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Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twenty—For The Greater Good

            “I don’t think we would have to involve your wife.”

            Harry leaned back and took a small sip of the butterbeer that Lucius had ordered the house-elves to provide for him. He had offered something stronger, but Harry didn’t think that was a good idea, especially with all the thinking he’d had to do. He and Lucius had discussed things, but Lucius had contributed nothing except objections. He kept staring at Harry and shaking his head a little, as though he didn’t understand where this incredible apparition with the power to save his life had come from.

            Harry didn’t mind. After all, people had stared at him in awe and wonder for much worse reasons.

            “But there’s no reason why she would not ask,” Lucius protested now. “If the Ministry suddenly stopped searching for me, then she would want to know why.”

            Harry snorted. “She already thinks she pulled off the smartest escape plan the world has ever seen.” Lucius had explained to him exactly how Narcissa’s plan had worked, how she had used the Imperius Curse to make Kingsley write those letters—although she had dictated the words that went into them—and walk onto the island and retrieve Lucius. Then a Memory Charm had taken care of any possibility that Kingsley would remember and accuse Narcissa when she removed the Curse. Simple, really, at least for someone willing to use Unforgivables. “She thinks they would never suspect her, never search for you here, or she would have taken stronger precautions to keep someone like me out.”

            “How did you get in?”

            Harry didn’t want to reveal Draco’s mirror trick, and he wasn’t sure that he could have, anyway; he had understood the magical theory behind the mirror when Draco explained it, but he wouldn’t remember all the names of the laws and exceptions. He smiled modestly instead, which made Lucius look even more awed, and said, “There is a way to make the Ministry stop searching for you and not suspect your family, either, and it’s the one I already explained to you. We use the readymade suspects that chance provided for us.”

            “You’re willing to lie to the Minister for me,” said Lucius. “And to let my wife get away with using an Unforgivable Curse.”

            “I used the same one, during the war, and got away with it,” Harry said quietly. “I do want to make sure that she won’t use it again, in pursuit of a worse purpose. If there’s any chance that she does, I’d expect you to report it to me.”

            “Why should I?” Lucius put his head up and tried to look intimidating, but it was a little hard when he was wrapped in a thick, warm robe and huddling towards the roaring fire in his hidden room. “What do I owe you?”

            “Keeping your arse out of prison permanently, instead of just for a little while,” Harry said. “You know her better than I do. Do you think Narcissa had any long-term plan? Or would she just have kept you concealed in the Manor until she wasn’t paranoid anymore? Which could take a long time.”

            Lucius thought about it, then sighed. “You have a point,” he said, without dwelling on it, which actually cheered Harry up. Awe of Harry or not, it was plain that his time in Azkaban hadn’t killed Lucius’s Malfoy pride. “But my son will know.”

            “He has to,” Harry said. “Just like he has to know that you don’t actually plan to take his life away and put him under permanent suspicion from the Ministry. And that’s the main reason I’m doing this, really. It’s not for you, although I do feel sorry for you being caught up as an innocent victim in all this. It’s for Draco. I want him to be happy.”

            Lucius stared at him in silence, nursing his glass of mulled wine. Then he said, “I do not know whether to be glad or sorry for Draco that he met you. I think you would do more, and worse, for him than Narcissa would for me.”

            “I would do much more, and much worse,” Harry said gently. “I never found someone, before, who needed me in all the ways he does, and who I was prepared to sacrifice so much for. I would have sacrificed for my friends if they needed me that much, but they don’t. Draco does.”

            Lucius looked away and stared into the fire as though that would afford him the reassurance that nothing else could, his hands trembling on his mug. “I hope that Draco never asks you to do anything that could destroy him,” he muttered.

            Harry laughed merrily. “I would know that ahead of time, and I would stop him.”

            Lucius watched him now with his head on one side and an expression that wanted to be wise on his face. Harry thought he had lost too much in Azkaban to really be wise, though. Perhaps when he’d recovered more and gained back his scattered wits. “Draco is stronger than you know. You might end up with his hand on your reins, and not the other way around.”

            Harry blinked for a moment, wondering how Lucius could have misunderstood everything so much, and then nodded as he grasped it. “You think that Draco and I aren’t going to have an equal relationship,” he said, “but we are. There isn’t going to be someone’s hand on the reins. We’ll guide each other together.”

            Lucius sighed and shook his head dubiously. Harry smiled back. He was used to people doubting him, until he did something remarkable and showed them they didn’t have to. So it was easy to forgive Lucius his doubts now. He would teach him better when he had the plan well in hand and the Ministry wasn’t hunting Lucius anymore.

            He swallowed the last of his butterbeer and stood. “Shall we get going?”

*

            “Where have you been?”

            Harry kept his back turned for a second as he took off his cloak and hung it up on the peg near his door. Partially, he just wanted to keep Draco fussing for a moment more, and bask in the fussing, something he wouldn’t get to do often, knowing Draco. Partially, he wanted to have a chance to work the grin at the fussing itself off his face.

            Then he turned around and widened his eyes innocently. “What? Did something happen?”

            “You weren’t at the Apparition point when you should have been.” Draco stalked towards him, then seemed to decide touching Harry would distract him right now and halted a safe distance away, glaring at him. “Do you know what I was imagining had happened to you?”

            “Tell me,” Harry said. “Unless it’s disgusting and not exciting, in which case, don’t bother.” He brushed past Draco casually and headed for the kitchen. He’d had plenty to drink at the Manor, but Lucius hadn’t thought to offer him food.

            Draco caught his shoulder and spun him around. Harry tossed his head back, and let himself bask, too, in the pure delight that flooded him when Draco touched him. His shoulders quivered, and his pulse beat, and he wanted to reach out and gather Draco close when he did that. But he had the feeling Draco might not understand.

            Draco paused, staring at him. Then he said, “You’re insufferable.” But his hand moved further down Harry’s arm, and clasped his hand.

            Harry nodded, lifting his head. “Your father is in the Manor. Your mother hadn’t hidden him all that well. I think that she counted on the wards to stop anyone before they got that far, or at least warn her so she could move him to a better location. And in the meantime, we had a nice chat. Thanks for keeping your mother occupied for so long. We wouldn’t have been able to do that otherwise.” He moved towards the kitchen again, although he allowed Draco to hold his hand and so expected the sudden tug backwards.

            “You had a chat?” Draco was staring at him, and the expression of wonder on his face was so precious that Harry reached up and cradled his cheeks. Draco batted his hands away, but didn’t move back, which might have been the only thing he could have done to teach Harry a lesson. “What about?”

            “About the best way to keep him out of Azkaban while making sure the Ministry has no reason to think that you or your mother are responsible,” Harry said tranquilly. “I came up with the plan, of course. He told me why it wouldn’t work. And he agreed to order the house-elves not to tell Narcissa I was there, so he did make some contributions.”

            Draco swallowed loudly. “Did he look—well?”

            Harry softened, and moved closer. “He was fine. Your mother is taking excellent care of him. He doesn’t want to go back to prison, understandably, but he swears that your life and your money are yours, Draco. He isn’t going to try to take control again.”

            Draco stood there with his eyes opening and shutting, as though he was struggling against a strong wind. Harry put his hands on either side of Draco’s cheeks, stroking gently, and Draco shuddered and bowed his head, his shoulders hunching as though to hold back another blast of that wind.

            “I want to believe him,” he whispered. “I think I could, if I could see him face-to-face. But how do I know this exhaustion of his is going to last forever? How do I know he won’t feel better in a few months and insist on taking control of the family back?”

            “He wouldn’t do that,” Harry said soothingly, running his hands up and down the tightly clenched muscles in Draco’s back and wishing there was another way to make him feel better.

            Draco opened his eye and regarded Harry for a second. “And you think that you can predict him, when you never knew him well in the first place?”

            “I think,” Harry said firmly, “that I’m going to prevent him from doing anything of the kind, and he knows it. He told me that it frightened him, how devoted I was to you. So whether you ever knew anything about what he was planning or not, I would find out. And I would stop him from doing it.”

            Draco took a step back, gaping at him. Then he said, quite sharply, “Devotion or not, I don’t want you killing my father.”

            Harry laughed. “Did I kill Flint? Did I kill Corinna? No. I only made sure they couldn’t interfere in your life. I’ll do the same thing with your father. More gently, because of what he is to you, but I’ll make sure he knows that any attempt to change your life is going to be met with my force.”

            Draco stared at him, his finger running absently, gently, up and down Harry’s thumb. Then he said, “It seems unfair.”

            “That I should protect you?” Harry cocked his head. “Well, if the rest of the world finds it unfair, then all they have to do is stop being your enemies, and then they don’t have to worry about anything like that.”

            Draco shook his head. “It seems unfair that I really did nothing to earn this level of devotion and protection. And you’re ready to offer it to me, anyway.”

            “Oh, that’s easily explained,” Harry said, and slid a hand into his hair and tugged gently. “No one else is as adorable as you are, or as deserving of protection. If they were, I would have found them already, and be serving them.”

            Draco’s face went through a number of complicated expressions. Then he said, “I don’t like the word serving, not in that context. The Dark Lord used it all the time, and I don’t want to be like him.”

            Harry stepped back and bowed his head, spreading his hands. “As you wish.”

            Draco eyed him in suspicious silence. Finally, he said, “You would give in that easily? I thought getting your own way was all-important to you.”

            “No, you’re all-important to me,” Harry corrected, wondering if he would have to give another long speech about how much he valued Draco before Draco would start taking him seriously. “I don’t know how you haven’t seen that yet. The way you act and react is a delight to me, and I want to go on giving you the freedom to do exactly as you please. Flint and Corinna and your father get in the way, and they’re pushed out of the way. More or less gently, depending on who they are and what they’re doing.”

            Draco opened his eyes wide, then closed them. “Only now do I begin to understand how devoted you are,” he said.

            Harry nodded. “Yes,” he said gently. “This is the kind of loyalty that the Ministry wanted to command from me, and never did. So use it wisely, Draco. Don’t do something that means I would have to stop you, or walk away from you for the good of the world.”

            Draco made a sharp little sound under his breath, and reached out his arms.

            Harry came into them, and held him. He wasn’t really sure who was comforting who. But they both needed to stand like that for a long time, and so they did.

*

            Harry shut the door of Immortal’s holding cell carefully behind him. It had taken him all his knowledge to get here without setting off some ward, all his collected favors from the Ministry, and all his familiarity with Auror routines. If Kingsley had changed one thing in the weeks Harry had been gone, including the patrol schedule, then Harry was sure he would have been caught, Invisibility Cloak or no Invisibility Cloak.

            But he had come this far, and Immortal was standing up and smiling at him with bright mad eyes. Harry took Corinna’s sapphire from his pocket and bounced it up and down in his hand without speaking, looking thoughtfully at Immortal.

            “Why have you come back?” Immortal whispered. “Have you seen the true vision? Do you want to bring him back?”

            “I want to give you a suitable body for your task,” Harry whispered back. The wards in the room would probably have let him shout and not be heard by anyone in the corridor, but whispering made Immortal’s eyes grow brighter, and that was the reaction Harry was looking for. “A body you can take the soul from.” He bounced the sapphire again, and this time Immortal looked at it, but didn’t react to it, turning immediately back to Harry’s face.

            “How could you get it here?” Immortal whispered, lowering his voice even more, as if he assumed that Harry would change his mind if he had to speak too loudly. “The Aurors would take it from you. They must not take it from you—”

            Now his voice was rising, and wards or not, Harry didn’t want him getting too excited and neglecting the task at hand. Immortal was insane. If his mind wandered out on its own, it was too little to come back by itself. Harry gestured with the sapphire, and as he had thought it might, the light caught Immortal’s attention and calmed him down.

            “No,” Harry said. “They won’t question an Auror bringing in anything. And I have this gem. It can make people soft and sleepy. You feel it making you soft and sleepy, don’t you?”

            Immortal blinked and shook his head a little. “If you’re an Auror,” he said, but didn’t complete the question.

            “Why am I sympathetic to you?” Harry smiled and brushed his fringe away from his forehead, waiting for a long, patient moment until Immortal’s eyes left the sapphire and focused on his scar. “Let’s say that you’re not the only one with a connection to him, or a longing for his glory.”

            It wouldn’t have convinced anyone who wasn’t already half-mad, but luckily, that was Harry’s only audience. Immortal nodded and smiled, and then moved backwards, his hands spread. “I will await you here,” he said.

            Harry bit his tongue on the need to say something sarcastic about Immortal’s power of moving away from the cell, and slid the sapphire into his pocket. “You have to be ready to receive the body,” he insisted. “You have to perform the ritual as soon as you can. Can you do it by yourself?”

            Immortal nodded. “The full ritual is very complicated, but the small one can be done by anyone with familiarity with Slytherin’s magic,” he began.

            “Right,” Harry said, knowing that he would have to listen to the full babble and ramble otherwise. “I’ll leave you to it.” He gave a complicated kind of bow with his hands in front of him that wouldn’t mean anything but would look cool, and then departed.

            He did pause outside the cell to lay his wand on the wards and murmur the spell Draco had taught him, the one it turned out that he’d used when he and Harry visited the Ministry to sneak through the protections on Immortal’s cell. This particular version went in and disabled the wards that would have otherwise reported Harry’s little visit just now to the proper authorities.

            Harry was smiling as he went on his way. Useful things, spells, and even more useful, the right incentive to use certain ones.

            Like being in love.



*

            SP777: Lots of people disagree about that people; if you search for it, you'll find some people defending Lucius' and some people defending Lucius's. I use the latter because I find it less confusing and more distinctive.

            delia cerrano: You might have a better idea of it after this chapter.

            Diana: Here you are.

            unneeded: I think it is, legitimately, pretty brilliant.

            nightlo: Draco wants his father to keep out of his life, and if Harry can come up with a solution that achieves that and also frees Draco of suspicion, then he would probably be just fine with this.
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