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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54573 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eleven—The Lord Defending His Vassals

            There was too much light, too much sound.

            Pansy stumbled back with her hands over her ears, her eyes fixed on the spectacle in front of her. She knew Potter had leaped, but she didn’t understand how or why. There was a cocoon of silver light around him now—Shield Charms, Pansy thought. But she had never seen so many of them cast all at once, and she did wonder why he had to cast more than one. It wasn’t like enemies were coming from all sides.

            Then something caught her eye. She saw a crack in the floor of the Great Hall, near Potter’s foot. It was a smoking crack, and it definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago. Pansy tried to trace the path, and her eyes fell on a burning rafter directly over her head. Someone else put out the flame with a jet of water. Pansy wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She could see the way a curse might have bounced from that rafter and down towards her. If Potter hadn’t got in the way first with his Shield Charms and his whirling curtain of energy, of course.

            She felt a little ill.

            Then Blaise was hauling at her arm. He wanted them to go towards the walls, Pansy saw with a glance. That would keep them safe beyond the first row of shouting people. It also might enable Potter to do what he had to do, defending them, without getting in his way.

            But when Pansy tried to move, a bolt of warmth shot up her shield mark. It didn’t feel like the almost approving warmth she’d got when she confronted Blaise in the hospital wing. It felt as though someone was shooting her full of burning pellets, instead.

            She stood in the same place, and both shook her head at Blaise and shook his hand off her arm. Then she turned her head to find Potter, wondering what she could do that the bond wanted her there for.

            Perhaps nothing but watching. It certainly seemed, as a close circle of blazing light surrounded Potter, that Pansy and Blaise would be able to do nothing to aid him.

            But they could be here. They could prevent themselves from getting in worse danger, or slinking away and worrying Potter later. Pansy folded her arms and held her head high.

            She wasn’t that experienced in battle; she had trouble telling who Potter was dueling in the close crowd of people that surrounded him. It didn’t matter. She could stand there and lend her eyes and the weight of her presence, and no one would be able to say later that Lord Potter’s Slytherin vassals were cowards.

            Her arm heated softly. Pansy blinked a little. Those thoughts were unlike her, were almost Gryffindor, and she recognized them as part of the bond.

            But she had been upset sometimes in the past when people called her a coward for preferring the practical way out. And she wanted to make a good impression on other people. She might not value the same things they did, but she wanted to look like she did.

            Maybe making that good impression was worth taking a few risks, along the way. Maybe the bond spoke to part of her that had already existed.

            Pansy lifted her chin, and watched.

*

            Harry felt as though he was fighting in the midst of a great clarity, as though sharpness of senses and quickness of reaction and richness of thought was another of the bond’s gifts to him.

            Who knew, maybe it was? This was the first time he had fought against someone on behalf of his vassals, after all, as opposed to against one of his vassals.

            He had blocked that first curse, and sought out the young man who’d sent it. He had sort of a familiar face, but he was too old to be a Hogwarts student.

            On the other hand, Harry thought, he could be the family member of one. Maybe one of the students that Parkinson had tortured on the Carrows’ orders.

            Harry set up Shield Charms, a blur of Shield Charms, all around him and in all directions, so that no one could get through them and cast more curses at Parkinson and Zabini. He discovered that his teeth were clenched as he worked, his hand tight around his wand. His holly wand, back the way it should be. He’d been able to use the Elder Wand for that much, at least.

            This was stupid. What did the people who wanted to hurl curses at the Slytherins think would happen? That it would be fine to answer violence with violence, that no one should ever have a trial, that everyone should just be condemned or put to death right away without asking what they’d done and what they deserved? If someone from Parkinson’s family came and cursed them later, continuing the cycle of vengeance, they’d probably cry foul, but what made what they were doing any better?

            That curse would have killed Parkinson. And that was totally all right with the person who’d cast it. Somehow, it was horrible for Parkinson to be guilty of torture, but all right for them to be guilty of murder.

            There had to be something. Maybe the Lordship bond, maybe laws and justice if the Ministry would ever obey its own rules. Something to lean against, something that was bigger than just someone being angry and upset. The same way that Hogwarts’s students hadn’t been allowed to randomly curse each other in the corridors, and someone who tried to retaliate with a hex was in just as much trouble as the first person who’d cast one.

            He thought that as he built up the Shield Charms, and the anger in him was burning and breathing hot and clear when the wizard who’d cast the curse in the first place stepped forwards and aimed his wand at Harry.

            Harry glared at him from behind the Shield Charms, and waited. He didn’t intend to reply with an offensive curse unless he absolutely had to. His job was to be a defender. The bond had come from a Shield Charm mingled with an obedience curse in the first place. Maybe other people were okay with randomly killing, but Harry wasn’t.

            He only had to look around the Great Hall to remember all the people he’d seen lying dead in it. He didn’t want to see more.

            “You should get out of the way,” said the tall young wizard to him. Now that Harry looked closer, he thought the wizard had a family resemblance to Terry Boot. Harry didn’t know if Boot had survived the Battle of Hogwarts or even been here, but he also didn’t know if he’d been cursed by Parkinson sometime during the school year. “She wanted to kill you. I heard her.”

            “And now she doesn’t,” Harry said. He waited, his arms folded, his wand resting in his hand and buzzing with energy.

            That simple response seemed to baffle the wizard. He frowned and looked back and forth between Parkinson and Harry as though the change in her mind had to be written on her face. “She still wants to,” he finally said.

            “How do you know?” Harry asked, and lifted his right arm. “Better than the Lord sworn to shield and protect her, I suppose?”

            The wizard scratched at his chin, and then said, “She cursed my younger brother. Held him under the Cruciatus for ten seconds.”

            Harry nodded. “Then that’s one of the things she’ll be tried for. But I recognized that curse you used. It would have burned her alive, and you aimed it so that it would bring the rafter down on top of her and kill her that way if she survived the first few seconds. What’s your defense?”

            “She cursed my younger brother,” the wizard repeated.

            “And she wanted to kill me,” Harry said. “Now she doesn’t. I’m guarding her, and the Aurors are guarding her, and they’re going to make sure she goes to the Ministry and prepares for her trial. What does killing her accomplish?”

            The man looked at him condescendingly. Harry still thought he resembled Terry Boot, but he was sure the Boot he knew had never had that pointed a nose, or nostrils that big. “She would be dead. She would be punished.”

            “Would you be willing to be arrested, then?” Harry asked in interest. He had his wand out, in case someone else moved, but so far, most people seemed to find entertainment in listening. And perhaps this man could still surprise him. He was older than the majority of the Hogwarts students. He wasn’t an Auror. That meant he could be outside of the stupidity that sometimes infected those two groups.

            “No,” the wizard said quietly. “You shouldn’t be, when it’s revenge.”

            Harry gave him a huge smile and aimed his wand straight at the idiot through the small gaps he had left in the Shield Charms. “Brilliant. Then you don’t mind if I curse you as revenge for cursing my vassal?”

            The wizard immediately tried to melt away. Someone shoved him from behind, and then Terry Boot was up beside him, panting and glaring at Harry. “He’s my brother Lewis,” he said. “And maybe what he did was stupid, but you don’t get to curse him for it. Sod off.”

            Harry nodded, and lowered a few of the Shield Charms. “I don’t care, and I’m willing to let it go, as long as he doesn’t try it again.”

            “Don’t worry, I won’t,” said Lewis, and aimed his wand around Terry. And to give him credit, he didn’t try and curse Parkinson again.

            He cursed Harry instead.

*

            Blaise wanted to go and hide somewhere. He didn’t understand the way Pansy could just stand there and act like battle was a spectator sport. A sensible person walked away and stayed away from the wizards who had battle and torture training. Sometimes, Blaise hadn’t been able to manage that during this last year, and he had hated that more than anything, being forced to participate, or torture, or watch, or squirm under the pain curses.

            But now they could hide somewhere if they wanted, and Pansy stood there as though someone had tied lead weights to her feet. Blaise was reduced to craning his neck, while keeping his body twisted towards the entrance of the Great Hall so that he could run if this didn’t work out.

            He saw what happened, sort of, but not very well. He saw a flash of red light, he saw Potter fell, and he saw Pansy give a scream like an angry hawk and go diving straight in at the wizard who had done it. Blaise clutched his right arm, wondering if the Lordship bond would give the pain back to the vassal, or hurt someone who didn’t want to jump suicidally in like Pansy did.

            But neither happened. There was just Pansy, trying to fight back a pushing, shoving knot of wizards, many of them taller and older than she was, who Blaise didn’t know were enemies. Maybe they were just trying to get her out of the way so they could get to Potter, who was writhing on the ground, and give him help.

            Then one of them—maybe the first one, Blaise couldn’t see—aimed his wand straight at Pansy, his blue robe swirling around his arm, and Blaise’s nerve broke.

            This was so stupid. None of this would have happened to them in the first place if Potter had just spirited them away to some secret property he owned or something. And he had to own Unplottable properties and mansions no one else had ever seen, right? He was the last descendant of what had once been a fabulously wealthy family. There had to be a house somewhere, with bright green gardens and silver water and silence, where Blaise could rest.

            But no, instead everyone was getting involved, and Blaise would be stranded here or in jail forever if he didn’t do something.

            So he drew his wand and raised a shield between the wizard in the blue robes and Pansy. Then he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, and melted back towards the corner of the Great Hall.

            Which was what everyone sensible should have done in the first place.

*

            Harry hurt.

            The bones in his arms, which the curse had hit, blazed with pain. Drawing breath hurt, and so did having his hair on his scalp, and so did having skin. The pain wasn’t from a curse he was familiar with, and he had no idea how to stop it. It raced everywhere, and made it utterly impossible to draw a breath.

            But he had to draw a breath. He had to get up, because his vassals were in danger.

            The sudden sweet shock of sensation from the shield mark on his right arm told him that. And it gave him something to cling to, a reality that cut through the reality of the pain and made something else exist.

            Harry fought his way to one knee and touched his wand to his shield mark. He croaked out a Shield Charm, hoping the spell could flow through the mark somehow and protect Parkinson, who was dashing at the crowd in front of her without knowing where the enemy was.

            Maybe it did. A Shield Charm flamed into being in front of her, and Parkinson stopped, as surprised as Harry was, so she hadn’t cast it. Just knowing that someone was safe let Harry get his hands beneath him, and then his knees, and fight his way up to a half-standing position. Lewis Boot looked at him with a wide-open mouth. Apparently the curse should have knocked Harry out for the count.

            Harry grinned back, savagely enough that the confident look finally left Lewis’s face, and he seemed to sense the possibility that he might be wrong. He began to back towards the far side of the Great Hall, and Harry, who was getting more and more used to the pain, scrambled the rest of the way to his feet. He panted, but that was nothing compared to the weight of the wand in his hand and the decisions spinning in his mind.

            He had to do what would keep his vassals out of trouble, and himself, too, because without him, they would be vulnerable.

And he didn’t know if cursing Boot was the right course of action.

“Finite Incantatem.”

            Harry gasped aloud as the pain in his body ended, so suddenly he staggered. It was a female voice that had cast the spell, and he turned to the side, expecting Hermione or maybe Parkinson.

            It was Jane Stone instead, the Auror he’d spoken to before. She looked like a boulder as she turned to face Lewis Boot. “I would have stopped this nonsense before,” she said. “But I was out of the Great Hall, in faith that people were following.”

            She darted a glance at the Aurors who had been supposed to escort Harry, Parkinson, and Zabini, and they flinched as if the look was a thrown dagger. Stone stepped up to Harry’s side and spent a moment supporting him. Harry nodded to her and resolved to remember to try Finite the next time he was hit with a curse he didn’t know. He had automatically assumed that it couldn’t have that simple a counter because it was so powerful, but he hadn’t tried the Finite, either. He really should. It was stupid not to have.

            “Did you curse Potter?” Stone asked Lewis Boot.

            “I did,” Terry tried to say, pushing himself forwards. He was only a little taller than Stone, but he looked pale and brave. Apparently it was an unwritten law of the Boot family that everyone had to sacrifice themselves for each other, Harry thought wearily.

            “You don’t have the magical strength,” Stone said, curt as lightning. “It was you.” That to Lewis.

            “I don’t deny that I did.” Lewis’s face was as deep a red as the curse he had cast at Harry, but he managed to draw himself up with what Harry thought was remarkable dignity under the situation. “If you care about it, Madam Stone, then I might suggest you should have intervened before now, when Mr. Potter and I were arguing.”

            “I was out of the room and couldn’t see what was going on,” Stone said. “Spectators at a fight make it so no one can see over them. It’s the worst of being short.” She turned and looked at Harry. “Did you curse him back?”

            “No,” Harry said. “I did stop the curse he cast that deflected off a rafter and would have killed one of my vassals.” He gestured at the burn mark on the rafter over their heads, and Stone looked up and studied it.

            “I don’t think a situation like this should be discussed in the middle of the Great Hall,” Lewis said. There was dampness where his hair clung to his brow. “We should go somewhere private and explore the ramifications.”

            “Suddenly you know words like that,” Parkinson muttered behind Harry. She had come to stand at his shoulder. Harry nodded at her, keeping one eye on her so that she wouldn’t move forwards and get involved with more than words. He had seen her spring to defend him during the fight, and that was appreciated, but not something he wanted right now.

            Briefly, it occurred to him to feel for Zabini, but his green dot was right outside the Great Hall, and not moving. That would do for now.

            Lewis flashed her a glance so full of hatred that Harry wondered at it. Terry, the one Parkinson had tortured, was right there, but he didn’t look at Parkinson that way. Was he just too afraid to? Or did Lewis think he had more right to hate her, for some reason?



            “I think a situation like this should be discussed in private, too,” Stone said. Lewis’s shoulders relaxed. “At the Ministry,” Stone added, and turned to address the Aurors who had remained with her. “Make sure that Mr. Lewis Boot reaches the Ministry as part of our cavalcade. Keep him apart from the others.”

            “What did I do?” Lewis flung his hands up.

            “Used two illegal curses,” Stone said. “The fact that neither of them killed their target is irrelevant.” She turned to Harry and utterly ignored Terry’s protests and the way Lewis kept talking. “Do you need to go to a Healer?”

            Harry blinked. “No. It lasted, what, two, three minutes? I’ve been under the Cruciatus longer than that.”

            He was just stating a fact, but the long, slow stare Stone gave him still made him feel like a child. A second later, she snorted and turned away. “Come, Mr. Potter. That escort you asked for to the Ministry is past overdue.”

            Harry fell into line again, with several Aurors in between him and Parkinson, and double that number between Parkinson and Lewis. As they came out into the entrance hall, Harry looked around, located Zabini under the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm that he could see straight through, and jerked his head.

            Zabini visibly quivered, but dropped the charm. Aurors moved in around him at once. They marched towards the upper floors with more dignity and more absurdity, both, than Harry had thought would happen when he first made his request to be arrested.

            At least we’re all going to be together, Harry thought, rubbing his arm as he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, on Stone, and not on Lewis, where he wanted to turn and level it. At least there’s that.

*

            Severus glanced up when the door to his cell opened.

            He had been separated from Goyle and Draco the minute they came to the Ministry, taken to the holding cells, which lay in a half-concealed portion of the Auror Department, a corridor that led away beyond the offices and cubicles. It was a plain room, made of stone, no windows, no bars in the door, utterly lit, utterly bare except for one plain bed and bucket. Severus had sat on the bed and composed himself, watching as the Aurors exited the room with his wand.

            After that, there had been nothing to do but wait.

            Severus was good at waiting. Albus had kept him doing that more than once. The Dark Lord was a past master at it. Potions required it. This past year as Headmaster of Hogwarts had been spent doing little more than waiting. Waiting until the moment he could help Potter. Waiting until the moment Potter had discovered his destiny and walked to his death. Waiting to see whether the Dark Lord would die and Severus could survive the war.

            When the door opened again, he was deep in meditation, his hands folded beneath his knees, lost in memory of what he had read about Lordship bonds during his lifetime and the way they functioned, and whether any had ever been successfully removed. He could not recall it so. There were always people who claimed that they had a way, Potions masters who thought they could gain fame should they invent a potion that did that, but he could not recall one who had the fame.

            “How could you?”

            His visitor was Kingsley Shacklebolt. Severus sat up a little more. This man had been in the Order of the Phoenix, and that was both good and bad for Severus. Good because he might have a little loyalty to Severus and know, once he heard the story, that Severus had indeed killed Albus on orders. The old man could convince anyone to do anything. Shacklebolt knew that. He would believe the story of Unbreakable Vows.

            The bad side came from the words that Shacklebolt had spoken and the way he stood glaring at Severus now. He had known Albus, all right, and honored and revered him in much the same way that an ordinary vassal in a Lordship bond would revere his Lord. The temptation to take revenge when that killer was right in front of him might be too much, Severus thought, watching the man’s hand tighten on his wand.

            “How could I what?” Severus asked, because as with so many other things he had been involved in in his life, he could do nothing until he understood the accusation.

            With a smothered curse, Shacklebolt turned and locked the door. Then he paced over and stood staring down at Severus.

            “The word coming from Hogwarts is that you tricked Harry Potter into a Lordship bond,” he said. “Purely to spare your hide and the hides of some of your traitorous students.”

            Right. Of course someone would take that path when they saw that Potter was not going to reject us openly. I should have anticipated it.

            “I did not do that,” Severus said, and shook his arms. The sleeves fell back down them as Shacklebolt tensed up absurdly, eyes flickering back and forth between Severus’s face and his arms. Severus sighed. “Your people took my wand, and you should have begun to hear other rumors now, true ones, that I killed Albus on Albus’s own orders.”

            “Why would you do that?” Shacklebolt carried on staring at him. “You had enough independence that you could have refused.”

            “An Unbreakable Vow,” Severus said simply, and turned his arms over, revealing Dark Mark and shield mark. “Why would I have Marked myself like this, Shacklebolt, when I finally had the chance to be free? I did not expect to survive the fall of the Dark Lord. Why would I sacrifice any freedom I had for security?”

            Shacklebolt hesitated, eyes still wide and wild. Severus waited, his Marks plainly in view. There was nothing he could do save speak more if Shacklebolt did not believe him. Words were one of Severus’s weapons, but he had never been in a position where they were all he had to use. In Hogwarts, in the inner circle of Death Eaters, in Dumbledore’s service, during the past year, he could have reached for his wand as well, or his Occlumency barriers, or at least his reputation.

            Now, he waited.

            Shacklebolt finally closed his eyes and muttered, “If this isn’t true, Severus, then you’re going to regret it.”

            The first name had already told Severus that he had won, at least partially. He kept the smirk off his face and his eyes on Shacklebolt’s. “Tell me why.”

            “Because the Wizengamot is meeting right now,” Shacklebolt said, lifting his head. “Seems there’s some ancient law that establishing a Lordship bond without asking the vassals first is a form of slavery, and enslaving wizards has been outlawed for the past four centuries. If they decide that Harry, or whoever really initiated the bond, did that, prison’s the least you can look for.”

            Severus stood. “And that is why you came to me, hoping I initiated the bond,” he murmured, mind racing. “Because I am here and Potter is not.”

            Shacklebolt nodded curtly.

            “Take me to them anyway,” Severus said, and if this was part of the bond asking him to his Lord’s Shield, he no longer cared, not when he could feel an excellent excuse for viciousness curling his lips. “I have some words to say.”

            Only weapon or not, it may be a powerful one.

*

            polka dot: Thanks! Glad you’re enjoying it.

            delia cerrano: Because they blame Pansy for what Terry suffered.

            SP777: I do have other stories I have to update!

            moodysavage: Sorry!

            unneeded: Yes. But he’s capable of making the right decision sometimes.

            Clari_Nevermore: Thanks! And no, I don’t think it’s creepy. This is one of my favorite Harrys, so I’m always glad when someone else is a fan of his.
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The Only True Lords