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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Fifteen—Humoring Him

            Harry wanted to speak, but all he could think of was the blockage in his throat and the people in the photo. He hadn’t seen or spoken to them in years, which felt like generations. He could feel them, though. There were still places in his body that always would.

            And worse, Malfoy had seen his reaction.

            Harry’s eyes snapped back to Malfoy’s. He had lowered the photographs and was staring at Harry with a silent face. Harry wondered how many other people were in the room. It seemed likely there must be some, or Malfoy would have said something before now. Harry swallowed and managed to smile a little.

            “Those are pictures of my Muggle family,” he said. “Did someone send them to you?” That would be the solution, of course. There was no reason for Malfoy to concern himself with the Dursleys’ existence as long as they didn’t somehow come into play during the campaign or the war.

            And more than that, Harry thought, his eyes on the photographs that he could see sliding out from behind the first one of the Dursleys, these pictures were old. The Dursleys no longer lived in Number Four Privet Drive. Harry knew that much, although not where they were. Apparently they had shaken off their Auror protectors the minute the war was over and relocated somewhere in England. Harry was glad. Other than a few wistful thoughts about Dudley, he didn’t care what they did.

            But someone must have taken pictures of the house, and of his primary school. They had taken pictures of the bars and the locks when those bars and locks still existed.

            Well, at least that narrows the suspect pool. It has to be someone who has access to Ministry files. Harry had discovered one file on himself in the Ministry Archives shortly after he became an Auror, and he was as sure as lightning that Dumbledore, for all that he knew more about Harry’s home life than he let on, wouldn’t have taken these pictures or willed them to anyone who would use them this way. If he’d given them to someone like McGonagall, even, she would have come to talk to Harry about them before this.

            But that they had been taken long ago, and left to lie until discovered by an enemy? Or even that an enemy had found them long ago and waited to see when they would best be used? That, Harry could believe.

            “They are your family, then,” Malfoy said, and lowered the pictures a little. “I wasn’t sure. Do you know why they were sent to me instead of you?”

            Harry nodded, still thinking furiously. It was better than thinking about how much Malfoy now knew, or guessed. “Yes. They wanted you to know some of the secrets that they had the power to expose. It would be the same if they’d snapped pictures of, I don’t know, me having sex in public. Better to try and threaten you into backing away from me because they can make me a political liability than attack me directly. That hasn’t worked for them the last few times.” He smiled grimly, feeling a little more strength from that reminder.

            “Why would these pictures make you a political liability?” Malfoy asked, his voice exquisitely neutral. “What do they imply?”

            Here it comes. Harry had never had to make a direct confession like this. Ron knew some things, from seeing those bars on the window, and Hermione had hinted she knew some things, and they had lived quietly together in a bubble of mutual understanding. But Malfoy was staring at him, and Harry had been the one who brought up the nature of the threat in the first place.

            “Because they show that I was abused,” Harry said. He said the word, he’d said the word, he’d been the one to say it, he reminded himself as Malfoy’s gaze sharpened. No matter how much he hated it, no matter how much Malfoy’s friends might taunt him, at least Malfoy hadn’t had to name it. “This is another thing they can spin to show that I’m mental and acting out of what happened to me in childhood. You know that. Their last tactic backfired on them because they made other people worry about what secrets the Mind-Healers might betray. This one won’t do the same thing. They can feel sorry for me, poor abused little Harry Potter, and suggest delicately that no one who grows up in such circumstances is normal.”

            “More along the lines of what they were suggesting, last time,” Malfoy said after a moment.

            Harry nodded. “But more powerful this time, because they have pictures. There are plenty of people who probably didn’t read all the way through those documents they published. Pictures are easier to comprehend. Easier to sensationalize.”

            Malfoy whistled through pursed lips. He didn’t look as upset as Harry had thought he would once Harry explained the intent behind the photos, what had to be the intent behind the photos.

            But his next words proved that was because he still didn’t understand everything. “How can you tell from the pictures that you were abused?”

            “Let me see all of them fully,” Harry demanded, leaning forwards. He hadn’t been able to make out every detail of the last two, although he was pretty sure what they were.

*

            “He’s taking this more calmly than I expected him to,” Pansy said in a light murmur that Draco knew Potter wouldn’t pick up, as Draco rearranged the photos.

            Draco simply shrugged with one shoulder. He had thought the reaction would be more violent, too, considering the way Potter’s face had paled when he first saw the photos, but he didn’t know what would happen next. He wouldn’t know the source of either reaction until he heard the story behind the pictures.

            And he was starting to think it was even more disturbing than the ones he had begun to make up in his own head.

            Potter studied the bars and the door with the locks and cat-flap, and nodded. “Yes, that’s the outside and the inside of my old bedroom,” he said. “Well, the way it looked from the side of the house and the way it looked from the corridor leading up to it.” He sighed and dragged his hand through his hair, then sat down in the seat that Hogwarts had helpfully shoved up behind him. “That was where they kept me.”

            “Kept you?” Draco repeated delicately.

            Potter nodded. “Oh, and that one,” he added, because the cupboard picture had fallen out of Draco’s hand, and Potter had probably only seen it now, when Draco picked it up from the floor and juggled it to ensure it a place among the others. “The cupboard was where I lived until I was eleven. The second bedroom was where I lived afterwards.”

            “A guest bedroom?” Blaise was the one who asked the question, leaning forwards as though he wanted Potter to see him.

            Potter gave him a single flat stare, as though wondering who he was and what he wanted, and then nodded. “Well, originally. It was a room they used to store all my cousin’s toys eventually. They moved me in there because they thought wizards were watching.” He turned back to Draco. “They wanted to show you—whoever sent these pictures, I mean—that they know all the secrets, where I lived and who I lived with. The school one was probably included just to show that they also knew where I went to school. Nothing like that happened to me there. Well, except that my cousin chased me and beat me up. But so did other kids.”

            Draco blinked. He thought he would go on doing that until Potter cleared some things up. “Who would have sent these?”

            “I think they’re from a Ministry file,” Potter said, shaking his head. “I don’t know where the Dursleys live now, but it’s not there. And I know that anyone who got into the house after that would have taken off the bars and the locks. The cupboard might not even still be there. It was pretty small.”

            Draco just sat there. Pansy’s face was empty. Blaise was the one who cleared his throat and asked a question. “Was confinement enough to make you mental, then? Would the person who sent the pictures think that?”

            “It depends on how much else they knew,” Potter said, and now he was grimacing as though he had bitten into spoiled lettuce. But he kept going. “My relatives also made me work a lot. Called me names. Didn’t tell me magic existed.” He hesitated, measuring his audience with his eyes. Draco didn’t know if it was something in Draco’s face or Blaise’s that compelled him to go ahead. “Starved me.”

            “And starvation can have effects on someone’s mind and body and magic,” Blaise said, for all the world as though he was discussing an academic theory.

            Draco wanted to shake Blaise, but he couldn’t miss that Blaise’s tone was exactly what Potter needed. He smiled, a moment later, and relaxed. “Exactly. I didn’t know about the effects on magic until just recently, but the effects on the mind would be the important ones. Maybe they wouldn’t even try to play me off as mental, just too stunted and stupid to know what I was doing.”

            Draco examined Potter again. He had to wonder how much Potter had been affected. “How much did they starve you?” he asked, to know but also to have something to say.

            “It depended,” Potter said. “How angry they were, usually. Some days I got to eat normally. I missed meals if I used magic. I also missed meals when my aunt tried to put my cousin on a diet. And there were sometimes during the summer when I got one piece of food a day.” He grimaced. “It was pretty bad for Hedwig, too.”

            “Hedwig?” Blaise asked.

            “My owl.” Potter shook his head as though he wished he hadn’t brought her up. “Died during the war.”

            Blaise only nodded, but Draco said, “Then—did whoever sent these pictures think I wouldn’t talk to you? That I would really be scared off by this? It doesn’t sound as though you were starved enough to really stunt you.”

            “You forget, they haven’t seen us interact yet except by my staring into your eyes and apparently reading your soul,” Potter said dryly. A snort from Pansy said she agreed, but luckily, Potter continued speaking, so Draco didn’t have to factor that into his universe yet. “They think you’re frightened of me. This—it might not be exactly what I thought.” He was speaking more slowly now, staring at the wall. “We’ll know if they follow it up by releasing copies of the photos to the public, or contacting you again. The first one would suggest it’s what I thought, the second one that they’re just interested in causing some sort of rift between us.”

            Blaise leaned back and raised his eyebrows at Draco, mouthing words Draco knew Potter wouldn’t be able to see. He can reason this out.

            Draco nodded. Potter needed the coaching of people like Draco and Ladon, obviously, but he was better than Draco had thought he was, and that might mean they could limit some of their interference, and Draco could even relax about aspects of politics he had thought Potter would have to have pounded into him.

            “Does the abuse affect you from day to day?” Pansy asked, this time taking Blaise’s place in front of the fire.

            Potter looked at her, not without recognition but without much interest. “Do you mean, do I think about it? Not that often.”

            Pansy shook her head. “But nightmares and the like might make you more of a liability.”

            Potter snorted. “Of course they could. But I’m more likely to have nightmares about the war, which could do the same thing.” He waved his hand at the sky, or else the invisible ceiling of the room in Hogwarts where he stood. “This is—an inconvenience. Something that happened to someone different, long ago and far away.”

            Not so much, Draco thought, or you wouldn’t have gone so pale on seeing those photos.

            But he wouldn’t say that in front of his friends. There were certain things that he and Potter would have to discuss in private, and soon. Blaise and Pansy might understand some of the political underpinnings, even reluctantly admire Potter as a political thinker, but they wouldn’t understand the other things Draco wanted to say.

            The things he had to say.

            “Good,” Draco said aloud. “Then the only thing we need to do is wait, and in the meantime, see who’ll they send owls to.” He hesitated one more time. This was a question he would have preferred to ask Potter in private, but as things stood, it was one he couldn’t omit. “How will you react if they do publish the pictures?”

            In the light of the fire, Potter’s eyes had a more lambent flame still. “Not the way they want me to,” he said, with quiet certainty. “They thought you would—perhaps they even thought you would despise me for the weakness of being abused by Muggles, if they sent them to you first. As it is, they warned me. Now I’ll be ready.”



            He nodded to Draco, and shut the Floo connection down.

            There was a little silence, and then Pansy cleared her throat and said, “Now I can’t wonder that Potter declared himself a Dark Lord.”

            “There are still things that don’t fit,” Blaise said, perhaps because he saw some of the words gathering in the back of Draco’s throat. He shook his head and picked up a wineglass in his slender fingers, frowning. “Why didn’t he approve of Muggle-baiting and those other things? He should have hated Muggles, because of what they did to him.”

            Draco cleared his throat. “Perhaps he sees people more as individuals, instead of groups.”

            “He didn’t see Slytherins that way,” Pansy pointed out quickly.

            “Mr. Malfoy.” Draco started and turned to face Rosenthal, who he had forgotten. She was meeting his gaze with a candid one, although one that had shadows that made Draco suspect he knew what she was going to say. “Can I speak with you privately for a moment?”

            Draco rose to his feet and nodded casually to his friends. “Go home and drink your own wine. I have business to conduct.”

            Pansy and Blaise stood up with stares in his general direction, but Draco couldn’t be bothered by that. There was a grimness, a hardness, to the lines around Rosenthal’s eyes that let him know this was no casual interview, and he shut the door of the next room, a small sitting room decorated in white and gold, gently behind him. Doing so engaged some wards that would prevent any eavesdropping.

            Draco didn’t ask whether his friends would try that if he left the temptation open. Of course they would. Better to save everyone embarrassment by shutting them out now.

            Rosenthal turned around to face him. “We should consider if the one who sent these photos might not be right,” she said.

            Draco blinked. “Right that Potter was abused? Of course he was. He admitted that himself. As to what purpose they might have had in mind, Potter made some good guesses, but that’s all that they are. We won’t get any definitive proof until we have more evidence one way or the other, and only time will produce that.”

            He was rather proud of that small speech, but it earned him nothing more than a hard stare from Rosenthal. “You do not understand,” she said. “Some of the things he said made sense. But we must ask ourselves whether—this is new information, sir. We must at least ask ourselves whether we are dealing with someone unstable.”

            Draco studied her. She was his adviser, and he shouldn’t have hired her if he didn’t want to listen to her advice, he reminded himself. The urge to snap at her was as counterproductive as it was childish.

            “You thought he was already, didn’t you?” he asked, because it made some of her earlier hesitation around Potter make sense. “That declaring himself a Dark Lord wasn’t a good sign?”

            Rosenthal handed him a slender smile. “I don’t see what it can be called a good sign of, sir, except his willingness to challenge the Ministry. And that might not be the best plan. I’ve gone along with this so far, but that was before I realized there might be a source of his instability. Other than the war, I mean. He seems to have coped with his trauma from the war. But dismissing childhood abuse like this is a worrying thing.”

            Draco sighed. No, he couldn’t snap at her. Her concerns were perfectly reasonable on the face of it. He might not want to admit it, but that didn’t change reality. “What do you think I should do, then?”

            “Don’t commit to Potter in public yet, sir,” Rosenthal said, lowering her eyes and twisting her braid between her fingers. That said a great deal, for her. Draco hadn’t realized until then how afraid she had been that he would disregard her advice. “Luckily, the only thing we have so far is Skeeter’s article, and that could be taken a lot of different ways. Wait. Don’t try to find out who sent the photographs yet. When we have more evidence, as you pointed out, we shall know how to move.”

            Draco nodded slowly. “All right. No commitment in public? I can do that.” They had barely begun their dance in public. It would do no harm to delay it for a time.

            But in private…

            I am going to speak to Potter tomorrow. Come advisers or high water.

*

            delia cerrano: Pansy is just Draco’s friend, who sometimes advises him. I said nothing about her being involved with Draco.

            qwerty: Or who sent them. That’s what Harry is more worried about.

            Seiren: It was actually longer than usual, but for some reason, everyone claims my longest chapters are the shortest.

            SP777: Thanks. But as Harry said, once someone took the photos, a lot of people could see them if they were in one of the official files.

            moodysavage: At the moment, a lot of his reactions are constrained because he’s in front of other people. He’ll have some things to say to Harry in private.

            alexkdp: Mostly, Harry doesn’t like what he thought Draco’s reaction would be to finding out about his childhood. He thought Draco might decide he is a political liability.
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