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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twenty-Three—Absolute

            He came for me.

            The words worked their way into Draco’s throat, down into his stomach, and he heard them ring in his head as clearly as if someone else had spoken them. He stood there with his hands locked behind his back, his head tilted as though to accommodate the jab of an Auror’s wand, though in fact no one had yet approached him or tried to force him to yield that way.

            He would not have said that he’d doubted Harry in the last twenty-four hours. Not exactly. He did think that his punishment for Fifernum was appropriate, and he knew other people would have taken more from her.

            But it had reminded Draco that he had no way of telling exactly how powerful Harry was, and that meant that he could never count on having the upper hand. This was a political alliance, but it was also more than that. Harry had at last begun to acknowledge it—at the moment when Draco wondered if he could commit to it.

            Now, as he saw Harry standing there with gold stars dancing around him, no mere illusions but the manifestation of his power as it just happened to be in this particular place and time, Draco shivered once, and fell.

            He didn’t care if Harry was so much stronger than him that Draco would never fully comprehend it. He didn’t care if his heart ached when he saw that power exercised, and if he had cause to doubt some of Harry’s decisions. He didn’t think Harry would take exception to being argued with, the way some Dark Lords would.

            It didn’t matter. He gave himself up. He yielded. He surrendered, in a private and personal way that had nothing to do with always giving in to what Harry wanted or always being passive and admiring in the face of his deeds.

            He gave himself up because he knew that Harry would come for him, impossibly, in the face of danger. He yielded because that power would be used for his benefit, along with other people’s, and that was something Draco craved more than he wanted to admit.

            He was not alone, and never would be. That, he could accept and fall in love with. That, he wanted.

*

            Harry turned his head back and forth casually from Minister Tillipop to the Aurors, distantly wondering who would make the first move. Tillipop’s face was so red that Harry thought he would faint. A few of the Aurors had drawn their wands and brandished them tentatively at Harry, but he thought that they weren’t serious. If they were serious, they would already be charging him.

            “Dark Lord Potter,” Tillipop said at last. His voice was strangled. A pity it had emerged at all, Harry thought. He had hoped one of the Aurors would speak. “Why have you come? This is a—free meeting. An—unstructured debate. There is no reason for your awe-inspiring presence here.”

            Harry had to smile. The man’s lies were as stumbling as the words themselves. Of course, Harry had to put that down to the terror he could almost smell.

            He strolled forwards, and stopped as all the Aurors aimed their wands at him. Harry extended his hands up in exaggerated fashion. A few of them relaxed. Harry almost nodded, but managed to keep the movement to himself at the last moment. Then they didn’t know about his wandless magic.

            “Well, if it’s an unstructured debate, then I think that’s all the more reason that Ministerial Candidate Draco Malfoy should be allowed to speak, don’t you?” Harry asked, turning and staring at Tillipop. “After all, you’re here to speak. Not arrest someone. Unless he’s already made a statement that proves he’s behind a murder or something,” Harry added, and turned to look at Draco.

            The force of the light in Draco’s eyes as he watched Harry struck Harry like a blow. He had to conceal a wince. There was faith there, and it would be so easy to shatter that faith. He didn’t think anyone had even depended on him that much when he was saving the world from a Dark Lord rather than being one. It was a very personal faith, and he didn’t know what he could have done to deserve it.

            “We are arresting Ministerial Candidate Malfoy for a crime, as it happens,” Tillipop said. “For the crime of knowing about a kidnapping from the Ministry.”

            “Oh, the kidnapping I did?” Harry bowed, his cloak sweeping behind him in a way that he knew several people wished they could imitate. Tillipop just looked as if he wished he could banish Harry, cloak and all. “Well, I can answer that he knew nothing about it.” He looked around, spotting the one person close to Draco who didn’t look like an Auror and so was probably the picked accuser. “And this young woman knows nothing about any incriminating evidence, either. Because it didn’t happen. Did it?”

            He pitched his voice low, but the woman was the only one who felt the sharp, cold wind that he had directed her to feel. She shivered violently and locked her arms around herself, staring at Harry with her mouth open. Harry hissed, quietly, and the grass at her feet writhed with snakes. Illusions, but illusions visible to her only. Harry doubted that anyone except maybe Draco would notice the way the grass had briefly brightened with some of his golden stars.

            “No!” the woman gasped. Her eyes darted back and forth between Tillipop and Harry, and wisely, she picked the one who threatened her instead of the one she had hoped could shelter her. “I mean—he didn’t know anything! I withdraw my accusation!”

            “Miss Sallow—” Tillipop began in gathering wrath.

            “Well, she said it herself,” Harry said, and draped his cloak back along his arm as he smiled blandly at Tillipop. “It was all a misunderstanding. Hadn’t you better let Ministerial Candidate Malfoy go so your unstructured debate can resume?”

            “It was not a misunderstanding!” Tillipop was beginning to lean forwards as if someone was swaying him in a high wind. Harry wondered, idly, why. He knew Tillipop was afraid of him; that much, the man had already proved. It seemed stupid and counterproductive for him to go on arguing with Harry. “She really did see and hear what she said she saw and heard! Ministerial Candidate Malfoy was already preparing to testify under Veritaserum when we got back to the Ministry!”

            “Oh, is that all?” Harry asked. He faced Draco. Draco stared at him in dazzled silence for a second before he ducked his head and shivered. Harry nodded. That was better. Those particular gestures could be taken by anyone watching, suspiciously, as signs that Draco was just as afraid of him as the Minister.

            “I can make it impossible for someone to tell a lie in my presence,” Harry said. “So I can test Ministerial Candidate Malfoy and see if he lies.”

            “You cannot!” Tillipop came out from behind the podium he’d stayed at so far, his hands chopping the air as if he was fighting with twin swords. “No one would trust you to guarantee that what he says is the truth, because—”

            Then he choked and fell silent. Of course, that was because he didn’t have much choice. Harry had turned towards him and snapped his fingers, and a huge shadowy fist had appeared between him and Tillipop, closing its fingers on the front of Tillipop’s shirt and hauling him off the ground. He dangled a few meters above it now, his feet kicking weakly and his shirt tugged up around his neck so that there was no way he could manage to speak.

            “No one would trust me?” Harry whispered. “You’re suggesting that there’s someone else I serve? Something I have an interest in, beyond the truth?” He waved his hand back and forth, and a second fist appeared, behind Tillipop, lifting him so that he no longer dangled, and could speak. “What would that be?”

            Tillipop’s eyes were starting almost completely out of his head as he stared down at Harry. Harry stared patiently back, not sure what Tillipop thought would come out of this. If he did suspect that Draco was connected to Harry, then it was stupid to threaten Draco. If he didn’t, then going to such lengths to frame Draco was still stupid, because there was no way that Harry wouldn’t take a frame involving his “kidnapping” of Fifernum personally.

            “You’re a Dark Lord,” Tillipop said at last, when he seemed to realize that there was no way he was getting out of this situation without talking. “Who in the world would trust you?”

            “I would.”

            That wasn’t Draco, to Harry’s relief. He didn’t know if Draco would be wise to reveal the connection between them right now. It was one of the Aurors who had stood ready to arrest Draco, instead, coming forwards to kneel at Harry’s feet.

            Harry blinked down at him. It was Helios Blackthorne, one of the Aurors who had trained Harry in Stealth and Disguise. He gazed up at Harry with the same black eyes that had once condemned him in the classroom, and there was nothing but admiration in them as far as Harry could see.

            Of course, he wouldn’t let it stand there. Harry tightened the air around everyone’s throats the way he had when he was forcing Fifernum to tell the truth, and asked, “Why?”

            “Because you’re standing up for an ideal that I want to serve,” Blackthorne answered. If he noticed the way the atmosphere had changed around him, he gave no sign. He eased back to one knee, but kept his head half-bowed. “I’ve been looking all my life for something to serve. I thought the Ministry was it, but they promised too much and changed too little. I never found a politician who didn’t have to compromise. You have the power not to have to. I want to follow you.”

            Harry blinked at him. That speech sounded strange to him, but he had made the air as tight and truth-forcing as he knew how, and he doubted his magic would suddenly fail him with an Auror when it had made the reluctant Gioia Fifernum tell him everything she knew.

            He placed Minister Tillipop back on the ground, more interested in Blackthorne. “You would—what?” he had to ask, because Blackthorne’s relaxed manner and kneeling stance didn’t complement each other. “Follow me? Guard me? Work as an Auror for me? Join me?”

            Blackthorne smiled. “All of those. You’re a Dark Lord, you said, but you don’t resemble the Dark Lords who murder and torture people, who are the only kinds I ever heard of up until now. I’m willing to give you a chance and see what happens. You’re at least a force for change in the world.” He hesitated, his mouth working, and Harry knew the truth-telling magic was forcing him to say something he might have kept quiet. “And I reckon I can always turn away from you and kill you if you turn out to be a disappointment. Or force you to kill me.”

            Harry had to smile and hold up one hand. “We’ll discuss that later,” he said. “I’m willing to take you back to Hogwarts as long as you remember that it’s the center of my power and I have rooms that would kill you in a minute if you betray me.”

            Blackthorne nodded and rose to his feet. “I promise.” He began to strip off his robes and Harry tensed for a second, wondering if he had added some command to the air for everyone to get naked that he didn’t remember. The only person here Harry was interested in seeing naked, sometime, was Draco.

            But Blackthorne only pulled off his Auror robes and dropped them on the ground, kicking them towards Tillipop with a little sneer. Then he turned back to Harry and stared intensely at him. “Do I get a different sort of official robe?” he asked. “Something so everyone knows what I do and whose side I’m on?”

            “I suppose so,” Harry said. Merlin, he hadn’t thought this through. He had anticipated that no one would “serve” him directly for a long time; it would be the Hogwarts professors around him, and people like Draco and his friends who were equals. But if he could make the decision to leave the Aurors, bond Hogwarts to him, and set up as a Dark Lord, all in the course of a day, why shouldn’t some of his followers do the same thing?

            Besides, this was probably one of those chances Briseis and Draco kept talking about, the chance to make a dramatic impression.

            Harry pulled one hand back and cleared his throat. Blackthorne knelt in front of him again, gaze rapt. Harry traced his hand in the air above Blackthorne’s forehead, not really sure what would happen, just as when he reached for Fifernum’s soul. He didn’t want Blackthorne’s, though. He was trying to create something, instead.

            It happened. The air he outlined turned bright red and burning, and then tumbled into Harry’s palm, something else falling behind it. Harry examined it carefully. Yes. The outline had formed into a lightning bolt pendant, which seemed to be made of gold backed with red metal. Maybe Hermione would know what the metal was. Maybe it was magical and had no counterpart outside Harry’s power. Harry didn’t know for sure.

            The pendant had a silver chain. Harry dropped it around Blackthorne’s neck, already thinking about different ways to do the symbol. Maybe a badge on the robes, like the Aurors or Healers had. He didn’t want anyone who belonged to him wearing chains. “Rise, Helios Blackthorne,” he said, clearing his throat after he spoke the words. Some of the silently staring crowd might not have heard him. “First of my—my court, the Knights of the Lightning Bolt.”

            There. That ought to be sufficiently dramatic.

*

            Draco stood there and tried to ignore the weight of jealousy that was pressing down on his shoulders like a stone cloak.

            It was difficult, though. Knowing that that idiot Blackthorne was able to approach Harry and kneel to him and say any bloody thing that came into his head about why he wanted to “serve” Harry, while Draco had to stand here and pretend that the only connection between them was that he’d been accused of knowing something about Harry kidnapping Fifernum, and Harry had denied that he did.

            Not even that connection remains.

            Rosenthal had once again pressed her fingers into his arm. Draco could picture all too well what she’d do if he said something or made a gesture.

            Instead, he stood there, and fumed, silently.

            Harry did turn his head, once, to meet Draco’s eyes as he looked up from Blackthorne and Blackthorne’s adoring expression and the gift he’d given Blackthorne. He caught Draco’s gaze, and a flickering edge of a smile worked around his mouth.

            Draco was sure that Harry had no idea how he felt in that moment. Harry would probably say that Draco had no reason to be jealous, since Harry wasn’t kissing or touching Blackthorne. He’d even dropped the pendant around Blackthorne’s neck instead of threading it there, so Draco didn’t have a reason to suspect that Harry wanted to touch Blackthorne with any tenderness.

            But that smile was gift enough, and Draco stepped back, smoothed down his robes, gently took Rosenthal’s hand from his arm, and faced Minister Tillipop again. “I think we should continue with the debate,” he said. “Don’t you?”

            Tillipop stared at him with shocked, glazed eyes. Draco coughed quietly. “The Dark Lord came in the first place to make clear his complete independence of me,” he said. “That I was not an accomplice for him, and not someone privileged enough to know anything about what he does. Has the point been made? Your Aurors don’t need to arrest me now. We can talk about other things.”

            The very lack of his reference to Harry’s announcement or Blackthorne’s desertion had its effect. Tillipop flinched miserably back, then seemed to remember he was still Minister and had a certain kind of dignity to keep up. He cleared his throat and straightened the sides of his robe. “Of course,” he said. “We should continue what we came here for, whether or not the Dark Lord agrees.”

            He turned his head and glared—only to find that Harry had vanished with Blackthorne. From the starts and the stares around the meadow, no one had seen them go. Rosenthal stood straight up and hissed through her teeth, and many of the Minister’s supporters began talking at once. Sallow, the woman who had accused Draco of plotting with Harry, looked ready to faint.

            Draco coughed again. “We cannot allow Dark Lords to dictate what we do,” he said. “We can only continue what we have begun.”

            Tillipop seized the excuse and started babbling out some nonsense about how his only desire was to stick to Ministry policy. Draco remained still until that speech finished, his eyes on the place Harry had disappeared from.

            Then he turned back and began to perform his own part, questioning Minister Tillipop with utter gentleness, drawing him out and showing how weak he was on the grounds of debate, making points that everyone in the audience could understand but not lingering on them, because his strength was so great that he didn’t need to.

            If I’m going to be part of Harry’s court, then I need to perform my part in the dance we agreed upon. And only I can perform it.

            I don’t care if he’s bigger, stronger, more important to the public than I am.

            If he is important to me, I will still be part of it, and important to him.

*

            delia cerrano: Arguably, just by yelling at people.

            kain: Thanks! Draco has done a lot of politics-building that we haven’t seen before the story started, or he couldn’t be this far advanced in the Ministerial run.

            Yes, Chapter 24 has an interview with a Transfiguration teacher.

            SP777: Rosenthal will stay Draco’s personal adviser. She distrusts Harry too much to become part of his Court.

            Maybe there can be another appearance of Auror Stephanie later.

            LeaniaSTL: Thank you! Glad that you liked the ending line.

            I don’t intend to give a lot of explanations for Harry’s power. In this case, it’s a plot device that I really need for the story to work, so I plan to explain everything else instead.

            Meechypoo64: Thanks!

            qwerty: Thanks!

            unneeded: I do have an update list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lomonaaerensstories/ that you can join if you want.

            It’s mostly that Harry is the avatar of Hogwarts. And yes, he will be accepting werewolf children. (Not sure if there are vampire children or not).
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Easy as Falling