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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54573 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-Nine--Slices of Blaise
            "You have to tell us everything that happened."
            Harry leaned back on his bed and laughed. He and Ron and Hermione were in his bedroom, with Greg on guard by the door. Harry thought it was the best place to escape the bunch of determined Slytherin gossips also known as his vassals. "I think you have more to tell than me! How did you get here? How did you get permission to be here?"
            Ron scowled for the first time since they'd showed up and unfolded something from his pocket. "This was published today."
            Harry took it and stared at it. It was a little pamphlet, with what looked like streaks of ink around some of the letters. He could imagine how rapidly it must have come off the press, although the name at the top was one that he didn't recognize. He reckoned Rita Skeeter thought she could earn a more exclusive story right now by staying with him, and analyzing his every action.
            HARRY POTTER, DEATH EATER'S CONSORT! said the headline. Harry sighed. He could see why it had sold a lot of copies. He just had to find out which one he was supposed to be sleeping with now.
            "You're not upset?" Ron had been watching him as though he expected the bed to explode.
            "There are so many things to be upset about," Harry muttered, and opened the pamphlet. There was a photograph of him in the middle of the second page, an old one. He thought it might have been taken at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Yes, there was the lake in the background, and enough water dripped from his hair and onto his shirt to soak a small island.
            The words here were harder to make out, even more liberally splashed with ink, and scrawled in a way that made Harry think someone had used a spell to translate handwriting into print--not very successfully. But at least he could make out that he was supposed to be sleeping with Draco.
            He snorted in spite of himself. Most of the stories that had circulated for the past few years about his love life had been limited to girls. "Why Malfoy?" he asked, lifting his head.
            Ron still eyed Harry as if expecting he would explode, but Hermione answered. "Whoever wrote this--I mean, of course it's not someone named 'Vox Populi'--has an informant in the Ministry. Someone reported that the Malfoys were taken out of their cells and somewhere else. So that caused an explosion of rumors that you were pressuring the Ministry to do that, or maybe they were your vassals, too, and Skeeter's story was inaccurate about how many you had."
            Harry rolled his eyes. "Of course. The one time she actually writes a story that's mostly real, her own reputation ambushes her."
            Hermione smiled and reached out to take his hands. "I told you that he would take it better than you thought he would," she added over her shoulder, to Ron. "He's a little more mature than just getting upset would imply."
            "Maybe not mature, just indifferent," Harry corrected her, although he hated to dim her smile. "I've had too many other things to think about. So I'm sleeping with Malfoy, and his parents are my vassals, and the Ministry decided to grant you permission to come here, why?"
            "Because Auror Stone thought you might need us," Ron said. "Said that you were already worn out this morning, with defeating another attack of those Freedom Fighters. If you had to put up with all the Slytherins plus the people who think that you ought to just hand them over, I'm surprised you're not mental."
            Harry tried to punch him in the arm, and only failed because Ron, unfairly, dodged. "Thank you for your stunning tribute to my confidence. I was almost mental. I'm glad that Stone thinks I ought to have some support."
            "I think she cares about fair trials, too," Hermione said. "If you're mental by the time you have to testify in front of the Wizengamot to try and clear your vassals, that won't do anyone any good."
            Harry snickered in spite of himself, and then nodded. "Let me guess. Besides the pamphlet whipping people up, it'll imply that I only bonded the Slytherins because I wanted to keep my lover safe. And that will turn people against me who wouldn't give a fuck about how much political power I had. Pure-bloods who think that a Lord's duty to his vassals should be pure."
            "Got it in one," Ron said. Hermione looked a little distressed over Harry's language, but said nothing. "And so we're to stay with you for the time being."
            Harry exhaled hard and slid back against the pillow. "You don't know how welcome you are. It's been a madhouse here."
            "Yeah, I can see that, since Goyle of all people is your bodyguard." Ron leaned forwards, sprawling on the bed until Harry had to pull his legs up. "How did that happen? Start with that first."
            Harry rolled his eyes, but obliged. He supposed he would be concerned about that himself if Ron was the one who had become a Lord, although from the inside it felt like the Malfoys and Snape and Blaise were his more vital concerns.
            But his best friends couldn't know that if they didn't know about all those other people and their problems, could they?
            As he spoke, he saw Hermione take out a piece of parchment and begin scribbling notes, head bowed and hair bobbing so sharply that it scraped on the paper sometimes. She looked up at him once and winked while Ron let his jaw dangle and said just the right admiring or damning or outraged things.
            They had faced down Voldemort and prevented the end of the world, once. The three of them. Side by side.
            They could do the same thing with seven Slytherins.
*
            Pansy had to admit that eavesdropping was a little undignified, compared to what she had been used to and raised to expect. But if her Lord was incautious enough to trust Blaise's future behavior to the arrival of his mother, then Pansy wasn't. Blaise might send her all the letters he liked, and meet with her, but Pansy would still make sure that any plots they might make in the meantime were discovered.
            Mrs. Zabini had knocked on the door and been shown in by the house-elf. Kreacher was maintaining a lofty pose that Pansy found odd. It seemed to suggest that the presence, or not, of Mrs. Zabini was a matter of no concern to Kreacher, and thus to his master--because a house-elf wouldn't act so casual around a guest, especially a pure-blood one, otherwise. Mrs. Zabini, or whatever name she wore now, had no expression on her harsh, beautiful face as she walked away from Kreacher and into the drawing room where Blaise waited.
            Pansy couldn't cast a spell that would prevent them from detecting her. So she did her best with what her mother had once recommended, to go unnoticed in a large manor house with the presence of enemies around her: settling into a corner, not next to the door but across the corridor from the room she wanted to spy into, and making herself sit so still, in such a comfortable position, that she seemed to sink into the shadows. She breathed gently and convinced herself that she was meant to be there, part of the furniture, part of the house.
            Mrs. Zabini had walked past her with less than a glance. Blaise had been too agitated to realize she'd been there at all, Pansy was certain.
            She waited, hands clasped in her lap, and focused. The drawing room door stood partially open, and no one else was in this part of the house. Mrs. Zabini could have raised charms against eavesdropping, but when she asked something in a low voice, Pansy could hear Blaise's response. "It's okay. Professor Snape is the only other one in this house who has a wand."
            And that made it worth the while not to put charms up.
            Pansy raised her eyebrows, once she convinced herself it wouldn't make enough noise to be detected. So Mrs. Zabini didn't fear Professor Snape, or felt that he would favor her cause. Maybe both. Maybe she had enough sense to know that the Professor would have one of the senior positions in the bond, and would approve of Blaise leaving because that meant he would have more peace in the house.
            Pansy had to admit that would be her point-of-view, if anyone asked her.
            But they still had to listen and know what the plan was hatched between Blaise and his mother.
            "I received a very strange letter calling me to your side," Mrs. Zabini began, peering down at Blaise as though he was a little crawling bug that someone had released from its proper place. "A letter that I could nearly not believe. A letter that spoke of bonding, and weakness, and being held and about to be tried." For a few seconds, she was still, and from the way she stood, Pansy couldn't see Blaise at all. Then she moved to the side, with a sweep of her robes that trailed around her like skirts. "Even though he has no Dark Mark on his arms, and there should be no reason for the Ministry to try him as a Death Eater."
            Pansy tried to imagine her mother saying similar words to her. She supposed she might. But she would have said them with either restrained passion or an open snarl, not the quiet neutrality that dripped from Mrs. Zabini's words, as though she was reciting facts about Blaise to someone who needed to Heal him.
            "I didn't want to be bonded."
            It sounded as though Blaise had a cleaver in his chest. He jerked the words out, and then knelt there, panting. His mother walked back towards him. Pansy nearly pulled her head out of the way. But she couldn't see Mrs. Zabini's face, exactly, and the best way she could draw attention to herself was by moving. She held still as the sweep of those long, royal blue robes once again blocked off her sight of Blaise.
            It was just...something about their sweep made Pansy want to retreat.
            "But it happened, didn't it?" Mrs. Zabini asked. Or not asked. Stated. Pansy thought the words could compete with the heavy curtains and stones of the Black house around them for reality. "It is still real. You did not find a way out of the bond. You did not find a way to make yourself free instead of a slave."
            Simple words, really. But Pansy could see little glimpses of Blaise, he was flinching so frantically away from each blow.
            "I didn't have a choice." Blaise would have said that loudly in the Slytherin common room, defending a wrong chess move, defending the detention that he'd had with Professor Snape. Here, it came out so soft that Pansy though she wouldn't have known what he'd said if she hadn't heard him say it before.
            "There are people who say that," Mrs. Zabini agreed. Her voice was gentle, now. That made it worse. "One of them was my father."
            Blaise flinched, bowed, almost pressed his head to the floor. His mother paced away again, and let Pansy see it. Then she turned. Pansy saw her raise a hand as though resting a finger against her lips.
            "Of course," she murmured, "strong people also do not cower like this before a scolding they know they deserve. Perhaps I was mistaken in you. Perhaps you are weak after all. It would cause many things to make sense. The letter, for example. Yes. That is an alternate theory. It makes many things real. It is interesting. I wonder that I did not think of it before."
            Pansy sat there, glad she was in shadows.
            “I don’t—” Blaise said, and then seemed to think better of whatever he had been about to say. He jerked his head down and folded his arms across his chest, shivering. His mother still stood aside, and waited for him to continue the sentence.
            Walk away, Pansy thought in his direction, feeling sorry for Blaise for the first time since this stupid bonding situation had begun. There’s nothing you can say that will ever please her, and you ought to have given up on trying to make yourself acceptable to her by now. You know there’s nothing that can do it.
            But Blaise didn’t seem to notice the advice, from the way he crouched there, and his mother sighed and repeated, “Perhaps you are weak after all. It concerns me. It means that I have spent many years pouring education into an unworthy vessel, and must start over again with another one, someone truly strong enough to stand beside me and take on the world. But better to know it now than to allow it to continue. Better to know it in the wake of a war that will give me more room and time to work.”
            She paced towards the door, towards Pansy. Pansy once again made herself sit still and thought, determinedly, again and again, that there was no particular reason for Mrs. Zabini to look in her direction.
            “Wait.”
            Pansy wondered if she was right to see a shadow pass over Mrs. Zabini’s face, and if it was the shadow of a smile or something else. She pivoted on what must have been one heel, but her robes prevented Pansy from actually seeing that. She was graceful that way, too, her robes swishing around her.
            “Yes?” Mrs. Zabini asked, in such a gentle and encouraging tone that Pansy wanted to run. She repeated her mother’s advice about staying still to herself. The last thing she wanted was for Mrs. Zabini to find her, even more than she didn’t want to stand there and watch her rip Blaise apart.
            Blaise slowly lifted his head. His face looked like grey porridge, but he whispered, “I—I’ll do it.”
            “Do what?” Mrs. Zabini laid a caressing hand on the doorknob. “There are so many things that you have promised me to do, and I am so often disappointed.”
            Blaise swallowed, throat bobbing in a way that Pansy wanted to glance away from. “I’ll force a break from this bond,” he said. “N-none of the ways I tried worked so far, but that meant attacking Potter directly. There m-must be something else. Something that wouldn’t irritate the bond but which would get me free.”
            “Of course there is,” Mrs. Zabini said, a sharper shade to her voice now than Pansy had heard so far. “You stand in a house full of Dark Arts books. Why do you wait?”
            “I didn’t know what I could cast without a wand,” Blaise whispered.
            Mrs. Zabini closed her eyes. “There are potions,” she said. “There is a house-elf here—a proper one, the one who delivered the letter to me. House-elves do not like serving masters who are not pure-blood. Did you even attempt to gain its allegiance, or did you simply throw your hands up in the air and decide that you could do nothing?”
            Blaise flinched and tucked himself down. Pansy chewed the end of her hair to keep from calling out to him. Blaise had showed that he recognized power plays and manipulations often enough in Slytherin House. Why couldn’t he see that they were also what his mother was doing to him?
            “I didn’t know what to do,” Blaise mumbled. He had lost his spirit now, Pansy thought. Mrs. Zabini would attack him more harshly than ever.
            But instead, she moved back towards Blaise and cupped his chin in her hands. “My poor Blaise,” she whispered. “You weren’t used to fighting without someone standing at your side, were you? My poor, poor Blaise.”
            It took Pansy a moment to understand the look on Blaise’s face, and how those last words could cut more deeply than open insults. Blaise shut his eyes, and didn’t draw back from his mother’s touch. She would probably speak again if he did. But his face set in a grim, resolved expression that Pansy understood far more than she had in the past.
            He could manipulate his way through Slytherin House because those games didn’t touch him as deeply. Something that does, he has no idea what to do but attack it desperately, in the hopes of gaining his mother’s approval.
            That was far more than she had ever really wanted to know about Blaise, but it was also information that might help her Lord, and that had been worth risking herself to get.
            “I know that you can’t handle this fight,” Mrs. Zabini went on, using one hand to pet Blaise’s hair. It had a ring on it, Pansy noticed, a single black ring with a round black stone in the center that she didn’t recognize. She wished she had her wand, to cast a charm that would tell her whether it had defensive or offensive spells on it. Mrs. Zabini probably wouldn’t wear jewelry that simply had sentimental value. “But it means a lot to me that you wanted to try. You spoke up, and you made your stand. I will remember that.”
            The small slices of Blaise that were flying around at the moment might be invisible, but they created a huge sort of drifted pile, Pansy thought, wincing. Mrs. Zabini turned her head a little, and Pansy froze. She didn’t want to attract attention, she thought, holding her breath, any kind of attention.
            “Mother,” Blaise said, and his voice was a pleading thing that even Pansy wouldn’t hesitate to call weak.
            “No,” Mrs. Zabini said, and patted his shoulder, straightening up. “I shouldn’t have let you go into the world on your own. I should have come to your side the minute that the list of Slytherins bonded to Lord Potter was published in the paper. My poor boy. You don’t have the spine or the nerves or the courage for this trial.”
            And she walked away, Blaise trailing behind her, mute and quiet. Pansy thought that some vibrancy had gone out of him that had always been there, even in the times when he had detention, and sat still.
            Mrs. Zabini glided up the corridor with no sign that she’d noticed Pansy, and made for the stairs. Pansy only dared to stir when they were ought of sight, her and Blaise, and then slipped into the room they’d abandoned and clapped her hands, whispering, “Kreacher!”
            He appeared immediately, although with his ears and hair on end, body quivering all over in the way that a house-elf did when summoned by someone other than his master. “Mistress Parkinson is bad!” he let her know, though he said it in a whisper, too. He seemed to have picked up on her instinct that this situation was one that demanded quiet.
            “I need you to go to Lord Potter and tell him that Mrs. Zabini is here and marching up to see him,” Pansy said. “Now.”
            Kreacher stared at her for only a second before vanishing. Pansy leaned back against the wall and sighed. She’d done what she could, and more detailed information would have to wait for a moment when she could talk with Potter face-to-face.
            She had done her duty to the bond. She would just have to hope that Potter’s temperament was of the kind that could face Mrs. Zabini.
*
            “Master Harry! Master Harry is being listening!”
            Harry jerked his head up. He had been starting to nod off; even the burning desire to tell Hermione and Ron everything that had happened was losing its power to keep him awake. But Kreacher’s shout startled him enough that he immediately jerked his head up and paid attention.
            Kreacher stood in front of him bristling like an electric nightmare, his ears flattened back and one hand raised as though he was gripping a cord. His other hand did hold a kitchen knife. Harry shook his head and tried to focus through the mists of tiredness that still wrapped his mind. “What’s happening?”
            “Mistress Parkinson is saying that Mistress Zabini is being on her way up here,” Kreacher said, and looked at Harry with eyes that were so wide Harry had to resist the urge to get down on his knees and hug him, warts and all.
            Harry grimaced a little. He really hadn’t wanted another challenge tonight. But Hermione was already asking, “Why is she a problem?” at the same moment as Ron was asking, “Who is Mrs. Zabini?”
            Hermione gave Ron a condescending stare for that. “She’s Blaise Zabini’s mother, of course,” Hermione said, and turned back to Harry while Ron was muttering that he knew that and he didn’t see why it mattered so much if that was all she was. “She’s coming here? You’re sure?”
            “If Pansy’s sure, I’m sure,” Harry said, ignoring their start at the sound of Pansy’s first name. He considered for a second what he could do, then shrugged. His options were limited. He wasn’t going to run away even if there was another way out of this room, and he didn’t have a wand for a duel. So he was going to fall back on what he had done so far, and act like a Lord.
            “Hermione.” Something in his voice made her sit up. “Can you cast a Cleaning Charm on me? I haven’t had a chance to take a shower today.”
            Hermione wordlessly did it, and Harry sighed as the slight sour smell he’d been aware of but not willing to call attention to vanished. “Thanks,” he said. Just knowing that he had a few people on his side with wands made him feel better. “Now, can you please both stand behind me? One on either side. Arrange yourselves however you want.” He shoved himself off the bed and managed to stand. To his pleasure, he had had enough food and rest that he wasn’t swaying on his feet.
            Again Hermione and Ron moved without question, and Harry felt a glow as he looked at them. They weren’t his vassals. They didn’t have to obey. There were just his friends, and that was enough.
            He heard Greg’s low voice from outside at that point, and immediately spoke up. He didn’t want Greg trying to face down Mrs. Zabini alone, particularly when Greg didn’t have a wand. “Send her in, Greg.”
            There was a pause, and then Greg opened the door, looking so tense that Harry wanted to reach out and touch his arm. They were too far apart, though. “My Lord?” Greg demanded in a low voice. “You want me to—”
            “Yes,” Harry said. “Is Blaise with her?”
            Greg nodded, slowly.
            Harry raised his voice so anyone outside in the corridor could hear. “Then I will see my vassal, and his mother if she wants to accompany him.”
            A sneaky smile darting across Greg’s face told him that he had done the right thing, the Lordly thing. “Yes, my Lord,” he said, and bowed before he stepped back and announced haughtily, “Two visitors, Lord Potter.”
            Harry grinned. Greg might not understand a lot, but he understood Lords' etiquette, and a granted audience was different from just barging in and demanding to see someone.
            Blaise followed a tall, stately woman with her hand on her wand. She gave Harry a cool nod. Her face was forbidding.
            Harry didn’t care. He was focused on Blaise and the way he stood with his head down, the way that Harry had sometimes stood next to Aunt Petunia when Aunt Petunia stopped to talk with neighbors.
            His heart was high in his throat and the anger high in his mind when he looked at Mrs. Zabini and said, “All right. So you’re going to tell me what you want, and you’re going to tell me why you’re frightening my vassal, in thirty seconds, or I’ll have you thrown out.”
*
Kain: Thanks! As for the other Slytherin students, Harry isn’t really thinking about them because he has so much on his hands right now. The other students would probably be mostly safe unless they’re also Death Eaters.
Genuka: It didn’t take that much for Goyle, more for Harry to recognize that Greg was serious about what he wanted.
delia cerrano: You get to see Blaise’s mum, at least.
Anon: Yes, but there aren’t just a few trials!
He didn’t get the time, but having his friends with him helps a lot.
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The Only True Lords