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Building With Worn-Out Tools	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Twenty—Consider Her Ways

            Harry slowed his steps and cocked an eyebrow as they approached the courtroom. Most unusually, considering that they’d arrived later every other time, Zabini and Ginny were waiting outside the building for them.

            Malfoy’s chin went up at once, Harry was amused to note, and his stride became stiffer, until a peacock in his pride couldn’t have done better. Of course, he was facing the man and the woman who had turned his insane father loose on him and conspired to kill him for no better reason than because he’d taken Harry’s case. He had every reason in the world to be cold.

            The moment Harry and Malfoy came into sight, Zabini stepped away from Ginny. She came forwards, her head up and the red hair Harry had once found so lovely flowing down her back. Hell, if he was being honest with himself, he still found it lovely.

            You’re rather physically attracted to everyone, aren’t you? his conscience accused him.

            Harry shrugged. Perhaps it was a side-effect of the long years of suppressing most of his emotions, and then desire for the last eight months, since Ginny wouldn’t have sex with him. So long as he didn’t act on his feelings, he doubted they mattered.

            “Harry.” Ginny’s voice was low, cold, and formal, but still more polite than it had been the last six or so times she spoke to him. She cast a narrow-eyed glance at Malfoy. “Can we speak in private for a moment?”

            He didn’t need Malfoy’s wrinkled lip to tell him what an awful idea that was. “No,” he said, returning the same level of coldness and formality that she showed him. “If you have something that pertains to the case, you should say it in front of Malfoy, anyway. He’s the Arguer, and he’s more likely to understand it than I am.” He tried to adopt an expression of bovine innocence, a look that an exasperated Hermione had more than once told him he pulled off rather well.

            He thought he caught an odd expression of gratitude on Malfoy’s face, but decided he must have imagined it. Why in the world should the git care to hear Harry’s praise of his skills? He knew he was good.

            Ginny just sighed, though she let the breath out slowly, in measured exhalations, that told Harry how very exasperated she was. The sound would have made him wince and anticipate cold silence and sharply thrown dishes for a week once. Now he just watched her, and wondered when she would reach the point.

            “This isn’t about the case,” Ginny said. “Not—strictly. I mean, it has nothing to do with laws and stern, unfeeling strictures like that.” She lowered her eyes, then looked up, and Harry was astonished to see tears standing in them. He wasn’t Witherbone, after all, who might be persuaded to give her something she wanted by seeing them. She already knew he wouldn’t back off from the case, so what she did she want?

            “What’s wrong, Ginny?” Harry asked, and his voice had softened, inevitably. The times she cried were nearly always times when she was in some awful pain and could conceal it no longer.

            “Harry,” Malfoy snarled into his ear.

            “I’ll tell you,” said Ginny, and her hand smoothed over and over the mound of her belly. “But not here.”

            Harry watched her in thoughtful silence, ignoring the claw-like grasp of Malfoy’s hand on his shoulder. If his decisions were going to matter, then he should be able to make them on his own.



            Maybe he would have believed her, but he’d seen the look she exchanged with Zabini before she came over here. It simply smacked too much of planning to him. And he wasn’t obliged to give her sympathy. The only tie between them was the legal one, now.

            “No,” he said after a few moments of consideration. “Sorry, Gin, but not this time.”

            Her face flickered and rippled like shadows dashing across a sunny meadow, and then she lifted her chin and swallowed. He recognized the expression she put on now, the brave face, the one she always used when something didn’t go her way and she wanted him to understand how very upset she was that it hadn’t.

            “All right,” she whispered. “I should have known better than to count on your sympathy, I suppose, since you can’t grant such a simple request.”

            She turned and walked away from him, back towards Zabini. He put an arm around her, but gingerly, as if he imagined she would shatter under a harsher touch. And he gave Harry a scorching glare.

            Malfoy’s hand tightened for a moment, as if he thought Harry would run after her, and then slowly let him go when Harry showed no sign of doing such a thing. “What made you decide not to listen to her?” he asked.

            “Your advice,” Harry said, still studying Ginny’s back and trying to determine from the line of it alone what she would have told him. But then she passed into the courtroom with Zabini and he lost sight of her. Harry shrugged and walked after them. “I can’t be weak to win this case. And really—what claim does she have on me now? I could have spoken to her alone because I felt a grand compassion for her, I suppose, but I don’t. And I don’t trust her, either.” He flicked his head back in Malfoy’s direction. “I trust you a lot more.”

*

            Draco felt a sudden heat leap to life in his chest, like lust and yet not it. He blinked and shook his head, then studied Potter’s face, which was bent slightly to study the step on which his shoe had just caught.

            Potter meant—

            Harry meant—

            Sternly, Draco dismissed his smugness, and refocused his mind on Arguing. They hadn’t won free yet. Today would begin a long and complicated process of negotiations which probably wouldn’t culminate until he’d been able to persuade Blaise out of the most important things. They would leave and then come back again tomorrow, and the day after, and then the day after that, until Blaise admitted defeat. Draco wouldn’t admit defeat, of course, because he never had.

            But it still meant something to know that Harry trusted him.

            He felt confident enough to sweep the courtroom with a commanding gaze when they arrived, and nodded when he saw that the chairs brought for them were more comfortable than usual. Of course, he probably wouldn’t spend much time in his, as he preferred to be on his feet when he paced the room and stared his opposition down, but the house-elves couldn’t have known that.

            Blaise and the Weasley were already in place, of course, and Judge Witherbone was just settling into her chair.

            “Arguer Malfoy,” she said, with a nod. Her face had an expression of faint excitement on it. Draco smiled a bit. She reflected the mood of the wizarding world at the moment, and the wizarding world would be focused on Pansy’s antics, wondering what they had to do with Draco’s case, and eagerly anticipating whatever would happen next, since it had been nearly a week since the last public blow in the struggle.

            “Judge Witherbone,” he said, with a slight inclination of his head. “Before we begin, my client and I would like to ask for the single concession due us for Mrs. Potter’s interruption last time.” He did not look in Weasley’s direction; it was easier to remember the proper name for her when he didn’t.

            “Of course,” said Witherbone. “The vaults, I suppose?”

            “Not at all.” Draco cupped a hand beneath his chin and tilted his head slightly, knowing well how magisterial that made him look. “The enactment of the Mouth-Binding Laws. Mr. Potter would like some reassurance that his former wife cannot ever bother him again when this case is done.”

            “So sure that you’ll win it?” Blaise muttered, but it was so stupid and undignified an interruption that Draco thought it best to ignore it, and Witherbone was peering at him in such surprise that she might well have missed the words.

            “Mr. Potter is quite sure?” she asked slowly. “Such an opportunity to ask for a concession free of negotiations will not come again soon. Perhaps not ever,” she added.

            “We are both sure, Madam,” said Draco, enjoying the way that his words were an answer to Blaise’s comment as well, and turned to collect Harry’s eyes. He’d been staring across the room at his wife, but he nodded and glanced back at once, smiling warmly enough that Draco felt a corresponding smile lift the corners of his lips.

            “Very well.” Witherbone tapped her wand on her podium twice, and then bent towards the piece of parchment that appeared before her with a flash of blue-silver light. “Be it marked and witnessed, then, that Arguer Malfoy and his client, Harry Potter, shall not be troubled by any owl from Ginny Potter, nee Weasley, after the conclusion of the trial.”

            The parchment glowed again, this time with a warm yellow radiance like candle-flame, and then settled. Draco stepped back, smirking, and faced Blaise.

            “Given that we had the first concession of any,” he said innocently, “I think Mr. Zabini should have the gift of presenting his arguments for the vaults first.”

            Blaise’s eyes glowed as richly as the parchment had with anger. He hated being predictable, and probably hated having to ask for money, too. But he did indeed rise to his feet with a list of demands in his hand, and read the claim about the vaults off first.

            “We demand half the Galleons in both the Potter and Black vaults,” he said. “As well as half the equivalent value of any magical artifacts found therein, excepting only family heirlooms.”



            Draco snorted and tapped his fingers on his hip. The ransom would have been ridiculous if the Ministry had asked it of his family for war reparations—and they could legitimately have asked for money from him, Draco knew. They had been satisfied with a token amount, though. They seemed to feel that having two mad parents was enough punishment for any one person. “That’s not acceptable,” he said at once.

            “Potter has to speak on this one, too.” Blaise’s fingers closed hard on the edge of the parchment he held, but otherwise he showed no sign of temper. He simply turned his head and focused on Potter, his eyes sharp and dark, like a crow’s.

            “Malfoy speaks for me,” Harry said quietly. “He is, after all, my Arguer.”

            Draco lifted his head and gave Blaise a teeth-baring gesture that one might mistake for a smile if one were blind. “We will certainly contest this claim,” he said. “And your next?”

            “Potter’s in possession of an Invisibility Cloak,” Blaise said. “Ginny wants it.”

            “Why?” Draco asked, tilting his head and so putting his face into profile as far as Witherbone was concerned. He knew that he sometimes looked handsomer when seen from that angle, and he would remind her of any little fact that might help them.

            “To make sure that he doesn’t sneak up on her after the trial and catch a glimpse of the child,” said Blaise, and there was a faint malicious twitch at the corners of his mouth, which warned Draco that his words would be bad before he said them. “Potter wanted a baby so much. We’re afraid that he might try to steal ours, even just in glimpses or photos, and we’re not inclined to permit that.”

            Draco didn’t dare turn and look at Harry, so he didn’t know how much that shot had hurt. He said only, “Impossible. We’re keeping the Cloak, too.”

            Blaise shifted his weight forwards onto his left foot. “You might as well yield, Draco,” he hissed. “You know that we won’t leave this courtroom until we have some of what we want, and this obstinacy won’t do you any good.”

            Draco examined his fingernails. “Present some reasonable demands, Zabini, and perhaps we can argue about them.”

            Blaise growled. Draco smiled privately to himself, and listened as Blaise began to detail the buildings Potter owned—the small house where he’d lived with his wife, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and a few other shabby Black houses—with a keen ear. He would refuse all of the demands at first, of course. Blaise was right in that they would have to yield some things, but there was no law that those had to be things that Blaise and Weasley wanted.

*

            Zabini was going on about houses now. Harry found it impossible to listen. His eyes had wandered back to Ginny again. He had thought she would be watching her new lover, her hand on her belly and love or pride in her eyes. Instead, she stared back at him, and her face held shadows of—

            Regret and loss?

            Harry shook his head and tried to look away, but his eyes wandered back a moment later. Zabini’s voice had grown sharper. Surely that ought to attract Ginny’s attention if anything could. She wouldn’t want to think about losing her blood money, Harry thought, more than a little malicious.

            She still looked at him, though. Her hand did move in a slow stroking motion over her womb, but nothing about her face was familiar. Harry hadn’t actually seen her look sorry for anything in years, even when she made an apology.

            She closed her eyes at last and leaned back in her seat. Harry started to turn away again—Zabini’s voice had risen, and of course Malfoy was answering him in cool, implacable tones—but in that moment he saw her wand flick, just below the arm of her chair and so out of both Malfoy’s line of sight and the judge’s.

            Something small, white, and winged left her and fluttered across the floor to him, keeping so low that it was hard to see it at all, and an observer would probably have mistaken it for a fluttering scrap of parchment otherwise. Harry tried not to stare. He wasn’t sure if he should look at it, but he had to admit he was curious, and he wondered why Ginny would try any magic in the courtroom that wasn’t offensive magic.

            Finally, the small white thing settled near his foot, where he could stoop and pick it up without trouble. He found it was a flying horse made of paper, but sketches of ink shone from the inside of the parchment. There was writing on it.

            Harry’s hand clenched, nearly crumpling the thing. He found himself unable to look back at Ginny now, but he didn’t want to look at Malfoy, either. He stared at a point on the floor midway between his chair and the judge’s podium, his breath coming fast, his whole being concentrated on the paper in his fist.

            At last, he lifted his hand to his mouth as though to conceal a cough, and opened it, and the parchment, there.

            Ginny’s handwriting was painfully familiar; there was a time when Harry had treasured even grocery lists from her, because he had been so in love with her that every word she wrote felt like an inscribed beat of her heart.

            Harry:

            We’ve found out that the baby will be born sick. Some rare ailment that runs in Blaise’s family and has to do with the heart. She can survive, but she’ll come early, which lessens her chances, and the mediwizards I’ve seen said that she’ll need the best of care. She should really live somewhere warmer than Britain, for example.

            Please. We need the money, for her. I know I’ve been a bitch to you, and I’m sorry for that. But please don’t deny my daughter her health because of a grudge you have against me.

            Ginny.

            Harry’s breath caught. The first emotion he felt was remorse, as warm and uncomfortable as losing control of his bladder, at the thought that Ginny did have a use for the money, and had probably held off on confessing to him about it because he would think that she was being manipulative—

            The second was icy rage. How dare she try to manipulate him this way!

            He raised his eyes and looked at her across the courtroom. She met his gaze, perhaps having guessed that he’d have read the parchment by now, and made an apologetic little gesture with one hand.

            Her face didn’t look sorry. It looked desperate.

            Harry swallowed. He had no idea what was real and what wasn’t—or what was a half-truth; after all, even if her baby was sick, Ginny might still take the chance to ask him for more money than she really needed.

            Could he really keep his money away from a sick child? It wasn’t as though he took any particular pride or pleasure in it.

            Ginny’s eyes watched him, steadily, warily. He had never been good at reading them, as his farce of a marriage had proven. He was no good at reading them now.

            He was sure of one thing. He needed to wait and talk this over with Draco. Even if he was nearly certain of what Draco would say, there still be might be an angle to the situation he was missing, some means of proving what Ginny said that Harry had forgotten.

            He bit his lip and looked away from her.

            This time, when the parchment touched his hand, he started. He hadn’t seen Ginny send it. But, as before, he reached down and scooped it up, and unfolded it when he’d checked that Malfoy was still involved in his conversation with Zabini.

            And doing brilliantly, of course. He did everything brilliantly. Harry felt a sour worm of jealousy nibble at his heart, and couldn’t have said whether it came from envy of Malfoy’s skills or the thought of someone else sitting here after Harry’s case was done, having their chance to admire him in just the same way.

            He looked down at the parchment.

            That was the last chance we could give you, Harry. If you won’t give me the money, for Lily—that’s what we’ve decided to name her—

            Harry closed his eyes for a moment, because that had felt like an icy spike through the chest.

            then certain things will happen which I don’t approve, but which Blaise says need to happen. I’m sorry. If you will give me and Blaise and Lily the money, look up and wave your hand three times to me.

            Harry kept his eyes on his hands, and didn’t look up, and made sure not to even glance in Ginny’s direction for the rest of the court session.

            A stubborn refrain kept running through his head, even as he thought that he should be able to make his own decisions, since Ginny was his wife and the money was his money.

            I need to talk to Draco about this.

*

            Draco left the courtroom pleased with himself. No, nothing had yet been accomplished, because he hadn’t made any concessions and neither had Blaise, but he had seen fear start to life in his old friend’s eyes. At least Blaise no longer thought that he would back down. He would be warier when they met and Argued tomorrow, and Draco would show Blaise the depths of his skill, his knowledge of the laws, how well he could speak.

            There was strength in his throat, sweetening the taste of the debates to come on his lips.

            It was evident from the look on Harry’s face that he had something to talk to him about, probably that ridiculously transparent deception of his wife’s, but Draco deliberately Apparated to the Manor with him before he could say anything. He wanted to go through the inevitable reassurance out of earshot. There was no reason that Blaise and Weasley should have any idea of how close they were outside the job that Harry had hired Draco for.

            Seeky was waiting for them beyond the wards. That was a bit unusual, but Draco supposed some guest had dropped by unannounced, and Seeky wanted to warn him. Probably Pansy, he thought, with a stifled sigh, as he smiled at the elf. “Yes, Seeky?”

            For long moments, there was no answer, as Seeky wrung its ears with huge hands, and its eyes got wider and wider. Perhaps Pansy had brought those ill-mannered Continental friends of hers with her, Draco thought. It had taken the elves three days to clean the Manor after their last visit.

            Seeky broke out in a sudden wail, so loud that it took Draco long moments to understand its words.

            “Master Malfoy, Mistress Narcissa has been taken!”

            And all the strength in his throat dried up.

*

            Tori: Both Draco and Harry will hold equal roles in the relationship.

            The adorable: Well, Harry would think such thoughts as Draco’s having beneath him, so no, he doesn’t have any clue yet.
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