Harry rolled his eyes and stood up from his chair and went to hug Rabastan.
"I came to ask if you wanted to take a walk with me in the garden. I asked Rodolphus to chaperone us because he's the least invasive and the least intruding."
Harry smiled. "I'd like that. Just…no more flowers, okay?" He said with a grimace, referring to the walk in the gardens that they'd taken when they were newly betrothed and before Harry had gone to Hogwarts for his sixth year where Rabastan had plucked a flower from a bush and handed it to him. "I'm just really not a flower guy."
Rabastan chuckled. "Alright. No more flowers. I'm not much of a flower guy either."
The two of them walked hand in hand down the corridor, Rodolphus following after them like a looming, solid shadow. "Can you try to be a little less menacing?" Harry turned to ask him as the hair on the back of his neck continued to prickle uncomfortably. "We're just going for a walk in the twilit garden. We're hardly going to start rolling around in the rose bushes. Too many thorns."
Rabastan laughed, but Rodolphus' scowl only deepened, making his skeletal face look even more sinister.
"It isn't funny." He declared sharply. "There is ancient tradition to uphold here. A contract that has strict guidelines to follow. I will not let you ruin my brother. I won't let you hurt him."
Harry sighed and he let go of Rabastan's hand. He went right up to Rodolphus and stood in front of that skeletal thin, impossibly tall man and looked at him seriously, dead in the eye without flinching or cringing back. Lucius had taught him the importance of eye contact and Narcissa had taught him the importance of a straight back. "Believe it or not, Rodolphus, I have absolutely no intentions of ever hurting Rabastan or ruining him. I'm trying my best to help him! It might be hard for you to believe, but I do love him and I will not let him go and I won't allow anyone to tell me otherwise. I was adopted by the Malfoys, yes, but only because I'm underaged, I am still Lord Potter and Lord Black. I am still my own man and I can make my own decisions if I feel I have to. I love Rabastan and nothing is going to stand in our way because I will not let it! The only person who can destroy this betrothal is Rabastan himself."
"Good." Was all Rodolphus grunted, but Harry got the distinct impression that he'd passed some sort of big brother test as Rodolphus looked much happier and his stance relaxed a fraction.
Harry went back to Rabastan and slipped his hand back into the older man's. They carried on their way to the garden and Harry no longer felt the sensation of a glare boring into the back of his head, so he was a lot more comfortable.
"He's just worried." Rabastan whispered as they started their walk around the garden, Rodolphus falling a few feet behind them to give them the illusion of privacy while still keeping them in his sights.
"I know. It's wonderful that he loves you so much and that he's so protective of you. I just wish he'd realise that I'm not the enemy here. I meant what I said, I don't want to ever hurt you."
"Yet I'm the one who can't stop hurting you." Rabastan said with a growl of frustration.
In the scant few days since he'd arrived home from Hogwarts Harry had had more minor injuries than he had actually had meals. Rabastan had bruised his ribs, had elbowed him in the side of his head, given him a black eye, split his lip, knocked him down the stairs, kicked his shin twice, yanked some of his hair out when he'd had a spasm when running his fingers through it, dug his nails into his elbow, and dropped a heavy jug of water onto his left hand. Harry had ignored it all as best as he could while Narcissa had applied a bruise salve for him and healed his minor cuts with a deft wave of her wand.
Rhadamanthus found it all incredibly entertaining and never failed to remind Rabastan of how utterly useless and inept he was at every opportunity. Which seriously wasn't helping Rabastan's confidence at all and caused even more instances of spasms and muscle-locking as the thirty-seven-year-old tried too hard to control himself and put more strain on his recovering body, which then caused his muscles to twitch and to move out of his control even more frequently. Rhadamanthus was undoing all of Harry's calm and patient care methodically and with a practised ease that spoke volumes of how much he had given time and thought to the best ways possible to ruin his own son.
"You should see my list of Quidditch injuries if you think that the few whacks you've given me are anything." Harry said, letting go of Rabastan's hand to link his arm through Rabastan's and reaching down to link their hands back together.
"Please, don't joke about it, Harry."
"You've got to give yourself time to recover." Harry told him patiently. "You can't expect a miracle recovery to happen overnight and you need to realise that I understand that and I did before we'd even met for the first time. I believe in you. I know that you can get better, but you have to let go of all the small lapses you have had and will have in the weeks and months to come. Your recovery was never going to happen overnight, we both know that, Rabastan. It's going to take months, if not years of help and specialised care to get you back to health and fitness."
"I know that." Rabastan snapped angrily. "But when I see Rodolphus doing so well, I…"
"Rodolphus is a different man to you." Harry interrupted sternly. "You are not Rodolphus, you are not your brother and you need to stop comparing your own recovery to his. You were younger than he was when you first went to that place and the younger you are the worse the effects the Dementors have on your mental health and overall wellbeing. Rodolphus is doing so well because he is a different person to you. This doesn't mean that you are not as strong as he is." Harry added softly. "It just means that you were both affected differently and he is having an easier time overcoming what happened to him. He still twitches, he still has stiff, aching muscles and joints, just like you do. He dropped a glass of water just this morning because his hand spasmed and he lost his grip. The difference between him and you is not how strong or weak either of you are, it is that he can let those small instances go. He knows that they're going to happen and he accepts that and when they do happen, he lets them go, Rabastan. You need to learn to do the same."
"I don't know how."
"Then sit down and talk to Rodolphus and ask him how he does it." Harry replied, not giving up in the face of Rabastan's pessimism. "I can let it all go when you accidentally injure me because I know, and I accept, that you can't help it, that you can't control what your body is doing. For me, as long as you never hurt me purposefully, I can let go of being injured by accident."
"But you wouldn't be injured at all if you weren't betrothed to me in the first place! If you were with a man that wasn't ruined by Azkaban then you'd be safer, you wouldn't have to worry about being hurt just from sitting next to me. You could be happier with another man, a whole man who hasn't ever been to Azkaban."
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