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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 Twelve—Settled

            “Is this comfortable enough for Your Majesty?”

            Stone isn’t here, or they wouldn’t have said that, Harry thought, and had to grit his teeth. He was starting to grasp another way the bond worked. When his vassals were nearby, Harry could do anything he needed to for them; he could suppress his temper, and speak in a soft voice, and cast spells that were more powerful and quicker than anything he’d ever managed before, and come up with crazy plans that might benefit them. But right now Parkinson and Zabini were in other cells, and he had no idea which cells the Malfoys and Goyle and Snape were in, and his head was buzzing with tiredness. He wanted to tell these idiot junior Aurors to go the fuck away and leave him alone.

            Hermione probably would have called what he was going through an “interesting experience.” Harry thought it was just another way that the bond was fucking up his life. He supposed that eventually, he would be able to blend these two states of mind, or at least leap back and forth more easily, but right now, it was bloody annoying.

            “You didn’t answer my question.” One of the Aurors stepped towards him. Harry looked closely at his robes, because something seemed off from the way Stone’s robes had looked in the Great Hall. They weren’t as dark a red. “Is this comfortable enough, my Lord?”

            “You shouldn’t call me that unless you’re bonded to me,” Harry said politely, not because he really felt polite, but because he knew it would piss them off.

            Trainee robes. I think they’re wearing trainee robes.

            Harry wondered for a second why someone like Stone would be relying on trainees, and then sighed. Of course. She’d said that a bunch of Aurors had been compromised, so they were either Death Eaters or they had done the same thing as the Slytherin students under the Carrows and followed orders in the Ministry because they were terrified of what might happen to them otherwise. Right now, trainees were more trustworthy than full-blown Aurors.

            “That’s a sign that the bench beneath your lordly arse isn’t comfortable enough, right?” The nearest trainee stepped towards him again. The one behind him winced and clutched at his arm, but that man shook him off and leaned in, until his nose was a few inches from Harry’s face. “That’s a sign we should do something to change it?”

            “Eric, we’ll get in trouble!” whispered the trainee behind him, checking down the corridor.

            Harry considered the first trainee again. He was probably the right age to have left Hogwarts a few years ago, Harry decided, which might mean that this hostility towards Harry didn’t all come out of him thinking that the Ministry shouldn’t make concessions to the Boy-Who-Lived.

            “You knew me when I was in school, right?” Harry asked. “And thought that I got too much attention and too much praise for being the Boy-Who-Lived? And now you think that you have to take me down a peg because I’ll get a big head because of being a Lord.” He sighed. “You would get along with Snape. Maybe you were one of his favorite students?”

            The trainee wrapped his arms in towards his chest, but seemed a lot more shaken about Harry describing him that way than he had been about the other trainee whispering his name. “What?” he began.

            “Come on, Eric.” The other trainee hauled on Eric’s arm again and gave Harry an agonized look. Harry just stared back. If the agonized look was meant to be an apology, then it didn’t go far enough. The other trainee hadn’t actually prevented Eric from saying the things he did.

            “No.” Eric drew his wand. “I was a Ravenclaw and in my fifth year when you were a firstie. You didn’t know me well. You can’t say shit about what I want and believe.”

            “Then why are you sitting here taunting me?” Harry grinned up at him. “What do you have against me?”

            Eric opened and closed his mouth. Harry shook his head a little. Some people thought he was Dark, and some people thought he was insane, and Eric apparently thought he was stupid. That annoyed Harry more than the rest. At least people would flinch away from him if they were afraid of him, and he might be able to make them leave him alone. But someone who thought he was stupid could do nothing but gape when they found out that Harry wasn’t.

            “Listen,” Harry said, leaning forwards and trying to make his voice as gentle and simple as possible. “I don’t want to fight with anyone.”

            “Really? Then why protect Slytherins?” Eric snapped. He had dark hair, which didn’t seem to stand on end naturally like Harry’s, but it was rising from his head now with the force of his fury. Harry eyed it. Eric might be capable of strong magic, or at least bursts of it, the way Harry had been able to cast all that magic at his Aunt Marge when he was upset. It would be better to get Eric on his side, if he could.

            And would I think like that, if it wasn’t for the bond?

            Harry sighed. He was already tired of thinking and then sifting through his thoughts for what was “really” him and what was “really” the Lordship bond. He thought that he wouldn’t have time for it, anyway, in most situations. He would have to go with what would save him and the others, and if that meant accepting help from the Lordship bond, then that was what it meant.

            “Because I’m bound to them, and that won’t change,” Harry said. He allowed a little hope to slip into his world. It was a million-to-one chance, but Harry’s life had been saved by stranger chances. “Unless you know some way to weaken a Lordship bond that won’t damage any of the people in the bond?”

            Eric fell back a step. “Why would I have that kind of knowledge?” His eyes darted around the cell, as though he had suddenly realized that Harry might be under observation by wards. “Who told you I did?”

            Powerful, but paranoid. Harry shrugged and slumped on the bench again. The other trainee had stopped trying to pull Eric away, and stood watching Harry curiously instead. He probably did that all the time, Harry thought. Watch, and stand around, and not “interfere,” which meant in practice that he put up with all the stupid shit other people did. Harry wouldn’t depend on him for anything. “Nobody. I just meant that you seem to think I have some choice about defending Slytherins when they’re bound to me.”

            Eric gaped at him. “You mean you wouldn’t if they weren’t bound to you?”

            Harry turned and tapped his head against the wall—gently. No one would benefit if he had a crack in his skull, except the people who wanted to see them all imprisoned or dead.

            “Of course not,” he snapped, turning back around. “I owe a few of them life-debts, and so I might have to testify at their trials or something. But the Lordship bond means that I’ll be responsible for them, legally and morally and financially, for the rest of my life or the rest of theirs. You think that’s easy? You think it’s something I wanted, when I spent years being responsible for the fate of the wizarding world? Of course not!”

            Eric blinked at him. Then he said, “But that means—I don’t think it’s right to try you for enslaving them, if you didn’t mean to.”

            “What do you mean?” Harry snapped, leaping to attention. He had thought he would be tried for using Unforgivables during the war and a bunch of other bullshit charges they could come up with, not for enslaving his vassals.

            Although that is the kind of bullshit charge the Ministry would come up with, and not such a far stretch, he had to admit a moment later. Kislik would probably testify for the prosecution.

            “We weren’t supposed to tell anyone that, Eric!” the other trainee hissed, looking up and down the corridor outside Harry’s cell. “You know that you only heard about it in the first place because your uncle’s on the Wizengamot.”

            “Exactly.” Eric stood there with his head thrown back, his neck tensed as though he was carrying a huge burden on his shoulders. He was trying to imitate Gilderoy Lockhart, Harry thought, or rather, the heroic stance that Lockhart had used in more than a few of his author photos. Harry would have snorted, but he was too busy watching Eric intently. “But the Wizengamot should have someone testify in front of them that Potter’s just as much a victim of the bond as anyone else. If it’s true,” he added, suddenly squinting at Harry. “But it must be. I know you hated the Slytherins.” He reached out and pulled Harry out of the cell abruptly by his arm, though after a minute Harry straightened up and walked rather than let himself be dragged. “Come on. The Wizengamot is sitting right now to debate the bond and whether it was enslavement, and whether that means that you should be tried as a Dark wizard. They weren’t going to let you in, but you’re here now, which means that your voice should be heard.”

            “We’ll get in trouble!” wailed the other trainee, hovering behind Eric and moving so that he kept the precise number of steps away from him at all times. Despite that, he didn’t run, Harry thought. Probably some follower of Eric’s family, the way Crabbe and Goyle had been with Malfoy. “You can’t just storm in there and demand they listen, Eric!”

            “Shut up, Oswald,” Eric said, and smirked in a superior fashion over his shoulder before turning back to Harry. Harry thought his words were for both Harry and Oswald, though. “That’s why it’s good to have an uncle on the Wizengamot.”

            And Eric set out through the corridors, striding fast and drawing Harry along in his wake. He had wanted to wait in the cells because he had thought he could do his vassals the most good by remaining there, but it sounded like the real battle was being fought right now in the Wizengamot’s courtroom.

*

            So far, Severus had walked into the courtroom, been seated, and had the looming faces in the gallery peer at him while a droning voice from the right asked him if he understood that his testimony would be recorded, that anyone on the Wizengamot could ask him questions, and that he might be imprisoned for wrong or false answers to those questions. The proceedings would have been more elaborate in some of the other courts, Severus knew, but the Wizengamot followed the opposite procedure; they would add more rules later.

            It was an unfair system, and the one that Severus had watched Albus wrestle with and twist and use and manipulate, but never transform. He gave the expected acknowledgments, his voice low and flat. Then the wizard with the droning voice moved into sight, a small, grey-haired one recording Severus’s answers on a parchment, and Severus knew the questioning was about to begin.

            It started with Tricia Selwyn, a witch so old that she looked like she’d been pickled. “Is it true that you killed Albus Dumbledore and were commended by You-Know-Who for it?” she demanded.

            “Forgive me,” Severus said, touching his chest above his heart. “I was under the impression that this interrogation was about the Lordship bond that some of you believe me to have initiated, not about the murder of Albus Dumbledore.”

            Selwyn’s eyes narrowed. By using the word “murder,” he had deprived her of one weapon she could have wielded. “This is hardly an interrogation,” she said, picking up on the other obvious word choice and walking straight into the secondary trap Severus had prepared for her.

            Severus smiled at her. “No? Then what is it? I understood the Wizengamot was sitting in judgment on the Lordship bond initiated by the contact between Harry Potter’s Shield Charm and the Dark Lord’s obedience curse without the Lord or vassals of that bond in front of them. Should such a vassal and Shield walk into the courtroom, what could he see himself as but the questionee in an interrogation?”

            “Questionee is not a word,” Selwyn said, but she shut her mouth and firmed her jaw when the contemptuous glares began to come her way. Severus sat up and turned to face the rest of the Wizengamot. He had been in this position before, when he was being tried after the first war, but he’d had to respect the limits Albus set on what he said then, and pretend that he was pathetically grateful for the chance to get pardoned at all. Now, everything was already known, everything was already done.

            And the Dark Lord was dead.

            There was what felt like a soft explosion of light and air in his chest, spreading. Severus shut his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. He had not thought of that fact before now, lost in his bitterness at the bond and the fact that he was a slave again. But now…

            Now, whatever else they might do to him, they could not give him to the Dark Lord. He would never rise again in the future. There was that. There would always be that, from now on.

            “Who initiated the bond, if you didn’t?” demanded the small grey-haired wizard who had recorded Severus’s initial responses. He was leaning over the gallery railing and peering down at Severus as though he suspected he had spoken to foil Selwyn and for no other reason. “Reports coming from the school said you did.”

            “Who gave those reports?” Severus asked quietly.

            The little man stabbed a finger at Severus. “We ask the questions here, and not you!”

            Severus gave a shrug and crossed his legs. This witness chair had no chains, unlike the one he had testified in after the first war. Once again came that wonderful, floating feeling of there being nothing they could do to him. Nothing that would be as bad as the consequences back then, nothing ever again.

            “I merely worried for the accuracies of the reports you received,” Severus murmured, eyes on the small wizard. Searching his memory for the name felt like a long plunge into a dark ocean, but finally produced it. Xavier Fawley, that was it. “If the Wizengamot cannot rely on its servants to tell them the truth, then what is wizarding society coming to?”

            Fawley’s expression was so pinched that he looked as though someone had been squeezing his cheeks. “You will answer the question.”

            Severus smiled gently at him, viciously, seeing another way that he could play with them. “No one initiated the bond,” he said.

            “Then there is no Lord, and no vassals?” That was Adela Abbot, a gentle, golden-haired witch who always looked as though she was on the verge of flinching. Frankly, Severus had no idea why she had gone into politics. She seemed to dislike the majority of what she had to do as a member of the Wizengamot, and had probably only taken a seat in the first place because of her family’s pure blood, rather than some kind of deeds in the Ministry propelling her to those heights.

            “There is a Lord, and there are vassals,” Severus said. He could feel the glares from several sides, but he kept his eyes on Abbot, who bit her lip thoughtfully.

            “Then who initiated the bond?” she asked.

            “No one,” Severus said.

            Pepper-Up Potion could only have made the steam coming out of their ears more visible. Selwyn crossed her arms and stuck out her chin like a battering ram to knock down the doors of Severus’s resistance. “Someone must have, or a bond would not exist.”

            “I gave you the answer to this question already, honored Wizengamot,” Severus said in a soft, bored monotone that his students knew to fear. “The bond happened because my Lord’s Shield Charm collided in midair with my former Lord’s obedience curse. It was accidental. No one can say that we chose to serve him. No one can say that he chose to bind us.”

            He received enough twitching fingers from that announcement that he wanted to smile, and would have if he hadn’t had better political sense. Taking a wizard as vassal could indeed be seen as enslavement, though that was a recent legal development and one that the Wizengamot had come up with at least as much to diminish the political power of bound Lords as out of concern for unfairly taken vassals.

            But if no one had actually initiated the bond or made the decision, then legally, no one was responsible for it. Severus supposed they could try the Dark Lord for using the obedience curse, which was Dark, but he also doubted they would find any vaults or properties to seize as compensation. And the Shield Charm was not a Dark spell, meaning that there was nothing they could try Potter with, either.

            Of course, this was the Wizengamot, who had declared that they didn’t need trials for some Death Eaters after the first war since “everyone” had seen them acting in the name of evil, but other Death Eaters, like Lucius Malfoy, needed trials because “one person less than everyone” had seen them casting Dark Arts. That Selwyn had used that phrase with a straight face still bewildered Severus.

            “Who made the decision to keep the bond going?” Selwyn asked now.

            “Can the honored Wizengamot member clarify the question?” Severus asked, staring up at the ceiling for a moment.

            “You do not ask the questions!” Fawley was hopping up and down, aiming a finger at him. “We do!”

            Severus glanced idly at him. These members were much less self-controlled than the Wizengamot he had had his trial in front of. He supposed that the length of time they had been in charge—they had grown fat and complacent—and their sudden release from the Dark Lord’s rule was the difference now. They didn’t see the need to hold their emotions back when they were talking to someone who couldn’t kill them for displaying them.

            “Very well,” Severus said, and remained silent.

            “Answer her question!” It was only not a howl, Severus thought, because no one else would use the word to describe the sound Fawley was making. The other Wizengamot members would agree that it had been a polite question, and the reporters knew better, by now.

            “I do not understand her question,” Severus said. “And I am not allowed to ask for clarification. I know that now.”

            Selwyn stood up and walked slowly to the gallery railing, bending down so that Severus could get a better look at her glittering black eyes and the iron rings on her fingers. Supposedly, she had won those rings in duels, either directly from her victims or by insisting that they melt down some heirloom and make the ring for her after she lost.

            Severus did not fear her. He was not about to duel her physically.

            “I will ask one more time,” Selwyn said. “Who made the decision to keep the bond going instead of severing it immediately?”

            Severus let his eyes widen. “There are ways to sever a bond,” he whispered, because he could not ask a question. “I did not know.”

            “That is not an answer to what I asked.” Selwyn’s fingers were white against the dark iron of the rings.

            “I did not know there were ways to sever a bond,” Severus said, ducking his head. “Particularly an accidental bond whose circumstances of formation would be difficult to replicate. I did not know. Now I know. I will begin investigating the methods of doing so immediately.”

            The sound of metal grinding on metal as Selwyn worked her hands back and forth on the railing was annoying, but Severus merrily ignored that. He had frustrated her, and that was all he wanted to do for right now, drive her in circles until she exploded or something else changed. Perhaps they would decide to bring in more witnesses, but until they did, this was Severus’s game.

            He was aware of Shacklebolt standing stiffly and unhappily by, his arms folded, but ignored the man. He had been the one who chose to bring Severus here, without trying to insist, instead, that the Wizengamot wait to hold a proper legal trial. He could put up with the consequences.

            “Who made the decision to remain as vassal and Lord?” Selwyn asked, sounding as if even that minor clarification was costing her at least a lung.

            Severus bowed his head. “The bond is two days old,” he said. “I am not sure that we have remained vassal and Lord, so much as been swept along by the course of events.”

            Selwyn stepped back and turned to Fawley, saying something Severus couldn’t hear. Fawley nodded, and turned, gesturing yet another wizard to come forwards. Severus watched as he came up to the front of the gallery, fussing with and straightening his robes before turning his long, donkey-like face towards Severus.

            Pius Thicknesse. The man whom the Dark Lord had placed under Imperius and used as Minister during the war.

            Shacklebolt tensed next to Severus, his motion so small that Severus would not have noticed it if he had not been so near him. But he was, and he knew Shacklebolt better from Order meetings than the man would have thought. Severus’s observation skills had been trained in Death Eater circles, where to miss something was death.

            Severus suspected where the attack would come from, then. He felt the weary certainty moving through his bones that had come to him when he found out about other Wizengamot activities in the past seventeen years. They cared little about legality, because the chances that something would be reported truthfully and publically outside the courtroom were small. This had turned, suddenly, from a trial on the Lordship bond into a trial for his activities during the war.

            And I was foolish enough to feel free at the prospect of the Dark Lord no longer being present. That had been stupid. Of course they could still use his Death Eater past as fetters to trap him.

            “You recognize this man?” Fawley was the one who asked the question, perhaps because Selwyn felt she had exposed herself enough for right now. Selwyn took the seat behind Thicknesse and folded her hands over her knees, looking so pleased that Severus wished for his wand.

            “Yes,” said Thicknesse, wrapping his fingers in the long tie he wore as though he could use it for a shield. “He is Potions teacher at Hogwarts.”

            Fawley gave Thicknesse a stern glance, and Thicknesse started and coughed. “And, of course, also a Death Eater,” he added. “Someone who attended the Death Eater meetings that I was brought to against my will and cursed at.”

            “Someone who seemed to be trusted by You-Know-Who?” Fawley asked, probing delicately.

            Thicknesse stared at Severus. The glazed eyes made Severus raise his own brows and lean back in his chair again. Perhaps this would be a simpler trap to escape than he’d thought. Prolonged exposure to the Imperius Curse almost literally scrambled one’s brains. The chances were good that Thicknesse hadn’t recovered enough yet to be a useful witness, no matter what the Wizengamot thought.

            “Yes,” Thicknesse muttered after too long a pause. “But—but he called him the Dark Lord.”

            Fawley looked as though he could barely restrain himself from shaking Thicknesse. Shacklebolt had leaned back a little, and Severus suppressed a smile. So this could be bad for him, but it would still take a while.

            “Why not call him Voldemort? He’s dead, and his Snatchers can’t find you anymore.”

            Severus started and glanced up. Potter was walking in at the door, accompanied by two young Auror trainees, one strutting and one dragging. Severus reached over and touched the shield mark on his right arm, finding it warm. Of course, the courtroom was stifling; that was probably why he hadn’t noticed Potter coming closer.

            Either way, there was no excuse for the fierce welcome that rose up in Severus’s chest like lightning.

            But it will be fun to watch what they do, Severus thought, leaning back again, his eyes on the stunned and pale faces of the Wizengamot above him. That is why I welcomed him.

            The shield mark pulsed on his arm, soft and steady, giving the lie to that statement. Severus ignored it. It was hidden by cloth anyway, no one could see it.

            No one except Potter, who stepped in front of Severus with a single glance at him, as though to make sure he had no visible wounds. Severus bowed his head a little, and let others take that gesture how they would. Potter’s eyes lit up with a fierce glitter, and he turned back and faced the Wizengamot again, clearing his throat. It was the same sort of sound Severus might have made, were he free to.

            Perhaps we are more than Lord and Shield, Severus thought, staring at Potter’s back. Perhaps we are comrades.

            His life had changed, and changed again, in the span of forty-eight hours. At least this change was more welcome than most of them, if it was real.

*

            AwfulLawful: Harry is close to that, but no one will let him rest.

            moodysavage: He at least held them until Harry could get there.

            Demonadine: Thank you! Glad you like it.

            SP777: That’s all? ;)

            polka dot: He thought the Aurors would support him.

            kain: I think Boot’s motives are understandable, but his hypocrisy and stupidity wouldn’t let him get away with it. He’s reacting out of emotions, rather like Draco when he got jealous of Harry.

            The Wizengamot will condemn Harry if they think he’s getting too political, and the wizarding public has turned against Harry before, easily, in fifth year and second year. He’s assuming it can happen again.

            Genuka: Hope it was bloody enough for you!
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The Only True Lords