now he was mixing his yellow to make it lighter.  This would be the final touch.

She laughed hollowly.  “Where have you been, Harry Potter?” she asked derisively.  “You obviously haven’t been keeping up with your pureblood form.”

He made a brush stroke and then nodded to himself.  Leaning forward, he breathed over the entire canvas to whisper magic into the paint.  “If you’ve noticed, Lady Lacerta, I am neither a pureblood nor am I in society.”  He looked up at her.  “Now it just needs to sit for a few hours and it will be ready for you tomorrow.”

He took her in, noticing how she was standing up, shoulders back, despite her arms being crossed.  Standing up, he found four rocks and placed them around his easel.  He offered his hand to Lacerta.

She stared at it.

“I need to create a perimeter that no one can cross while the painting dries and begins to move.”

“Oh,” she startled and she immediately took his hand.

Immediately, a shock of magic erupted from their fingers and stung them. 

She instantly dropped his hand, staring at her fingers.

Harry was staring at her.

“You’re not a pureblood,” she declared, looking up at him, rubbing the tips of her fingers together in order to soothe them. 

“That’s a common misconception,” he told her carefully.

Her ice blue eyes flashed.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I said—that’s a common misconception, one that I frequently perpetuate.”

She stepped closer to him and looked him dead in the eye.  “Why would you do that, Mr. Potter?”

He shrugged.  “It never seemed to really matter.”

“Well,” she told him quite plainly.  “It does matter.  Your magic just shocked me and I’m set to marry another wizard tomorrow.”  She looked him up and down.  Harry was sure he looked a fright, wearing an open shirt and covered in watercolors.  “You’re just going to have to do,” she told him.  “Come up to the manor with me.”

“Er,” he realized he was far above his head.  “Let me cast the wards.  I don’t want my painting to be disturbed.”

She nodded and walked out of the wards.  Harry looked after her and after quickly picking up his brushes and paints, he placed the wards on the stones and hurried after her. 

They were only about half a mile from the manor so it was only a few minutes’ walk to the house, and Lacerta just let them in.  She walked purposefully through the hallways despites the early hour of the morning and came to a door, which she knocked on.

Harry suddenly realized that Lacerta was dressed in a nightgown and robe and he was in a state of undress.

It was too late because she was ushering him into a room.

It was a study and Draco Malfoy was sitting in an armchair reading a fragile book.  He looked up when he saw Lacerta and grimaced.  “No, I won’t cancel the wedding,” he told her flat out.

“Yes, you will,” she responded, ushering Harry forward.  “This wizard was painting the manor and when he offered me a hand outside of his wards, he sparked me.”

Draco looked over Harry Potter.  He snorted.  “Potter is a half-blood.  Nice try.”

Lacerta looked at Harry and nudged him.

Harry cleared his throat.  “That’s technically not true.”

Draco startled.  “What do you mean ‘technically not true’?”

“What I said.  My mother went to The Wicked Stepmother over Winter Break her fifth year and gained entrance.  I have her card in a trunk at home.  I’d rather not show you her diary, but her membership was grounds for a divorce in 1979.  My father thought she was cheating on him.  She was actually sneaking out and seeing her brothers who were on the opposite side of the war.”

Slamming his book shut, Draco stood.  “Your mother was a pureblood?”

“Technically.  She was raised—”

Draco made a motion with his hand.  “She was recognized?”

“Privately.”

Lacerta was standing there calmly in her dark robe and braid.  “Draco, as you can see—”

“Yes, yes,” Draco agreed.  “You said you were painting.”

“Malfoy Manor, yes,” Harry agreed.  “Lacerta said she wanted it as a wedding present.—What kind of wedding is this, Malfoy?  Neville didn’t even inform me he was getting married.  I’m one of his oldest friends.”

“It’s a private family affair,” Draco explained away.

Harry fought from rolling his eyes.  “I’m involved now—”

“Take it up with Neville Longbottom.  You, however, are taking me to Grimmauld Place and showing me this membership card and any heritage parchment you have.”

Harry ground his teeth.  “Is the heritage parchment actually needed?”

Draco leveled a long look at him.  His message was clear.

“I’m coming, too,” Lacerta informed them.  When Draco tried to refuse her, she asserted, “This is my life.  I’ve had no input in my marriage to Neville Longbottom.  Please don’t do that to me again.”

“Get dressed,” Draco told her.  “Quickly.  Breakfast is in—” (he looked at a clock over the door) “—an hour and a half.  We have that much time before Mother realizes something is happening.”

Lacerta disappeared and was down ten minutes later.  Her hair had been left in its messy braid and she had slipped into house robes.  They used the floo from Draco’s office and arrived in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. 

“We’re going to the attics,” Harry told them.

They climbed the three flights of stairs until they were up in the hot attics and Harry started searching the trunks for his mother’s Hogwarts trunk.  Finally finding it after a good twenty minutes of searching the many trunks that were stored up there, he unlocked it and started taking out her many years’ worth of diaries. 

“How many are there?” Lacerta asked.

“She started keeping a diary as soon as she started performing magic when she was seven,” Harry told her.  “I need her diary from 1980.”  He sifted through the diaries from the early 1970s until he found the right one.  Opening it, he took out two cards.  They were both a deep purple.  The first one read ‘Lily Evans’ in light blue cursive with ‘The Wicked Stepmother’ in white ink opposite it, upside down.  He handed that to Draco and then paused when he took out the second one.  It read ‘Regina Lestrange.’  He then handed it over.

Draco stilled.  “Lestrange?” he asked.

“Yes,” Harry acknowledged.  “Dad thought she was having an affair with Rabastan Lestrange.  The truth was they were brother and sister and were just meeting in secret so Dumbledore and Voldemort wouldn’t find out.”  He held his hand out for the two membership cards.

Lacerta was now inspecting them.  She handed them back and he put them back into the back of the diary before slitting it back into her trunk.  He then opened a false bottom in the top of the trunk and removed a folded hereditary parchment.

“It’s all there.  She was Rodolphus and Rabastan’s much younger half-sister.”

Draco had it stretched out and was examining it.

“There’s Aunt Bellatrix,” Lacerta pointed out.  Yes, she was married to Harry’s Uncle Rodolphus. 

“Well, it’s all there,” Draco agreed.  “You actually sparked?” he checked with his younger sister.

“I swear on my magic, Draco.”  She crossed her heart.

He sighed.  Turning to Draco, he asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

Harry wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for marriage, but he wasn’t going to let Lacerta marry Neville Longbottom the next day.  The idea sickened him. 

Draco leveled a long look at him.  It seemed it was up to Harry.

“We’re going to have a very long engagement so we get to know each other,” he told Draco very seriously.  “I don’t think the answer is to replace one wedding with another.”

“Perhaps not,” Draco agreed a little petulantly.  “We’ll announce it in The Prophet as ‘Harry Lestrange Potter.’  Tell me, Potter, your pureblood mother didn’t actually name you ‘Harry.’”

“Harrogate,” he answered.

“Harrogate Lestrange Potter, then.  I’ll go see Longbottom after breakfast.  You’ll wash up and come over to the Manor for breakfast so we can tell Mother the good news—”

There was a crack and Kreacher appeared.  “Miss Wheazes is here,” he apologized.

“Before breakfast?” Draco demanded. 

Harry sighed.  “She’s always here before breakfast.  It’s why I usually find myself painting somewhere else.”

“Well,” Lacerta said as she got up, ironing the dust off of her robes with her wand.  “I think this is my problem to handle.  Where is she, er—”

“Kreacher,” Harry supplied.

“Kreacher,” she agreed.

“The Tapestry room.”

“Show the way,” she told the house elf and left Harry and Draco in front of the open trunk.

“I’m going to floo out,” Draco said.  “I’m going to leave it up to you if you want to let Lacy be territorial without chaperoning her or if you’d like to watch a Malfoy at work.”  He got up and refolded the heritage potion.  “I’m going to get this verified by the goblins.  We’ll get you tested for form.”  He then picked his way through the trunks.

Harry closed the trunk and sat there for a long moment before leaving the attic and making his way down to the master bedroom.  Not thinking about it, he took out his Invisibility Cloak and put it on.  He then slipped into the Tapestry Room.

“I’m afraid Harrogate is an artist,” Lacerta was now saying, “you’re not going to change that.”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?” Ginny asked, her garish red hair up in a ponytail.

Lacerta just smiled condescendingly.  “I’m Lacerta Malfoy, Harrogate Potter’s fiancée.”

“His name is Harry,” Ginny spat out.

“If you say so,” Lacerta answered, clearly not caring.  “Thank you for those pamphlets on the Auror Department, but as I said, they’re not needed.  If Harrogate hasn’t entered the Auror Training Facility by now, at the age of twenty, he’s not going to.”

“He’s just—” Ginny was clearly looking for an excuse. 

“He’s an artist,” Lacerta told her again patiently and quite firmly.  “Now, I would appreciate if you not floo in before breakfast.  It really is bad form.”

“My brother is Harry’s oldest friend.”

“But are you Harry’s oldest friend?” Lacerta asked prettily.  She waited for Ginny, who looked ashamed.  “I didn’t think so.  You were never even his girlfriend, if memory serves me.  He was seeing that Chaser.  Katie something.”

Everything seemed to be well in hand.

Harry exited to the room and went to go to take a quick shower.

He had to go meet Narcissa Malfoy not as her son’s classmate but as her daughter’s future husband.

The End.