Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—Speak the Truth

            “Mr. Potter.”

            Harry looked up with a faint smile. After all, it was nice to hear from someone who didn’t call him “Lord.”

            He’d had a filling if plain meal of toast and porridge and something that might have been pumpkin juice in another lifetime. Now he waited, his hands gently twisting around each other. What else did he have to do? It wasn’t like he could read in here, with no books, and he didn’t see the point in plotting and planning dizzily. The Wizengamot might do something he had never thought of. He would react when he had their plans in front of him, and not before.

            But Auror Stone was in the doorway now, and of all the free people in the Ministry, she was the one Harry trusted to bring him real news. He sat up and nodded. “Yes, madam?”

            Stone studied him with a faint frown, and then nodded back and said, “Your friends Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger are here to speak with you.”

            Harry wanted to close his eyes and melt down the wall, but it wasn’t like that would bring Ron and Hermione closer. He cleared his throat as importantly as he could. “Send them in, please.”

            Stone’s brows pinched tighter, but she stepped out and said something to a person waiting in the corridor beyond. Harry saw the swish of a scarlet robe and assumed it was an Auror. Ron and Hermione were probably right there, if they’d been brought under an Auror escort.

            But getting up and running towards the door would just convince them that he was dangerous, too. Harry wrung his hands again and leaned back against the wall, his eyes on the cell door, waiting.

            Hermione when she came in looked ten times more beautiful than she had at the Yule Ball, and there was Ron behind her, his grin lighting up the room. Harry charged up to them, ignoring the way Stone touched her wand, and hugged them both. He knew that Stone wouldn’t cast a curse at them unless she thought him truly dangerous.

            “Thank you,” Harry whispered into Hermione’s hair, and she leaned back and smiled at him, a little. Her eyes were too bright, but Harry knew she wasn’t about to cry in front of Stone and all the rest of them.

            “You’re welcome,” Hermione said. “Oh, Harry.”

            “I know,” Harry said. “It’s not as good as getting me free yet, but it’s something, for you to be here.” He held Hermione’s hand tightly and turned to Ron. “What’s going on out there? Is your family okay? What about Ginny?”

            Ron snorted at him. “Ginny’s not the one who got herself arrested because she told everyone about casting the Unforgiveables, mate.”

            Harry waved his hand. “Yeah, but she was pretty upset the last time I saw her.” He thought he could say that much without betraying the secret he and Ginny had. They would just think that he was talking about seeing her in the Great Hall before the Aurors took him away.

            “She’s fine,” Hermione said, speaking so quickly that Harry decided she probably resented the loss of time. “So are the rest of the Weasleys. A bit shaken up, but there’s no one who was in the Great Hall who isn’t.”

            “Except people like Lewis Boot,” Harry muttered.

            “He was arrested, just like you, so it doesn’t matter as much what he’s feeling right now.” Hermione studied him with narrowed eyes. “What do you need?”

            “News from outside this cell,” Harry said promptly. “But I don’t know if you can bring that to me, or if you want to.”

            “What do you want to know?” Hermione took her hand out of his and stood regarding him seriously, as though she was going to charge off and get everything he wanted the instant he said he wanted it. Harry smiled. The shield mark on his arm might bind him to his vassals, but he doubted he would ever find a bond as close and strong with them as he had with his friends.

            “Yeah, mate,” Ron added, shaking his head. “Want to bring it to you. Honestly.”

            Harry grinned at him, then turned back to Hermione. “I need to know what the Wizengamot is saying about the arrests, and the Lordship bond, and the end of the war, and all the rest of it. I need to know everything you can find out about the pure-blood Helton family, and this thing called a blood-ghost, which supposedly showed up to attack Malfoy a while ago.” Even as he spoke, a new plan was coming to life in his mind, although it was probably only there because he had done it once before. Harry knew that he wasn’t a strategist. Everything would be a lot easier if he was. “And I need you to carry a message for me.”

            “Okay,” Hermione said. She didn’t glance back at Stone because Harry hadn’t, and luckily, Ron was able to keep his eyes under control as well, although they’d widened.

            “Find the publisher who decided to publish that biography of Dumbledore that came out last summer,” Harry said, as casually as he could. “I want to make sure that there isn’t going to be any unauthorized biography of me coming out. Nothing that could make me look even worse in the eyes of the public, you know?”

            He hoped they would understand him, considering who had written that biography, and they did. Hermione pressed her fingers briefly into Harry’s hand, then said, “I’ll let them know. You’d think that it would be too early to publish a biography, but I’m always amazed at how fast some people write.” She blinked twice at Harry, too fast for it to be natural.

            Harry had to smile a little. “Yes. Right. Although that’s a bit rich, Hermione, considering how fast you take notes.”

            Hermione rolled her eyes. “You were grateful to take advantage of how fast you could copy them in school,” she said haughtily, and then abruptly hugged Harry one more time, so hard that Harry gasped a little. “Be careful,” she hissed into Harry’s ear. “Please.”

            “I know,” Harry said, and he didn’t have the words to tell her everything about how he would be careful because he had to be, because now it would be his vassals who would pay for any mistake he made as well as him, but Hermione seemed to sense it anyway. She gave him one more squeeze, and stepped out of the way for Ron.

            Ron didn’t hug Harry, but he did shake his hand and look into his eyes. “You’ll do this,” he said. “I know that, somehow, you’ll do this.”

            Harry could have questioned that, the way he wanted to. He really wanted someone to tell him what to do. Going into the Forbidden Forest had been one of the worst moments of his life, but he had to admit, it had been freeing as well. He was following orders then. There was only one step he could take to defeat Voldemort forever, and once he took it, no one else could scold him or pressure him into doing anything else. More to the point, there was only one right thing to do and he couldn’t make any more mistakes.

            But he had to be a leader, and it seemed he would be one for the rest of his life at this rate. He squeezed Ron’s hand back and said, “Please take care of them, Madam Stone.”

            “I’ll see that they get safely out of the Ministry,” Stone said in a voice as neutral as the bench behind Harry as she led them away. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

            Harry sat back down on the bench when they were gone and spent a moment massaging his wrists. He thought Hermione had understood his message. What was important about that biography of Dumbledore wasn’t who had published it, but who had written it. And the publisher could get a message to her.

            Now it just remained to be seen if Rita Skeeter would come to him—and if her beetle Animagus form could dodge the wards and protections the Ministry had put up during the war.

*



            “Severus.”

            Severus didn’t recognize the glittering white place he opened his eyes to, but that didn’t matter. He knew the voice. And he had no intention of rising to his feet off the soft pallet that he seemed to have appeared on. It was ten times more comfortable than the bench he had gone to sleep on in the Ministry holding cell.

            “Severus,” the voice repeated, and the pallet disappeared from beneath him.

            Severus heaved himself to his feet, and turned around with a scowl. He saw no reason to pretend that he was anything but displeased by this summons.

            Looked at more closely, the glittering white place resolved into a replica of the Great Hall of Hogwarts, though empty of all furniture except a single table and with windows made of faceted diamond. And at the table sat Albus.

            Severus thought about lying down and going back to sleep, but the problem was, this was sleep. And he thought he would only wake up into another dream if he did manage to close his eyes.

            He took a few steps towards the table, and stopped with his arms folded a considerable distance away. Albus gazed up at him, twinkling as madly as ever. “Why have you stopped, my dear boy?” he asked, and spread his arms. “Is this not a beautiful place?”

            “It’s not a place that I wanted,” Severus said quietly, and sat down on the edge of the bench furthest from Albus. For a moment, it twitched, and he thought it would shrink and draw him closer to Albus that way, but it settled and stayed in place. Perhaps Albus was content to talk to him from this distance. “I thought I would die. Then I thought—there would be blackness. Peace. Perhaps Lily again.”

            To no one else alive could he have said that, but Albus knew all his dirty little secrets already, and he wasn’t anyone alive. Severus would be surprised if he could contact anyone outside Severus’s head.

            This could be a dream, too.

            If it was, though, it was a persistent one, maybe even one Albus had planted in Severus’s head before he died, to come out only if Severus lived after the war. Severus sighed and leaned back, watching. Albus would say what he had come to say, and nothing would change that.

            But Albus sat still, reluctant, it seemed, to say it. Severus watched him trace his fingers in circles on the table. They formed brief, sparkling rings, that then vanished.

            “Is this the afterlife?” Severus asked at last, because if Albus had nothing important to say, then maybe he would let Severus go back to sleep. “I disapprove. It has far too much light.”

            Albus looked up with a smile that was almost sweet. “No, my dear boy,” he said quietly. “It is not the afterlife, only a half-place that I lingered to speak to those who might need me. You, now. Harry not long ago.” He paused, and fixed Severus with that patient stare he almost always used when he spoke of Potter.

            Severus exhaled. “He did die. Or at least the Killing Curse struck his body and that was enough to fool the Dark Lord, and he came to you.”

            Albus nodded. “He had a choice. He could have gone on, died in truth. Then there would have been an end of the Dark Lord’s Horcrux, but an end, too, of Harry Potter.” Albus sat up, seeming to draw in the majesty that Severus remembered him so often clothed in. He supposed it was a privilege, of sorts, that Albus had trusted Severus enough to show him his power, rather than the dotty old man that he presented to the public. But considering that he usually showed it when invoking or mentioning the Unbreakable Vows, Severus could have lived without the privilege.

            “Harry made the choice, though,” Albus continued. “The harder choice, the more courageous one, to go back and continue fighting and defending. And you made yours, too, Severus.” His gaze was hard enough now that Severus winced. “Which is why I am beyond distressed, my dear boy, to see you doubting your decision now.”

            “What do you mean?” Severus demanded. “I lived, but I never thought I would have another master. Both my masters are dead. There shouldn’t be any vow or mark to hold me anymore—”

            “I’m talking about the decision that you made in the Shrieking Shack,” Albus interrupted.

            Severus felt as though his marrow was flinching. He sat still, with his arms folded. It was the only rebellion he could make right now.

            “You could have died, when the fangs tore your neck open and Nagini’s poison entered your bloodstream.” Albus cocked his head. “I know that you gave the memories to Harry, that you almost died protecting him and lying to Voldemort. You did all that the vow asked of you.

            “But you chose to reach for that bezoar, and for that all-purpose healing potion you invented years ago, the one that can be absorbed through the skin of the palms and collects as condensation on the outside of its vial, for one too weak to break the glass…”

            “You weren’t supposed to know about that, you old meddler.” Severus spoke through lips numb with shock, but he knew that Albus had understood him when the fool chuckled.

            “Yes, I know,” Albus said. “But you weren’t subtle enough about ordering the dragon’s blood, my boy. I still kept track of shipments and sales of that, in view of my old interest. So I knew where it was going, and once I investigated a little further and learned its purpose, I was content to let you make the potion.”

            “Because it might benefit your favorite, of course.” Severus didn’t know his voice would snap like a whip until he heard it.

            Albus fell silent abruptly, and then looked straight at Severus and said, “You are exactly right. Benefit someone I cared for. That is the only reason I permitted a potion that powerful, and potentially deadly in Voldemort’s hands, to exist.”

            Severus couldn’t deal with what Albus’s words implied, and he turned his head and stared blindly at one of the diamond windows until he thought he had both his tongue and his temper under control. Then he said, “I made the decision to come back to protect Slytherin students that I thought the Dark Lord might blame, in a way, for their actions during the war. Even if your side won, they were likely to be poorly treated.”

            “My side?” Albus had that light sound in his voice that he did when he offered someone sweets. “Is it not your side also, Severus?”

            “My side consisted of Lily and myself,” Severus said. “Everything else, I was made to vow.”

            Silence again. Severus had the impression that he had shocked Albus at last, or saddened him. But it didn’t feel like a triumph. What Severus wanted most was for the white light around him to dim, to become peaceful blackness that he could roll himself in as if it were grass.

            Well, no. What he wanted most was for Lily to walk towards him with her hand extended in forgiveness. But he knew he didn’t deserve that, so he would settle for something in reach.

            “Severus…I am sorry.”

            Albus had said that before. Perhaps not with this tone in his voice, and not in a way that soothed some of the old wounds on Severus’s soul, but he’d said it. Severus refused to let it affect him any more profoundly now. He simply grunted.

            “I am,” Albus said. He stood up and walked towards Severus’s position on the bench. Severus clung to his stillness with some effort. He would never have expected something like this. Yes, some things had changed in death—he had already seen that Albus had two whole hands, for example—but the soul couldn’t, and Albus had a soul incapable of yielding.

            Yet that man who could not yield knelt in front of Severus and looked up at him, his eyes so somber that Severus nearly reached out to check for a fever. Then he shook his head. He was being ridiculous. Ghosts didn’t get fevers.

            “I know you never thought you would be marked and have to serve another master,” Albus began. “But you made the decision to come back, and I would like you to live.” His hand gripped Severus’s knee. “Not only because Harry needs you. Not only because young Mr. Malfoy and the others need you. Because you deserve to live, my boy, and find joy somewhere along the route.”

            Severus shut his eyes. He didn’t want to admit that he had wanted this, some sign that Albus cared about him beyond his usefulness in defending Harry or as a spy against the Dark Lord.

            It is typical of my life that I had to wait until after he was dead to receive it.

            “I am sorry,” Albus whispered. “I am sorry for forcing you to kill me.”

            Severus did open his eyes in shock at that, and saw the white Great Hall dissolving around him. Albus rose to his feet with a grim set to his mouth, and that had never shown up save on the rare occasions when Albus went to battle.

            “I can stay no longer,” Albus said. “You are waking. I do not even know if we will be able to speak to you again.” He held out a hand to Severus, but Severus did not try to take it. He didn’t think it was meant for that. “Please, Severus. Live if you can. I hope you try.”

            The whiteness blew away in mist, and Severus was once again turning around on the bench as the wards on his door opened.

            This time, it wasn’t Shacklebolt. Two wizards muffled in heavy cloaks entered the room. Severus could see the color of those cloaks, just barely, in the dim light that filled the holding cells at night, and they weren’t Auror robes.

            “Take him,” said someone waiting outside the cell, a voice that croaked and hissed the way someone would under an auditory glamour. “But be careful not to hurt him.” There was a pause, while Severus leaned in and the two cloaked wizards seemed uncertain of what to do, and then the disguised voice added, “Tranquillus.”

            Oh, very good, Severus thought distantly, as the Calming Charm fell on him and subdued his emotions to a distant, drifting grey haze. This was the reason a potion was usually used instead, because a Calming Charm left a person almost incapable of feeling or speaking. But it would work perfectly to keep the Lordship bond from alerting Potter with any discomfort or fear on Severus’s part.

            His head flopping, a layer of velvet between him and the world, Severus barely felt the cloaked wizards pick him up. Then they were out the cell door, hurrying him down the corridor in search of places unknown.

*

            Harry had to look away when the beetle crawled under the door into his cell and then transformed. Not even McGonagall was pleasant to look at when she was coming out of her Animagus form, but Skeeter seemed to take longer at it. Harry wondered if that was because she’d been an unregistered Animagus and hadn’t dared practice a quick Transfiguration.

            “Thank you for coming to see me,” Harry said, determined that he would be polite.

            Skeeter stood up and patted at her hair for a few moments. Making him wait, Harry was sure. Then she took out a quill and a sheet of parchment and faced him, holding both of them up like weapons.

            “Why did you choose to call me on, Mr. Potter?” she asked, fastidious. “As you know, I’m much more of a biographer now than a reporter.”

            Harry widened his eyes. “Oh, but I was thinking of your future business, rather than your past one.”

            That caught Skeeter off-guard, the way he’d intended. He’d known he would have to bargain with her. The only difference was that what he could offer would probably persuade her with no harm to himself or his vassals, unlike the things he could offer to the Aurors who protected him.

            “Oh?” Skeeter said at last, when she seemed to realize that Harry wasn’t rushing into telling her what he meant. “Why do you think so?”

            Harry smiled at her. “Because someone who spread around some interviews that caused trouble for the Ministry right now might impress me. I might think they were at least a little on my side. I might let them write my biography later, after the trials.”

            Skeeter stood up straighter before she could stop herself. Then she leaned back against the cell wall—not near the door, luckily, which still shimmered with wards and the other spells the Aurors were using to stop Harry from getting out—and watched Harry with a weird expression on her face.

            “What?” Harry asked. He’d thought she would either ask questions or jump right to agreement, not do this.

            “I’ve heard some people talk about you doing this since the Lordship bond started,” Skeeter observed, and Harry kept from rolling his eyes. Yeah, right, she’s not a reporter, when she got that much information in a few days. “You offer gifts that you never would have before. You bargain. Is it the bond making you politically savvy?”

            Harry thought about that, then shrugged. “Maybe. I already know that the bond will help me take care of my vassals, and if it needs to tell me things about them or adjust my thinking, then it will.” His spine crawled as he thought that, but he knew now that he’d been foolish to listen to Kislik. Unless there was actually a spell that would break the bond with no negative consequences for anyone, he didn’t want to use it. “But I think a lot of it is just the saving-people thing that Hermione always told me I had.”

            Skeeter’s lips twitched. “Ah. Your martyr complex.”

            Harry shook his head. “No. I’m not just making sacrifices to take care of the whole world, now, or a few of my friends. It’s my vassals.” He grinned at Skeeter. “And when you make deals and trade favors for other favors, my impression was that it was called politics.”

            Skeeter laughed. “I find you much more interesting and relatable than I did before, Harry Potter,” she murmured. “Or should I call you by your title?”

            Harry shuddered. “No, thanks.”

            He saw Skeeter’s eyes gleaming, and knew she had probably noticed the shudder and was filing it away. But she said, “All right. I can’t start the book until after the trials. What are the other restrictions?”

            Harry met her eyes. “You say whatever you like about me. Look up dirty secrets, whatever. I’ll even help. But you only say positive things about my vassals, or I’ll do whatever I can to stop you.”

            Skeeter only nodded. If she was scared of the threat, Harry really couldn’t tell. She took out her quill. “Then let’s begin on the interview portion now, shall we?”

*

            polka dot: He’s not being very brave at the moment, that’s true.

            SP777: Thank you! He can do lots of things, as long as he knows that his vassals are in danger.

            moodysavage: Draco is more practical and less philosophical than Harry. He accepts that the bond won’t change and he might as well try and be happy.

            strange: No, it wasn’t marked as Snarry.

            Kain: No, the ghost was making up a story. He intended to present himself as an Auror who had a right to be there if someone confronted him. It was only Harry’s rather sudden entry that forced him to reveal himself as a blood-ghost.

            Heartstar: Thank you!

            delia cerrano: Thank you!
- 14
- 15
- 16
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Only True Lords