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Building With Worn-Out Tools	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Thanks again for the reviews! This story is so much fun, especially knowing that other people like it. I have a great urge to share this next chapter.

Chapter 11—Conflicting Opinions

            “So what happens next?” Harry asked Malfoy when they met that morning at breakfast.

            For long moments, it didn’t seem as though Malfoy would bother with answering, as he sipped his tea and examined the front page of the Daily Prophet. Then he looked back up with a small smile. “Taking an interest in the trial to deprive your wife of the money she should never have claimed, Potter? How unusual.”

            Harry shrugged and ate a piece of bread with marmalade before he replied. If Malfoy could act arrogant and delay the discussion of important business with his own unimportant gestures, so could he. “We have three days until Judge Witherbone ordered us back in the courtroom. I just wondered how we would fill them.”

            “Striking back at Blaise and your wife, since they have decided to publish those pictures of you that they claim prove you committed adultery,” Malfoy murmured, and pushed the paper across the table.

            Harry steeled himself before he examined the photos. They really weren’t very good, only showing someone who might, possibly, be him in a bad light and if the observer squinted, entering what was obviously another woman’s house. Of course, some people would believe them. Some people would believe anything. But thanks to the spell that connected Judge Witherbone to the wizarding world, this amount of belief might determine the future quality of his life.

            Then Harry snorted. And the inane things that people believed about me before this didn’t determine that? I was miserable at Hogwarts when everyone thought I was a Dark wizard because I’m a Parselmouth, and again in fourth year when they believed I’d cheated to put my name in the Goblet of Fire. This is a familiar tactic. I’ll live.

            He handed the paper back to Malfoy, and said, “All right. What do you suggest for a strike at them?”

            Malfoy spent some moments studying him. Perhaps he had expected a stronger reaction. Harry was determined not to give him one. He owed Malfoy a debt, but that was different from letting the ponce control his every action. He ate while he waited, never looking away from the gray eyes that wanted to pierce his.

            Finally, Malfoy gave a little nod, as though Harry had passed some indefinable test, and said, “They’re trying to undermine your reputation. It would work best if we could remind everyone of just what your reputation is. I can arrange a press conference; I know—“ a light smile flitted across his face “—some of the more prominent journalists in our fair community. I want you to agree to speak there about your defeat of the Dark Lord.”

            Harry blinked. “You think that’ll work? I’ve done that often enough since I killed him. It’s old news by now.”

            “Then speak about some things that you’ve never said before.” Malfoy leaned across the table, intently. “Details about the final battle. Ones that will make people remember just what they owe you.”

            “Still.” Harry waved a hand as he crunched through his toast, and watched Malfoy’s lips tighten in enjoyment. I don’t have to keep up my table manners just for a prig like him. “Not everyone you might know in the newspapers will be interested in covering that, I’m certain.”

            “It’s old news to you, because you haven’t tried to play it up,” Malfoy snapped. “Trust me, Potter, five years is not enough to make everyone forget that you saved their skins. They can ignore it, but that will be difficult if you make it a story of humanity, courage, and heroism.”

            “You mean, the way I’ve always refused to do before now because I don’t want to play up just my own involvement?” Harry put the toast on the table and regarded Malfoy evenly.

            Oblivious to the danger in his voice, Malfoy nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

            “Just because I’m threshing this case out with Ginny doesn’t mean I’m willing to abandon all my principles,” said Harry, and tried to control his temper on instinct. Then he remembered that Malfoy had said he could get angry, and took a certain grim amusement in showing the git just what consequences his own advice had. He leaned forwards himself, until only a few inches separated them, and the air sparked and tingled, his magic building mild effects between them. “I didn’t defeat him alone. And I didn’t whore myself on cameras all over Britain when the battle was done, because I wanted people to remember that it took more than just my effort.”

            Malfoy snorted rudely. “Who’s asking you to whore yourself on cameras? Speak the truth. That should be enough.”

            “I’m not the most eloquent speaker alive,” Harry pointed out. “Why would it be enough?”

            “In a press conference?” Malfoy produced a glittering smile. “It’s a public venue that has certain advantages over a letter. It brings you face-to-face with the reporters. Some of them will be awed enough that they’re meeting a hero, someone who can bring home his deeds to them. And others—well, that aura of magic you carry about you is useful in more than one way, Potter.”

            Harry frowned. “I don’t understand.”

            “Powerful wizards can—inspire—others.” Malfoy seemed to pick his words carefully. “Power is, literally, attractive. It’s one reason that the Dark Lord made so many of his followers look past the insanity of his plans. With magic that strong, they still thought he might do something grand, and they could benefit. Dumbledore had something of the same effect, though he used his magic for the greater good, of course.” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Magic enthralls us, bedazzles us, if we aren’t careful and if it’s concentrated enough. I don’t think anyone will be careful around you, because they don’t know that you have this kind of power in your pocket. So you bedazzle the reporters, and they’ll write bedazzling things about you. That works well enough, I think.”

            Harry paused for a long moment. Some things made a lot of sense, now. He chuckled.

            Malfoy frowned at him. “What?”

            Harry waved a hand. “Nothing.” He felt a kind of dizzy relief flowing through him, though. At least now he knew why Malfoy had pounced on him as if Harry had hung a sign saying AVAILABLE TO GAY MEN around his neck. The magic had attracted and confused him. Well, as they spent time together, he would probably become used to the effect and back off. Good. Harry didn’t want to deal with Malfoy stalking him on top of everything else.

            “It is, Potter,” Malfoy said. “You looked at me and smiled. What is going through that head of yours?”

            “Nothing, I said,” Harry replied innocently, and changed the subject. “Where should we hold this press conference? And how long will it take you to arrange it?”

            “About two days,” Malfoy said, his eyes still narrow. “We’ll hold it in Diagon Alley, where we can attract a crowd. And you’ll speak about your experiences in the war? No holding back the way you’ve done in the past, out of fear of corrupting the poor innocents or stealing someone’s glory?”

            “Of course not,” Harry said. “Since I plan to invite someone else to speak with me.”

            “Not one of the Weasleys.”

            “Hermione. She’s only a Weasley by marriage, and she’s the one who advised me to contact you in the first place.”

            Malfoy let out a little growl at that, though Harry wasn’t sure if he felt insulted that a Muggleborn witch had recommended him, or about something else. “What will that accomplish? I know how she can talk. She’ll steal the spotlight from you, and that’s not what we want.”

            “No, she’ll speak about her own experiences effectively,” Harry said. “And this should show that I’m generous and compassionate in the eyes of the press, especially generous about sharing my victory. It will make it that much harder for Ginny and Zabini to imply that I’m just showing off because I like the attention.”

            “What makes you think that would be their next tactic?” Malfoy asked, though not as if he disagreed.

            Harry chuckled, and tried not to let it sound bitter. “I’ve lived through this before, remember? Once courtesy of you.” He cocked his head at him, remembering how the man had given Rita Skeeter false information about him in their fourth year. “Of course they’ll try to turn anything good I do to their own advantage, and the Daily Prophet’s favorite accusation has always been that I’m an attention-seeker. They’ll go back to it, I have no doubt. In the meantime, I might as well try to control what they do to me as much as I can, since I can’t avoid the publicity.”

            “All right,” Malfoy said. “Granger. But absolutely no one else.”



            Harry didn’t bother to correct him about Hermione’s last name. He just nodded, and stood to escape the table.

            “Potter. A question.”

            Simple curiosity seemed to animate Malfoy’s tone, so Harry turned back and waited for him to speak.

            “Why haven’t you used your power for anything?” Malfoy leaned forwards. “I’m not talking about anger, now, or why you didn’t become an Auror. I’m talking about the sheer power that you carry around with you: your reputation, your magic, and your money. You could have done anything. Why haven’t you done it?”

            “What am I supposed to have done?” Harry asked back.

            Malfoy blinked. Then he said, “Anything. You could have done anything. Run for high office in the Ministry, even the Minister himself in a few years. Established a business selling whatever you wanted to. Donated money to some cause and built up the cause into a political one. Punished your enemies and all the people who have annoyed you throughout your life.”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself. “I think you’re thinking of what you would do with this power,” he said. “I don’t have your kind of ambition.”

            “But power wasn’t just meant to sit around unused.”



“Maybe not in your universe,” Harry retorted, and left to go back to his legal books before they could get into an argument.

*

Draco was relieved to find that it didn’t take even two days to get the journalists he knew to assemble for a conference. The notion that Harry Potter was going to speak about his war experience, something he hadn’t done willingly since the days when the Ministry still forced him to attend public functions, brought them swarming like hungry sharks. If either Blaise or Weasley tried to owl in the next few days with more pictures of Potter supposedly doing illegal things, Draco thought, they would be lucky to catch anyone in an office.

They met in Diagon Alley, in front of Madam Malkin’s; she was happy to accept it, since she knew increased business would spill into her shop afterwards. There were some people who were simply in the mood to buy anything, even new dress robes, after an exhibition like this.

Especially when it was Harry Potter.

            Draco might have hated and resented the power of that name at school, but he had learned to appreciate it since—better than the owner of the name did himself, he felt certain. Potter was still a symbol, and one entirely of hope, now that he had brought down the Dark Lord. Vague but persistent rumors circulated that he was the most powerful wizard now living, or at least the most powerful wizard in Britain, and that the Ministry had engaged him to work on a number of secret projects next to which the Unspeakables were doing nothing special. There would be a crowd.

            There was, nearly six hundred people. Draco could see the unnerved expression on Potter’s face when they Apparated in behind the hastily constructed stage, which occupied the wall between Madam Malkin’s and the shop next to it. Swaying curtains concealed their presence from the crowd, for the moment.

            “This is insane,” Potter breathed, one hand rising to rub at his forehead as if he might scrub off the scar that had brought all the attention.

            “You have to do this right,” said Draco, taking his arm and turning him around. “Will you do it or not?”

            Potter looked faintly sick for a moment. Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stood straighter.

            “I always do what I have to do, Malfoy,” he said, opening his eyes.

            His magic emerged as if from hiding and danced around him. Draco smiled in spite of himself, and nodded towards the stage.

            “I’m not the one you have to impress,” he said.

            Granger appeared before Potter could respond, and took Potter aside to fuss at him and hug him and probably talk about the divorce case. Draco didn’t mind. He had done the work arranging the conference. He would loiter in the background, for now, and watch Potter pull it off—successfully, he hoped. He couldn’t do everything for the git.

            He was, however, looking forwards to what might happen.

*

            “I’m glad I have a chance to talk to you, Harry.” Hermione’s hands clenched around his arm like steel bands. “Do you really want to do this, or is he forcing you to do it?”

            “Hermione.” Harry glared at her and tried to tug free, but apparently she didn’t agree that every person should have two arms. He sighed and shook his head. “He suggested the tactic, but I agreed to do it. I was the one who insisted on your being here, though. I think it’s the best way to counter the accusations of attention-seeking that Ginny’s sure to bring up next.”

            Hermione bit her lip and eyed him the way she had the day she told him about the distribution of the Weasley family members for and against him. “And you’re committed to hurting her?” she asked.

            “Not you, too,” said Harry. “For God’s sake, Ron accosts me twice, Ginny yells at me in the courtroom, the twins attack me with Dungbombs, and then attack Draco in the middle of the Alley—yes, I’m committed. I won’t do what she wants, and that means that I have to do what she doesn’t want.”

            Hermione bowed her head and nodded a little. Her cheeks flushed. Harry blinked, then grew suspicious.

            “Hermione Weasley-Granger,” he said. “That’s what you look like when you’re hiding a smile.”

            “I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” she said, lifting her head and letting the smile out. “But you look alive again, Harry. I just—I hated to see you look so despondent these past few years, as if you’d convinced yourself being dead was better than being angry.” And she flung her arms around him with unexpected force.

            Harry hugged her back tentatively. Even Ron had proven disappointing in his support for Ginny. He could barely believe he had support of any kind from Hermione.

            But he did, and by the time she slipped out onto the stage to speak first, about the part she had played in the Horcrux hunt—without alluding directly to the Horcruxes, of course—he had finally begun to believe it. He suspected he had the stupidest smile on his face as he stared at the closed curtains, but Malfoy had joined the crowd in the front by then, and there was no one to tell him it was stupid.

*

            Draco tested the strength of the wards around the crowd, and relaxed when a fat spark fell from his wand. Good. There was a real danger, during any large public event in Diagon Alley, that the Weasley twins would try to disrupt it. The wards Draco had set were keyed to keep anyone with blood ties to the Weasley family away.

            He didn’t care if some of them were friendly to Potter. When matters came down to the line, they would choose blood over friendship. It was the way nearly every pureblood family known to Draco functioned.

            Granger spoke first, of course, and was a boor, with her constant references to applying knowledge and research in ways that no one else could understand. She gave a lecture on the importance of education that probably would have made even the most dedicated reporters drift away if it were more than seven minutes long. Luckily, she had agreed to a time limit, and she quickly bowed and got off the stage.

            Potter stepped out from behind the curtains.

            Draco snapped straight, and could feel dozens of others throughout the crowd echoing the motion. The pulse of Potter’s magic was audible, visible, and tangible on the other senses even from here. He’d relaxed some of the strict control he kept himself under, Draco guessed, and the effect of that was to nail every eye to him.

            Draco licked his lips. Yes, he was definitely attracted to the power in Potter.

            For a moment, Potter stood still, surveying his audience, gauging their mood and making sure he had their attention. That was a move Draco had advised him to use, but it seemed so natural that Draco didn’t recognize it until the moment Potter nodded and began his narration.

            “I’m sure that most of you know about the original incident with the Killing Curse that frustrated Voldemort and drove him into hiding for ten years. With respect, then, I won’t waste your time with that. You came to hear a new tale, one I’ve never told before.

            “Here it is.”

            Draco raised one eyebrow, impressed. He would have added flourishes to the speech and used prettier words, but Potter didn’t need to. His aura made every word he said seem important, and that suited his plain style best.

            “I had to fight for nearly a year before I was ready to kill him,” Potter said. “My friend Hermione Weasley-Granger told you something about that. And then we met in the midst of the final battle, which was held on Hogwarts’ grounds.”

            A tingle gathered at the base of Draco’s spine, causing him to feel as if he rode a phoenix. I didn’t know he would tell this one.

The people around him were likewise making soft, interested noises. Potter had only told this tale in broad outline, not revealing it in detail to anyone except those who already knew it, by virtue of being with him.

“The battle lasted forty hours.” Potter gave his hair a subtle toss, shifting it to the side so that his lightning bolt scar shone clear and unblemished. “Three of those were direct combat against him.

“I had—taken steps to render most of the more arcane protections he had useless. But that didn’t lessen the effectiveness of his magic. He hit me so hard that the ground trembled, the grass turned to mud beneath my feet, and more than once I entered memories that weren’t mine, but the dying ones of his victims. I know what it’s like, now, to have my tongue torn out, my limbs removed one at a time to ease his anger at some minor offense, my blood turn to boiling lead in my veins.”

No wonder he has nightmares.

Potter lowered his head a bit, as if he couldn’t stand to look them in the eye while he spoke the next words, but his voice was still clear. “There’s no answer for agony like that, except to do the best you can to combat the source of it. I fought through it because I had to. I had a clearly defined goal. Kill him, and his magic would have to stop. Kill him, and he couldn’t hurt anyone else. I couldn’t have thought beyond the end of the battle, or I would have gone mad.

“On and on. I was on the defensive most of the time, but I wore him down, and I kept his attention focused on me.” Potter gave a faint smile. “He always did care too much about what I did. That was his greatest weakness, I think.

“Finally, I knew I had to move. If I waited, I would be too tired to do as I needed to do.

“I summoned all my strength, called it from every part of my body, so that if my strike failed, there was a good chance I would die with it. I could feel my heart slowing. I remember that my fingers and toes went numb, because heat was draining from them into my magical core.

“I let it all fly up the end of my wand, and into him.

“The light—it came out as light—reminded me of a star being born. I was just the conduit for this amazing pulse of energy. Now I think I know what lightning feels like when it hits the ground. Just like my hours of fighting him, of fighting through those memories, it went on and on. I couldn’t think. My attempt to put words around it now—“ Potter waved a vague hand. “They don’t work. I literally thought nothing, the one time in my life that’s been true.”

Draco watched, entranced. He could see it clearly in his mind, he found, more clearly than he had when reading the newspaper stories about the final battle.

“When I opened my eyes, I was facedown in the mud. I thought he must be dead, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been alive, but I didn’t know for certain, and I had to know. I rolled over.

“And there he was.” Potter’s voice lowered and slowed. “Just this ordinary-looking figure in a black cloak. And—that was all. That was it. I was free.”

A pause. Draco suspected the reporters wanted to ask questions, but they would need a moment to digest the fascination and frame their wonder into coherent words.

And suddenly Potter’s voice soared. Draco whipped his head up to see Potter leaning forwards, the magic around him reaching out to his audience. The hair of everyone in sight lifted straight up. A high, keen, wild singing entered Draco’s ears.

“I was free,” Potter repeated. “But not everyone was. And Voldemort and the Death Eaters aren’t the only evil in the world. And you can’t get rid of every evil in the world by killing it.

“Remember that. Please. My work is done, the work some people say this scar on my head fated me to do, but everyone else’s work isn’t. You have to keep pushing, and you have to live with and fight against evil you can’t just pull a wand on.” Potter gave them all a humorless smile. “In a way, I was lucky. My enemy had a name and a face. Most of yours won’t.

“But we have to remember that our world needs everyone who will fight for it. They need everyone with the ability and the drive to make a difference—and if you have the drive, most of the time you’ll find you have the ability already. If you take one thing from my story, I hope you take that.”

“Thank you.”

And Potter, very dramatically, Disapparated from the stage in the next moment.

Shouted questions immediately began to rise. Granger, probably by arrangement, stepped out from behind the curtains again and began to answer them. Draco had no fear she would say something wrong. She’d worked for an unpopular cause—trying to get greater rights for house-elves—for five years. She’d faced harder audiences than this.

He removed the wards he’d cast and then Apparated back to the Manor, because he knew Potter would have gone there, or as close as he could approach. His blood still carried that tingle, and his ears were filled with the last echoes of Potter’s words.

He had a few things he needed to say to Harry bloody Potter.

*

Harry’s hands were shaking.

He had actually called Seeky and asked for a glass of wine, and now he sat on the bed in the room Malfoy had given him, sipping it and staring at the far wall. The memories of what he’d said that morning didn’t quite seem to belong to him. They’d come on him and passed through him like thunder, like—like the spell he’d cast to kill Voldemort.

Good, Harry thought darkly, and sipped again at the wine. Then I don’t have to take responsibility for them.

Malfoy opened the door without knocking, as usual. Luckily, Harry half-expected him. He nodded. “Did it go well?”

“Of course it went well.” Malfoy let the door fall shut behind him with an oddly solid bang. “You idiot.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

Malfoy stalked a few steps closer. His eyes were narrow, his face intense—just as it had been, Harry thought with sudden unease, that night in the library. He stood and put the wineglass on the table next to the bed. He didn’t know why, but he thought it might be a good idea to be free to move and reach for his wand.

“You’re an idiot,” said Malfoy, savoring each word. “I’m done, you said, as if you really were. Do you really believe what you said there, Potter? Then you’re a hypocrite as well as an idiot. What makes you think that you’re excused all the work you talked so grandly about? What lets you retire from the world?”

Harry felt his anger surge up around him, and his magic promptly began to orbit his head lazily, in a net of light. “I did my part,” he snapped. “I don’t think anyone would say I wasn’t entitled to a rest. And I can’t be of any use now.”

“Bollocks.” Malfoy stalked several steps towards him, then stopped, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Of course you can have a rest. And if you think that you can’t be of any more use, then you’re deaf and blind to what you did this morning. That was just a little speech, conducted because of this divorce case. Imagine what you could do with months of planning and preparation, Potter, and your own money and power backing your reputation.”

“I told you, I don’t have that kind of ambition,” Harry said between grinding teeth.

            “But you should, if you believe in your little speech.” More long steps; Malfoy was only about a foot away now. “The world needs anyone who can do good? Then it needs you to get off your arse and do something. Do good; don’t do dirty politics if you don’t want them. But I think it’s a waste of something more than power for you to remain as you are.”

            Harry shook his head several times in quick succession. “My anger—“

            “Is lessening now, or you could never have done what you did with that magic.”

            “No one needs—“

            “Maybe they don’t need you in the purest sense of the word. But they’d follow you.”

            “I don’t want—“

            “Oh, that’s bollocks too, Potter. You come alive when you’re angry. You’ve just never become enough of an adult to use your name for your own ends. But you have the ability. That makes you a hypocrite.”

            Harry picked up the wineglass, swung around, and launched it at Malfoy.

            Malfoy didn’t flinch. The glass sailed past him and splintered into several pieces on the wall near the door, spraying wine at the same time. Malfoy gave Harry a slow smile. His eyes burned with obvious excitement.

            “Oh, yes, fight me,” Malfoy said softly. “I like that.” And he turned away and walked out the door, ignoring both the broken glass and the squeaking house-elf who appeared just then to clean it up.

            Harry collapsed back against the bed with a long hiss, his adrenaline pumping. He’d been a few heartbeats away from rushing Malfoy and tackling him to the floor, or at least slamming him into the wall.

            This is getting out of hand.

            Especially since it was likely only residual attraction from the magic at the press conference that had made Malfoy act the way he did.

            Harry stood up with a little shake of his head. He had a new project for the day after tomorrow, when they went back to the courtroom: find a new place to live. He couldn’t stay in Malfoy Manor anymore.

            The immediate project was to take a shower, since his own body was no more interested in correct times to get aroused than Malfoy’s was.

*

            Missy Padfoot: Sorry, but your e-mail doesn’t appear to work. My e-mail keeps bouncing.

            Donavon: As far as Harry’s concerned, this whole thing was too soon, and Malfoy is crazy and does not really want him.

            Dezra: Life is not going to be easy for Ron, especially since Hermione supports Harry.

            Mangacat, Soria, _crimson_: Sorry, but I didn’t see your e-mails, either.
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Building With Worn-Out Tools

Chapter 11—Conflicting Opinions