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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-One—On High
            “It seemed harmless at first.”
            Harry said nothing, and simply waited for Rosenthal to speak again. He could see Draco, off to the side, darting a keen look at him, but Harry didn’t see the need to react to that. Rosenthal had made the choice to come and speak to him about her part in taking those photographs, and Harry had made the choice to try and listen to her. He didn’t know if he could forgive her yet, though, because so far, there seemed to be no details to forgive.
            “But I think I knew all along that it was wrong,” Rosenthal whispered, speaking to her hands. “Taking pictures of the Muggles that seemed to hate you. Listening to their voices. Seeing the visible evidence left on the house.” She lifted her eyes and looked straight at Harry now.
            Harry shook his head a little, refusing the pity in her face. He was past that now. He was stronger than that now. He had survived everyone in the wizarding world who could read knowing about his abusive past. Now he was in the position to make things happen, and if he didn’t want to take vengeance on the Dursleys, nothing would stop him from fighting those who fought him, if they used these tactics.
            So he waited, and Rosenthal finally got over expecting him to reassure her and went on. “I spoke with your aunt and uncle a few times. That was my assignment, to get as close to them as I could and find out as much as I could. I have—experience moving in the Muggle world. I didn’t stand out as much as most of the other people the Ministry could send.”
            Harry nodded again, and waited.
            “I asked, once, what the photographs were for.” Rosenthal’s fingers knotted themselves around each other again. Harry thought that was fine. If she suffered a little anxiety from this, that was fine. He might be a Dark Lord and a protector, but he had stopped being a savior. He wasn’t going to protect people from their own demons. “The person who blackmailed me patted my head and told me not to worry about it. He said that they weren’t even sure you would become dangerous, that this was just insurance in case you did.”
            Harry had known that. He’d known that. Fifernum had said as much.
            But still, something, deeper inside than his conscious assumptions, maybe, froze and shattered. He found that he was breathing gently, as though drawing in more breath would result in an explosion of magic. Draco put his hand on his arm. Harry sat there and let Draco touch him, but didn’t look away from Rosenthal.
            “What?” Rosenthal added, and shifted around on the hospital bed she had chosen as her seat.
            “His name,” Harry said. “So far, you’ve only referred to him as the person who blackmailed you. What is his name?”
            Rosenthal swallowed. Draco leaned forwards from the side as though he would be equally interested in the answer. Harry flicked a hand, low down, and Draco settled back. Harry didn’t want Draco prejudicing the answers Harry might get from Rosenthal.
            “I don’t—I don’t want to name him here,” Rosenthal whispered.
            “Can you name him or not?” If there was some sort of vow or magical restriction on speaking the name, then Harry thought he could remove it. If Rosenthal was delaying out of some stupid conviction that it would gain her more attention or more mercy, Harry intended to show her otherwise as soon as he could.
            Rosenthal looked up at him, her eyes shimmering. “I mean, I don’t want to name him in Hogwarts,” she said. “A portrait might ensure that the name gets back to him.”
            Harry held up his hand. The castle tightened around him as he did, as magic flowed out of him and touched the walls and the doors and the windows and the floors. The stones shimmered and rippled and rang, and Harry could feel portrait frames tense up at the same moment. No portrait would be moving from one picture to another until he said so.
            “You forget that I’m the avatar of Hogwarts,” Harry told Rosenthal gently. “I control what happens in this school. You’re welcome to walk away if that makes you nervous, but since you told me that you could name someone who knew I was being abused and yet wanted to leave me at the Dursleys’, I think you can tell me who he is now.”
            Rosenthal stared at him, her jaw dangling a little. She took a glance at Draco, and that was what made her shut it. “Mammon Rosier,” she said.
            Harry blinked and dropped his hand, although his control over the school remained in place. “Rosier?” He hadn’t thought there was anyone of that name left in power at the Ministry; hadn’t they all been Death Eaters?
            But no, there was a Rosier on the former Hogwarts Board of Governors, wasn’t there? He’d met her when he threw the Board of Governors out of Hogwarts. But this seemed to be a different person. Maybe the whole family just disliked him because of what he’d done to Voldemort.
            “Yes,” Rosenthal said. By now, her hands were pressed together, as though she could make up for her dislike of him by praying. “You haven’t heard of him?”
            Harry listened to the tone of her voice as hard as he could. It seemed to convey a cautious relief. He shrugged mentally.
            “I haven’t,” he said. “But I know at least one relative of his was a Death Eater, and one was on the Board of Governors who tried to close down Hogwarts. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise to me that someone like him wants to close down the school.” Harry experienced a pulse of mild frustration. He would have liked to proceed through one day without another enemy turning up.
            “He doesn’t want to close down the school,” Rosenthal said. “I shouldn’t expect he cares about that. He wants to stop you from becoming a political force.”
            “Then he wants to close down the school,” Harry said. “Because my bond to it is what made me a political force.”
            “Your magic,” Draco said, in a murmur so low that Harry wasn’t sure if he had meant Rosenthal to overhear or not.
            Harry waved a hand at him. “My magic wouldn’t have come into play, or mattered, or been used, or been known to anyone except my close friends, if they hadn’t decided that the Ministry should control Hogwarts.”
            Draco shut his jaw hard, and said nothing. Harry looked at him curiously, and then turned back around again and faced Rosenthal.
            “Okay,” he said. “So Rosier wanted to have evidence of my abuse. I’m more curious about something else. How did he know that I was being abused in the first place? What prompted him to look for evidence?”
            “I don’t know that,” Rosenthal said quietly. “I did far less for him than I have for Candidate Malfoy. Gathering information was the extent of it. He had to tell me some things, because I had to know what I was looking for, but that didn’t include where he came by it.”
            Harry nodded. He supposed that was something he could find out for himself, when he went and questioned Rosier.
            Because he had no intention of skipping that step.
            He leaned forwards and studied Rosenthal, in the meanwhile. She clasped her hands in front of her and arched her neck, so stiff and straight that Harry sighed a little.
            “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “So I would appreciate it if you stopped acting as though I was going to torture you.”
            Rosenthal shot him a single, terrified look, and then clamped down on her emotions. “All right,” she whispered.
            Harry cocked his head. “There’s still the idea of what I should do with you.”
            “I know.” Rosenthal went back to staring at her hands again.
            “I don’t think I want to trust you at my back any time soon,” Harry went on thoughtfully. “But while you’re within Hogwarts, you can’t hurt me, and I have the impression that you’ve been indispensable to my ally Malfoy.” In front of someone else who didn’t have family connections to Draco or wasn’t one of Harry’s close friends, that was as much as Harry was willing to claim from Draco right now.
            He glanced at him, and saw that Draco was sitting up and frowning a little. He nodded grudgingly at Harry when Harry met his eyes, though. “She’s been very useful,” he said. “Although I’m not sure that I’m willing to trust her very far when I didn’t know about this.”
            “I won’t act against you,” Rosenthal told the floor. “I came to you when Rosier tried to blackmail me.”
            “You did,” Draco said. “Although I suspect it wasn’t at the beginning of the blackmail, was it?”
            Rosenthal licked her lips. “Not exactly,” she said. “I received a threatening letter or two first, and they were so vague that I honestly wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. I thought—I thought I could continue to serve you, Candidate Malfoy, without doing anything about Potter.”
            Harry grunted. No wonder she hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic, as Draco had told him, about things like finding an adviser for Harry.
            “You can’t,” Draco said. “Not now. You’re on the inside. You know that we’re allies, and closer than the Ministry thinks we are.” He didn’t glance at Harry, so Harry had to bite his tongue. He still didn’t know whether Rosenthal knew a lot about them being lovers, and whether it would be safe to refer to that in front of her. “You could damage both of us if we let you say whatever you wanted. I’m afraid that’s out.”
            “I understand that.” For a moment, Rosenthal sat up very stiff and straight. Then she slumped over again. “But I did think it would go away or didn’t matter very much as long as they didn’t ask me to betray you.”
            She was looking at Draco, who shrugged. “I accept that you couldn’t have known Potter and I would become allies when you joined me,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that giving him a name and an apology now is enough.”
            Rosenthal turned back to Harry. “Is it enough? What else do you want?”
            Harry watched her for long enough that she was squirming around, despite being one of the more self-possessed women he’d ever met. He tapped his fingers on his legs again. Safe enough in Hogwarts, but not at Draco’s back. Rosenthal might have told them everything, but might not have, and since Draco wanted to retain her services, questioning her under Veritaserum or keeping her here until she told them everything wasn’t an option.
            He held his hand out, concentrating. Magic brewed into being above his palm, so thick and golden that Rosenthal blinked and glanced away from it.
            “This is part of what will determine your immediate future,” Harry said. “So you might want to watch it.”
            That brought her head snapping back around. Harry nodded approval, although he doubted she noticed it. Good. He wouldn’t want someone who was mostly a coward at Draco’s back, either.
            The golden light grew brighter and brighter, and changed shape as Harry changed his mind about what he wanted. On the one hand, he wanted to prevent her from betraying them again; on the other hand, he didn’t want to get as intrusive as he had when casting the spell that bound Fifernum. Rosenthal had come to them and told the truth, if not exactly of her own free will.
            The light rippled one more time, and settled into the shape of a muzzle. Harry eyed it, then shrugged. It would do as well as any other shape.
            He looked up at Rosenthal, who was swaying on her chair, her face white. Harry rolled his eyes. “This isn’t going to be literal,” he said, and raised the muzzle to the level of her face. “This will keep you from talking about me at all, unless you’re in a room alone with Draco or here at Hogwarts. If someone asks you about me while interviewing Draco, you’ll just have to shrug and look mysterious.”
            Rosenthal nodded, once. “I never heard of a spell like that,” she said.
            “It isn’t a spell so much as pure magic obeying my will,” Harry said, and then had to smile, a little, at her expression. “Yes, I can do things like that. That’s why it isn’t a good idea to betray me.”
            Rosenthal swallowed. “I’m sure that Rosier didn’t know anything about it,” she whispered.
            “Or he probably wouldn’t have wanted you to go up against me.” Harry smiled again. “Good. Now, will you wear this willingly?”
            “Will it prevent me from betraying Candidate Malfoy?” Rosenthal’s eyes were fixed on him now, and Harry couldn’t read the emotions behind them. Perhaps pure practicality or concern for her job, if she was asking this. “I thought that was what you were most concerned about.”
            “I have to choose between keeping you useful for him and what you told me,” Harry said. “Understand, though, you’re only important to me because you’re important to him. If it were just you and me, then I’d choose a different kind of vengeance altogether.” He thought of what he’d done to Fifernum, and although of course Rosenthal didn’t know about that, she could see the expression in his eyes.
            She looked away. “I accept that I’m being spared worse because of my connection to Candidate Malfoy,” she whispered. “I meant—I don’t know what would keep Rosier from pressuring me to betray my employer next.”
            “I’m going to do that,” Harry said. “The next time he communicates with you, if he does, then it’s going to be after the little conversation I’m having with him in, oh, the next hour or so.”
            Rosenthal nodded. “You’ll trust to that?”
            Harry half-smiled. “No. Not completely. Your very reluctance to betray Draco gives you a kind of recommendation. I know that you didn’t want to, and you didn’t consider your own reputation so sacrosanct, because you told him the truth when he asked. For now, I’ll trust to your honor and the fact that I’m giving Rosier other things to think about. If you do betray Draco anyway, then I’ll deal with it.”
            Rosenthal spent a long moment sucking on the corner of her lip. “Can you do something like that for my hands, too?” she asked, nodding at the muzzle. “So that I can’t write to anyone about you?”
            Harry stretched his fingers and flexed his magic, and golden wrist-chains of power blazed into being on his palm. “Done.”
            Rosenthal stretched out her hands to receive them first, and then Harry slipped the muzzle around her head. She closed her eyes after it settled and the power sank into her skin, but Harry thought that was relief as much as anything. She really hadn’t wanted to betray Draco, and while Harry mattered to her obviously less, as long as he was part of what Draco wanted, then he was also important to Rosenthal.
            “Good,” Harry said quietly. “The same restrictions apply to writing about me: you can do it alone with Draco or here. Nowhere else.”
            “Thank you,” Rosenthal whispered, and rose as she looked at him. Yes, the relief was real. Harry nodded to her.
            “Go back to work now,” he said. “I’ll deal with Rosier.”
            Draco shifted and caught Harry’s eye. Harry raised his brows, then decided that wanting to wait to talk to him deserved some privacy. He nodded Rosenthal through the infirmary Floo, and she went, with only a glance back at Draco.
            “What was it?” Harry asked, as he turned around to face Draco. “I know that you felt the punishment was fair, or you would have spoken up before now.”
*
            Fair, yes. And also…fuck.
            Draco was just glad that his clothes, thanks to advice from Blaise, usually had charms on them already that prevented spills from sticking or stains or other marks on his skin from showing, because otherwise Rosenthal would have noticed his erection as he watched Harry work.
            He stood up and reached out to Harry. Harry blinked once, then grinned and rose to meet him, hooking his arms around Draco’s neck as he kissed him. Draco rocked back, the power that still beat around Harry like a desert wind urging him down. And right behind them was one of the hospital wing beds, how convenient…
            Harry broke away with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I want to, Draco, but I really do need to talk to Rosier.” He would have said something else, Draco was sure, but a distant look came into his eyes and he turned his head. An instant letter, he held out his hand.
            There was a blur and a zip, and an owl appeared in Harry’s palm. From the way it shook its head and ruffled its feathers, it didn’t like the experience of the school forcibly bringing it where it should go. Harry ignored that as he took the letter from its leg and opened the envelope.
            “Ah,” he said a second later.
            Draco had experienced the complicated harmonics of that voice more than once already, and closed his eyes as he pressed a hand down between his legs. “From the Ministry?’
            He opened his eyes to find Harry nodding. “To inform me that they will no longer give NEWTS and OWLS to any student at Hogwarts, or accept any student from Hogwarts into training for Ministry employments, like the Auror Program.” Harry folded the letter twice, three, four times, and looked at it thoughtfully.
            “Can I go along?” Draco didn’t know how breathless he would sound until the question burst from him.
            Harry looked up. “Go along where?”
            “Go along with you when you teach the Ministry better.”
            Harry’s smile spread like an oil stain. “Well, I have to talk to Rosier anyway,” he said. “Get your glamours ready, and you can come.”
            Draco had never cast a glamour charm so fast.
*
            kain: Yes, Harry isn’t willing to condemn Rosenthal as much because she did refrain from blackmailing or threatening Harry, and she is important to Draco’s campaign.
            SP777: Yes, Rosenthal approved Briseis and hired her for Harry.
            LeaniaSTL: Thank you! I think Dumbledore and Minerva did care about Harry, but they kept telling themselves that they were probably wrong, because they knew how much public criticism they would face by taking Harry in. It was just easier to turn away.
            Sex will have to wait for the next arc in the story.
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Easy as Falling