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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-Eight—Confrontations From Within

            “Mr. Potter. I must speak to you.”

            Harry paused, and turned around. He had to admit that it was nice to have someone call him that instead of “My Lord” or “Harry-I-have-lost-my-patience,” as Harry had mentally nicknamed the tone Hermione used to speak to him whenever she came to see him about changing the History of Magic classes. Harry had told her to do whatever she wanted; Binns was still showing up to teach, but they would just move Hermione’s classes down the corridor to a different room and handle it that way. Binns was stuck in too much of a routine to follow.

            He was a little less relieved when he saw it was McGonagall. She stood there looking cold, arms folded and head bowed. Harry swallowed and kept the stones from swelling up beneath her feet. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want Hogwarts to hurt her. He just wanted to hear what she’d come to talk about.

            “Professor McGonagall?” That just made her shoulders tighten up more. Harry hesitated, then used the title that she had refused to be addressed by in the last few weeks. “Headmistress?”

            “Do not call me that.” There was a hint of her old sharpness, and it relaxed Harry far more than seeing her had. “I am no longer Headmistress of this school in any way that matters.”

            Harry eyed her cautiously. “I tried to leave your office open for you,” he said. “I’m sorry for using it the first few days I was here. It just seemed like the natural place to organize the school from, but now I realize that my own office works better.”

            McGonagall’s shoulders pulled in further, and for a moment Harry thought she was changing into her Animagus form; her hair almost visibly bristled. “You should not be organizing the school at all,” she whispered. “I should have.”

            “Then do it,” Harry said. “Whatever you want me to hand over to you, I will.” It would actually sort of be a relief if McGonagall would run the school on a day-to-day level, Harry thought, and interview the professors Harry had hired and make sure they were actually competent. Then Harry could concentrate on defending Hogwarts from the sort of stupidity the Ministry had pulled the other night.

            “You make a mockery of me.” McGonagall had her head up again, and her hand on her wand. Harry told the stones buzzing under her feet to shut up. He was perfectly capable of handling this himself, without it dissolving into violence. “You claim that you want me to run the school when I know full well that you were the one who chose to send out invitations, and hire professors, and run the Hogwarts Express tonight.”

            Harry waited to see what else she would say, then shrugged a little. “Okay,” he said. “But do you want to make different decisions? If you want to hire new professors, then do it. But you’re not going to close the school down. That was what the Board of Governors and Minister Tillipop wanted. They’re not going to get it.”

            “Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall whispered, “that, no matter how excellent your reasons, rebellion against the lawful authority is still wrong?”

            Harry sighed. “Maybe. Maybe I could have done this better.” He glanced towards the front of the school, then shook his head. Of course his bond with Hogwarts would let him know when the students were actually approaching. Right now, he was looking for a way to escape this conversation with McGonagall, and that was a weakness that was unworthy of him. “But I did it, and I don’t agree with any of the reasons that Minister Tillipop and the Board of Governors had for closing the school. Did you?”

            McGonagall shook her head. “But I still didn’t rebel against them.”

            Harry shrugged. “I did. I don’t know what you want me to do, unless you think I can use my magic to turn back time.”

            “I want you,” McGonagall said, and her wand was out and trained on him now, “to surrender to me. To come with me, and tell Minister Tillipop that you’re giving up and letting yourself be arrested.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows, and once again squashed the castle’s instinctive response, which was to defend him. He wanted to handle this on his own. “You said something you should have paid more attention to,” he murmured.

            McGonagall eased forwards one step. She didn’t look at his hands, only at his eyes. Harry approved her caution. She knew that with so much magic at his command, his wand wasn’t the danger here. “What do you mean?”

            “Let myself be arrested,” Harry said. “By now, Tillipop would know that for the charade it is. There’s no way they can take me unless I let myself be taken. I can’t get anywhere by bowing my neck and hoping that contents them. Tillipop already had weapons waiting, like the photographs of my past, on the off chance that I might become interested in politics and a problem someday. They were always uneasy about me. They’ll be terrified from now on.” He looked at McGonagall and wished that he saw some softening in her eyes, some acknowledgment of the reality of what he was saying.

            “If I surrender,” Harry said, deciding he had to be blunter, “then one of two things will happen. Either I’ll end up in Azkaban for the rest of my life, probably along with my friends, or they’ll kill me.”

            “They would not do such a thing,” McGonagall said stiffly. “You could prevent them from doing it.”

            Harry had to snort. “Why should I prevent them from killing me but not from arresting me? And a term in Azkaban would be all right? Everything would be all right, as long as I do the right thing but not what they want me to do?” He focused on her, to the point that the castle did, too, and McGonagall swayed a little from the intensity of that regard. “Besides, do you think Tillipop is rational enough to believe me if I say that I’m surrendering?”

            “That is a chance you will have to take,” McGonagall said. There was still dignity in her, sharp, sturdy dignity as she drew herself up that Harry couldn’t help respecting. “You are not surrendering as much for Tillipop as you are for the ordinary witches and wizards of the world.”

            Harry blinked. “How have I hurt them? By keeping the school open, you could say that I’m benefiting them.”

            McGonagall shook her head impatiently. “If you show them that rebellion against the Ministry is possible, they might try it. And none of them have your power and your—power of standing up to the Ministry’s reprisals. They would be crushed.”

            Harry sighed. “If they do something against the Ministry that is stupid and unjustified, then yes, they’ll be crushed. But that was true of the Dark wizards I hunted during my time as an Auror, too. I won’t be responsible for every stupid thing that someone else does because of me, any more than I was responsible for the Minister’s decision to bribe my Mind-Healer and release those photographs of me.” He might as well let McGonagall think Minister Tillipop had been behind everything. “I’ve outlined what I’m defending. Hogwarts, and my allies. That’s it.”

            McGonagall gave him a sad smile. “I don’t want to have to do this, Harry,” she whispered. “I thought I could convince you. But I see I can’t.” She turned and looked over her shoulder down the corridor, searching, for a moment before she called, “Are you ready?”

            There was a shuffling in the portrait frames. Harry looked up. He hadn’t tried to control the portraits in Hogwarts, really. He controlled the walls they hung on, and that was enough, if they ever tried to spy on or hurt him.

            Dumbledore was in the nearest frame, which Harry knew had been a landscape up until a few moments ago, staring out at him.

            Harry cleared his throat awkwardly. He hadn’t talked to Dumbledore even during the few days that he’d used the Headmistress’s office. He hadn’t known what to say.

            “My boy,” Dumbledore said gently now, “do you know what you’re doing?”

            Harry nodded. “Yes.”

            It was impossible to tell, from the expression on Dumbledore’s painted face, what he thought of that answer. “Do you?” Dumbledore repeated. “Can you tell me ten things that you would not do?”

            Harry had to think about it, but then he held up his hands and started numbering them off. “I wouldn’t kill someone who was trying to attack me. I don’t need to, when I can just imprison them instead.

            “I wouldn’t ever damage or tear down Hogwarts. I came here to save it.

            “I won’t punish anyone for questioning me. Questioning isn’t an attack.

            “I won’t turn away people who come to me for sanctuary. Hogwarts is so huge that I can find some job for them around here.

            “If the Ministry does something to me or my allies, I’ll find out the specific person who did it or ordered it and punish them, not anyone else. I don’t need more enemies than I have.

            “I won’t let myself be used as a pawn in someone else’s struggles with the Ministry. I’m too powerful to just sling my magic around at someone else’s request.

            “I won’t interfere in criminal sentences unless I have proof that the Wizengamot was bribed or there was some other means to show that the trial wasn’t just. They must still be capable of making the right decision some of the time.

            “I won’t pursue Minister Tillipop after he leaves office. He’s not important to me once he doesn’t have political power.

            “I won’t force anyone to come to me or change their political affiliation. I want people I can trust around me, not someone who was coerced into making the decision.

            “I won’t attack over simple insults published in the paper. I’ve been insulted too many times to really care about that.”

            He dropped his hands and looked up at Dumbledore, raising his eyebrows. McGonagall was still and silent beside him, Harry knew that, but he didn’t want to look at her right now. He kept his gaze firm and light and steady, and Dumbledore began to nod as though he didn’t know what else to do, a small smile breaking out over his face.

            “That sounds like a reasonable and fair set of rules to follow, my boy,” he said.

            “Albus!” McGonagall almost screeched the word. Then she calmed down and spoke to the portrait in a tone Harry didn’t have a name for. “You can’t seriously think that this is a good idea? He isn’t obeying any rules except his own! What’s going to keep him from doing something horrible later? These rules might be a good idea right now, but—”

            “What’s going to keep the Ministry from doing something horrible?” Harry interrupted, and he could feel the stones lashing under his feet now. He let them rise. He was tired of always trying to reassure people who wouldn’t believe him anyway. “What happens if they try to kill me, or my friends, or the people who are teaching for me? Should I stand by with a patient smile and let them do it?

            “And they’ll never think of me as normal, no matter what I do. I was an Auror for the last year, and an Auror trainee before that, and they always whispered about me and walked carefully around me even though I hadn’t shown them I was magically strong. I just—what? Should I always pay the price that Voldemort should have paid? Do I have to be cautious forever because he marked me and now people think that I’m going to be him? Or would me taking over the school and being powerful be okay if I just wasn’t the Boy-Who-Lived?”

            The corridor echoed with his shouts, and then snakes of stone rose out of each wall and aimed their heads at McGonagall. Harry shut his eyes and stood there. He smoothed the snakes back into the wall, then opened his eyes to look at the Headmistress.

            She was grey and very old. She met Harry’s eyes and shook her head. “You promised that you wouldn’t attack anyone who questions you,” she whispered.

            “True,” Harry said. “I’m sorry. But you’ll notice that I held the snakes back from attacking.”

            “You threatened me,” McGonagall said. “It’s the same thing. I can’t trust you now.” She took out her wand again, looking at it for a second as though she regretted it wasn’t more powerful. Then she aimed it at Harry. “I’m going to ask you to leave Hogwarts now, and let me be the one to summon the Board of Governors back.”

            “So you can close it,” Harry said. He didn’t ask.

            “Yes.”

            Harry shook his head slowly. “I told you that I came here to defend Hogwarts. I wouldn’t try to stop the Ministry from building another prison or deciding that no one could use house-elves anymore. But I am going to defend Hogwarts.”

            “Maybe it’s the right thing to keep the school closed for a little while,” McGonagall said, and gave him a humorless smile. “So that we can think about our priorities. And you said that I was the Headmistress.”

            “The Headmistress’s duty is to keep the school open,” Harry said. “Not to close it because the Ministry wants you to. What are the students supposed to do while it’s closed? Why are the Board of Governors and the Minister being responsible to close it, when it means that all sorts of students will go without a year or years of magical education?”

            “They can go to Durmstrang or other schools,” McGonagall said steadily. “This is what the Minister decided, and he’s the elected representative.”

            “I never let the Minister decide my course of action, Minerva,” Dumbledore said from his portrait. “One could even argue that I defied them more drastically than Harry has done.”

            McGonagall turned to look at Dumbledore. “That was different, Albus,” she said, as her eyes filled with tears. “You know—you knew the costs of your actions and you reckoned them up. Mr. Potter is too young to do so.” She turned back towards Harry, and her wand arm might as well have had a steel pole up the inside by now. “I don’t trust that Mr. Potter has enough experience to make the right decisions.”

            Some part of Harry froze tight, and then shattered.

            No matter what he did, it was always different. He had been a perfectly competent Auror, he had taken some risks, but they were risks that the older Aurors he worked with had taken, too. And it didn’t matter. They were still unacceptable because he was him.

            Defying the Board of Governors didn’t work because it was him. He should have stood back and smiled and not done anything to anyone when those photographs appeared or the Mind-Healer gave his interview because it was him. He was unfit to have so much power because it was him. Defying the Ministry, something Dumbledore had also done, was wrong because it was him.

            Harry Potter just didn’t belong anywhere and couldn’t be trusted with anything, even after he saved the bloody fucking world.

            “Fine,” he said, his voice alien. “When would I have enough experience to make the right decisions? When I was thirty? When I’d spent fifteen years locked in Azkaban? What makes you think they could even hold me? What makes you think they wouldn’t try to drain my magic away and leave me like that?”

            McGonagall peered at him. “Draining someone else’s magic is illegal,” she said, as if Harry was slow.

            Harry laughed, and saw slivers of stone fly out of the wall above McGonagall’s head. He couldn’t be sure if his voice had caused them or if Hogwarts was responding in sympathy to his emotions, and he didn’t care. “So is bribing Mind-Healers and not interfering when a child is being abused, but the Ministry did that, too.”

            McGonagall reached up and adjusted her glasses with a hand that trembled. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I suspected, but…”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “And you didn’t interfere because it was more important for the Boy-Who-Lived to be behind blood wards and out of the wizarding world than it was for him not to be abused, right?” he asked.

            “I didn’t interfere because I wasn’t sure.” McGonagall sounded as though she would try to rival his voice for sharpness.

            “Why didn’t you ask?” Harry said, and his voice trembled this time. He closed his eyes. No, he wasn’t going to get involved in a useless argument over this. He had already decided what he should do. He didn’t want to kill or hurt people who were only doing what they thought was right, but he wouldn’t allow them to stay around him, either.

            McGonagall’s silence was the only response Harry would ever get, he knew. Just like the Ministry would be silent on the subject of how long they’d had those photographs of the cupboard and the bars on the window, and St. Mungo’s would be silent if Harry demanded an apology for the shitty quality of their Mind-Healers’ discretion.

            He was never going to be normal or receive normal treatment because he was Harry Potter.

            Fine. He would make his own normal, then.

            He opened his eyes and gestured with one hand, letting the magic choose where it wanted to go, how it needed to act. Another stone snake reared out of the floor where McGonagall stood, but this time, it just curled gently around her waist and rippled away towards the door.

            “You can send an owl with a list of what you need, and I’ll send you your clothes and anything else you own,” Harry called after her.

            He turned around and caught Dumbledore’s eye, still watching from his portrait.

            “Get out of my sight, sir,” Harry said softly.

            Dumbledore didn’t move. “How long are you going to do this, Harry?” he asked. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

            “Did you know about the Dursleys?” The question Harry hadn’t intended to ask came out of his mouth with enough force to make a torch sconce burst into flame.

            Dumbledore closed his eyes. “I had my suspicions.”

            “And you did nothing because?” This time, both wall and floor trembled.

            Silence.

            Harry raised his hands. The ground inside the portrait began to move sideways, shuffling and shutting Dumbledore out. Harry knew that he could still return to his own frame in the Headmistress’s office, but Harry would confine him there, and decide what to do later.

            He stood there with his heart beating and his cheeks hot.

            He had always been less important to other people than something else—their own personal lives, or other people they were protecting, or their desire to believe him mad, or their jobs, or the dead, or their fears. Well. Now, he was going to demand respect and consideration. He was here, and the Ministry couldn’t get rid of him by slapping him down.

            “My Lord?”

            Harry opened his eyes. Briseis was on the steps that led down to the Great Hall, watching him with a faint frown.

            “The Hogwarts Express is due to arrive in a few minutes,” Briseis said.

            Harry took a deep breath. He couldn’t demand respect right now. He had to go and greet his new students and professors and reassure them.

            But later, he would go to someone who Harry thought could give him consideration, and ask for some.

            He might be a Dark Lord, but he couldn’t do it all alone.

*

            SP777: Well, thank you! I might do it more often, but there’s not that many plots you can do with it.

            streakerboi: Thanks! I think he managed to do it in this chapter, too, although perhaps not in a good way.

            moodysavage: Thank you! A lot of it is just stuff that I think is really cool.

            delia cerrano: Thank you!
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Easy as Falling