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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty—Outside the Rules
            “Is Potter going to be here for this one?”
            Draco gave Rosenthal a brilliant smile and looked back down at the parchment in front of him, the outline of the dining hall where he was throwing a dinner for whoever wanted to attend. The security provisions needed to be checked again and again; while Draco wanted supporters of Minister Tillipop and reporters there to prove that he wasn’t the monster Tillipop was trying to paint him as, he wasn’t foolish enough not to try and do something to preserve his life. “No. He’s busy with the school.”
            He thought Rosenthal would either acknowledge that or ask again, and looked up at her continued silence. Rosenthal faced the window of their strategy room, a huge thing in a jeweled frame that Draco thought was gaudy. At least the view it showed, of the gardens, was soothing to the eye.
            “What’s wrong?” Draco asked.
            “I don’t like it,” Rosenthal said.
            “Don’t like what?”
            “That he’s staying away from this one.” Rosenthal turned to face Draco, and now she stood with her hands clasped behind her back. “When you might need the most protection, then he abandons you?”
            Draco had to laugh, although he tried to keep it to a polite snicker for Rosenthal’s sake. “Why do you want him here?” he said, studying Rosenthal’s face and trying to see what had changed. “Earlier, you kept worrying that associating with him would tarnish my reputation. What changed?”
            “I came to see that his power has its uses.”
            Draco stood up and circled the table. “Tell me the truth.”
            Rosenthal almost visibly spun around to face him, but managed to control it at the last minute and just gave him a haughty look. “I have. If he’s that powerful and your ally, you should get some use out of him. And this is the most dangerous dinner that you’ve ever done. The most dangerous stunt that you’ve ever done. You know I disapproved of it when you first announced it—”
            “But you figured out ways to make it work, rather than telling me you wouldn’t do it,” Draco said. “Is this more of the same? You’re putting up with Potter because you’ve learned that he’s not going away?”
            Rosenthal hesitated for one second. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. That’s it.”
            “No, it isn’t,” Draco said, and this time he moved around her until she had no choice but to look him in the eye—that or stare stubbornly at his feet, and Rosenthal wasn’t the sort to indulge in those childish games. Well, Draco would have said so until today, at least. Now she stared at his feet, and Draco sighed. “Have you found out something about Potter that you fear to share with me?”
            For a long second, Rosenthal’s nails drove into her skin. She relaxed them when she saw Draco looking, but said, “I can’t—I can’t be of use to you much longer. Someone—found out something about me.”
            Draco raised his eyebrows. That hadn’t been a problem he’d anticipated having. Rosenthal was so efficient and practical that it made it seem as if she had lived her life as cleanly as a bird in the air.
            But the more he thought about it, the more Draco had to grimace. Of course one couldn’t spend time around politicians without deciding it was a good idea to spend more time, and to get involved in some of the things they did. To nudge people along who might be more useful if threatened. To spend a little more money than necessary, and arrange to have rumors spread that might not start otherwise. Draco had already had Rosenthal help him with several of those things in his campaign against Minister Tillipop.
            The true problem was, what had Rosenthal done that made her so sensitive about telling him? What could be worse than what Draco had asked her to do so far?
            “Tell me,” he said.
            Rosenthal turned and stared at him. “Don’t you think I would have if I felt I could?” she whispered. “The most I can do is have you sack me, so my blackmailer can’t use me against you.”
            “They specified doing that, then?” Draco let one hand fall against his leg. “Then it must be someone who’s prominent in the Ministry or the campaign to get Tillipop reelected. Maybe both.”
            Rosenthal closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s no one you would ever have heard of.”
            “They’re often the most dangerous, I know,” Draco said softly, nodding. “But listen. I don’t think your blackmailer anticipated that you would trust me enough to tell me even this much. Otherwise, you wouldn’t make such a fine weapon against me. Why not go the rest of the way, tell me the whole of the truth? Then we can convince him or her that you’re still working against me, still cooperating with them, when in truth you’ve turned around and are a knife aimed at their throat.”
            Rosenthal’s eyes closed more fully. “A plan that I would have approved, if you brought it to me,” she whispered. “It is a shame that I must leave you when you are becoming more practical.”
            “A plan that you can’t approve?” Draco’s mind coiled back on itself, wondering what the hell she could have done. Even murder would have been something he could reconcile himself to, if he needed to, and provided who she had killed and how. And acting against the Malfoy family interests before he’d hired her seemed strange; he thought that Rosenthal had enough common sense to know she’d probably be found out if that was the truth, and she wouldn’t have tried for the job near him in the first place.
            “Yes.” Rosenthal kept her eyes closed, her lashes so dark against her cheeks that Draco thought he had never seen them properly before.
            Another suspicion began to stir in Draco. Not the Malfoy family interests, that wouldn’t make sense, but she might have acted against someone else, someone now closely associated with Draco—someone who hadn’t been associated with Draco when Rosenthal began working for him.
            “Potter,” he said. “You had something to do with Potter and the conspiracy against him in the Ministry, back when it was only a potential conspiracy.”
            Rosenthal choked and opened her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had no idea that you would ever be allies. I had no idea that he would ever become so important. He ruined so many plans when he declared himself Dark Lord.”
            Draco nodded absently, his mind ranging back over some of the ways that Rosenthal had responded to Potter in the past. Well, they made sense now that he knew what to look for.
            “If he could be the one to agree it was all right and you should continue working for me,” he asked abruptly, “would you do it?”
            Rosenthal gaped at him. “But he doesn’t forgive his other enemies. Why should he forgive me?”
            “None of those other enemies were ones who had tried to help him as well as hurt him.” Draco tapped his chin with one finger. “Of course, it’ll depend on what you did.”
            Rosenthal lowered her head and paced back and forth. Draco waited for her, ignoring the sense of undone things around and beyond them, unsigned papers on the desk behind him, unraveling plans. He knew that he was on the verge of losing Rosenthal if he pressed too much, and he didn’t want that to happen.
            Rosenthal finally licked her lips and turned around again. “I helped secure the pictures of his abusive relatives.”
            Draco winced. “He’s going to have a hard time forgiving that,” he said, when he could speak again.
            “So we might as well not ask?” Rosenthal winced as she said it, but her arms were hanging down at her sides again, and she looked like herself again instead of the desperate woman who had first attracted Draco’s suspicions this morning. “I am prepared to apologize, and offer information if he does not have it.”
            “Including the name of the person threatening you?” Draco asked.
            Rosenthal paused, as if communing with herself, and then nodded.
            “Then the least we can do is ask him,” Draco said, and picked up a handful of Floo powder. He did pause to look her in the eye. “You understand, after this, you’ll have to be loyal to him as well as me. He won’t tolerate your going against him again.”
            Rosenthal nodded. “If I can escape this blackmail and continue working for you, then I’ll pay that price.”
            Practical, Draco approved to himself as he threw the Floo powder in. It isn’t what I would want in a lover, but perfect in an adviser.
*
            “But it’s important for them to learn more than goblin rebellions.” Hermione stood in the center of Harry’s office like a warrior queen, her eyes snapping.
            “It’s also important for them to learn how dangerous Muggles are, but I don’t see you volunteering to teach the history of that,” Briseis said sweetly.
            Hermione’s eye twitched in a way that Harry hadn’t ever seen it twitch, and Harry intervened before the conversation could end in another of those armed silences that seemed to fill the room whenever Hermione and Briseis were together. “Hermione only just started at this job,” he reminded Briseis. “She still has to make decisions about what to teach and what she won’t.”
            Briseis looked down her nose at the room in general, a neat trick since she was shorter than Hermione. “She has already made up her mind about what to leave out. I am merely trying to give her some advice about what to include.”
            Harry flashed a hard glance at Hermione when she started to respond. She gritted her teeth, but kept silent out of friendship for him, which was more than Briseis would have done, which was why Harry was inclined to let Briseis have her say.
            “And I think the confusion over this is stupid.” Briseis looked bored. Before Hermione could explode, she continued, “Of course our students should learn everything. Goblin rebellions, danger from the Muggles, the origin of the Ministry and blood politics. That is the kind of thing that would most infuriate the Ministry and prove our school different. They were perfectly satisfied with the way Binns was teaching the classes before, because it suited them to have us ignorant. Do something different, be expansive and don’t leave anything out, and you’re flouting them.”
            Hermione blinked, and blinked. Harry leaned back behind his desk and beamed at both of them. Maybe they would settle this themselves and he wouldn’t have to smooth over ruffled feathers.
            “But I don’t think goblin rebellions are useful,” Hermione said at last. “There are so many of them.”
            Briseis waved a hand at her. “Dig into the causes behind the rebellions. Present those, and maybe our students will finally stop believing that there’s no friction between goblins and wizards and we all live happily together. Most of them seem to think that just because the goblins run Gringotts for wizards, they never resent them.”
            “I can’t teach everything,” Hermione said, and it sounded close to a wail. “I would never fit it all into the classes!”
            Briseis half-sniffed and turned her head to the side. “Simplify it for the younger years. By the time that they get to your upper-level classes, they should be able to build on the knowledge that you’ve already given them, and you can spend time going deep instead of broad.”
            “But I’m talking about the students that are here now.” Hermione folded her arms. “Even the seventh-years don’t know much because they kept dozing through Professor Binns’s classes and they don’t care about history.”
            “Tales of bloodshed would wake them up,” Briseis said firmly. “That would have done it when I was a student.”
            “Why aren’t you teaching history, if you know so much about it?” Hermione demanded. But her eyes gleamed, and Harry recognized the look she had when she knew that someone else had a good idea, she just didn’t want to admit it, because that would end a debate she was enjoying.
            “I don’t know much about history as such,” Briseis said. She had a look on her face that Harry knew, too. She wouldn’t end the debate because she thought she was winning, and she wanted everyone to admire her. “I was only naming things that I think are important and that would have intrigued me when I was a student. Someone else would probably have a different list. The important thing is the way you teach things.” She examined her fingernails for a moment, and then smiled at Hermione. “And part of my job is coming up with ideas. I like it better than implementing them.”
            Her tone implied all the superiority in the world to teaching, and Hermione had just opened her mouth when Harry held up a hand. “Listen,” he said, because both of them turned around and glared at him. “Hermione, why don’t you come up with what you think is most important and only mention goblin rebellions a few times this term? It’s going to be a short term anyway, since we started in the middle of it. Let’s do what we can and have restricted exams, and you can teach a longer list of subjects next term.”
            “Restricted exams?”
            Harry slapped his forehead. He saw Briseis’s smug glance, and gestured at the door. “You. Out,” he mouthed, when she would have stuck around to see the carnage.
            Briseis sniffed and left, after a long bow to him that must have made Hermione’s hair bristle. Harry couldn’t wait for the day that Briseis declared herself Harry’s Death Eater in Hermione’s hearing, and by “couldn’t wait” he meant that he would rather be on the other side of Britain at the time.
            “We can’t have restricted exams,” Hermione began. “It goes against the whole spirit of a school!”
            Harry held his hand up, and Hermione fell silent, staring at him. Harry had half-closed his eyes, and he was sure that he looked ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. He could feel a silent, soft singing in his bones, similar to the kind of impression he’d got when Draco was in danger of being arrested at the debate.
            At the same moment, the door burst open, and Blackthorne bowed hastily to him, straightening up enough to gasp, “My lord, Ministerial candidate Malfoy and his adviser Rosenthal are on the Floo.”
            “Why didn’t the Floo open directly into my office?” Harry demanded, but then he remembered the seventh-years yesterday who had thought it would be great fun to direct every Floo call into Harry’s office, including ones from their parents. Harry had temporarily shut down his own hearth, so Blackthorne, who had some Healer training, would have received the call in the infirmary.
            “I’m coming,” he said, standing.
            “The exams, Harry,” Hermione said. She sounded close to tears.
            “I trust you to invent an exam that’s comprehensive and as difficult as it should be, but only covers a small amount of material,” Harry said over his shoulder. It was the right thing to say; he could see her stiffen with pride before the door of his office swung shut behind him.
            “Is it wise to leave her in the office, my lord?” Blackthorne was trotting behind Harry as Harry’s strides lengthened, searching for the place in this corridor most directly opposite the infirmary, where the stones could open and pull him through. Blackthorne’s silver lightning bolt pendant still banged against his chest. Harry had offered to get rid of it and give him something more discreet and, as Draco said, tasteful, but Blackthorne had refused. Harry rolled his eyes to himself. At least he didn’t have to fear that Blackthorne was going to be mindlessly obedient to him all the time, the way he had at first.
            “Hermione is one of the three people I trust with my life,” Harry said. He would leave Blackthorne to wonder about who the third one was. “She’s always welcome any place I go.”
            “All right, my lord.”
            And although Blackthorne sounded dubious, Harry knew that was it. Blackthorne would obey him and guard Ron and Hermione as well as he could, if he had to, despite doubting the wisdom of some of Harry’s suggestions.
            Harry found a place where he could twist through the stones without either upsetting the foundations of the castle or emerging into a classroom and upsetting, in a different way, the students and teachers sitting there. The stones opened in front of him like a mouth, and he sprang into them and was gone.
*
            Draco had been irritated that his firecall went to the infirmary hearth and they had to wait, but at least Harry’s “Knight” had apologized and gone to fetch him right away.
            Really, the person Draco was worried about most when it came to the delay was Rosenthal. She hadn’t moved since Draco had thrown the Floo powder in. She sat with her head bowed and her eyes fixed on her fingers, and Draco was afraid that she might be regretting that she’d agreed to this.
            “What happened?”
            And then Harry was there, his power visible around him almost in a blaze, and Draco decided that regrets were worth nothing in the face of that.
            “I have someone with me who once helped gather evidence of your abuse,” Draco said. “Now someone is trying to blackmail her into stopping her support of me—and you. Will you see her, and forgive her?”
            Harry didn’t blink for a long second. The power smoldering around him sprang into flame, a golden aura that haloed him, and then ran up and down and out with a wink. Harry nodded.
            “Bring her through.”
            Draco turned and reached for Rosenthal’s elbow, but she had already stood up with the Floo powder in her hand. And she did say “Hogwarts” when she cast it into the flame, despite Draco thinking she might have preferred a different destination. Draco watched not her back but Harry’s face as they came out into the hospital wing.
            For long seconds, Harry was still. Then he took a deep, noisy breath, shook his head a little, and met Draco’s eyes.
            “If I can forgive her, I will,” he said. “Shall we begin?”
            Draco felt a throb that wasn’t magic and wasn’t love beating beneath his breastbone as Rosenthal started her story. It took him long moments to identify it. Trust.
            I can trust him, Father. I really can. With lives and secrets that aren’t mine, even.
            If you ever really believed in and trusted and followed a Lord, then I’ve found mine.
*
            delia cerrano: I think I know what you mean! And, well, Harry may look like that from the outside, but he knows how often he jumps into something without a plan.
            SP777: The way that I relate to this Harry is complicated. I like him, but I know he’s going to make a lot of mistakes.
            Glad that you liked the end of that chapter.
            moodysavage: It’s really not the name so much as what Harry did, like defying the Minister and kicking the Board of Governors out of Hogwarts.
            MsShinra: Thank you!
            Nicole: Thank you!
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Easy as Falling