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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
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Chapter List
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Chapter Eighteen—Affairs of the Blood
            Severus pulled roughly out of the mind of the man he’d questioned, and stepped back, grimacing. He had had to use Legilimency with all of them; they wouldn’t respond to ordinary means of interrogation, and Potter wouldn’t allow him to use even threats of torture. The snake swaying in front of them seemed to be as far as he was willing to go.
            Severus pressed a hand to his forehead. He could have done this without much trouble, once. But he was exhausted, and the Legilimency took a toll on his mind every time he had to read someone else uncooperative.
            “What did you learn?”
            “The same thing I learned from the first five,” Severus said, without turning around. He could hear the scrape of scales as Potter either moved his hand along the snake’s back or commanded it to slither aside. He didn’t care which it was, right now. “That they are not Wizengamot members themselves, but related. They are afraid that they might lose their wealth and privileges if you investigated too closely into their connections to the Ministry under the Dark Lord. Some of them are also afraid that you might become a political power later, if you aren’t one now. They wanted you stopped, and they thought the best way to do that was taking us.”
            “Surprised they didn’t grab Ron and Hermione, too,” Potter said. He stepped up beside Severus, his face still and his eyes wide as he looked at the malefactors. It reminded Severus of the way he had looked at the ashes of the Dark Lord.
            Severus grimaced, rubbed his arm where the bond mark was throbbing slightly, and said, “They are lazy and uncoordinated, and they were desperate. They took us because we were closer and more convenient to them, since we were captive in cells already.” He cast a harsh look at Potter, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “They also know more about Lordship bonds, and give them more credit, than you do. They thought there was no way you could fight back once they had your vassals.”
            A sneer worked its way across Potter’s face, and he lifted his boot as if he would prod the nearest wizard in the ribs. Then he pulled it back. “But I did,” he said, and if it was too soft for the ears of the person it was superficially intended for, Severus understood why he said it.
            “How did you find us?” Severus asked, changing the subject. “They were clever about blocking the bond so that our emotions could not send you a message, if nothing else.”
            For some reason, Potter looked stricken. But he took in a shaky breath and answered, the same way he usually had when Severus called on him in class. “I used the blood of someone related to one of my vassals.”
            Severus narrowed his eyes. “Weasley is the likeliest guess,” he said, “but I should not have thought his blood connection to Draco that strong.” He thought that Weasley was also related to the Crabbes through a connection to the Blacks, but that was distant, and he could remember no recent intermarriages with Goyles, Parkinsons, or Princes.
            “No,” Potter said, his voice so quiet that Severus only realized it was meant to be words a moment later. “It was—it was Lucius.”
            Severus took a step back from him, despite the pulling warmth in his arm, wet and messy like tears, that urged him closer. “There is no way you could have got his blood, unless you have an ally in the Ministry that you did not inform me of.”
            Potter shook his head and looked at Severus. Ah, Severus thought with an uninvolved part of himself, that is why the bond was wet. His eyes look so. “It turns out that my mother was descended from a Squib who was born into a pure-blood family called the Heltons. They have this blood-ghost thing hanging around that has a grudge against the Malfoys. It already attacked Draco. I convinced—Lucius to take Draco’s place, and give himself to the ghost in exchange for giving me some blood so I could track Draco down.”
            For a moment, Severus stood there in the midst of a long fall. Then he shook his head and snapped, “Then you have the most accommodating blood-ghost I ever heard of.”
            “He wasn’t fucking accommodating!” Potter stepped towards him, and the snake at his side, the snake Severus had conjured, reared its head back and hissed. Severus rolled his eyes. Of course everyone had to take Potter’s side, including his own conjured animals. “I had to argue and argue with him to get him to take the message to Lucius and come back with Lucius’s blood.”
            Severus shook his head. “Blood-ghosts manifest only rarely, Potter. If they complete their task, they’ll fade, but they aren’t all that strong. If they were, they could fulfill more than one task. In this case, it sounds like he’s chosen Draco as his victim, and he must have expended a lot of strength carrying that vial of blood back to you. What makes you think that he would have changed his mind and chosen to slaughter Lucius simply because you asked him to?”
            “Because that was the bargain,” Potter said. He was beginning to look confused, not that that was new, Severus thought. He moved his right arm, and Severus noticed for the first time the blood smeared over the shield mark. A crude but effective technique, he thought, and wondered if Potter had had to think before he employed it, or hit on it the first time by sheer luck. “He wouldn’t have brought me the blood if he hadn’t accepted it. He would have just sat there—floated there, I don’t know—and attacked Draco when he came back.”
            “Blood-ghosts cannot change their nature,” Severus said.
            Potter gasped and stared at him. “He did say that,” he admitted.
            “Of course he did,” said Severus. “Blood-ghosts are not usually deceptive to the members of the families they serve.” His mind wandered for a second, distracted by the news that Lily had pure-blood descent, but he folded the thought away to consider for later. The name Helton was not familiar to him, which made it less distracting. “He was trying to warn you. What was his task, specifically?”
            “To kill the last member of the family line living,” Potter said. “He said he didn’t do anything to help me against Lucius before because Draco was alive, so killing Lucius wouldn’t do anything to stop the Malfoys, and his center of power is the Ministry holding cells and he can’t move far away from them. But then he said that he could accept Lucius as a substitute for Draco…” Harry’s voice trailed off.
            “The same objection would still apply,” Severus said, and didn’t try to hold back his sneer this time, especially because the shield mark had stopped pulsing. “If Draco is alive, he can sire children. No, Mr. Potter. I think it likely that Lucius is still alive, and the blood-ghost told him something different, perhaps simply that you needed the blood to bring Draco back. Once Draco returns to the holding cells, the blood-ghost has his preferred victim in reach, and can slaughter him there.”
            “What did you do to my father?”
            Severus sighed. Of course Draco would have started listening at the worst point possible in the conversation.
            Potter turned around to face Draco, though. “I thought I was sacrificing his life so that you could live and I could find you,” he said. “And you could live after that, because the ghost wouldn’t be hunting you. I’m sorry, but I would do it again.”
            Severus slapped his hand over his eyes. Neither Potter nor Draco, of the rapidly widening eyes and harsh breathing, seemed to notice, but he did, and that was the important thing.
            And sometimes our Lord is stupid.
*
            Draco blinked. He had a tingling in his right hand, and in his right arm, and he didn’t know why.
            Then he realized that his slapping Potter across the face probably had something to do with it.
            He had done it without thinking of the bond, without caring, instinctively. He flexed his fingers now, and swallowed. He didn’t know what punishment the bond would dole out to him, but he didn’t think it would be mild.
            Then he realized that Potter was looking at him as though Draco had the right to do that, not even touching his red cheek. And he nodded a little and said, “I made the bargain. I would do the same again. Your father isn’t one of my vassals. You are.”
            “But you had to know that they weren’t going to hurt us.” Draco’s throat felt choked, but his voice came out in spite of that, like a river forcing its way around a dam. “They took us and kept us calm, and they bound us, but they didn’t torture us.”
            “I had no idea what they intended to do,” Potter said tiredly. Now he reached up and massaged Draco’s handprint, but as if he wanted to go to sleep, rather than as if it hurt. “I only knew they blocked the bond and I couldn’t feel or see you in any normal way. Figuring out how to come to you and how to get a vision of you were accidents. Right now, they weren’t torturing you. But we know they didn’t have much of a plan and just did the first thing that came into their heads.” He looked over at the wizards cowering against the far wall of the cellar. “Torture might have been next, when they realized that I wouldn’t do what they wanted.”
            “You would have had to, if they had your vassals.” Draco said. He was still lightheaded at the thought of something happening to his father, but the words spilled out without much effort or prompting. “Of course you would have. That was what they were counting on, wasn’t it?”
            Potter narrowed his eyes further. “It’s what they intended. It doesn’t mean that’s what would have happened.”
            Draco shook his head violently and wrenched the conversation back on track, which was harder than he thought it would be with the image of his father bleeding to death in the back of his brain. “But they had us, and we were safe. You didn’t need to make that stupid bargain. You could have waited.”
            “No, I couldn’t.” Potter stood very tall, and his left hand came over to clutch his right arm as though his shield mark was punishing him for some reason. “They could have turned violent at any time, I told you. I needed a way to find you right away.”
            Professor Snape delicately cleared his throat. Draco turned towards him, wondering if he could change the world in some way so that his father would still be alive.
            “You could indeed have waited,” Professor Snape said. “I could feel the bond in my mind. Their Calming Charms did not have as much effect on the mind of a Legilimens. Perhaps I would have been able to send you a message by touching the bond.”
            Potter shrugged. “I had no way of knowing that. I didn’t feel you, you know. None of you. Whatever they did to block the bond, it could be permanent.”
            Draco opened his mouth to ask about his father again, but Professor Snape glanced around at the walls and door of the cellar they stood in and shook his head. “Rather, I think, a property of the place they chose to put us in.”
            Potter opened his mouth, and no doubt he would ask some other useless and absurd question about the place and what they were supposed to do next. Draco cut in. “You could have waited,” he said. “You didn’t know Professor Snape might be able to find you, but you could have. You didn’t need to sacrifice my father.”
            “I thought at the time I did,” Potter said, looking straight at Draco and so wide-eyed that Draco didn’t think what did come out of his mouth next actually would. “I’m sorry.”
            This time, Draco tried to punch him, and he was fully conscious of what he was doing, and he didn’t care about the bond and the shield mark and the way they might punish him. He wanted Potter dead for that kind of remark. If he was sorry and he’d cared about Draco’s father in the first place, he wouldn’t have done this.
            Potter avoided the punch, though, and stepped back behind the black snake that Professor Snape had conjured as he spoke. “Stop it, Draco! I did what I thought was best, and it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. Maybe. I could have found you without it. Maybe. But I didn’t know that at the time. And I would do anything to keep you safe.”
            “Sacrifice our families?” Draco could feel eyes on his back, and knew Pansy and Blaise were watching this, too. Well, good. Maybe they ought to think about it and wonder whether their families were next.
            “Yes.”
            “Yourself?” Draco tried to figure out some way past the snake, but it was huge, and he had had a sharp lesson in underestimating them when he was around Nagini. He tried to calm down. Maybe Potter would come in punching distance again if Draco sounded less like he cared.
            Potter smiled slightly. “How is that different from what I did in the Forbidden Forest?”
            Since Draco still didn’t know the full story of what he’d done in the Forbidden Forest, he ignored that. “Your friends?”
            Potter sucked the back of his teeth, making a disgusting sound, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s the tricky one, because I’ve known them so much longer and they’ve been part of my life so much longer.”
            Draco decided he didn’t care about looking calm anymore, because Potter had just admitted that he didn’t give a fuck about Draco’s parents. “Fuck you,” he hissed, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter start. At least he knew Malfoys didn’t often use that kind of language. “I’m not going to sit by and see my parents offered up on an altar every time you feel the need to rescue me.”
            “I’ll do whatever I have to to save you.” Potter’s eyes had gone flat and cold, in a way that Draco wouldn’t have thought they could. “And your parents would have done anything to save you. I don’t see how it’s different.” He reached down and roughly massaged the snake’s head, making it hiss at him in a way that sounded irritated. Draco hoped it was. He hoped that the damn snake would turn around and bite Potter. “And you heard Snape—Professor Snape. I don’t think your father is dead. The blood-ghost has decided on you as its victim. It probably helped me so that you would come back.”
            “It could still have hurt him.” Draco’s throat seemed to ease a little, but he still found it hard as he envisioned his father sitting in darkness and bleeding from a wound. Of course the Aurors wouldn’t help him treat it. They wouldn’t care. “And in the meantime, you act as though it doesn’t matter what he did to himself, as long as you get me back.”
            “Get all of you back.” Potter looked around at Pansy and Blaise, hesitating a minute over Greg. Since he was asleep, Draco could understand why, but he didn’t want to understand, and vowed to tell Greg about how Potter had hesitated later when he woke up. Potter looked at Snape last, and nodded at Snape as if he was the one Potter was closest to. “I think it’s the bond affecting me, but I don’t care. I don’t want to feel that frantic and that afraid when I know anyone close to me is in danger. So I came to you.”
            Draco shut his eyes. He no longer thought the Lordship bond was such a great thing, such a protective thing, not if it might cost him his family without him even knowing it.
            Which made no sense, because shouldn’t the Lordship bond have prevented such thoughts if it didn’t want him to think them?
            Draco shook that thought away. “My father asked you for protection,” he said.
            “A bloody lot I’ve been able to do so far,” Potter said. He was standing straighter, and for some reason, had exchanged glances with Snape. Draco wanted to know why, but Potter bulled straight on, without giving anyone the chance to ask questions. “And that’s not the same as being a formally bonded vassal. You know it’s not.
            “And you heard what Snape said about the blood-ghost and how literal it is. It pretended to agree with me, but it’s after you, not your father. It did this to satisfy itself, so it could have you back, and kill you. So your father’s still alive, and maybe hurt, but not dying. So everything’s all right, and will you shut up and listen?”
            He’d probably yelled those last words because Draco was shaking his head frantically. Draco couldn’t bring himself to care. The shield mark on his arm still didn’t burn, and that made it easier to say, “But you wouldn’t have cared if he died, and you said that.”
            He turned away and sat down, lowering his head. Snape started talking again, but Draco didn’t listen. He buried himself in a private world that had first enveloped him when he stared at the Dark Mark smoldering on his arm and heard the Dark Lord pronounce his task.
            The only ones I can trust are my family. No one else gives a shit about us.
*
            Harry stared at Draco’s turned back for a long time. Even knowing that Lucius was alive didn’t seem to have reassured him.
            Of course not. And you know why.
            His shield mark was burning. Harry whipped away and faced Snape, who was in the middle of a long sentence Harry hadn’t heard the beginning of.
            “—transport them back to the Ministry. None of the ones I have mind-read know why we are here, in particular. They were told by someone else to come here, and that in this place, they should be safe from pursuit or interference.”
            Harry bit his lip. “You think the Ministry will accept that? A bunch of prisoners bringing in a bunch of prisoners?”
            Snape shrugged. His face was dark, his eyes glittering and focused on Harry as though Harry really was the center of his existence. “You are the one who chose to play this game by going to the Ministry and through legal channels,” he said quietly. “You are the one who must continue to play it.” He paused delicately. “Unless the rules have changed?”
            Harry shook his head. He still had Lucius and Narcissa locked up in the Ministry, and Lewis Boot. Although they weren’t his vassals, they were people he had some kind of interest in.
            And these people were connected to the Wizengamot. As much as he hated it, they had to go back to the Ministry to find answers.
            “Come, then.” Snape leaned close to Harry. “But I have something to say to you before we leave.”
            Harry nodded and went apart with him. He could hear the murmur of voices as Draco spoke to Zabini and Parkinson, and winced. Clear, searing bands of emotion shot across his shield mark, as though someone was burning in the lesson in separate places, so he would never be so stupid again.
            “You made a mistake.”
            Harry threw up his hands. “I didn’t know there was another way to find you! I did what I thought I had to do.”
            “I mean, in making your thoughts transparent to Draco, that his father was just a tool to save him.”
            Harry paused and sighed. “Yeah, I think I did.” He wasn’t willing to turn around and say that he would never ask someone else to make a sacrifice for his vassals, though, because that wasn’t true. He would rather anger them than lie to them. He supposed that didn’t make him diplomatic, but he wanted to be an honest Lord first.
            “You must learn to hold your tongue,” Snape murmured. He sounded as though he was reading from a book on the duties and training of Lords. For a moment, Harry wished there was one, instead of the mishmash of expectation and tradition that fate had handed him. “You must learn to let some of what your vassals say pass unchallenged and unquestioned. Then do what you must for the good of the whole.”
            Harry jerked his head back. He’d made a promise to himself, and here Snape was asking him to break it. “So I should lie to them?”
            “By omission,” Snape said, and didn’t look away from him. Harry lowered his eyes, because he didn’t really want Snape reading his mind right now. It was easy to remember he had hated the man, when he talked like this. “They are generally accounted less objectionable than lies of commission.”
            “Think those people include Draco?” Harry muttered.
            Snape scowled at him; Harry knew it without even raising his eyes. He had learned to read those silences when he was a student at Hogwarts. “It does not matter what one vassal thinks. You must learn what all five of us think.”
            Harry did look up at that, because Snape urging him to treat Snape’s own desires as less important than Harry’s own was weird. “But you’re all individuals. How can I treat you just like one of a group? Parkinson might want something you hate, and Draco might want something I can’t give him but I can’t just ignore, and Zabini wants to leave altogether.”
            Snape gave him another sharp look. “You will have to learn how to balance your desire to give all of us free will and what the Lordship binds you to. It is called being an adult.”
            Harry scowled. So Snape had no secret key, and it was the same thing everyone had been telling him all along.
            “Let’s get this bunch to the Ministry,” he said, nodding to the wizards slumped along the wall and still staring in fear at the snake. “We can figure out what to do once we get there.”
            I’m always going to be better with direct action than with words.
*
            Blaise ducked his head. Let Pansy and Malfoy think he was nodding in response to their conversation, which in fact had gone so fast and so angrily that he couldn’t keep up with most of the words.
            In reality, he was watching Potter, and he didn’t want his Lord to see his expression. He would have worried about Potter feeling his emotions through the bond, but there was no sign of that, and Blaise had been feeling them at least since Potter got here.
            There was dissension among them, now. Pansy might still follow Potter, Snape might think it was the best solution, and Goyle didn’t count, but Malfoy was turning away. Anyone who tried to hurt his family was someone he might fear, but never count as an ally. Blaise knew that from the hints about the Dark Lord he’d dropped over the last year.
            That meant Blaise had an ally, and with that, he might break free of Potter, or even bring him down.
            Blaise had to smile. Thanks for the free gift, Potter.
*
            SP777: Severus knows that Harry isn’t Voldemort, but he also doesn’t really care. If he can be free, he’ll still take the chance.
            delia cerrano: Well, they were for a while.
            moodysavage: Thanks! And Draco can be the best connection to Harry, or he can be a weakness. Blaise is going to try to make him into a weakness.
            polka dot: Yes. Something Harry can’t really use in this situation.
            WorldePARALLEL: Extremely bumpy Lordship adjustment ahead! Snape was primarily trying to send a message to Harry by touching the bond, but he would still break it in a minute if it could be done.
            Blaise wants to be free, too. He doesn’t want to be weak for a second, and he thinks being bonded makes him look weak.
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The Only True Lords