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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.

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Chapter Four—Questions and Skin Infections

            Harry stepped into a quiet entrance hall. But he could feel the tension thrumming up and around from at least four people in the mark on his arm.

            Harry closed his eyes and sighed. Zabini hadn’t awakened at all on the march to the castle. He wondered if that was a good or a bad thing. On one hand, it meant he hadn’t screamed his head off. On the other, Harry would have liked some reassurance that he was still alive.

            The shield mark on his arm wasn’t going crazy now, and Zabini’s breathing was still slow and steady. Maybe that was all the reassurance he really needed.

            Footsteps moving towards him made Harry take up a protective stance in front of the stretcher, his wand raised. He hadn’t seen them personally, but if Ron and Hermione were right, there were Aurors in the school. Aurors might be reasonable, like the ones in the Order, or they might want to arrest everyone who had been involved with the Slytherins in any way, like Scrimgeour. Harry couldn’t let them take Zabini—even assuming he had been involved with Death Eaters—until he knew if he was all right.

            But it was Ron and Hermione, followed by Mrs. Weasley and Ginny and a few other Gryffindors, who appeared around the corner. Harry relaxed and waved at them to come closer. As long as no one insulted Zabini or tried to attack him, it should be all right.

            “What happened, Harry?” Hermione whispered, coming to a halt in front of him and peering around him at Zabini, as if she could tell by looking. Maybe she could. After the last year and how many times she had kept them alive on the run, Harry had started to try never to underestimate the amount of knowledge Hermione had.

            “Oh, Harry!” someone shouted before he could answer, and then Mrs. Weasley hugged him.

            Harry closed his eyes and squeezed her back. Of course he was glad that his friends had brought him food this morning and started discussing the situation, so he had someone to talk to who was sane, but he was also glad someone was here who would just hold him and make clucking noises and ask, as Mrs. Weasley did a minute later, if he was all right and had he had a chance to take a bath and he shouldn’t give interviews until he was ready and was he all right.

            Harry had to swallow as a huge lump of emotion rose up in his throat. It felt like—loneliness. Homesickness. But what he was homesick for was his parents and what it probably would have been like if they were alive.

            “I’m all right,” he finally said, when Mrs. Weasley left him a breath in edgewise to answer. “Thank you. I’m—still dealing with all this, and Zabini and I both did something stupid out in the woods, but we’re okay. I think,” he added, with one more dubious glance at the stretcher. Zabini didn’t contradict him, but it was kind of hard to when he was flat on his back with his eyes shut.

            “What did you do that was stupid out in the woods?”

            That was Ginny, her eyes so big they seemed as if they would overwhelm most of her face, looking at him sideways, and quietly. Her voice was quiet, too. Harry put out his hand, and Ginny took it, looking earnestly at him.

            Harry tried to remember if she had looked at him that way before the war. He thought so, but honestly, so much seemed fuzzy and ill-defined about that time, while everything since had been thrown into sharp relief. He had to clear his throat a few times before he answered. “Zabini used a spell on me. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it made my heart jump.”

            “Like you were running?” Ron asked, leaning forwards to peer at Harry’s chest as if his heart would explode out and splatter him with blood. Harry had to admit that would have been much wilder than what he actually had to report.

            “No,” Harry said. “Like it was going to stop. Like—he was trying to give me a heart attack. But I don’t know if he actually was,” he added hastily, because everyone else was gaping at him and he was afraid they wouldn’t take what Harry had retaliated with seriously enough. “I reacted like he was, and the bond punished him.”

            “I don’t see any sign of it,” Hermione said, leaning forwards and studying Zabini’s face and chest.

            “You whipped him, and you healed the whip marks?” Ron sounded disappointed.

            Harry rubbed his forehead as that damn quicksilver feeling moved through him again, and squeezed harder on Ginny’s hand. “No. Will you please stop saying things like that, mate? It makes me uncomfortable.”

            “Sorry.” Ron shook his head. “But he looks okay for having just been through a punishment. Maybe you’re taking it too seriously.”

            “Lordship is a very serious thing,” Mrs. Weasley said, frowning at him. Ron rolled his eyes at Harry behind her back as she turned to Harry and patted his shoulder in a steadying way. “What did you do, Harry dear?”

            “I caused him some kind of pain,” Harry whispered. “In his arm, I think, since he grabbed it first. He was in so much pain he couldn’t even scream. Just whistle this kind of—thin cry. And his legs were hanging in midair.”

            There was a movement on the edge of his mind and the edge of the hall at once. Harry looked up and saw black robes sweeping around the corner. He winced. Snape had been listening, he thought. And now he would probably think Harry was a worse Lord and they were all in more danger than ever.

            “You hurt him?” Ginny whispered. Her face had gone pale.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “It didn’t stop even when I said stop. It didn’t stop until I said I forgave him.”

            In the silence that followed, Ginny detached her hand from his.

            Harry turned to her with his mouth open, and then closed it when he saw the look she was giving him. He didn’t know what to do with it, really, or if he should do anything. Maybe she was right to look at him like that. He would have said she was until it actually started happening. He swallowed and turned back to Hermione.

            “I want to get Madam Pomfrey to look at him,” he said. “Or some other Healer, if there’s anyone here. Is there?”

            “I am.”

            Harry jumped. He thought he had already become used to feeling and hearing other people around him through the bond, so he was surprised that the woman striding towards him now had managed to come this close without him noticing her. Especially since she was almost as tall as Snape, and had lime-green robes on, and had a smile that made him think of the way Dumbledore smiled when he was going into battle.

            She nodded to Harry, said, “My name is Healer Emeraude Kislik, Lord Potter. St. Mungo’s summoned me because I have some experience in dealing with the victims of Lordship bonds,” and tapped her wand on Zabini’s chest, murmuring to herself. Flashing red letters appeared above his head. Harry had no idea what they meant. He watched them bob and shine in place, while Healer Kislik nodded to herself or shook her head depending on what seemed to be chance.

            “Victims?” Hermione was the one to ask. “What do you mean by that?”

            Kislik smiled at Hermione. This time it was the smile, Harry thought, of a shark that had spotted something slow-moving and delicious in the water.

            “I’ll explain later, after I’ve finished making sure this young man didn’t take permanent damage,” she said, and looked at Harry. Harry flinched. Kislik nodded. “You’ll have to make sure that you control your temper in the future, when you have other lives depending on the sweetness of it,” she murmured.

            She turned back to Zabini, and Harry turned his head to the stairs that led down to the dungeons. Two of his Slytherins were coming this way. Malfoy and Parkinson, he thought, concentrating on them.

            Then he realized what he had thought and blinked. My Slytherins? I don’t want to think like that, either.

            But Malfoy and Parkinson appeared on the scene then, loud and demanding, real people, and Harry had to forget about things inside his own head for a while. Because their reaction to the sight of Zabini on a stretcher was as loud and real as anything he could have wished them to show. They weren’t under his control so fully that they would stop expressing their emotions just because it would be more comfortable for him, and he had to be grateful for that.

*

            “What happened to Blaise?”

            Pansy’s voice was low and horrified. Draco shook his head, rejecting the feeling for a second if not the question. He couldn’t take on Pansy’s horror in addition to his own. He had learned during the war that that didn’t work. He could only carry so much fear, or he would explode.

            He took a cautious step forwards, and felt Pansy fall into step behind him. At least she would kind of shadow him and back him up if it turned out that Potter had beaten Blaise to death. That was something.

            A slight burn from his arm made Draco grimace. Yes, yes, the bond was punishing him for his disloyal thoughts about Potter. It didn’t matter. He had torn out of here and hadn’t explained to any of them where he was going. Draco hadn’t done a lot of reading about Lord bonds, but what he had done said that Lords owed a responsibility to their vassals just as the vassals owed a duty to them. He should have told someone. What would have happened if he’d died out in the Forest?

            Then we’d be free.

            Draco sighed and walked towards Potter, Pansy trailing at his heels. Professor Snape had tried to tell him again and again that he couldn’t get caught up in elaborate plans and not do anything. And right now it would be stupid to try and plan anything anyway, since he didn’t know enough.

            “What did you to do to him, Potter?” he said, and then blinked and lowered his voice as he realized Potter was already looking at him. He’d thought he would have to fight for his attention with the Weasleys. “Why did you do it?”

            Potter bit his lip. He had some dirt on his cheek, and he folded his arms as if he wanted to hide the shield mark. Draco just stood there and looked at him. He didn’t think Potter had fought Blaise, or both of them would have been a lot more battered.

            “I think we should wait for Goyle and Snape,” Potter said. “I only want to have to explain this once.”

            “That bad, is it?” Pansy had found enough courage to put her head around from behind Draco, and sneer at Potter. “You can’t find a way to make it look good to anyone who hears it, so you’re going to hesitate and stutter along if you have to say it more than once?”

            Potter kept his head turned away instead of looking at her, focusing instead on the stretcher and something the Healer who stood there was saying to him. Draco sniffed. He was at least glad that a proper Healer was taking care of Blaise, although she might only be trying to get him well enough to survive his stint in Azkaban.

            “You can answer me,” Pansy said, raising her voice. “Gregory won’t come out of his room for anything, and Professor Snape has more important things to do than listen to your convoluted explanations.”

            “What about Malfoy?” Potter turned back around and, this time, to Draco’s discomfort, he really was looking directly at Draco. “Do you want to hear it twice, or just once? Here?”

            Draco licked his lips and found his voice, which had gone into hiding somewhere in the back of his throat. “I think you should apologize for running out and leaving us with no idea of what was going on, whether Blaise was in danger or you were.”

            Potter looked at him, and then smiled. Draco took a wary step back, but that didn’t work well, because Pansy had tried to hide behind him in turn. They collided, and spent a moment wobbling back and forth while Weasleys snickered.

            “I didn’t think you would care that much about the last part,” Potter muttered.

            “You’re our Lord now,” Pansy said, popping her head out again. “We’ve got to obey you and follow you around and do what you say.” Draco frowned. Pansy tended to repeat herself a lot, one reason Draco didn’t think much of her stated ambition to be a politician. Her speeches would bore everyone too much for them to listen to her innovative proposals. “I don’t exactly want to do this, but if we don’t, then the Aurors here would probably arrest us.”

            “I wouldn’t let that happen,” said the Healer working on Blaise calmly, without looking up.

            Pansy blinked at her. Draco took up the thread of the argument, because none of this was getting them to the heart of what they needed to know, which was what Potter had done to Blaise. “What happened, Potter?”

            Potter sighed a little, and said, “You might as well come out and hear it with the rest of them, Professor Snape.”

            Draco turned his head in surprise. He had always been the best of the students in Slytherin at telling when their Head of House was nearby, but he hadn’t sensed it at all in this case. Snape slowly stepped out into the entrance hall, sneered at Potter, and spread his arms mockingly. “My ears work whether they are a few meters or one from you, Potter.”

            “Yes, well,” Potter said, and Draco thought he saw him bite his tongue. But he didn’t know why, and he didn’t care, because Potter was turning around as if to make sure that his audience of obedient little hangers-on was paying attention, too, and perhaps they would finally get to hear why their friend was lying in a stretcher.

            “Zabini went out into the Forbidden Forest,” Potter said, not raising his voice much. “He thought the centaurs might be able to remove the Lord-bond mark. He thinks of it as a skin infection, apparently, and the centaurs are skilled healers.”

            Draco caught his breath. He hadn’t thought of that, but it was marvelous for Blaise to have done so. On the other hand, centaurs were savage creatures and the stories of their healing wizards were centuries old. But perhaps a Healer from St. Mungo’s could do the same thing? This one seemed to be at least a little sympathetic to them.

            And her hands had stopped working over Blaise while she listened, Draco noticed. Maybe that was a good sign.

            “The centaur refused to touch the Lord-bond because—because it was me, basically.” Potter rubbed his face, which was a stupid gesture since it drove his glasses into his nose and then he had to straighten them out again. “Something about a black star and a supernova. I don’t know. I tried to get Zabini to come back to the castle with me, and he attacked me. I felt this odd jump in my chest and I turned around and he had his wand raised. I thought he was trying to attack me, maybe cause a heart attack.”

            “That’s impossible,” Pansy snapped. “Blaise wouldn’t be that stupid. He knows that a Lord is always stronger than a vassal. You can’t get free by killing a Lord.”

            Potter snorted, and the sound was bitter enough to make Draco start. “But I’d just been nice to him, a little, and asked him questions instead of commanding him to obey. Maybe he thought that meant I was too weak to be a Lord.”

            Draco looked at Pansy without meaning to, and found her looking back. She gave the shadow of a nod. Yes, that might be something Blaise would think.

            Draco glanced at Professor Snape, too, and saw him standing with his arms folded, his head tilted to the side as he listened.

            “I turned around,” Potter was saying now, reciting in a dull voice. “I was angry. I lifted my hand. And Zabini started screaming. I think the pain started in his shield mark. He looked like he was on fire. Not visibly, but—it was that kind of pain. In a little while, he couldn’t even make noise anymore, it was so bad.”

            Draco wondered if he was the only one who saw Ginny Weasley wrap her arms around herself and take a long step back from Potter. Or maybe Potter’s eyes, flickering sideways before he returned his gaze to them, saw it, too.

            “It didn’t end until I forgave him,” Potter said, and then he took a deep breath like someone drowning and turned on Professor Snape. “Is there any way you can stop this? There must be some way that you can stop this. None of us can live with this.”

            “We must, Potter,” said Professor Snape. His mouth had twitched to the side in an odd way that Draco had never seen before, but even as Draco watched, it relaxed. Professor Snape had been a spy, he knew that now. There was no other way he would have rushed between the Dark Lord and the small lot of Slytherin students and tried to rescue them. But Draco had never suspected it during the war. “I told you, there is no way to break a bond like this once it is established.”

            “Zabini went to the centaurs,” Potter said. “And Healer Kislik said she could work on it.”

            Professor Snape looked at the Healer. Draco did, too. She had her head bowed, still casting diagnostic spells on Blaise, but Draco could just make out the edge of a smile.

            “With all due respect to Healer Kislik,” Professor Snape said, in a voice that made it worse if he had been openly disrespectful, “I do not think this is a problem that she can change. Nothing can be done except to live with the bond.”

            “But Zabini wanted to make a bargain with magical creatures he distrusted and attack me rather than live with it,” Potter insisted, taking a step forwards. “You feel like you would rather die than live with it.”

            Professor Snape’s eyes fixed on Potter, and there was something else there Draco had never seen. The next instant, the professor had looked at Draco and Pansy as though they were doing something wrong by standing so close.

            “Leave us,” Professor Snape said, and his voice was more terrifying than the Dark Lord’s when he spoke Parseltongue.

            Pansy fell back a step, with a whimper. Draco reached out to take her hand and said, “But this is about us, too. Potter’s right. None of us want it. Why should you be left alone to talk about it, just because you hate it more?”

            “I have some experience in living through this, and you do not.” Professor Snape had gone white to the lips. “Go.”

            Draco might still have stood there and tried to force things—they didn’t even know for sure if Blaise was going to be all right yet—but Pansy tugged on his hand again, and made him move. Draco went with her, but still watched over his shoulder as Professor Snape and Potter faced each other. Yes, the professor was white. He reached out one hand as though he was going to clap Potter on the shoulder, weirdly, then pulled it back again and said something in a low, furious hiss that Draco couldn’t make out. Potter nodded. Professor Snape stalked off towards a staircase, and Potter followed.

            Draco sighed and turned around again. He reckoned he should go find his parents anyway, and reassure them that he was still alive and Potter hadn’t forced him into becoming his servant, the fate that his mother in particular seemed to be afraid of.

            I just want to know what’s going to happen.

*

            Snape turned around when he got the door of the Charms classroom shut. Harry glanced around, saw the dirty stain low down on one wall that he knew very well from the color was dried blood, and decided that he would rather not look anymore.

            “How did you know?” Snape’s voice was soft.

            Harry wanted to cover the shield mark with his hand again, but he thought Snape would probably kill him if he did that. He didn’t know how to answer. He had spoken what he thought the blackness swaying in the back of his head, the dark candle flame that represented Snape, felt like, not—

            But Snape had taken him literally.

            “You do want to kill yourself,” he said, and he didn’t know how to interpret the softness of his own voice.

            “You can, of course, order me not to.”

            Snape’s eyes were wide and black and glinting like oil. Harry flinched before he could stop himself.

            Snape, unlike Zabini, didn’t use that moment of weakness to cast a spell on Harry. He merely sneered and turned away, pacing in a slow circle while staring at the walls as though they would tell him something they wouldn’t tell Harry.

            “I won’t—I won’t do that,” Harry managed to croak. He coughed and cleared his throat and started over stronger. “What I mean, sir—”

            Snape turned around. Harry recoiled at the look on his face.

            “Do not call me by that title again,” Snape said. “It is a meaningless mockery when I can have no authority over you.”

            Harry nodded, but found his voice. “What am I supposed to call you, then? ‘Green pinpoint on the left’ doesn’t have a real ring to it. And professor is another title.”

            Snape looked at him as though he had never expected the question. Then he said, “Severus will do. If you must.”

            Harry resolved quietly that he would keep from using the name if he could, except when Snape wasn’t around, and then said, “Look, I need—I don’t want you alive because I hate you and I’m trying to take charge of your life. I need you alive because you’re the one who can help the others the most.”

            “Ah, yes, the role of the sacrifice is one to which I am well-accustomed,” Snape said, and his smile was jagged. “Although I did hope to someday play the role in which I do not teach others to lay their necks on the chopping-block.”

            “Well, then help me find a way to get rid of this—”

            “There is no way to get rid of this!” Snape crossed the ground between them with a long stride, staring at him. “Do you not understand? There is no way to destroy a normal Lord-bond, and this is not normal.”

            “Then help them learn to live with it!” Harry shouted back, stepping up to Snape. He didn’t know who was more surprised, Snape or him, but he plunged ahead before he could think about it, because that was when he did the best work. “I nearly killed Zabini today. I might have. I’m not good at this, I know I’m not good. I’ve been a sacrifice and a hero and a fighter and a Chosen One, but I’ve never had to rule like this. Help me learn to keep my temper and test the limits of the bond! Hermione’s already said it’ll be a little weird, and there’s things that aren’t—they don’t make sense, like the way I can sometimes sense you and sometimes can’t. So help me learn to be a good Lord. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you. Help the others learn to live with this.”

            Then he stopped, because Snape was staring at him with hooded eyes and he knew they hadn’t been the right words. Harry thought a minute, head hanging, quicksilver feelings that weren’t his own still darting through him.

            “No,” he said after a second, lifting his head. “Help them learn to live.”

            And while Snape still studied him as though Harry was a Potions ingredient gone rotten, Harry knew they had been the right words by the way the light in Snape’s eyes grew sterner and more open, and by the feeling in his own heart, like a key fitting a lock.

            That has to be it. If we really can’t get out of this, then it’s not going to be just a matter of me keeping my temper. They could still get in trouble for hurting someone else and force me to punish them that way.

            We’ll work together. We don’t have a choice. We’ll keep it going.

            And if I’m good enough, then maybe someday it’ll be like they’re free.

*

            Severus did not move or speak for long moments, until he felt he could nod acceptance of what the boy in front of him had proposed.

            He did not wish to discuss his own desire for suicide any further. He did not wish to discuss what Potter thought the bond would mean to Severus, because it could never mean anything but slavery and entanglements with Potter, when he had thought he had finally paid the long debt owed.

            But that it might mean less than a completely miserable life for the students whom he had tried to protect was a chance he was willing to grab for.

*

            Sasunarufan13: This Draco is, at the moment, more dependent on other people than the Draco I normally write. He’s not going to do something so independent.

            And yes, the bond would have killed Blaise, although Harry’s not sure of that because he doesn’t know for certain that Blaise was trying to kill him.

            SP777: I think this Harry is trying very hard to resist becoming a Dark Lord. He doesn’t want to be Voldemort, that’s the whole point. He’ll carry guilt through the rest of his life if he kills someone, even accidentally. He can just be a Lord if he has to.

            And I wasn’t aware that Harry was coming out particularly short…

            delia cerrano: No external burns. The main danger is nerve damage.

            And Harry is trying to sit down with Snape. Kind of.

            Jien: There will be consequences for Blaise himself when he wakes up.

            LeaniaSTL: It’s not that they believe living in a Lordship bond is such a bad thing—Snape once chose to do something similar—as because it’s Harry, and he’s a Gryffindor that two of them (three, if you count Goyle) have been involved in personally obstructing and arguably trying to kill. Pansy is picking up on everyone else’s emotions and not liking the interference with her ambitions. And Blaise has a Thing about freedom, for reasons that will become clearer later on.

            The pairing will be Harry/Draco, but I think you can see why it will take A Long Time.
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The Only True Lords