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Sleepless	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16095 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Two—The Barrister Unheralded

            For long moments, Harry thought that no one would ever say anything again. The entire crowd seemed to have been struck dumb by his words. The air was still. Neville watched him with a gaping mouth, the Malfoys were still as if already dead behind him, and the wizard with the silver beard clutched it like a lifeline.

            The witch with the bell-like voice cleared her throat delicately, and started everything around them into motion again. “Mr. Evans,” she said. “I’ve never heard of you. Certainly, if you want to defend the Malfoys, then you may. But we would need to see your credentials.”

            Harry met her gaze with a solid glare while he thought furiously. He didn’t know what the state of things was here, whether his parents were alive or whether anyone would remember Lily Evans. That was why he had used the name Evans instead of Potter; it would be harder to associate him with anyone.

            But one thing he had learned since he started his law training was that lies didn’t always have to make sense. Hermione had lamented over and over to him that wizards lacked logic, and Harry had seen that in the courtrooms. Archaic procedures that made no sense, loopholes in the laws, precedents based on a romantic tale…there were plenty of those scattered like unexpected grains of gold among the commonplace dirt of most laws.

            For once in his life, Harry was going to make the wizarding world’s insane expectations work for him. He puffed out his chest and said in an important hiss, “I come from a long line of Muggleborn wizards who educated their own children at home. We never wished to join a world so bigoted and faulty in understanding.” He jerked his head at the cage that held the Malfoys. “Condemning even the guilty without a fair trial comes from bigotry.”

            The witch tapped her lips with her finger, a look in her eyes that said she didn’t believe him. But before she could speak, Neville interrupted. “Why defend the Malfoys if you aren’t part of the wizarding world, then?” His fingers had tightened on his wand, Harry noted. He resolved to keep an eye on that. If this world’s Neville had really defeated Voldemort, then he would be a much better fighter than the one Harry knew.

            “Because it’s finally gone far enough,” Harry answered. “You can’t find my family through me; they’ve taken precautions against that.” True enough, when they’re in another world and all dead anyway. “They tell me that I’m young and idealistic and need to learn detachment, but I won’t learn that when it means letting innocent people die.”

            “You can’t have followed the news closely, if you think them innocent,” the wizard with the silver beard announced in a surprisingly deep voice.

            “They still need their guilt proven,” Harry said steadily. “You can’t frighten or freeze me out of that belief.”

            The witch smiled, for some reason, and exchanged glances with Neville. Harry watched closely. He thought he was correct that they ran things jointly around here. The wizard had to be on the platform for God knew what reason—he was probably a representative of the Wizengamot—but he didn’t have any idea what went on over and behind his head.

            “We would still need some reason to allow you to defend them, instead of another member of your no-doubt extensive family,” the witch said, and turned back to him. “Why not call on someone older, someone more acquainted with the wizarding world? You look as if you were a contemporary of our Savior here.”

            “If he saved the world at a younger age than I am right now, why not trust me?” Harry asked glibly. “The worst I can do is mess up, and you won’t care about that, since you don’t care about the Malfoys anyway.”

            The witch hesitated and once again looked at Neville. Neville took his turn to step forwards. “Mr. Evans,” he said kindly.

            Neville is so different in this world, Harry admitted to himself, uneasy. I don’t know what he’ll do or say next.

            Then he wanted to laugh at himself, hysterically. It wasn’t as though Neville could hurt him, no matter what he said. This wasn’t another world; this wasn’t a vision of the way things could have been, the way the Mirror of Erised had shown him. This was a dream. Harry would wake up soon and carry no wounds. He probably wouldn’t even remember this.

            The notion filled him with a giddy confidence, and he gave Neville a glare of contempt that this Boy-Who-Lived couldn’t have received all that often. Neville blinked and retreated a step. “You did say your name was Evans?” he added.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “Harry Evans.” He wondered if he should say something about the lightning scar, and then decided not to. Neville and the witch would recognize it or not, and they could say something about it if they wanted. Harry didn’t think they would want to in front of a crowd.

            They can’t do anything to me if they do realize that it’s a curse scar. Harry fought the urge to stick his tongue out. As long as he was taking the Malfoys’ plight seriously, he had to take the notion that he could cause them harm seriously.

            “You don’t quite understand what we have here,” Neville said. He reached out and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. It felt heavy, and Harry wanted to shrug it off, but Neville was speaking in a slow manner that suggested he thought Harry was slow, and Harry would have to deal with that first. “These are condemned criminals. Hundreds of witnesses agree that they did the crimes they are accused of. You can’t help them even if we did admit you as their defender, and that’s against the rules.” He flashed Harry a smile that he must have practiced on hundreds of people, hundreds of times.

            “What about the Good Stranger Exception?” Harry asked, his heart almost pounding out of his chest.

            He had the pleasure of seeing Neville hesitate and frown. He glanced sideways at the witch despite visibly trying not to do so, and then murmured, “The what?”

            The witch half-bowed her head, in the manner Harry had seen some duelists use with a superior opponent, and murmured, “Very good, Mr. Evans. It seems you have been trained in law, however much I must doubt your story.” She turned to Neville and nodded. “The Good Stranger Exception is based on an occurrence many years ago, when a centaur offered to become a barrister for an accused wizard who had no defender. It turned out that evidence used to condemn that wizard had been set up by his own family, and they had used the Imperius Curse to ensure that no one would have sympathy for him. The Good Stranger Exception has remained in force because we can never be sure when the force of public opinion might actually be manipulated, thanks to the presence in our world of spells that can command the mind and memory.” She looked at Harry thoughtfully.

            Harry tried not to stare. Shit. She’s dangerous.

            “Oh,” Neville said blankly. Then he frowned. “But since we know that everyone really does hate the Malfoys, do we have to let him go through with it?”

            “We have to,” the witch said. “It doesn’t matter what we think of it; the fact remains that they deserve the chance, and so does he. If he falters at the end, that’s between him and his clients.” She turned around and held out her hand. “Welcome to the regular wizarding world, Mr. Evans. I hope you stay. We could use someone with your courage and compassion in our ranks.”

            Harry gripped her hand. He could feel the platform beneath him spinning dizzily, and this time, that dizziness didn’t come from the realization that he could essentially do anything here and it wouldn’t affect him. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

            The witch smiled and kissed the back of his hand, barely brushing her lips over his knuckles. “Estelle Mondragaron, but you might as well call me Discipula.” She saw Harry frown, and smiled more broadly. “It’s the Latin term for student. It implies that I’m always learning. And oh, I am. Everything I learn teaches me more about the breadth of my ignorance. I will be a student forever.”

*

            Harry opened his eyes with a gasp. It took him a moment to figure out why he was lying down instead of standing up, and where Neville and the cage with the Malfoys in it and the silver-bearded wizard and Mondragaron had gone.

            I—shite. That was a weird bloody dream.

            Harry sat up and raked his hand through his hair, frowning. He must have kicked out in his sleep, because his leg ached. He reached down and massaged it, while wondering why in the world he would have dreamed something like that. It had been as intense as some of the visions he’d got from Voldemort, but his scar didn’t ache. And he’d been in control of his own body in that dream, too, not looking through someone else’s eyes. Besides, his mind had created a coherent backstory for that dream. There was no reason why it had to be so, but it had happened anyway.

            Harry shook his head briskly and stretched. Maybe it was my mind’s way of telling me that I have to be nicer to Malfoy.

            “Harry, are you awake?” Hermione knocked on his door, and Harry smelled breakfast cooking in the next moment. “Ron wants to talk to you about Malfoy.” She opened the door and popped her head in. “A conspiracy theory,” she added under her breath. “Try not to pay any attention to it.”

            Harry nodded and smiled, waiting until she had ducked out of the room before he went to shower. He didn’t think he would have as much trouble ignoring Ron’s paranoid words as he would have had yesterday, and oddly enough, his dream was to blame for that.

            The Death Eater trials had ended with the Malfoys free, but they could so easily have gone the other way. They almost had. Harry imagined them condemned to the Dementors’ Kiss, or to at least standing up, shackled, in a cage, while a crowd bayed for their death. That last picture was like a memory. The dream hadn’t faded at all.

            I’ll try to be nice to Malfoy, Harry promised himself as he stepped into the shower and tilted his head forwards so that the water could cascade down the nape of his neck. That could have been him.

*

            “Fuck, Potter, what have you been eating to give you a stomach like that?”

            Harry glared at Malfoy. He didn’t know where the berk got off harping on his weight; it wasn’t like he could see anything of Harry’s body anyway beneath the bulky professional Quidditch robes. Malfoy had thrust the robes at him the moment Harry came up carrying his broom, because “that will make it look more like it’s real.”

            “God knows I’ll need a stomach of cast iron to deal with your insults,” Harry snapped back, and then turned and surveyed the pitch Malfoy had brought him to. He thought it must be a place the Eagles rented, unless there was less money behind the new teams than he had supposed. The grass was ragged and ill-cut, and the Keepers’ poles bore the results of late, desperate polishing. At least a circle of trees surrounded it, and there were anti-Muggle wards everywhere, as well as more ordinary wards that warned off intruders. Harry didn’t have to worry about word of his presence here getting back to the papers.

            Quickly, anyway.

            Malfoy had said nothing since his last insult, Harry realized. He turned around. It would be like the git to have tumbled off his broom to his death in that short interval and put the onus on Harry to avoid being tried for murder.

            Instead, Malfoy was studying him with more interest than he had ever shown before. Then he clapped, slowly. Harry focused on his long, slender hands and thought of the way he probably clapped at games between two rival Quidditch teams when he was watching instead of playing.

            “Oh, very good,” Malfoy said softly, eyes glinting. “This might not be the utter wasteland of conversation I had envisioned.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I can offer you any insult you want,” he said. “And the price of peace is simple. Let me out of this ridiculous bargain, and you don’t have to hear any more of them.”



            “Do you really think so little of your skills as all that?” Malfoy was looping above the right side of the pitch, suddenly, although Harry had never seen him turn his broom. He spoke as casually as he had when they were straight side-by-side, compelling Harry to speed up some more to hear him. “You seemed confident in them when we were in school, or you wouldn’t have dared to challenge me.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Need I remind you that I got put on the team a year before you did? It wasn’t about challenging you. I didn’t know McGonagall would put me on the team instead of expel me at first, and then it was another way to fit in.”

            Malfoy snapped his head around and stared at Harry with a devouring interest that seemed out of all proportion to the words. “Really,” he said.

            It wasn’t a question. Harry was already regretting having told Malfoy so much, though. He shrugged. “That was a long time ago, and although I’ve kept busy since school, I haven’t played Quidditch. You told me yourself there was a difference between school and professional Quidditch. Why should I be a good opponent for you?”

            Malfoy smiled again, for some reason, and murmured, “Watch this.” He opened his hand, and the Snitch concealed in it soared into the air.

            Harry watched it go, assuming that Malfoy would dart after it and show him how fast he could catch it. But when he looked to the side, it was to see Malfoy squatting on his broom, holding a watch and an expression of weary disapproval.

            “You’re supposed to chase it, Potter,” he said. “And you’ve let six seconds go by already. Seven.”

            Harry gritted his teeth and flung himself into the pursuit. Yes, he thought this was stupid, and he wished that Malfoy had chosen someone else. But he still couldn’t let the Snitch simply go in front of a challenge like that and feel good about himself. There was such a thing as pride.

            Yes, and pride can kill you if you let it.

            Harry kept his eyes fixed on the little golden ball singing and darting from side-to-side, and didn’t let that second acknowledgment into his thoughts. The ball was even crazier than a regular Snitch, he thought. To the side, and then up and down, and then around to the right and the left, spinning like a top on a marble floor. But it never soared away from the level Harry was chasing it at, as if it had an allergy to going nearer to the ground. Harry finally flew up next to it and held out his hand.

            The Snitch spiraled down at once, as if it had an allergy to his hand, too. Harry, barely aware of what he did, only knowing that it was right, spun himself around the broom, hung upside-down, and cupped his hands as though he was waiting for water to fall into them.

            The Snitch smacked home, and though it immediately tried to leave again, Harry closed his fingers tight. A sharp shiver of satisfaction ran through him. He sat up, shaking his head, and telling himself he had to stop feeling that soon. If Malfoy saw it, he would waste no time in tearing Harry’s fragile confidence to pieces. He hadn’t done that well. And Harry no longer played Quidditch. He had no reason to locate his sense of self-worth in the game.

            Still, when he turned around again, it was to see Malfoy’s eyes locked on him. He was holding the watch up. Harry flew back down towards him, wiping some sweat from his forehead. It must have taken longer than it had felt like it had. Time in the air was subjective, though, he knew that. It either stretched or limped along. “How long?” he panted.

            “Two minutes,” Malfoy said. “Not counting the time you wasted watching it.” He shut the watch and stared at Harry in a fashion that prevented Harry from making the retort he wanted to. “You’re beautiful when you fly.”

            Harry flushed and then told himself that Malfoy was only using those words as a setup for an insult. The best thing he could do was to steal his enemy’s thunder. Malfoy leaned forwards yet further, his eyes wide and filled with something that Harry thought looked almost like tears, and Harry tossed the Snitch into his face.

            Malfoy yelped and reeled back. The Snitch darted over his head and then went off to dance triumphantly through one of the Keepers’ hoops. Harry grinned at him and turned to watch the gleam.

            “Come, come, Malfoy,” he said. “You’ll have to get better than that if you want to catch the Snitch in a real game.”

            Malfoy brushed past him with a murderous glare. Harry laughed at him. That made Malfoy stiffen up and down his back as though wasps were stinging him and huff away with a sharp turn of the broom.

            Harry followed him, shaking his head and wondering what Malfoy had wanted from him. Harry was more valuable to him in the character of a rival than a friend, surely. A friend wouldn’t teach Malfoy how to play Quidditch, wouldn’t bring that edge to the game that Malfoy said he wanted.

*

            “Hermione, what do you think would have happened if Neville was the Boy-Who-Lived?”

            Harry hadn’t really meant to ask the question. But the dream had been preying on his mind since he came back from the practice with Malfoy, which had ended with Malfoy beating him soundly. Harry was leaning on the couch in their house, staring at the ceiling and wondering what would have happened if he could exchange that triumphant Malfoy for the broken, defeated one he had seen in his dream.

            Not that he would want to, of course. Even Malfoys deserved a second chance, and Harry was grateful that their family had had a competent defense in his world. But still, the parallels couldn’t be far from the surface of his mind.

            And he had learned in the past few months that Hermione really was the most brilliant person he knew, not just the most brilliant person at homework he knew.

            When he glanced up, he saw that Hermione was sitting on the edge of her couch in the living room, the squashy red-and-gold one. Her expression was painfully earnest. Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected her to give this so much consideration.

            Ron spoke before she could. He was sprawled on his couch, the bright scarlet one that Harry had told him more than once clashed with his hair. Ron always argued that Harry didn’t know the first thing about fashion, and anyway, Ginny had bought this couch for him, and she wouldn’t deliberately choose something that would also clash with her hair.

            (Harry wasn’t so sure about that).

            “We would all have been doomed,” Ron said lazily, opening and closing his eyes as if he wanted to count how many blinks he could fit into a minute. “Poor old Nev wasn’t made to be a hero like you, Harry.”

            “Harry wasn’t made to be a hero, either,” Hermione said, frowning at Ron as if he had said something distasteful. Her fingers were twisted together. Harry had to wonder if his question had touched on some secret anxiety of her own. Hermione was pretty good at separating the real and the theoretical, most of the time. “That was the training he went through, and the way he was raised.”

            “Oh, God, not another nurture-nature debate,” Harry said. He didn’t bother to hide his exasperation. Ron had decided, or pretended to decide, since the war, that people were born either good or evil, and Hermione always argued with him. “Please.”

            Both of them ignored him. Ron pointed a finger at Hermione and wagged it back and forth. “Neville would still have been raised by his grandmother even if he was the Boy-Who-Lived. Dumbledore couldn’t have taken him away from his relatives the way he took Harry away from the wizarding world. And he would have been timid. You really think that someone who took a whole year to become as brave as Harry was right away could have saved us?”

            “You don’t believe things like that,” Hermione muttered. “You only think you do. Neville would have risen to the occasion.”

            “He had Auror parents, I know,” Ron said, as if that was the point Hermione was making. “But blood doesn’t always run true. He also had lots of timid relatives. And he was a pure-blood. He would have grown up either timid or with people worshipping him all the time, and You-Know-Who’s spies would have an easier time getting to him, because he was in the wizarding world.”

            “Your argument sounds more as if you’re on my side,” Hermione said, with a faint smile.

            “No, it doesn’t.”

            Hermione met Harry’s eyes and shook her head. Harry knew why. Since the war, Ron had decided that the way to get over the pain of Fred’s death and others was to be as ordinary as possible. That meant shutting out complicated explanations and refusing to be as rigorous and logical as Harry knew he could be, having seen him play chess. If he made a mistake, he also refused to admit it.

            Hermione understood and even, she said, admired it in a way. It drove Harry insane. He popped to his feet. “I was just curious,” he muttered, and retreated into his own bedroom.

            Hermione was waiting for him when he came out.

            “The answer to your question,” she said, “is that Neville would have risen to the occasion. You know that a lot of what you did was up to Dumbledore making choices and manipulating people. He would have done the same thing to help Neville succeed.”

            Harry nodded. He had to wonder, in his dream, where Dumbledore was and how his unconscious mind would account for that.

            Then he told himself again that it was only a dream, and thus didn’t have to make sense.

            “Good night, Hermione,” he said, kissing her on the cheek as he went by.

            “Good night, Harry,” she said, and smiled at him. “We have a big case tomorrow, remember. Sleep well.”

            And doubtless Harry would have, if he hadn’t found himself back on the platform in front of the cage, with Discipula and Neville and the silver-bearded wizard waiting, the moment he closed his eyes.

*

            “The Good Stranger Exception holds,” Discipula said, speaking to the crowd as if they had to accept her judgment. Maybe they had. Harry didn’t know anything about the way things worked here, politically. “Mr. Evans shall defend the Malfoys.”

            A storm of shouting and objections broke out, but Discipula serenely ignored them. Somehow—Harry was never sure how—she got them herded off the platform, Harry and Malfoys and all, and into a side room. Harry still wasn’t sure what building they were in, either, but at least it had a door that they could shut between them and all the noise.

            He put his back to the door, wishing he didn’t feel that he was trying to hold it shut, and then studied his new clients.

            They were still chained. They still had the marks of pain in their faces. Lucius Malfoy had a healed scar near the eye, and Narcissa Malfoy looked as if she had anemia. Draco was crushed down to the point that Harry didn’t know if he could lift his eyes.

            “I’ll do my best to help you,” he said. “But I need to know more about the general situation.”

            For long moments, there was a single, freezing silence. Harry wondered if they were capable of seeing him as a friend when they’d been surrounded by enemies for so long.

            Then Narcissa asked, “Are you Muggleborn?”

            Harry had to nod. After all, that was an essential part of this conspiracy that he’d claimed existed between him and all these mysterious other Evans family members.

            As one, the Malfoy parents turned their backs on him. Draco hesitated, then shuffled around to join them, dragging his chains.

            And no matter how much Harry tried to talk to them, no matter what he said, they wouldn’t say a single word.

*

            js: Thanks!

            paigeey07: Thank you!

            Wölkchen: Thanks for reviewing. As for other people having the dreams, Harry doesn’t think so, or probably other people would have said something by now.

            SP777: No, I’m not involved in law. I just think it’s interesting.

            And yes, Harry will be involved with both versions of Draco.

            Mehla_Seraphim: Well, in this chapter, Harry has made it his mission to be annoying anyway. ;)

            I did get your message, though I haven’t yet replied to it.
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Sleepless