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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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Chapter Twelve—Ginny’s Demands

            “What will they do today?” Harry murmured to Malfoy when they entered the courtroom and found Ginny and Zabini waiting already. Zabini had a thick sheaf of parchments in one hand. His wife—his former wife, Harry supposed he should really think of her as—sat beside her new lover, staring at the podium, though Judge Witherbone hadn’t yet appeared. Her face was carved with lines of suffering that once would have made Harry’s heart constrict.

            Now, he was a bit astonished to find that he didn’t care. Maybe he’d just seen the expression too many times.

            He became aware that Malfoy hadn’t responded to his question, and turned to face him, one eyebrow rising. Malfoy snorted at him and shook his head. “Forgive me, Potter,” he said. “I’m astonished that you chose to acknowledge my existence.”

            Harry shrugged. Yes, he’d spent the rest of yesterday, after his speech, and this morning not speaking to Malfoy, but that was because every other word out of the idiot’s mouth was innuendo or an attempt to make him angry and continue their argument. Harry had told himself that he had an advantage here, that he was more used to controlling his temper, and they had to present a united front. Perhaps, once Malfoy realized Harry only did want him as an Arguer, he would stop his stupid attempts to pick a quarrel.

            “We’re in the courtroom now,” he said. “What will they do?”

            Malfoy gave a long sigh. “We were able to present our own demands in the last court session,” he said, as he sat down in his chair and pressed unnecessarily close to Harry’s side, a warmth that made Harry’s stomach churn with what had to be disgust. “They rebutted what we said—what I said, do pardon my inexactness—and now they will have the chance to present theirs.”

            Harry grunted, and studied Ginny more closely, looking for any sign of real stress behind her artificially strained face. Not a thing. Or had he just become that inexpert in reading her?

            “When will you give this up?” Malfoy asked abruptly into his ear.

            “This case?” Harry smiled, not taking his eyes from Ginny. “As I told Ron, never. Why, Malfoy, do you have some desire to receive the reward without doing the work? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

*

            Draco hissed under his breath. He had taken the fight yesterday as a step forwards; Potter had responded to him, and finally started to lose some of the increasingly brittle control that he exercised over his actions. But now he was responding in such an irritating way that Draco’s concentration in the courtroom might be affected. This was not the way this was supposed to happen.

            “You’re an idiot,” he said.

            “Yes, I’m aware you think so,” Potter muttered back at him out of the corner of his mouth.

Draco put a hand on his shoulder and wrenched, hard. Though it must have hurt, Potter did nothing but look at him with a faint smirk, and perhaps an even fainter shadow darkening his eyes.

            Draco clucked his tongue, this time with his irritation mainly directed at himself. He couldn’t seem to keep to a consistent course of action when it came to Potter. He kissed him too fast, he stirred him out of his apathy only to find himself coolly shunted off to the side, and he tried to pick a fight only to have it degenerate into a meaningless spat.

            No one else had ever affected him like this. Or, at least, no client had ever affected Draco like this. Lucius did have a more marked effect, just because of who he was.

            “Listen, Potter,” he said, keeping his voice calm, “I meant, when will you give up this pretense that you don’t need me and that you plan to disregard everything I say? I give you good advice; you refuse to consider it. We come into the courtroom, where I need my calm; you insult me. We’re both adults. We can acknowledge each other as more than sparring partners. When do you plan to do so?”

            For a long moment, Potter regarded him thoughtfully. Then he took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles.

            “Perhaps you’re right, Malfoy,” he said, as if thinking deeply. “I do have an idea for something that might change things after today.” He gave Draco a smile that he probably didn’t even realize was charming. “For now, I’m sorry. Yes, you need your calm, and I’ll try to be a good little client, keep quiet, and say nothing legal without your approval. All right?” He shook Draco’s arm a little.

            Draco eyed him mistrustfully. Quite apart from anything else, the flare of warmth he’d felt when Potter touched him was not something he could control or define, and he disliked things like that. But Potter looked back with a clear, earnest face, and he couldn’t demand more reassurance, or he would look like the whinging, unreasonable one.

            “All right,” he said at last, still with a tone of resentment in back of his voice, because he wasn’t superhuman.

            Potter gave him another charming-in-spite-of-himself smile, and then looked up attentively as Judge Witherbone entered the room. Draco stared at his profile for a moment.

            What did he want?

            To see Potter in strength. To have the git give himself over willingly. To argue with him. To see Potter best his enemies, and do it for some other reason than because Draco was in danger and needed his help. To watch him learn how to sneer, so that he could direct it at his wife.

            It was somewhat surprising, how many contradictory desires filled him, and certainly worrying.

            But Potter’s slut of a wife had stood now. Draco leaned back in his seat and directed his attention to her, because he had to.

*

            Harry gazed steadily at Ginny. She had chosen to read her demands, and he knew that her staring at him and the brave little smiles she showed every now and then were meant to lure him into feeling sorry for her.

            It wouldn’t work. He didn’t feel sorry for her. She had chosen to make this bed; now she had to lie in it.

            “Access to half the money in the Black and Potter vaults,” Ginny read smoothly. “The money will be used for raising our child. If we have more than one child, access to half of what remains with each one, so that they may have a good life and an education worthy of them.”

            Harry folded his hands behind his head. She gave him a sidelong glance; she seemed to remember that he only did that when he was relaxed or bored, and probably she couldn’t read his mood as well as he could read hers.

            “The right to freedom from his owls when necessary, so that he cannot contact us to harass us. When a special owl comes to him, bearing an invitation to write, he can send us post, and only then. Contacting us otherwise, or writing us an insulting letter, would be grounds for a fine.”

            Harry was wondering what the Dursleys would have done if they had ever discovered that he had this much money. He could imagine Uncle Vernon’s voice—no, probably it would be Aunt Petunia’s, because his uncle’s mouth would be too full of drool at the thought of the wealth they were about to acquire—reading out the same list of demands.

            When had Ginny put herself on the level of the Dursleys?

            “He will also need to make a public apology for the way he treated me.” Ginny’s eyes rose, and there was a satisfied gleam in the back of them, the first time she had broken her mask of victim in public.

            Harry rolled his head to the side and gave a slight yawn.

            Ginny’s voice tightened as she spoke again, though Harry wasn’t sure that anyone who hadn’t lived with her as long as he had would hear the change. “He has treated me inexcusably, ignoring my pleas to better his life so that we could both live in comfort and respectability. I tried to support him, to make him realize what damage he was doing to his reputation, but I could not change him, and how far should a wife have to go in a duty like that?”

            Apparently Malfoy thinks that’s his duty, now, Harry thought with a small, amused smile. All the more reason for me to leave Malfoy Manor as soon as possible.

            “He will also continue his investment in Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” Ginny concluded, with a little nod. “I would not see my brothers hurt because Harry is dissatisfied with me.”

            Harry gave a soft snort, then looked sideways at Malfoy. He thought that Ginny’s finishing her uninspired recitation was a sign for Malfoy to stand up and play his part, and not be staring at him with his mouth slightly open like a prat.

*

            He invested in the twins’ joke shop? Is there no limit to his selflessness? Or his stupidity?

            Of course, now that Draco thought of it, he should have seen something like this long since. The Weasleys were all poor, and it would have cost enormous money to open a shop in Diagon Alley and buy the ingredients for potions and pranks—more than two seventeen-year-old boys could have reasonably persuaded any prudent wizard to lend them. Potter, of course, was anything but prudent.

            He gave them what they needed to get started. And they still turned against him.

            Shaking his head slightly in wonder at how stupid the Weasleys had been, Draco stood and looked at Judge Witherbone. She had a copy of Weasley’s and Zabini’s demands, but wasn’t looking at them; her face showed how bored she was with the whole affair. Draco smiled and gave her a small bow. “May I respond to the demands, Madam?”

            “If you feel the need to ask no questions, Arguer Malfoy, then yes, you may,” said the judge, and waved a hand as she sat back in her seat. Her expression held a trace of petulance now, as if she did not really care who won the case at the moment; she simply wanted someone to entertain her.

            Draco faced Weasley and Blaise. Weasley sat with her head leaning on Blaise’s shoulder, her hands joined on her belly, where Blaise’s hands also rested. Together, they rubbed in a slow, soothing motion.

            Draco stared for a moment, then snorted. If they thought to make him feel sorry for them by presenting themselves as a family, they should have paid closer attention to his career. He hadn’t been sensitive to enemies in his cases who had a dozen small children; once he chose his side, he defended it without stint, because that was what he had been paid for.

            And, in this case, because it is a positive pleasure of its own.

            “What Mrs. Potter asks is absolutely ridiculous,” he said smoothly. “She tried, at first, to gain access to my client’s money illegally, by threatening to sell his house, and by removing the key to the Black vault from the place where he’d hidden it.” He saw Weasley shift a little at that, though she didn’t lift her head from Blaise’s shoulder, as if she didn’t want to break the image of herself as a helpless female. “It has become clear that she never cared about her husband; all she wanted was Galleons, and what the Galleons could buy.”

            He spun to face Witherbone—and Potter, at least if he was looking out of the corner of his eye—and raised his voice. “Why should he live the rest of his life as a slave, contacting her only when she says he may, sending money whenever it is asked for, for children not his own? Why should he be required to give preference to his wife’s biased version of events above his own? Why should he support his wife’s brothers—two wizards doing quite well for themselves?” Draco spread his hands. “Why for any reason but extra Galleons?

            “Money is all that matters to Mrs. Potter. And she does not even approach it in a wise manner. Otherwise, she would have ensured that Mr. Potter was kept happy and more likely to share his money with her. However, because she became pregnant, she realized that she could not keep the secret concealed from him much longer, and tried to shame him into a silent, amicable divorce.” Weasley had sat up now, and was glaring at him. Draco could tell from the burn of her eyes on the side of his face. He bit his lip to ensure that a grin could not escape and warn her about what he would do in the next few moments. “He was just a bit too smart for that, however, and she was content to face him in the courtroom—until she realized that her new lover did not have enough money to hire his own Arguer, and than even she and her child might be in danger of living poorly. They might lose. So she tried to reconcile with her former husband, and even now she targets him with her words, trying to throw him off balance and make him agree to simply surrender to her. All for money. Love has never mattered to her, nor Potter’s reputation—I doubt she would have looked twice at him if he’d been born poor—nor the amount of effort he expended on caring for her.” Draco spread his hands. “Does that sound like someone who deserves wealth? Or merely someone who will run through the coins as fast as she can when she has them, birthing enough children in the meantime to make her own ragged family look small?”

            “Malfoy!”

            The outraged shriek made him turn with artificially wide eyes, as if he had had no idea that he would enrage her. Weasley was on her feet, face red, hair bristling around her like a lion’s mane—

            And she had her wand in her hand.

            Draco choked on his own laughter. Better and better! If Weasley actually hexed him, then Judge Witherbone’s punishment would be much worse than if she had kept it to a simple interruption. She might let Potter and Draco have whichever of their demands they asked for, outright, without forcing them through the tedious process of negotiations that would otherwise come next.

            Weasley lifted her wand slowly, as if she were having trouble deciding between debilitating hexes for him. Draco couldn’t look to see whether Blaise was trying to hold her back; he had his eyes fixed on hers in utter fascination, wanting to see how far she would go.

            Then her wand vanished.

            Draco blinked for a moment. When the moment was done, he turned and looked at Potter, who had Weasley’s wand in his hand.

            “Pardon me, Madam,” Potter said, addressing the judge as if she were the only person in the room who mattered. “I thought you might prefer that your courtroom not explode into a spell battle, so I took the precaution of Summoning Mrs. Potter’s wand.” He gave an apologetic little bow, waited for a small nod from Witherbone, and then carefully tossed the wand back towards Weasley. It skimmed past Draco’s head and settled neatly into her palm again.

            He didn’t Summon it, Draco thought. I was standing close enough to see it fly if he did. He Apparated it. Which is something that I didn’t know you could do with an object you weren’t touching, let alone without a wand and at a distance.

            And why did he do it? Weasley couldn’t have seriously hurt me, not with my own magical defenses and not with Witherbone sitting so close by.

            Could it have been that he was afraid I would get hurt?

            He briefly turned his head to stare at Potter, but Potter was looking away, at Witherbone.

            “Your magic is acceptable, in light of the circumstances,” she said, and then faced Weasley and Blaise and shook her head again. “Your interruption was unwarranted, and threatening to use magic on an Arguer in the middle of a legitimate argument is more than unwarranted; it is actively illegal. I declare this court session over. We will meet again in four days’ time, and Arguer Malfoy and Mr. Potter may choose whatever single demand they wish to have granted to them before then. When you enter the courtroom, I will expect you to specify that demand to me before we enter negotiations.” She nodded to Draco, and then to Potter, with the ghost of a smile on her face, before she once again descended from her high seat and swept out of the room.

            Draco let out a satisfied breath. As much as he had hoped that Potter would leave things to play themselves out, so that they might demand even more concessions from Blaise and Weasley, this was an acceptable conclusion. He gave Blaise, who looked almost ready to explode, a slight smile.

            Then he sauntered across the room to Potter and, in the course of leaning over to collect his papers, let a hand brush across the side of his neck. “My hero,” he murmured into his ear.

            “Don’t flatter yourself, Malfoy,” Potter said as he stood. “She was interrupting the trial. Of course I couldn’t take the chance that you would strike back and switch Witherbone’s sympathy to Ginny.”

            Draco blinked. “I am in control of myself at all times,” he said. “Do you think my hatred for Weasleys as deep as all that?”

            “You’ve been acting damn uncontrolled lately,” Potter muttered, and swept out of the courtroom as if he’d been watching Witherbone do so and wanted to practice on his own.

            Draco followed, wondering if he were more upset because of Potter’s lack of faith in him or because the idiot refused to let him have the last word.

*

            Harry knew something was wrong the moment they landed on the outer edge of the Manor’s wards. He had acquired something of a sensitivity to large concentrations of magic during the final battle with Voldemort; too many Dark wizards in too confined a space had burned the impression of it permanently into his brain. Now there was either a large group of wizards somewhere nearby, or else a single one with his magic leaking—the way it would have if he’d escaped from St. Mungo’s. Cautiously, he shook his wand into his hand and looked around. The curving path that led up to the Manor was free of obstacles, but that didn’t mean anything.

            Malfoy popped into place beside him, sounding slightly out of breath. “We will talk about what you said to me,” he began.

            “Shut up,” Harry said, glancing in irritation at his Arguer in the same moment that a very familiar green curse cut through the air from beyond his shoulder.

            Harry didn’t know whom their attacker was aiming at, and he didn’t care. He dived, giving a brief thanks that he’d slept well last night and so his right leg hadn’t cramped, shouldering Malfoy to the ground at the same time. The other man gave a cry of shocked surprise, but Harry ignored it; he knew from the tone that he wasn’t hurt. He lay with his body stretched protectively over Malfoy’s and looked sharply in the direction from which the Killing Curse had come. Who would risk casting that, when they would know it could send them to Azkaban?

            He understood many things when someone began to laugh, in a hoarse, broken voice, and Lucius Malfoy stepped into view. The air beat around him with his magic; his face was carved with lines of madness and cunning, a dangerous combination, as Harry had learned viscerally when he faced Bellatrix Lestrange.

            He moved so that he was kneeling between Malfoy and his father, his wand steady in his hand. He didn’t like fighting, but he hadn’t forgotten how to do it in five years, and now his magic circled around his head, purring restlessly with anticipation of further violence.

            Let Lucius try something. Harry was ready.

*

            ProfessorSibly: Well, Harry has his own way of reacting to Draco’s harshness, and he demonstrated that in this chapter.

            Graballz: Yes, Harry did mean that he owed Draco a debt for giving him permission to be angry. I don’t think he would approve of your way of working it off, though…

            That fight aroused both Harry and Draco, though as far as Harry’s concerned, it was sick and wrong and shall never happen again; he’s decided to be condescending instead.

            777: Power is perhaps a misleading word; it’s what first attracted Draco, but he’s also intrigued by the strength of his reactions around Harry. What I was mainly trying to convey is that he doesn’t really want to see Harry broken and pleading.

            MadnessWithinMe: Sorry, but AFF has hidden your e-mail address.

            Claire2007: No, I’m not sure how long the story will be yet. Maybe around 25, 30 chapters, depending on how many twists and turns the plot takes.
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Building With Worn-Out Tools

Chapter Twelve—Ginny’s Demands