Choices of the Heart

Chapter 7

Kreacher had cooked steak and roasted potatoes with gravy and peas for dinner. There was a lovely rhubarb crumble just out of the oven for later. Harry sat at the table across from Draco feeling amazingly content, in spite of the questions about the wands. He was starting to realise that he enjoyed Malfoy's company now that they were not on opposite sides of a life-and-death struggle. Malfoy had certainly made him laugh these last two days, both on purpose and unintentionally, and that had been a wonderful release after all the harrowing months of tense conflict he'd been through. And discussing things like wands with Malfoy was stimulating and interesting.

"Merwyn," said Draco, breaking into Harry's thoughts.

"What?" said Harry, having not the slightest idea what Malfoy was talking about.

"Merwyn," repeated Draco. "That's what you should name your new owl."

"Oh," said Harry, cutting his steak. Merwyn, he repeated to himself. It had a nice ring to it. In fact it had an oddly familiar ring to it that Harry couldn't immediately place. Merwyn. And then it hit him. "Wait a minute," he said. "There was a Merwyn on a Famous Wizards card. I remember because I had four or five of him when I was collecting them. Merwyn the Malicious. Medieval wizard who invented a lot of nasty curses and jinxes. Very funny, Malfoy. I'm not naming my owl after someone like that."

"I thought it would be perfectly fitting," said Draco holding up his finger for Harry to see. Harry could barely discern the tiny scratch on it from where the owl had bitten him.

"He's not much good at biting, if that's all the damage he did," said Harry with a chuckle. Then he had a sudden inspiration. "Maybe I should name him after people we want to remember. People who died in the war." He paused. Draco was taking a bite of steak and looking at him expectantly. "Maybe something like... Albus Severus."

Draco choked on his steak. "You can't be serious," he said, when he'd finished coughing.

"Hey, that's an idea," said Harry, grinning. "Sirius."

"Oh, please," said Draco, with a groan. "But that's more like it, actually. The Blacks always named their owls after ancient wizards, or stars or constellations."

"Not just their owls..." said Harry, pointedly.

"Shut up," said Draco. "My great-uncle Orion's owl was named after the ancient Norse wizard..."

"Thor," said Harry. "Yeah, Kreacher told me." He might consider a name like that. "So give me some suggestions, Malfoy," he said. "Serious ones. No more Merwyn the Malicious."

Draco glared at him for half a second and then rolled his eyes. "Okay," he said. "I was studying the tapestry upstairs and there are several constellation names that the family haven't used. I'm assuming you would want something new?" At Harry's nod of agreement, he continued. "All right, then, just off the top of my head, there's Aries, Hercules, Leo, Perseus, Scorpius..."

Harry snorted into his teacup. "I can't imagine naming an owl Scorpius," he said. "Some of the others, maybe... What else have you got?"

"Well, in my opinion, all the good star names have already been used, but there's Altair, or Rigil, or Aldebaran."

"No," said Harry, although Rigil wasn't terrible. "And the ancient wizards?"

Draco pulled a face. "The only ancient Norse wizard names I can think of are Odin and Loki. And if you didn't want to name your owl after Merwyn the Malicious, you don't want to name him after Loki either," he said. He paused for a second, thinking. "There's always the ancient Greek and Roman wizards." Then he snapped his fingers. "I think there was an old text book on Ancient Wizard History up in Regulus's room. I saw it when we were talking up there. That might give you some ideas."