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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54632 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 31
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Two—The Tug of Responsibilities
            “I suppose that you know it might have been worse.”
            Blaise rolled slowly over. Professor Snape had sat with him for a long time before he spoke those words. Blaise wondered whether it was sensitivity that had kept Snape silent this long, or mere knowledge that Blaise wasn’t ready to speak to anyone about what had happened with his mother.
            Knowledge, Blaise decided, when he met those death-dark eyes. Professor Snape sat in a chair on the other side of the room, a book spread in his hands. Sensitivity could be mimicked by as perfect a Slytherin as the professor was, but not made real.
            Blaise made his throat work with his swallow, even though he didn’t want to. He leaned back and shrugged a little. “It could have been,” he said. “My mother and Potter might have dueled, and the bond would have punished me if I tried to aid my mother. Or she could have touched me with her ring.”
            Professor Snape examined him for a moment. Unexpectedly, that scrutiny comforted Blaise. He might have been a Potions ingredient. At least Snape wasn’t about to look at him differently, as if he had changed instead of the world around them changing.
            Then Snape said, “What ring are you talking about?”
            “She had a black ring on her hand,” Blaise said, concentrating on remembering the details of the jewelry. His mother was the one who had trained him to remember like that, so he would know how to survive if he was ever kidnapped or—or trapped in a Lordship bond, he remembered her saying once, with a faint smile that showed him how unlikely she thought that was ever to happen.
            Blaise swallowed the stickiness in his throat that he wouldn’t allow to turn into anything and went on. “I’d never seen it before. There were silver runes on the band, but I couldn’t tell what they meant. She touched it, and suffered no ill-effects. When Potter started making it clear that she couldn’t just walk away with me, she turned and swung it at me.”
            Professor Snape stood and came over to the bed. Blaise stared at him, but let Snape feel up his arms to his shoulders. Snape shook his head a little and stood back. “You are suffering from no ill-effects, then,” he murmured. Blaise might have laughed at him for imitating Blaise’s phrasing so closely in other situations, but this called for biting his tongue and nodding.
            “You are certain it did not touch you.” The professor prowled around the bed, eyeing Blaise from several directions.
            “I’m certain,” Blaise said. “Potter stopped it before it could.” He hesitated. “I didn’t know he could use the bond that way, sir. How—common is it for Lords to protect their vassals that way?” His mother had told him plenty about Lords and the way they neglected their other concerns, including business and families, for their vassals, but she hadn’t mentioned the bond or their magic being manipulated into a wandless shield.
            “Nothing about this bond is common,” said Professor Snape, meeting Blaise’s heavy gaze. “It may be that other Lords can do much the same thing, but I have not heard of it before.”
            For a moment, Blaise felt a little shiver that at least there was that, that he was in no common bond, but a deep and special one. Then he shook his head. The day he started feeling proud of the bond was the day that he lost his last chance for freedom. “What would the ring have done if it had touched me, sir?”
            “I cannot be certain without a more detailed description.” Snape stared Blaise in the eye, and Blaise silently reinforced his Occlumency shields and stared back. The professor turned away after a moment and walked over to resume his seat. “But it sounds like a slave-rune ring. The runes would crawled onto your skin and brand you the property of the one who had wielded the ring against you.”
            Blaise wanted to choke. “It must have been something else.” He almost blurted the words, and didn’t blame Snape for turning back to him, one brow rising. “It must have been, sir. My mother hates all forms of branding and marking and claiming. It was why she never took the Dark Mark.”
            “She may hate most of them,” Snape said. “Unless she is in charge of them, perhaps?”
            Blaise turned away from Snape’s clear gaze. He had never bothered telling his Head of House about his mother. Snape knew the common rumors about her husbands and their deaths, of course, and outside of that, Blaise had nothing to complain of. Potter had seemed appalled at the way his mother had been, but Blaise wasn’t.
            Or he hadn’t been, until he heard Professor Snape talking about this.
            He reminded himself that Professor Snape had said himself that he couldn’t be sure, not without a more detailed description of the ring—or seeing it himself—and muttered, “She was a Lord’s daughter. She hates them. I wanted—I wanted free of this because I knew she would never accept me with this on my arm.” He touched the shield mark, which thrummed. Blaise was too tired to figure out what that meant. “It’s impossible that she would want me as a bound slave of any kind, whether she was holding the leash or not.”
            Professor Snape only stood there, regarding him. Then he said, “What did she rear you to be?”
            Blaise was grateful that he understood enough to ask that question. Then again, most of the children that ended up in Slytherin had been raised by their families to be something: the perfect heir, like Draco, or quiet, or observant, or strong. Blaise was proud that he could answer with the last one.
            “She raised me to be strong,” he said. “And to stand independent and proud, even of her. Her equal, if I could. Weakness was not tolerated.”
            For a moment, Professor Snape’s eyes slitted, and he looked as if he would sigh. Then he said, “And do you think that the Malfoys meant to do less? That they wanted to raise Draco to be weak, or as emotional as he is?”
            Blaise sat up, his hands folding in his lap. “I know that the conditioning isn’t perfect, sir,” he said. “I like to think that I don’t have as many lapses as Draco does, but I know I’m not perfect, either. I hoped to become worthy of her someday, that was all.”
            The professor continued staring at him. Then he asked the question again, as if Blaise had never replied. “Do you think the Malfoys were aiming for weakness? For the person that Draco is? Or for an ideal heir that could copy Lucius from birth?”
            Blaise sighed a little. It seemed that he wouldn’t get anyone to listen to him until he answered their irrelevant questions. “I think they were aiming for the perfect heir,” he said. “Of course. But they never acknowledged his lapses, while my mother always told me that she understood mine and would wait for me to catch up.”
            He felt hollow and freezing a second later, remembering that he was the one who had turned away from her expectations. He clenched his fists in his lap.
            “Draco is not what his father hoped for,” said Snape. “Not perfect. On that, we would agree.” He inclined his head. “Do you think that his parents would ever walk away from him?”
            “Well, of course not,” Blaise said. This question wasn’t merely irrelevant, it was useless. “He’s their only child. They won’t get another chance at an heir, most likely. It has to be Draco or nothing.”
            Snape slowly swept his glance over him. “And is that the only reason? Do they not care for him at all?”
            Blaise shut his eyes and looked away. “You’re wrong,” he said. “In what you’re implying. My mother always forgave me and gave me another chance.”
            Professor Snape did not speak, and silence settled around Blaise’s words, until they fell to the carpet like the thick dust.
            Blaise shivered. He knew that his mother had done the best she could. That was what other people didn’t seem to comprehend. There were some things that his mother couldn’t do, either because they would make her weak and she had an aversion to weakness, or because her childhood had been even more constricted than Blaise’s own.
            When did I learn to think of the way she raised me as constricted?
            Well, Professor Snape had asked him to compare his upbringing with Draco’s. Blaise knew some of the things that Draco had received as gifts and been permitted to do, from the way Draco bragged. But his mother couldn’t have afforded most of those things, because she lacked the money and the time. Was that what he was supposed to long for?
            He lifted his head. Professor Snape was still looking at him, his eyes as blank as the grey stone of the hearth in the corner.
            “I think that you need to decide whether she will give you another chance now,” he said. “And what it means that she was willing to use a slave-rune ring.”
            “You don’t know that’s what it was,” Blaise whispered, his throat aching with the dryness.
            “As you say,” Snape agreed, with the kind of mocking tone in the back of his voice that meant it wasn’t really agreement after all.
            “It wasn’t,” Blaise said. “I didn’t get a good look at it, and who knows what it would have done? Maybe she would have killed me. She may have thought that being dead was better than being the slave of a Lord.”
            Snape’s gaze sharpened. “Is that the kind of thinking she taught you?” He tapped one forefinger on his lips. “I had been blushing that one of my Slytherins was trying such clumsy tactics to get free of an enemy—especially an enemy who is compelled by the bond to help him and to punish his wrongdoings—but now I understand. If she instilled that desire for freedom in you, then you would do anything for it.”
            Blaise was blushing now on his own account, and it was no more comfortable than being forced to blush for his mother. “You don’t understand,” he whispered, and his throat was tight and aching. “It—it wasn’t that way. It never was. She taught me to be strong, and strength requires freedom. If I don’t break free of Potter, I’ll always be weak, always expecting someone else to intercede for me.”
            Professor Snape stood up. Blaise looked up at him. He didn’t think he’d convinced the man, as stubborn as he was, but he wasn’t sure what else the standing meant.
            Snape stood looking at him, as still as a dungeon wall, for some time, and then nodded. “You need more time to work this out,” he said. “But the traces of the path you will need to follow are in front of you at last. If your mother meant to kill you, then you must wonder why she bred into you that compulsion to be strong, why she was willing to murder someone she invested so much time and effort in. If she meant to make you a slave, then you must wonder at her violation of her own principles.”
            Blaise closed his eyes. “And you think that wondering, either way, will destroy my faith in her?”
            “The destruction has already begun,” Snape said simply, and reached out to lay a hand on Blaise’s shoulder. “You will question and find your way to true strength. If loyalty was your defining trait, the Hat would have placed you in Hufflepuff. Instead, you can find your way to self-preservation. Any Slytherin can.”
            Blaise buried his face in his hands. It was another weak gesture, but he had already accepted that he was weak, hadn’t he? It was the reason he had decided to detach himself from his mother, and stay here.
            He heard the door close quietly, and thought Snape was leaving him to think it over. But it appeared he had only gone to get another book, because he came back in a few minutes, and sat down in the same chair he’d used before, opening the book to the proper place.
            Blaise stared at him in confusion. Hadn’t Snape said that he needed to work out his way to self-preservation—whatever that meant—on his own? Why was Professor Snape still here?
            Then Blaise knew, and he turned over on the bed and put his head in his arms again.
            Just because he was going to be left to discover that path—whatever it was, whatever Professor Snape meant—didn’t mean that he was going to be without a guardian as he did so. They were probably afraid that he would hurt Potter or try to run away again and get them all murdered by Aurors or whatever the consequences were for breaking a Lord’s Word, Blaise thought resentfully.
            As his mind began to dim with fatigue, Blaise decided on something else, another possible explanation, but he discarded it as irrational. Had it been his mother keeping watch over him, then he might have dared to believe it, that they didn’t want him to be alone. But there was no one else who cared about him.
            He fled his own mind into sleep before the promptings, the whisperings, and rumors, of his thoughts that his mother had never cared for him that way, either, could properly begin.
*
            Harry sighed and stretched as he stepped into the kitchen, Greg and Ron and Hermione following him. He had found another bedroom, not wanting to disturb Blaise and Snape in the one he’d originally picked, and this time he’d slept long and deep. When he woke, he’d found a few spells singing around him, and suspected Hermione had “helped” him with the long and deep sleep.
            But that didn’t matter, not against the sense of hope and thrumming courage it gave him. He could do anything now, and it would be that focused meditation on the bond as soon as he’d had breakfast.
            He stopped when he saw who was already in the kitchen, though. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sat on one side of the table, and Draco on the other. All had their eyes fixed on them, although as far as Harry could tell, Draco’s was the only anxious pair.
            “Have you given any further thought to our offer to become your vassals, Lord Potter?” Lucius asked, lifting his teacup to his lips, although Harry couldn’t see any steam coming out of it.
            He makes it sound as though it’s some sort of favor he’s conferring, Harry thought, and curled his lip. He wished for a second that Snape was with him to give some approval and strength to his decisions, but then dismissed the idea. If he concentrated on it long enough, the bond might pull him from upstairs, and Blaise needed Snape more right now.
            “I have,” Harry said, and took a seat on the other side of the table. A beaming Kreacher immediately served him scones, butter, marmalade, pumpkin juice, kippers, and so many other plates that Harry had a hard time seeing what was on all of them. Besides, it was a little difficult when he didn’t really dare to look away from Lucius Malfoy’s eyes. “I’ve decided that it won’t do, not in the traditional sense.”
            Narcissa caught her breath. That could have been for a lot of reasons, and Harry didn’t look at her for more than one second.
            He did catch Draco’s betrayed glance, and winced, but there was no twinge from the bond. Harry wondered if that was because he was doing something that would benefit more of his vassals than taking the elder Malfoys on would.
            “May I ask why?” Lucius’s voice was small bells falling in snow.
            It’s the bond making me think things like that, it has to be, Harry decided crossly, and began to butter a scone. “You’ve already managed to put my vassals in danger by not being part of the bond,” he said. “You’re a formally acknowledged Death Eater who didn’t do anything for our side, the way Snape did by getting us the Sword of Gryffindor and—helping us in other ways. What do you think you’re going to do to our chances of surviving the trials free?”
            Lucius stared at him with slightly parted lips, and then glanced at Narcissa. She shook her head and laid her hand on his wrist, then turned to Harry with a mockingly polite inclination of her head. Harry let her do it. He had known that he would be making an enemy in her, after all.
            “Why should my husband go to prison?” she asked. “Because that is what you are aiming at, after all.”
            Lucius gave a little jerk, and Draco’s eyes widened. Harry knew that Draco hadn’t had any idea where this was going, but he wondered if Lucius really hadn’t, or just hadn’t allowed himself to voice the notion as plainly as that.
            “Because he was a Death Eater,” said Harry. “A willing one, and not a spy. Because he’ll drag down all our chances of staying free if I accept him as my vassal. I don’t owe him anything, because I didn’t mark him. I took his blood, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make to let me find Draco.” He turned to Lucius, who was watching him in breathless, motionless silence. “In return, I’ll guarantee that Draco will survive his trial, because he’ll remain in the bond, and I’ll fight to protect him as hard as I can.”
            “If he remains in the bond, that would happen anyway,” Lucius said. Harry felt his friends shifting uneasily next to him. They probably thought Lucius would reach for his wand in the next second. Harry wondered if he had remembered to actually tell them that Lucius was unarmed.
            And so was Narcissa, which, seeing the expression on her face, Harry was glad for.
            “You would provide a distraction,” Harry said coolly. “And I think you’re perfectly capable of plotting against me and doing something that would disrupt my chances of protecting Draco if you thought that would gain a higher status for your family in doing so. If you’re out of the way in prison, I can know that you’re not plotting against me. And it shows that I can make a good faith gesture to the Ministry.”
            “That’s not what it is!” Draco’s voice exploded into the center of them like a bomb, and when Harry glanced at him, the betrayed look in his eyes was even more prominent. He did feel a dull, muted buzz from the bond, but it seemed uncertain, as though the bond didn’t know how he could spare Draco pain while also protecting his other vassals.
            “It’s what it’ll look like to them,” Harry said, as indifferently as he could. “And I think you were the one telling me that it didn’t matter so much what kind of gestures we made towards them, as long as we made one.”
            “I was the one telling you that,” said Narcissa, although Harry labored to recall the words to mind, and couldn’t. She gave Harry a slow, sweet smile. “Is this bargain contingent on the idea that I go to prison, as well? Because I find myself disinclined to do so.”
            Harry eyed the way she laid her hand on the back of her husband’s chair, and suspected she would try to restrain Lucius if he exploded. That might be of some service. Harry honestly wasn’t sure. He turned his head so that he was holding Narcissa’s eyes, and murmured, “I haven’t decided what to do about you yet. If you can help save Draco and convince the Ministry, you might be useful. If you plot against me, no.”
            Narcissa’s head went up so proudly that it was like watching a dragon in flight, Harry thought. But she said nothing for the moment. Harry turned back to the stone-silent Lucius and began to explain again. He thought it was a good sign that none of his friends had tried to interrupt yet. That meant he was doing something right.
            “I think that you would be a bigger hindrance to us than your wife. For one thing, she’s not as well-known for torturing and killing people and interfering in the Ministry.” Lucius flinched minutely, but said nothing. “For another, she saved my life in the Forbidden Forest, and we can spin that out to good effect.”
            “Listen to you, talking about spinning as though you knew what it meant,” Lucius muttered. But Harry could listen—perhaps the bond had made his senses sharper, too—and he knew that underneath the sarcasm was fear.
            “I will make sure that they don’t delay your trial until the Dementors come back,” Harry said, deciding that even more bluntness might help. “They lost control of them, and the people Voldemort put in charge of controlling them probably fell with him or fled when they realized their side was losing. It would take a long time for the Ministry to convince them to come back under control, if they ever could. You’ll go to an Azkaban without them, and you won’t be executed by the Kiss. That’s all I can promise.”
            “A great all,” Lucius said, and his hands opened as if he would seize the knife and fork in front of him. Harry felt Ron and Hermione tense, and Greg do more than that, but they were still letting him handle this.
            He would have glanced back at them and smiled in gratitude, except that would mean relinquishing eye contact with Lucius, and he didn’t want to do that.
            “Yes, all,” Harry said. “I think it’s great, myself. Your son living under protection, the Malfoy line continuing, the political enemies who would rejoice over your fall not getting to destroy you. A prison term is better than death, and you know that you could expect death from some of them.”
            There was a scrape of a chair. Harry glanced over, thinking that Draco was standing up to flee the room, which Harry couldn’t really blame him for. But it was Narcissa who rose to her feet, and she leaned forwards and bent her body in an ornamental bow, while her eyes never released Harry’s.
            “Mr. Potter,” she said, her voice coming down with a thump on the first word as though to accent that she wasn’t about to call him a Lord, “can I speak with you privately?”
            Harry gave her a thin smile and stood up, ignoring the way that Hermione tugged on his arm. Severus had said that he didn’t know what Narcissa would do, that she was the more dangerous and unpredictable one. And as long as neither of them had a wand and Harry had the bond that would let him summon help if he really needed it, he thought this was about the least dangerous way he could deal with her.
            “Let’s,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen with her, ignoring the way that Greg shifted to go after them. Harry darted a glance at him, and that stopped soon enough. It was frustrating that Greg would obey him so intuitively, but there were good things about it, too.
            And in the meantime, Harry could come up with a political strategy that concentrated on the enemy immediately in front of him.
            He might even clear his mind enough of problems that he could concentrate exclusively on the bond later, as he had promised Hermione he would.
            Goodness. Maybe I’m becoming political after all.
*
Kain: Thanks! Harry’s friends aren’t that happy about his decision to handle Narcissa by himself, and Draco isn’t happy about anything, but Harry may be able to talk even Draco around, if he displayed some tact.
moodysavage: Thanks! I’m afraid that Harry is also sincere in his desire to have Lucius go to prison, so that is going to be a challenge for Draco.
Genuka: Yes, and he is focused on that solution Hermione talked about for controlling the bond now, even though he has to deal with Narcissa first.
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The Only True Lords