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Made of Common Clay	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 10987 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Eleven—Trod the Road
“I heard about what you did to Simon.”
Harry nods as he sips at the fresh orange juice Molly gave him when he came in. At least he’s not so out of favor as to not get his favorite juice. “I would be surprised if most people don’t know by now.”
“The curse was cruel.”
Harry nods again. “But not as cruel as it could have been. I would have done a lot worse to most people who gave away the key of my wards to someone. Especially if it had turned out to be an assassin sent by an idiot.” He puts down the orange juice as he notices Molly’s hands clench. He doesn’t think she’ll attack him, but he likes the idea of having his hands free, anyway. After seven years as an Auror, it’s hard to ignore his instincts.
Molly finally swallows and says, “This notion of arbitrary justice. You wouldn’t have done that before becoming a member of the Sun Chamber?”
Harry shakes his head. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t have to do it with most people. They would respect me enough not to betray my secret.”
Molly looks away from him. “But it’s Ginny.”
“Yes. She’s the only reason that I didn’t punish Simon as harshly as I could have. It had nothing to do with Simon himself.”
Molly says nothing and fidgets with the corner of the shawl thrown over her shoulders. Harry watches her and wonders when she started wearing them. He thinks it might have begun with Fred’s death, but then, he tends to attribute everything to that unless he thinks carefully. It’s definitely the biggest change in Molly’s life.
“She still loves you.” Molly seems intensely interested in the remains of the fire in the hearth.
“She was the one who broke up with me.” Harry shrugs and sips at his juice again. “I know very well that I can’t give her what she needs. If she’s trying to say that she needs me to, now…” He can only shake his head. “I can’t be that for her.”
Molly says nothing for so long that Harry almost thinks the conversation is done. This isn’t at all the way he pictured it going when Molly called him through the fire. She looked as if she would spit at him like a Hungarian Horntail.
When did everyone get so small and old? It can’t be Fred’s death for everyone. Harry knows how Ron and Hermione think, and he thought he understood Ginny and Molly. But he’s trying to think back on it, and he wonders now how long it’s been since he actually spoke to any of them in full comprehension of what they were feeling.
He’s still thinking when Molly glances up and says, “I’m afraid that Ginny’s never going to be over you.”
Harry only blinks and replies, “I can’t help that.”
Molly rambles on, her eyes fixed on the far wall. “She chooses men who are like you in some way, have you noticed that? All dark-haired and confident about something. With Simon that confidence was misplaced, but…” She trails off, uncertain. “I think that she’ll never find what she wants unless she gets you back. It’s why she’s so angry about what you did to Simon.”
“Hell, Kingsley is angry about what I did to Simon.” Harry finishes his orange juice and wonders if he ought to get more. Ordinarily, he would, but he doesn’t feel much like a guest in the Burrow at the moment. “And I’m pretty sure Kingsley’s not in love with me.”
He hopes to at least startle a smile out of Molly, but Molly only shakes her head, solemn. “Ginny’s dreamed of you from the time she was nine years old.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Something broke in her when she saw how broken you were by the war.”
Harry rolls his eyes. He honestly wouldn’t describe himself as broken, more like tarnished, but he’s heard that description too many times now to be offended by it. “I can’t help that, either. It’s not as though she went through easy things at Hogwarts.” Honestly, he thinks that’s another reason they broke up, although Ginny would never acknowledge it: she was always pushing him to talk about his “trauma” but would never talk about hers. Harry thought at the time they just handled things differently. Now he sees it as another way in which their relationship wasn’t equal.
“Would you consider getting back together with her?”
“No.”
Molly flinches a little, and Harry tries to soften his voice. Honestly, he’s getting too used to dealing with Kingsley and his ilk. He doesn’t need to snap at everyone, and it’s important for him to remember that.
“She broke up with me,” Harry says again. “And she betrayed me even though she didn’t mean to. And she’s just—she doesn’t fit with the kind of person I am. She didn’t want me to care so much about politics. Now I’m invested enough in politics that I can’t back away from it.” He pauses, wondering if he should say the last reason, which might hurt Molly as well as Ginny. But watching her hopeless, hoping eyes, he decides he has to. “And I think Ginny ought to ask me herself if she really wants to, not delegate you to ask for her.”
Molly does flinch again, but says nothing to contradict his assumption. Harry nods. He was right, then. This isn’t about Molly pleading with Harry on behalf of her daughter. Ginny asked Molly to do it.
Honestly, Harry has no patience with people who aren’t honest or brave enough to ask their own uncomfortable questions, either. And as for whether he would let them into his bed? No way.
He stands up, brushes a kiss over Molly’s cheek, and quietly tells her farewell. He thinks invitations to the Burrow might be rare for a little while.
But it’s nothing that will make him stop or turn aside.
*
“I challenge Lord Potter to a duel!”
Harry raises slow eyebrows. He’s been sitting in the Sun Chamber and listening as Neville waxed dramatically on and on about his wards. Apparently several Lords and Ladies have gone over to Neville’s house to examine the ones he’s worried about and get his advice on strengthening their own. Harry knows their plan is going well because of the grin that Neville gave him when he came in.
But he didn’t expect this. On the other hand, it’s not like he’s never dealt with the unexpected before. He puts his hand on his wand and says calmly, “One punishment not enough for you, Lord Parkinson?”
Honeywell flutters back and forth and looks distractedly around. “Surely, Lord Parkinson, one challenge—”
“He impugned my honor! He impugns my daughter’s honor!”
“How?” And Harry is a little curious. He hasn’t said a word to Pansy Parkinson since the Battle of Hogwarts.
Atlas splutters in a way that made it clear this accusation wasn’t part of his fantasy. Then he points his wand dramatically at the ceiling. Harry can’t help noticing that that action lifts the sleeve of his robe in a way that exposes his armpit, and it looks like it hasn’t been scrubbed out in years. “By existing!”
Harry can’t help it; he snorts laughter even though he’s honestly trying to act like he cares about the rules of the Sun Chamber. But he’s not the only one. Neville is smothering as many chuckles into coughs as he can, and Shafiq is grinning her narrow grin.
“That’s interesting,” Harry says. He lounges back in his seat, and if someone thinks he’s being disrespectful, well, they’re right. Besides, they’re probably all too fixated on Parkinson at the moment to notice. “Because there must be lots of people who impugn your honor, if that’s your definition.”
It takes Atlas a short time to get it, but his face turns the color of an apple in a Muggle supermarket, and he aims his wand. Honeywell immediately gets in the way, flapping her arms like a windmill.
“Not in the Sun Chamber! Not in the Sun Chamber!”
No, we only kill each other outside of it, Harry thinks idly, as he watches Honeywell force Atlas to back down. But he glares at Harry, and jabs a finger. “Tomorrow, at noon, Potter! In the Ministry Atrium!”
Harry widens his eyes. “You would conduct a duel indoors, within an area a large number of people pass through each day?”
“No, no, Lord Potter, I’m sure that he didn’t mean it like that.” Honeywell is looking fretfully back and forth between them. “Choose a sane place, Atlas.”
Atlas just gets angrier and angrier when he realizes what a fool he made of himself in his desire for drama. “Then—then you choose a place, Potter! And just realize that the duel is going to be to the death!”
Harry gives a rippling shrug even as Honeywell tries to hiss at Atlas about how this contravenes protocol. “I was thinking that we might fight in the graveyard at Godric’s Hollow.”
There’s silence, although Harry thinks it’s coming from Atlas because he’s perplexed, not because he understands what the rest of them do. He’s probably trying to remember where he’s heard of Godric’s Hollow.
“You would fight in front of Muggles, Lord Potter?” Honeywell finally asks.
“Oh, I’m sure that we can put up enough charms to hide ourselves and keep them away from the fight,” Harry says, and smiles at Atlas. “But it’s a special place. If I win, then my parents can witness my victory from their graves. If I don’t, then you won’t have to take me far away to bury me.”
There’s more staring, as people try to work out how serious he is. Only Neville, unnoticed by the others, is rolling his eyes.
“Er, right, of course,” Honeywell says, and then coughs a little. “You will not be reconciled? We can ill afford to lose two Lords in such a short period of time.” But she sounds resigned. Maybe it’s less serious this time because Atlas has an Heiress and Selwyn didn’t, Harry thinks idly.
“No! He made accusations against me!”
“Accusations that happened to be true,” Harry says mildly. “Or the stole of the Chamber wouldn’t have burned you.”
Atlas just stands there and fumes. Harry glances away from him and towards Honeywell. She sighs again and sits down.
Good. She’s not going to interfere, then. Harry doesn’t particularly like her, and thinks she deserves to be pulled down just like all the other Lords and Ladies, but he doesn’t want to hurt her much either, if he can help it. She’s a true believer, not someone who’s given up like Kingsley has.
“If we are all agreed about the duel,” Neville says in a serious voice, pulling their attention back to him, “then we might start to consider my wards again, and the necessity of more Lords and Ladies coming over to see them. I’m just a young Lord, and due to my tragic circumstances—” he bows his head “—no one was able to raise and train me in the duties of my Lordship the way I should have been trained. That means that I need people to help me tell me how secure my house should be…”
Harry’s irritation with Atlas melts into amusement once more, and he leans back and listens with a smile. Of course the Lords and Ladies will patronize Neville, but he can put up with that in a way Harry can’t. With his trembling lip and helpless smile, he can lure them into walking into his house. Harry has too dangerous a reputation to snare any but the most hot-headed idiots.
And when they walk into Neville’s house, they’ll have to pass underneath a certain stone in the archway of his front door. The stone is enchanted to record their magical signatures.
What will come when it’s fully charged ought to prove interesting.
*
“I don’t want you to fight the duel with Atlas Parkinson. It’s not a good look for the Ministry.”
Harry lowers the paper and blinks at Kingsley. He got in late to his desk this morning, and hasn’t had the chance to read the Prophet’s latest recounting of the protest in Diagon Alley this morning, where people protested the notion of captive house-elves alongside that of Muggleborn spell-crafters who are pressured to sell their work for a pittance to pure-bloods, who then claim credit. “What?”
“You shouldn’t fight a duel with another Lord. It’s not a good look for the Ministry.”
“The Ministry hasn’t attempted to regulate the duels I fought before this. Even the ones rogue Death Eaters challenged me to when I was still nineteen years old,” Harry says mildly as he rolls up his newspaper and considers Kingsley. Kingsley’s lips are twitching in agitation, and he avoids Harry’s eyes as though he thinks that that will keep Harry from using Legilimency on him. But Harry’s never seen the need to master Legilimency when he can just use hard words. “Why this one?”
“It’s not a good look for the Ministry.”
“Not a good look for them to let a teenager be challenged by fugitives, either. But it still happened.”
Kingsley’s hands are so tight around the arms of his chair that Harry thinks he’s going to break something. If Kingsley does, then Harry plans to offer a healing spell. Just because he thinks the man is frequently a coward doesn’t mean that he wants him in pain. “That was different.”
“Why?”
“The Ministry and the Sun Chamber are two branches of government. At the time, you were only an Auror trainee, one who might have dropped out of the program. We really had no official standing to complain.”
“You didn’t attempt to regulate the duel that Lord Selwyn and Lady Shafiq fought a few weeks ago.”
Kingsley is silent. Then he abruptly explodes out of his chair and paces around Harry’s office, his head bowed and his breath whistling through his lungs as though he’s just run a race.
Harry only watches him. If Kingsley wants to be this tiresome, he can try. And really, Harry doesn’t have to keep asking what the difference is between the Ministry’s interest in him and its lack of interest in other Lords and Ladies. He knows.
But he’d still like to hear Kingsley state it openly, because he’s not sure that Kingsley knows.
Finally, Kingsley turns around, and he looks like a man who’s come to the point that he has to admit the problem. “You’re not just another Lord,” he says. “Or another Auror. If you die on our watch, then we’re going to get questions about why we didn’t prevent it. If you kill Lord Parkinson, then we’ll get cries that we sanctioned murder.”
“But not in the other duel?”
“Neither of them was as famous as you are.”
Harry smiles a little. Well, it’s kind of a smile. Let Kingsley mistake it for one if he wants. Now we come to it. “So this is about my name recognition. Not about Lords dueling. Not about Aurors dueling.”
Kingsley at least has the bollocks to look him in the eye when he puts it like that, instead of glancing away and fidgeting again. “Yes.”
Harry nods slowly, and sighs a little. Honestly, at this point he would be just as pleased to quit the Aurors. But the resistance still needs him there too much. He can get insider information and perhaps recruit Aurors like Weston who show flashes of good sense. And he wants to show the Ministry that, in the end, it was someone they counted as one of their own who helped bring them down.
“Fine,” he says. “I don’t intend to shirk the duel, which I couldn’t anyway, by the rules of the Sun Chamber. Is that enough for you? That I’m trying to obey the rules, and not running all around London trying to embarrass the Ministry of my own free will?” That’s what I have my fellow Lords and Ladies for.
Kingsley sits down and gives him such an open look that Harry’s skin prickles a little. It seems like he’s finally about to get the truth, and he’s waited long enough for that. He takes the chair across from Kingsley again. It feels less like he needs to be on his feet in case Kingsley suddenly attacks.
“I wanted to be a Lord so badly,” Kingsley whispers, and he’s looking past Harry at something so far in the distance that Harry doesn’t have any idea what it is. “And then I lost the chance. I thought anyone who had the chance was—blessed. I got used to living without it. But the first thing I thought when I heard that you had not one but two Lordships was what I would do to be in your place.”
If the Sun Chamber was only a lot of blowhards with no effect on wizarding government, you could have it. But Harry holds his tongue and listens. He knows he won’t get another chance if he blows this one.
“And then you seem to treat it casually and not care much about it.” Kingsley seems to remember that a living, breathing person is in the room with him, and gives Harry an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry. But that’s what it seems like.”
That’s exactly what it’s like.
Harry only widens his smile and claps Kingsley on the shoulder. “As long as you remember that it’s my Lordship—my Lordships, sorry—and remember that you can’t project your personal opinions all over me.”
Kingsley’s actually relaxing, nodding. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Harry. I let old bitterness overwhelm me.” He shakes Harry’s hand. “Thanks for understanding. And of course you don’t really hate your Lordships and wish they were gone. That would be ridiculous.”
Harry smiles without showing his teeth and waves Kingsley out of the office. Then he sits back and indulges in the eyerolling that he had to deny himself until now.
At least Kingsley should be less suspicious of him now. And Harry knows exactly what’s going on in his head. More about him than the Ministry, yes.
But. Him and Susan and even Ginny, if she finds Simon impressive enough to date when he brags about the Lordship he could have had all the time. Why are so many people I like idiots?
*
Moodysavage: Thank you! Harry is pretty fun to write, all through this story.
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Made of Common Clay