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A More Worldly Man	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10961 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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—The Decline and Fall of Charlemagne Diggory

            “Can someone tell me why there are chains on Mr. Potter’s wrists?” Kingsley demanded, stepping forwards. “Surely no one in this room could seriously think the hero of the wizarding world would wish to hurt him—“ his eyes flickered to Diggory for the barest second “—and if he were to use wandless magic, then mere bonds would not stop him.”

            No one moved for a moment, as though everyone on the courtroom floor were hoping that someone else would volunteer for the responsibility. Rather like the Wizengamot members wanting someone to speak up for them, Harry mused. He was no longer going to think that the wizarding world had changed substantially since Fudge’s term in office. Clearly much remained to be done.

            Then one of the Aurors who had stood to guard him stepped forwards hesitantly and undid the chains with a pass of her wand. Harry sighed and rubbed his wrists, pulling them into his lap at last. Skeeter had been frozen on the back of his neck, as though there were so many things to run in circles about that she couldn’t choose a direction, but Harry felt her crawl forwards to the edge of his hair now to look down at his wrists. He obligingly tilted them back and stopped rubbing them for a moment, so she could get a good glimpse of the raw, red patches of skin around them. He was sure they would appear in her article tomorrow under a suitably inflammatory description.

            Draco was beside him then.

            He shifted the Pensieve he was carrying to his right arm and hugged Harry fiercely with the left, bending down so that Harry’s head was tucked into his neck. “I didn’t know this was happening,” he whispered, “or I would have been here much earlier to stop it. Please believe me.”

            Harry smiled and raised a hand to touch the small of his back. He suffered a brief spasm of regret that Draco was wearing robes and cloak instead of merely shirt and trousers, which meant he couldn’t stroke the band of skin between the clothes in promise. “Nonsense,” he whispered back. “It wasn’t your fault, and I refuse to listen to any protestations that it was. Haven’t we already got enough enemies in the same room?”

            Draco laughed quietly, then pulled away and turned to face Diggory. He had fallen back to the side of Harry’s chair, and Harry was astonished at how the simple gesture seemed to transform the symbol of his humiliation before the Wizengamot into a throne. “Now,” Draco said, in a carrying voice Harry knew he had perfected for talking about merchandise to an entire shop at once, “we shall have a proper trial, with all the evidence needed.” He lifted his arm so everyone could catch a glimpse of the silvery Pensieve. “And all the witnesses.” He nodded at the man behind Hermione, whom Harry knew was probably Littlesmith.

            “Only the Wizengamot has the authority to call for a trial,” Prunella began, speaking with immense dignity.

            “The Wizengamot, acting with the Minister,” Kingsley snapped, and took a step towards the gallery. Though he was far beneath Prunella and could not possibly have hurt her, the woman flinched and drew herself up as though he’d cast a Stinging Hex. Harry arched an eyebrow. “So far as I can see, this has been an illegitimate farce of a trial, called for the sole purpose of embarrassing a man to whom you lot were embarrassed for owing so much.” He looked hard at Diggory then.

            So did Harry, for the first time since Kingsley had taken command of the room. (Harry didn’t know what had happened to put such fire into him, but he suspected it was Hermione). Diggory stood quite still and looked at them with calm patience, like an elder Olympian god bored with the antics of the younger ones.

            “If you feel this trial has been conducted in an incorrect manner, Minister,” he said, “of course that should be put right as soon as possible. Your word is law—for as long as you hold the office.” He bowed.

            Kingsley hesitated once. Then he nodded briskly and extended his wand, speaking three muffled words that Harry suspected they weren’t meant to understand. At once a silvery staircase extended from the top of the gallery and to the floor. Kingsley stepped onto it and turned to face the rest of them.

            “If you intend to be here as a witness,” he said, “then the proper place is the floor. If you are only here to observe, then come to the gallery.” He nodded at Diggory and began to climb the stairs, as much to say that he was assured of Diggory following him.

            “I do have testimony,” said Diggory. “As one of the witnesses to Mr. Potter’s disgusting crimes could not be here today, he entrusted me with his evidence.”

            “Who is this person?” Kingsley asked, voice dry.

            “Mr. Lucius Malfoy.”

            Hermione snorted and then covered her mouth. Harry grinned at her as Diggory’s eyes momentarily became sharp and darted in her direction. He doubted she had anything special to say; she just wanted to make a sound of amusement to disconcert Diggory. It had succeeded. He looked back and forth between Hermione and Draco for a moment, as if trying to decide what they could have planned.

            “Excuse me,” Hermione said gravely, and put her hand down. “It was very wrong of me to interrupt. You were saying, Mr. Diggory?”

            “I have evidence to give,” said Diggory. “And therefore I will stay on the floor and present it.” He flicked his wand in a brief summoning gesture, and the Pensieve with the memories in it that he’d been handing around the Wizengamot flew out of the hands of the witch holding it and towards the floor.

            “As you will,” said Kingsley, with a shrug, and continued climbing until he had settled into the Minister’s central position. Harry didn’t miss the nervous glances that Prunella and Williams, in particular, gave him. Kingsley stared back without seeming to see them, but he had probably memorized their faces.

            “Now,” Kingsley said, facing the floor, “the trial can begin. As I suspect a great deal of ‘evidence’ against Mr. Potter has been presented before now, I call his witnesses first.”

*

            Draco grinned. He wished Diggory was looking at him at the moment so he might get the full force of the grin, but he was staring up at Shacklebolt without expression instead. Ah, well. It was good enough that their trap should be sprung almost as they had planned.



            “I have the most extensive story to tell,” he said, stepping forwards, exactly as though he and Granger had planned he would go first all along. He caught her eye, but she simply inclined her head, and he knew she did not object. “Harry Potter is indeed my lover, and he did break into Daphne Greengrass’s home to rescue me. She was torturing me.”

            Draco closed his eyes for a moment so he could continue, feeling Harry’s hand reach up and grip his. He had known this was coming; he had prepared himself for it in the back of his head over the last few days, because he and Harry had agreed during the discussion in hospital that his memories would have to come out. But it was still horrible to talk about.

            And he did not think demonstrating his memories to the Wizengamot would be the most effective way of showing the horror, though he and Harry had talked about that as well. After all, so much of what he had suffered was mental, and the Pensieve would demonstrate only the state of his body.

            “I would like Veritaserum,” he said suddenly.

            “I have some,” Kingsley’s voice announced at the same time as a tramp of footsteps sounded, and Draco turned to see more Aurors entering the courtroom. One of them was Willowberry. One of them also held a glittering vial of clear liquid. Draco had never been so glad to see it.

            He accepted the vial from the Auror’s hand and twisted it back and forth, squinting thoughtfully at the potion. When he was satisfied with the state of the potion and that it held no impurities, he uncorked it.

            “A moment,” Diggory said. “Should we not have the potion tested by a Potions expert, so that we know it is not doctored? I mean no disrespect to Mr. Malfoy,” he added, as Draco turned and stared at him. “But the Ministry has been less than reliable in this affair, and—“

            “You do not have a right to request such things, Mr. Diggory,” Shacklebolt said, sounding almost idle. “You are, after all, only a witness.”

            Draco wished badly that he could look at Diggory’s face, but he didn’t dare, because he knew he would burst out laughing if he did. Instead, he glanced at the Auror who had given him the Veritaserum and asked, “Is this pure?”

            “It is,” said the Auror, a young woman with hair as red as a Weasley’s and brilliant dark eyes that suggested this was the first severe excitement she’d seen in her training. “I brewed it myself, and I took an Outstanding in my Potions NEWT.”

            Draco nodded at her as one artist to another, and then placed three drops ceremoniously on his tongue. He grimaced when they began to work and he felt his mind drift softly away from most of the people around him; he had to wait a moment before he could hand the vial of Veritaserum back to the Auror without dropping it.

            But throughout the drifting, Harry’s hand remained on his, a steadying grip. Draco had never had someone touch him like this, as though they believed in him, and only him. He hoped it would be enough.

            “Daphne Greengrass told me that she would lend me money if I became her lover,” he began mechanically, grateful now for the distance the Veritaserum afforded him. “I had a great need to raise money quickly because some debts I had owed for some years had been bought up all at once by Cordelia Nott, who worked with Mr. Diggory here. They believed they could thus deprive me of my shop and the means of brewing Desire potion, which Mr. Diggory feared for some reason as a threat to his campaign for the Minister’s office.”

            He did look at Diggory now, and again Diggory gave him the look of a bored god. But he had spent too much time around Lucius, enough time to pick up one of his mannerisms. A muscle in the corner of his eye was twitching wildly, the way it often did in Lucius’s when he was agitated about something and dared not show it. Draco gave him an abstracted smile and continued speaking.

            “She used Memory Charms and Legilimency on me, so that, whilst I knew she had done something to me, I could not remember what it was. My mind as well as my body was raped. She had a great fetish for uncertainty, and she put on me spells that would affect my heart or cause me pain if I performed certain activities—and then did not tell me about them, so it was clear I could die at any moment.”

            “If she used Memory Charms and did not tell you about these spells, how is it that you remember them?” demanded a witch with a face like an old apple.

            Draco eyed her with quiet scorn. “She returned all my memories to me at once when she kidnapped me, whilst Harry was dealing with the threat of Cordelia Nott,” he replied. “I suddenly learned I had been raped with a knife—“ He paused. His voice shook, and the grip of Harry’s hand on his tightened. Harry leaned into his field of vision, and Draco saw that he was shaking his head slightly. He didn’t want Draco to speak of these memories, even to save him, if doing so would hurt him.

            But Draco had lived long enough with this poison lying in the back of his mind, emerging in nightmares the past few days when he had not had Harry around to soothe him. He had barely had time to focus on healing, given the busyness of Harry’s trial and the preparations to counter Diggory, but he knew the memories would return with a vengeance the moment he relaxed. He didn’t want that. This was hardly the arena for confession he would have chosen—he had imagined murmuring the truth to Harry as they lay in bed together, with Harry still inside him and his body still tingling from pleasant sex—but it was the one he had.

            “I suddenly learned I had been raped with a knife,” he continued, “and that she had been inside my head, deleting some of my memories.” Not even the distance the Veritaserum imposed between the truth and the speaker could help him now, and he realized he was trembling in every limb like a colt forced away from its mother’s side too soon. Harry stroked his arm. Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on the thought of Harry as he had looked when he broke into Daphne’s house, strong and fierce and utterly devoted to Draco. “I will never be rid of the taint of her, anymore than someone who is raped can simply overcome the rape. She used pain spells that should have left me wrecked and out of my senses, drooling—but she caught my falling mind each time, brought me back to consciousness, healed me, and then began the pain once more. She broke my fingers by bending them backwards and then warped the bones so they would set wrong, then broke them again and set them again. My hands are my livelihood, and I could have suffered permanent effects from that. She left a few gaping holes in the middle of my memories, so that in the middle of recalling a conversation or party I was part of some years ago, suddenly there are faces I would not know if I saw them today and words I cannot remember. She ransacked my life, inside and out. And she would not have stopped her torture no matter what. Harry was right to take her magic. She tortured me with magic, made hers into an instrument of harm that could not be surmounted any other way.”

            There was silence when he finished. Draco did not care to open his eyes and look at the expressions of pity or disgust on their faces. He concentrated instead on the calluses on the inside of Harry’s fingers, running his own fingers up and down them. Strange calluses, he thought. Harry’s work had been making wizarding cameras and film, not flying, for the past seven years. Could he really have retained calluses from flying a broom all this time?

            “And you expect us to believe that the Veritaserum was untainted after all?” one of the Wizengamot members demanded.

            Draco flinched, but Shacklebolt said at once, “If you believe that, Eleanor, your quarrel is with the Ministry’s brewing team and not with Mr. Malfoy. Do you believe that Veritaserum did not work? What reason do you have for doing so?”

            Draco opened his eyes in time to see the insufferable woman with the apple face flush bright pink. At the same moment, another woman leaned forwards and said in a voice like the peacock Patronus’s, “Oh, dear, Eleanor. I think your nephew works for the Ministry’s Potions committee, or the one of the sub-committees. I never thought I would see the day when you chose political loyalty before family loyalty.”

            Eleanor began to splutter. Draco gave an iron smile, and then stepped aside, letting Granger gesture Littlesmith forwards.

            Harry took the moment of confusion whilst Littlesmith was moving to lean up and whisper into Draco’s ear, “There is no braver thing you could have done, and I know it.”

            The depth of love in those few words was one that Draco had never heard in his parents’ brief compliments to him, which had once been his standard for intense emotion packed into a small space. He felt a sharp thrill travel through him, and he leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder for the brief time he felt he could.

            He was in love, and it was not the terrifying experience his father had always told him it would be.

*

            Harry didn’t listen to much of Hunter Littlesmith’s testimony, though if he had to he could have recited the most important part of it back. The man was only confirming that Daphne Greengrass had been abusive to her lovers, in any case. The spells she had used on him had been different from most of the specific ones she used on Draco, but the wider range was a good thing; it would confirm the picture of Daphne as cruel and ruthless, or so Hermione had explained it to him.

            But he was more concerned with Draco just at the moment.

            Harry knew he could not have stood up in front of a group of strangers and talked about the most humiliating moments of his life. A few months ago, his potion might have given him the courage to do it, but even that would not have increased his willingness. Draco had brought himself here by his own will and determined to do what he thought was the right thing even before he took the Veritaserum.

            Harry wanted to take him from the courtroom in his arms and make love to him slowly, gently, and then hide him in a curtained bed away from the world, which they would never have to leave again if Draco didn’t want to.

            And since they were in public and still in front of that group of hostile strangers, there was so little he could do. He stroked Draco’s arm and hair and kissed his knuckles once when Littlesmith came to a particularly dramatic part of his story and Harry thought everyone’s attention was on him instead of Draco. Draco gave a trembling little sigh and leaned nearer, seeking comfort.

            Littlesmith’s testimony ended at last, and Kingsley spoke without a pause for breath. “Mr. Potter, do you agree that these witnesses have spoken the truth? Was Daphne Greengrass violent enough that she needed to have her magic removed in order to force her to stop hurting others?”

            “I believe she was,” Harry said. “Certainly I never believed that she would stop. I offered her the chance because I am, at heart, someone who wishes to believe good of everyone—even my enemies.” He glanced at Diggory, who regarded him with heavily-lidded cat-eyes. Harry wondered if he had no tricks left and was simply trying to endure the inevitable fall with dignity. “But she would not, and she had just tortured—as you heard described—the man I’m in love with.” Draco’s fingers tightened on his briefly, convulsively. “So I swallowed her magic.”

            “What conditions are necessary for you to swallow magic?” demanded Prunella. “Could you do it to anyone in this room?”

            “Not likely,” said Harry, “except one man, and even then he would have to make a move threatening Draco.” He looked at Diggory, and didn’t care who watched him doing it. This was a day of bold gestures. He would make what he could of them whilst he held the Wizengamot’s attention. “I need intense rage to drive my desire to take magic in the first place; I cannot simply strike out with wandless magic. I need the conviction that someone I love is in immediate danger, which means that I would not lash out because someone made a threatening gesture towards Draco in jest.”

            Hermione drew her wand and took a little step towards Draco. Harry watched her calmly. They hadn’t discussed that, but he knew Hermione and understood what she was about at once. Hermione put away her wand and bowed to the Wizengamot.

            “And I need intense emotions of other kinds,” Harry finished. “Lust, for example—“

            “An incubus!” said Williams loudly. “Just as Mr. Diggory suggested.”

            “The lust is useless without the rage,” Harry said patiently. “Or I would have taken my lovers’ magic. You can ask Susan Bones and many other women I dated whether they ceased to be witches once they lived with me.”

            “There was some talk, as I understand it,” said a wizard further back in the ranks of the Wizengamot, “about your nearly having drained the magic of someone else. A Miss Ginny Weasley?”

            “I nearly did, to my shame,” Harry said. If they produced Ginny now, he didn’t know if he would be able to look her in the eye, but he knew he would speak on to the end. There could be no other fitting return to Draco’s bravery and his sacrifice. “I was again feeling the combination of lust, jealousy, and rage, on a night when I thought it extremely probable that I should lose Miss Weasley to another lover.”

            “That is also a trait of an incubus,” Diggory murmured.

            “As you’ve utterly failed to prove my incubus blood despite having several chances without the Minister in the room, I don’t think that I need to listen to you,” Harry told him, as pleasantly as possible, and then resumed his story. “I nearly did take her magic. I was so horrified I brewed a potion that would keep me from feeling those emotions again, so it would not happen once more.”

            “And why did the potion not hold you back?” demanded Williams.

            “Because the potion is a variant of Desire,” Harry said. “When my greatest desire changed, the effect of the potion changed as well. I began to desire to protect Draco instead of to suppress my emotions, and so that strengthened my wandless magic. That is another reason that Daphne Greengrass lost her power. I entered with my rage and my magic strengthened because of what she had done to Draco. And if you are about to object that I should have managed to restrain myself even then, I beg you to think again of Draco’s testimony. Would you have stood by when someone was torturing your husband or your lover in such a way?”

            Williams subsided, looking sulky. Someone else asked, “And are you still on the potion, Mr. Potter?”

            Harry shook his head. “I considered that I had achieved my desires. Draco was safe, and I had no need of extraordinary magic to protect him. Besides, it was his desire that I get rid of the potion and see if I could live without it. I did so.” He looked up at Draco, who was looking down at him with brilliant eyes. “There is nothing I would not do for him, as I believe I’ve already made clear.”

            They threw a few more questions at him, but nothing else hard to answer, and no one had thought to go for Ginny. Then Willowberry stepped forwards and spoke a few simple sentences about his conviction that Harry had no creature heritage at all. He said he had “tested” him, but not how, and everyone else assumed he had used Veritaserum, since he also spoke of feeling a need to distance himself from the case after he made a mistake. Harry smiled at his back. He had no problem sharing a secret with the man.

            Diggory began to speak. “Of course that is all very interesting, but I can provide irrefutable evidence of Mr. Potter’s incubus heritage—“

            “And why should the Wizengamot accept that, when we have Pensieve memories of your attacking Draco Malfoy, and thus of your mindless enmity towards both Harry and his lover?” Hermione asked, stepping forwards with the Pensieve Draco had surrendered to her. “Appearing with a group of wizards, no less, and ordering them to curse him because he took a step towards you?”

            Harry was watching Diggory this time. He saw the man’s eyes close, as if, for just a moment, the lids had become too heavy to lift.

            I hope he saw his defeat, Harry thought viciously, as Hermione began to hand the memories around to those of the Wizengamot who wanted to see them.

*

            Mangacat: Thank you! Of all the blows, Rita’s article might actually be the worst for Diggory.

            Thrnbrooke: Thanks for reviewing!

            Christabell: Thanks! I thought the ending with Harry’s POV might have been a little too abrupt, so I wanted some extra description of the group.

            SP777: Hope Kingsley’s taking charge satisfies you!

            Whitmore: Thank you!

            Dragons Breath: Diggory is seeing his cherished plans collapse. That might be even better than fear.

            Yume111: I don’t think we really know enough about Shacklebolt’s character from canon to judge how good a politician he’d make. This one definitely doesn’t feel comfortable playing the politics games. (On the other hand, neither do Harry or Draco, but they have managed to be effective).

            I think the wizarding community doesn’t have much need to change because of magic, and the fact that magic doesn’t have constant innovations made to it the way technology has had for a few centuries. Inventing new spells isn’t the same thing as inventing a new way to do magic. That freezes people, and they’re likely to think old ways of doing things are best and fear change. Human mindsets changed very slowly in the centuries before technology started advancing so rapidly.

            I chose a peacock for Firstfruits because a peacock is attention-getting. ;)

            Diggory is still desperately trying to retain his pride and stoicism, to pretend nothing is really wrong and his enemies aren’t getting to him.

            Thanks for reviewing!
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A More Worldly Man