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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 Twenty--Hunting on the Ground

            "I don't know if I can face them."

            Harry put a hand on Draco's shoulder and smiled into his face. He was standing next to Harry, not running away, but his legs were locked as if he thought that the ground would shift any second. And when he felt Harry touching him, he did turn and bury his head in Harry's shoulder.

            Malfoy would probably despise him for being weak. But Harry remembered the way he had felt when he was tried for using the Patronus Charm in fifth year, and even how sick and shaky his stomach had been when he stepped into the courtroom in his own world to give the testimony that would free Narcissa Malfoy.

            "Don't think about the people watching," Harry murmured. "They won't be allowed to interfere, or the trial would become a circus, and I can't think that even Discipula wants that. Keep your gaze on me or your parents, instead. Or the witnesses. Think about what you'll do when you have your freedom back and you're able to go wherever you want."

            "So you think that'll happen." Draco's voice was soft, and his fingers tangled in the edge of Harry's shirt as if he had forgotten that Harry was the one wearing it. Harry could feel Lucius's gaze on them from behind, but he didn't know if it was disapproving, upset, or something else. He wasn't about to turn around and check, either.

            "Yes, I do." Harry infused his voice with confidence, because anything else wasn't to be thought of right now. "I think that everything you want will happen. And that I want will happen," he added, aware that Draco might not think those two things were exactly identical. "We'll get you free. I'm a good barrister."

            Well, I think I am. In theory, anyway.

            Draco gave a tiny sigh and a smile, and then stepped out into the middle of the courtroom that Discipula had chosen, looking at no one, but only at the small cluster of chairs on the left side. Woburn, Wellworth, and McGonagall were already seated there. Woburn looked blank, Wellworth self-satisfied, and McGonagall strained and pale.

            The crowd pushed in from beyond the railings around the courtroom. Harry knew they weren't inside the Ministry, but he hadn't recognized the outside of this building when they arrived, any more than he had recognized the one where the Malfoys were held. It was possible that it didn't exist in his own world. The crowd consisted of wizards and witches of all ages who began to shout when the Malfoys appeared, but Harry waved his wand unobtrusively by his side and raised a wall of silence around them.

            Draco turned to him with a look of amazement. Harry grinned back at him. "Well, we have to be able to hear ourselves speak, don't we?" he murmured.

            Draco didn't say anything, but he did duck his head with a motion that made it look as though he was trying to hide his own smile.

            When they arrived at the cluster of chairs, Harry shook hands with the witnesses--except Woburn, who acted as if he was above such niceties--and thanked them for coming. Wellworth accepted his hand with a beam and a nod. Woburn simply watched him with those same burning eyes that could apparently detect a lie.

            McGonagall looked as if she was about to fall off her chair.

            "I thought there was something odd from the photograph," she breathed, as she held Harry's hand between her own and stared into his face. Harry shifted uneasily. The McGonagall he knew would have been too self-conscious to do anything like that, but possibly this one was different. "I didn't realize this, though. A perfect likeness!"

            Malfoy's voice murmured in Harry's head, saying that he didn't know how much he looked like his father. He shook it off as much as possible and gave McGonagall a temperate smile. "Headmistress?"

            "You look as if you're a member of the Potter family," McGonagall whispered. She sat back and let go of his hand, then, but the shocked look remained on her face. "And those eyes could have come from Lily Evans, who died at the end of You-Know-Who's wand, Merlin rest her soul." Abruptly, she shut her eyes and looked away.

            Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably and nodded. "My family's taken in a lot of blood from different Squibs over the centuries," he said. "Some of them could have been Potters."

            "Impossible," McGonagall said. "There were no Squibs born to the Potters in the last two centuries. There were so few children..." Then she suddenly blinked and sighed. "Forgive me, Mr. Evans. This must be painful for you, when you know perfectly well who your family really was. There could have been a Squib I didn't know about, of course. Or you could be related to the Evans family that produced Lily, and just look a bit like James."

            Harry gave her a faint smile and turned to help Draco into his chair. Someone else was looking at him now, though, hard enough to make his skin prickle, and he glanced up casually, expecting to see Discipula staring down from the high podium.

            No. It was Woburn, his eyes so hard that Harry half-expected him to stand up and stamp out of the courtroom, declaring that he wouldn't help them.

            He didn't. Harry shrugged back, not caring if the bastard saw him do it, and turned his back to make sure the elder Malfoys had comfortably found their chairs. He doubted that Woburn would know anything about either the Potters or the Evans families; he probably represented the kind of pure-blood wizards who kept themselves aloof from even other pure-bloods, at least if they "polluted" their heritage by marrying Muggleborns.

*

            Within five minutes of the trial's beginning, Harry knew that he was in over his head.

            It wasn't that he didn't understand the witnesses' claims, or the legal precedents being invoked. (Well, all right, he understood most of the legal precedents). But he hadn't realized just how many witnesses the prosecution would call out.

            As the parade went on, men and women and even children who stated that they'd seen Lucius casting curses as a Death Eater and a few who had stated that they had seen Narcissa, plus people Draco's age who talked about how much he had bragged about his father's involvement with Voldemort, the Malfoys looked sick. Well, not Lucius. And Narcissa only went pale and held her husband's arm unnecessarily hard.

            But Draco looked as though he might throw up. And McGonagall had turned away from the betrayed glances other people gave her in a way that made Harry think she regretted agreeing to become a character witness for their side.

            Discipula sat in her high seat and listened calmly to all that testimony, except during the moments when her eyes gleamed with sympathetic tears. On either side of her sat members of the Wizengamot, and in a chair not far away was Neville. He seemed to be watching things, Harry saw, but there was no expression of either understanding or compassion on his face.

            The parade lasted most of the morning, and Harry was shaking by the time they were excused to find sandwiches or something else they could eat. He came back with a plate of sandwiches for Draco and his parents, although Lucius turned up his nose at anything so common. Wellworth ate her own lunch happily enough, and nodded at Harry when she was done.

            "What happens after this?" she asked.

            "We'll begin with our own testimony," said Harry. He glanced about for Woburn, but he had vanished. Well, Harry doubted that he would have any objections to Harry assigning him to go last. He would probably think that it was more fitting of his dignity, or some such thing. "Headmistress, you first, as I have the most hopes of getting Draco acquitted, and the evidence against him was weakest."

            "Did you listen to them?" McGonagall's voice and face were both grey, and she hadn't touched her food. "I didn't realize--Mr. Malfoy, how many times did you talk about your father and what he would do to anyone who tried to hurt you or even get better marks than you did?"

            Draco winced, but to his credit, he didn't turn away from her bleak stare. "I've lost count of all the times, Headmistress," he admitted softly.

            McGonagall sighed. "How are we going to combat them?" she asked no one in particular. "They have all the witnesses on their side. And there's no denying that some of them did commit crimes." Her gaze passed too quickly across Lucius for him to notice, or at least deign to notice, but Narcissa gave her a nasty look.

            Harry jumped in at that point. The last thing he needed was this small and motley collection fighting among themselves. "Yes, I know, but we need to concentrate on the evidence. Everyone so far has testified that the Death Eaters wore masks. Exactly how did they know that the people they saw were Malfoys? And Draco's bragging about his father is the sort of thing all schoolboys do. There's no reason to take it more seriously than the threats of one student to kill another."

            He turned back to Draco and saw that he wore an odd, stricken expression. Harry reached out without thinking and let Draco clasp his hand, but Draco's hand shook more than Harry was used to it doing.

            "I'm a child?" Draco whispered.

            Harry sighed. He hadn't meant to give that impression, but he probably had, talking as though he was years older than Draco rather than just a few months--well, no, perhaps it was a few years, but only a few. "I just meant that they shouldn't take what you said at the time seriously," he tried to explain. "Not that you're not an adult now, of course. You're probably more mature than most of them, since you've spent so much time in prison."

            Draco didn't smile. He leaned nearer and whispered against Harry's ear, close enough to raise the small hairs there. "But compared to you, and what you've done, I know that I am a kid. How could I have hoped that you would see me as anything else?"

            Harry shook his head and grasped his hands hard enough to make Draco wince a little. "Don't think about that," he said, his voice wavering between command and plea. "You're still innocent. You still deserve a trial."

            "And your regard?" Draco leaned away from him, eyes bright and hard.

            "I--"

            But Woburn appeared back in his chair then, and Discipula announced the end of lunch in a sonorous voice that made Harry think she should have been Minister after all. Neville slipped back into his seat, wiping his mouth. He caught Harry's eye and gave him a sort of guilty look. Harry took a deep breath, wondered if he should smile or frown back, and ended up turning to Draco instead, who looked as though he didn't know whether he should be jealous.

            "We'll talk about this later," he said, quietly but forcefully.

            "Ordering me around." Draco's face was paler than normal, and suddenly Harry could see the resemblance to Malfoy that he'd denied seeing before. "Like my Mum." He turned and shoved his chair forwards so that it was between his parents', rather than separate from them.

            "Draco--" Harry began.

            "It is your turn to call your first witness, Mr. Evans," Discipula said, inflexible as a hailstone.

            Harry bowed, to hide his glare, and turned to McGonagall. "Please, Headmistress," he said. "Think about what you've seen him do, how you've seen him act, rather than what other people have said."

            McGonagall looked at him, then seemed to look more deeply, and abruptly nodded. "Yes, you are right, Mr. Evans," she said. "I should have been doing that. I am sorry that it took your words to remind me where duty lies."

            And with that ambiguous comment, she turned and marched across the courtroom to the podium-like stand the rest of the witnesses had taken, leaving Harry blinking behind her.

            "State your name and position," Discipula said, as she had said to all the other witnesses. Harry had watched carefully, but he detected no sign that she was absolutely in charge of the proceedings other than that. She was the one who had set the date and place of the trial, but the other Wizengamot members asked more questions than she did, and even Neville volunteered certain words sometimes. Discipula leaned back and watched things with an expert eye, not interfering.

            Watching.

            She wasn't the judge. But Harry knew better than to let that persuade him that she wasn't dangerous.

            "Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts." McGonagall's voice was firm and strong now, and she leaned forwards as if she was prepared to attack Discipula in defense of a member of her House. Harry nodded in some relief. That was the professor he knew, and he was glad to see her taking her place on the battlefield. He wouldn't have wanted to have to fight her as well as Discipula.

            "Headmistress, we all know what a fine person you are," said a Wizengamot witch in a bright yellow robe that made Harry think of daffodils. "Why have you agreed to be a character witness for someone whom you must know wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it?"

            "I only know one person who wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it," McGonagall said in a dry tone. "And rest assured, Mr. Malfoy is not him. He was much taller, much paler, and had no nose."

            There was a slight rustle of laughter in the Wizengamot for the first time, but the witch in the yellow robe wasn't satisfied. "Yes, but surely you must admit that someone who served him willingly is not to be trusted?"

            "I have questions about the willingness of Mr. Malfoy's service, given that he claims to have been coerced into it," McGonagall said, even more dryly than before. "And there is a large difference between not trusting someone and executing him."

            Neville leaned forwards. Harry saw the way the audience turned to orient on him, like a sunflower spinning to meet the sun. No matter what the questions surrounding Neville's defeat of Voldemort might be, it seemed that they still regarded him as a hero.

            "You said sometimes that you wanted to kill me, and the people who were my friends," Neville said. He spoke quietly, but the courtroom's acoustics were good, and Harry knew everyone could hear him. "Why did you think that anyone would believe that you weren't a Death Eater?"

            Harry was on his feet before he knew that he was going to stand. "Mr. Longbottom is violating a point of order!" he said loudly. "Mr. Malfoy is not in the box and therefore cannot be directly addressed."

            Neville turned to him with eyes as large as full moons, and Harry felt a frisson of shock travel through him. Neville hadn't been expecting the challenge.

            And not because he didn't know the rules of the courtroom. On some level, it seemed, he had expected Harry to be like everyone else, and cower in awe when Neville looked at him. No wonder that he had felt free to speak to Draco; everyone else would bend the rules for him or know they were to be bent, so he had thought Harry would, too.

            Or so Harry thought in those few dizzying moments when he was meeting Neville's gaze and no one else was moving to do anything. It was possible that he was wrong and the way Neville stared at him meant something entirely different, of course. But he didn't think so.

            "Mr Evans," Discipula said in a weary, tolerant voice. "I'm sure that our Chosen One meant to direct his question to the right person. After all, we know that Mr. Malfoy will need to speak in his own defense. This is merely skipping a step in the process, and I think it right and necessary. We know that truth often appears under impulsive circumstances, rather than perfectly polished ones."

            I don't want you to coach him into actually defending himself, Harry read the subtext under that speech.

            He bared his teeth and replied, "And yet, Madam, when I wanted to question one of the witnesses who claimed that Mrs. Malfoy had joined her husband in Death Eater raids, you told me that I was not yet allowed, and the order of the courtroom must be upheld. Would you say the same thing now, or is the ChosenOne allowed leeway just because of who he is?"

            Discipula's face changed. Only for a moment, only for a flicker of expression, but Harry was looking right at her and didn't doubt what he saw.

            She's afraid. And angry. And it has something to do with Neville.

            Harry took a deep breath and held it while trying to make sure that he remembered her expression well, so that he could show it in a Pensieve to Malfoy when he got back to the other world. I wonder if part of the secret she conceals is that she's been asking for political power, or enacting political reforms, while pretending she's acting for Neville? That could be a reason for her to be afraid when someone comes in who's not overawed by the Boy-Who-Lived and who actually dares to question him.

            "My apologies, Mr. Evans," Discipula said in a voice as sweet as treacle tart. "I didn't realize you were such an experienced barrister. Of course you are right, and of course letting Mr. Longbottom do exactly as he wishes should not be supported in a courtroom. I will speak with him." And she leaned back and whispered directly into Neville's ear, while another Wizengamot member spoke up to question McGonagall.

            Harry had to force himself to pay attention to the questions and McGonagall's answers. His heart was pounding, and he found it difficult even to sit down and take his eyes from Discipula.

            The bitch.The bloody bitch.

            He didn't know why he was so angry. Had he become used to that sort of special treatment from people in his own world because he was the Boy-Who-Lived, to the point that denial of it enraged him?

            And it wasn't as though it was strange for someone in a courtroom to test the limits of rules and what they could get away with. It was probably more common for the opposition or the accused to do so, but Hermione had warned him about it, and Harry had thought he'd accepted it--especially with all the reading of historical cases she'd had him do, where people had actually been sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss because of tampering with the rules of procedure.

            But Discipula had managed to get him angry anyway. Harry had to touch his temple and shake his head hard before he could start paying attention to the courtroom in front of him again.

            "I do not know that simply bragging about what his father would do makes Mr. Malfoy into a criminal," McGonagall was saying. She had her pace now, and was giving the Wizengamot a sardonic look that made more than one member move uneasily in their seats. Harry wondered how many of them might have had her for a professor. "Otherwise, we would have to use a Time-Turner to arrest me, since I bragged as a child that my mother would turn someone throwing mud at me into a toad."

            "But everyone knows that you are an upstanding citizen, Headmistress," said a large wizard in a sky-blue robe. "The Malfoys were Death Eaters."

            Strange the way people repeat those words here, Harry thought, clenching one hand into a fist down at his side, where people watching him couldn't see it. It's as if they're an incantation that they expect to take away all the common sense of those who hear it.

            He shot a glance at Draco, only to find him sitting straight in his chair, gaze on McGonagall as if she was the only one who could save him. Harry swallowed uncomfortably and turned back to watch her, too.

            "From listening to me as a child, you could not have predicted that," McGonagall said, her voice thickening with something that might have been amusement. "The same thing holds true for Mr. Malfoy. Just because, as a child, he exhibited some character traits that the majority here condemn does not mean that he will grow up and become that same kind of adult."

            Harry let out a large breath. He could see that some of the people in the courtroom, even in the audience, had taken in that point and been struck by it.

            Discipula was smiling.

            Why? Harry glared at her enough that she started to turn her head towards him, but he looked away before she could catch his eye. He swallowed the rage. He didn't know why she was having such an effect on him, and he tried to tell himself that it was only paranoia that made him feel as if she was winning because she looked smug or amused when they started to succeed. If anything, that was probably a technique she had learned in politics, and he shouldn't be surprised that she knew it or that she could make someone watching her feel small.

            The members of the Wizengamot asked McGonagall a few more questions, but it was plain that they felt unable to dent her wall of tranquility, or perhaps were too respectful of her to try and do so. When she turned towards Harry at last and gave him an encouraging smile to begin her questioning, Harry was fairly confident that Draco's reprieve from the conviction was already won.

            It wouldn't do to act like it, of course. He stood up, smiled at McGonagall, and asked the first of his carefully prepared questions. "Headmistress, some people are saying that Mr. Malfoy went bad because he was in Slytherin, and that all Slytherins should be cast out of Hogwarts the moment the Hat Sorts them." Start with a point of hyperbole, Hermione had told him more than once. Cuttingback down from that can make you look reasonable. "What is your response to that?"

            "He was neither better nor worse than many other students I had the pleasure of teaching," McGonagall replied. "He played pranks and earned detentions, but so did every other student in the school."

            Harry was horribly tempted to ask if that included Hermione, but he held himself sternly on-topic. "Thank you. And would you say that Mr. Malfoy ever expressed any willingness to be a Death Eater, himself, no matter how much he praised his father?"

            "I never heard him do so. And more than once, he came to my office and acted as if he would like to speak to me. I thought he would confess then, but he did not do so. Understandably," McGonagall added, "since he feared what You-Know-Who would do to his parents. And family loyalty is a commendable thing in a child."

            Harry glanced back towards Draco, unable to help it, and thinking he would be smiling. Instead, Draco sat there in a brooding sulkiness that only lifted when Lucius subtly poked him, probably reminding him that a dignified face would help them in the court.

            Harry asked the rest of his questions, but he had been distracted by Draco's reaction, and he thought that he did a worse job with the questioning than otherwise--even though McGonagall pressed a commendatory hand on his shoulder as she stepped out of the podium.

            And then chance, or fate, or his peculiar brand of luck, gave him something else to worry about. As Harry walked past Woburn's chair, he drew his wand and cast a spell in Harry's direction, not bothering to hide it.

            Words formed in Harry's brain, a hissing telepathy.

            I know who you really are.

*

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Sleepless