Harry Potter :The Chronicles of Black

Harry grimaced. "Divination and Care of Magical Creatures, both of which I was going to drop as useless subjects this year. I regret taking them both now and, in hindsight, I wish I had taken Arithmancy and Ancient Runes from the beginning. I have so much to catch up on, but Draco is helping me too."

"I was looking forward to Care of Magical Creatures." Draco put in.

"I was as well." Harry sighed. "Unfortunately, Hagrid's idea of a magical creature doesn't fall below four X's on the Ministry's classification guide, which would be brilliant if not for the lack of direction and safety. Those Blast-Ended Skrewts were particularly dangerous and disgusting."

"I'm telling you he bred those things himself. There is no way that the Ministry's Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures department would have allowed those beasts out to the public." Harry chuckled. "You just didn't know how to handle them!" He insisted in an imitation of Hagrid.

"Funny, I seem to remember you being dragged around on your belly in one particular class. Leashing those monsters and having to walk them like they were mere crups!" Draco huffed indignantly.

Harry couldn't help it as he threw his head back and laughed. "Do you remember the lesson where one of them set Crabbe on fire?"

It was Draco's turn to snort in laughter. "I couldn't forget it, I share a dorm room with him, he was blistered all along his one side, including his face."

"Did it make much of an improvement?" Harry inquired in his best innocent tone of voice.

"Boys, calm yourselves." Lucius cautioned them. "Oh, let the boys talk, it's entertaining." Xerxes waved away. "No one cares for those Crabbes; Vincent was matched to a thirty-year-old witch from Slovenia. Her blood is questionable as they claim she was born of her father's pureblooded wife who died in 'childbirth', but there are rumours that she's the daughter of her father's muggle bit on the side and that he killed his wife himself to stop her from telling the truth about his halfblooded wench."

"Wouldn't a blood test clear that up?" Harry questioned politely.

"It would clear it up perfectly, but adding fire to the rumours, he refuses to produce definitive proof that his daughter had pure blood and hides behind a wall of indignant anger that anyone would dare ask about his daughter's blood purity or dare call him a liar. I refused a contract between her and Rabastan immediately and answered back that I was insulted that he even considered his halfblooded bitch to be a worthy match of my Rabastan."

Harry chuckled politely, but he had to wonder what Xerxes thought he was, because Harry was actually a halfblood, even if he had been legitimised. Was the Lestrange family actually that desperate for a match for Rabastan? Draco had told him that the four men currently in this room were the last of their line and that even the far-out branches of their once large and illustrious tree had thinned and then dwindled to nothing until the four men in this room were the last of their line. Rodolphus was married to Bellatrix who would not be producing an heir for the Lestrange line and the only other option to carry on the family was Rabastan, who was not a good catch at the moment because he was an escaped felon and he was ruined by a decade and a half in Azkaban.

Harry didn't care for such physical aesthetics; he knew that given some time and a lot of decent meals and certain potions then Rabastan and Rodolphus would be perfectly healthy, handsome men once again. They'd always be mentally scarred from their fifteen-year stint in Azkaban, locked in with the Dementors, but the physical damage that had been done by the prison and the lack of truly nutritious food would be healed over time.

They were served tea and tiny, dainty little cakes an hour later at Lucius' command to a house-elf; neither Rodolphus nor Rabastan touched the food and Harry wondered why. Surely such a little cake would help them, or at least wouldn't hurt them.

"We're on strict diets." Rodolphus told him when Harry had politely inquired. "To help us gain the maximum weight in as little time as possible we have to stick to a strict regime of food and potions to help us combat the damage that Azkaban has done. Even something as small as those cakes would throw us off of a seven-month plan and could do us more harm than good. We need to stick to our scheduled eating times and our specially tailored meal plans or we might be forced to go back to square one and start all over again."

"Do not mention such things to your brother's potential suitor!" Rhadamanthus hissed.

Harry could hold back the chuckle. "It's not as if we can't all see the ramifications of their fifteen years in Azkaban. Why shouldn't it be mentioned?"

"Harry!" Lucius growled at him and Harry closed himself off immediately.

He resettled himself, straightened his spine, pulled his shoulders back and adjusted his chin to sit at a ninety-degree angle. He looked straight ahead and kept an empty, vapid smile on his face as his hands curled together in his lap. "No, he's right. It's obvious that we've both been in Azkaban, look at us! We're hardly the picture of virile health and with our uncontrollable twitches, it's not like we can hide it. Rabastan almost crushed Lord Potter-Black's hand!" Rodolphus spat at his father.

A soft touch to said hand had Harry curiously peeking, he couldn't help it as his curiosity won out over a potential hex to the head for dropping his chin, but he found Rabastan's hand touching his own, not gripping it like he had when Harry had led him to the settee, but his shaky fingers brushed over the top of his hand gently as he cradled it in his hand.

Harry smiled and put his other hand over the top of Rabastan's holding it tight.

"I think we can leave it here for today." Lucius said. "The both of them seem to be receptive to one another and that's really all the first meeting looks for between the betrothed." Xerxes Lestrange agreed with Lucius and Harry said a soft goodbye to Rabastan, honestly sorry to see him go. They hadn't interacted much, but there was a smothered vulnerability to the youngest Lestrange that Harry couldn't help but notice and it made him want to protect the older man and nurse him back to health. He hoped that he got to see more of Rabastan before he had to go back to Hogwarts; he had genuinely enjoyed his company.

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