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The Night With Stars	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 9544 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Four—Ripples of Reaction

            “You’re really trying to change the world with Lucius Malfoy,” said Hermione, and she put the papers in front of her aside and gave Harry her full attention.

            Harry sipped a little at the glass of sour lemon water he’d requested from Hermione’s free house-elf, Mara. Where she’d found one like Dobby who wanted to earn money and wear clothes, Harry didn’t know; Hermione was keeping the name of Mara’s former family secret because it was hot evidence in an upcoming case. Harry did wonder, a bit, whether profiting from the labor of a free house-elf was any better than an enslaved one, but that wasn’t the kind of issue he would raise with Hermione.

            They’d become better at respecting each other’s tender places over the years. Harry stayed away from them, and Hermione didn’t lecture.

            Now, she looked too dazed to lecture. Harry nodded and said, “I told you I would, you know.”

            “Yes, but I thought Malfoy would never agree. That son of his certainly never would.”

            “From what he tells me, dear Draco’s a bloody disappointment,” Harry said, and went gleefully on before Hermione could do more than offer him a half-hearted glare for his language. “Not as deep a thinker as his father. Lucius wants to leave him with a comfortable inheritance and so on, of course, but he’s doing what he does more for the sake of the future intelligent children Draco might have than for Draco himself.”

            “And you call him Lucius.”

            “Yes.” Harry leaned forwards. “I think that you know exactly why he agreed to help me, Hermione. He’s an immensely practical man. All I had to do was offer him evidence that it was more pragmatic to help me than to oppose me, and—this is more important—an ally powerful enough to make it worthwhile stirring himself on Muggleborns’ behalf rather than remaining at the Wizengamot’s side.”

            “So he’s using you as much as you’re using him.”

            “Yes, you could put it that way.”

            Hermione sighed a little. “I did disbelieve he would help you, because I thought he was more like Draco. His prejudice matters more to him than good sense or politics or anything else, you know that.”

            Harry nodded silently. Draco had done things like go up to Hermione two days after the end of the Death Eater trials—the trials in which Harry had testified to keep the Malfoys out of Azkaban—and call her a Mudblood. In public. While Rita Skeeter was in earshot. Then he had acted shocked at the resulting storm of outrage. The wizarding world had changed enough that that kind of thing wasn’t going to pass when the person insulted was a war hero.

            “Draco didn’t inherit the political instincts, for some reason. You can imagine how dismayed Lucius is.” Harry smirked a little when Hermione gave him a blank look. “Well, maybe you can’t. But the point is, Lucius thinks of this as doing something good for his son and the pure-bloods in the end. They’ll live in a world where they’re better-positioned in the way Lucius thinks they should be, even if they don’t see it right now.”

            “That means he might be interested in turning aside from the goal once it’s achieved?”

            “Do you know how long it’ll take to achieve?”

            “I don’t think anyone knows that.” Hermione looked down at the stack of parchments in her lap. “Any more than anyone knows how long it would take to free house-elves.”

            Harry nodded. “That means that Lucius is committed to this for the long term. Not just a few months. Probably not just even a few years. I can’t see him turning aside from something he’s invested that much effort into.”

            Hermione exhaled slowly. “That’s true. I suppose I find it hard to trust him because he served Voldemort, and then denied he did, and then went back, and now he’s rebuilding a new image. Can you really trust someone who turns his back on his allegiances so often?”

            “I trust him to be practical,” Harry repeated. “And compromising with the Muggleborns is the most practical course for any pure-blood family right now. And we already have our first ally.”

            Hermione’s mouth fell open a little. “What? Did he manage to convince Draco to ally with you after all?”

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t think he’ll approach him, from what he’s told me about Draco. No, it was Blaise Zabini. His mother’s in Italy, but he seems to have control of finances of his own.”

            “Well, of course he does. If you paid attention to the gossip columns, then you’d know he has all these Galleons from a lawsuit he won for slander…”

            Harry listened with half an ear, glad that Hermione hadn’t become enraged when it turned out that he was really going to use Lucius after all.

            And he wondered, with more than half his brain, what Lucius was doing at the moment.

*

            The mirror across the room shattered, and bits of glass drifted to the floor in flakes like sharp snow. Lucius might have found it more entertaining if this wasn’t the seventh time it had happened.

            “Very impressive, Draco,” he said, and bit his lip firmly against another yawn. His son’s tantrums always made him bored, and he got sleepy when he was bored. “As is your Reparo. I can’t see the cracks when you put it back together.” He turned and flicked through the Daily Prophet again. No, nothing even in the gossip pages about Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy being seen together. A pity.

            “You can’t ally with Potter! Reparo! Reducto!”

            This time, Draco’s spell went awry and bent a fairly expensive golden lamp next to Lucius’s seat out of shape. He glanced up and raised an eyebrow. Draco stopped and stared at him with his chest heaving like he’d been galloping.

            Maybe it would be best to think of him that way. As a handsome, pedigreed, soft-brained Abraxan.

            Lucius smiled a little at the article in front of him. At one time, that thought would have been so painful that he would not have entertained it. But it would have remained there subconsciously, making him miserable.

            After the war, he had decided he would not give space or time to misery, no matter how much it might be justified. He would push forwards those thoughts and make himself confront them. If they were difficult, so much the better. It would make for a greater challenge to test his strength against.

            Narcissa had not agreed, especially when his disparaging thoughts concerned Draco. She had wanted to build safe walls after the war and make sure their family would never be challenged again. It was one reason they had parted ways.

            “Are you even paying attention to me, Father?”

            Lucius put down the paper and directed a courteous gaze at his only heir. “Now I am.”

            Draco’s chest heaved as he stared at Lucius. Lucius tried to remember a time when he had been that young, and could not. Of course, the death of his father had forced Lucius to thread a maze of responsibilities and privileges that Draco did not have.

            Lucius had assumed Draco would mature as he himself had, that the war would serve as Draco’s particular test of adversity. Now he knew it would not. It was disappointing to learn so late, but at the same time, he welcomed the knowledge. He was building for future generations, and only one of them was Draco.

            Lucius would give his son the comforts and lifestyle he desired, and educate his grandchildren. He was not defeated, and he was not afraid.

            “When Theo Flooed me and told me, I couldn’t believe it,” Draco said. He was shivering a little, and he paced slowly forwards as if he was giving Lucius time to stand and bolt out of the room. Since Lucius couldn’t imagine why he would wish to do so, the leisurely advance was more than a little absurd.

            “He told me,” Draco continued, “that Potter kept him from trying to disenchant you.”

            “Of course he did,” said Lucius, leaning back in his seat and considering Draco. His son had clearer eyes than he had had in a long time. Lucius liked that. Perhaps his outrage over Potter had sharpened Draco’s mind instead of clouding it. That would be a pleasant result. “I did not need disenchantment.”

            Draco halted. “But Theo didn’t know that,” he said, as if it was impossible that there was something Theodore Nott didn’t know.

            Lucius sighed. “I did try to tell him, with words and subtly, that Potter and I are allied now. Is it my fault if he did not believe me?”

            “You can’t be allied with Potter.”

            I am tired of this refrain. Lucius leaned forwards. “You will do me two favors, Draco. You will not speak those words again. And when Potter comes to visit here, you will be courteous to him.”

            “I’ll say whatever I like. Because you’ve disgraced the name of Malfoy.” Draco had his arms folded so tightly that his fingers were digging into the flesh of his elbow. “Why would you ally with one of our greatest enemies, a half-blood who—”

            “You told me not long ago that you thought our greatest enemy was the Dark Lord, and my greatest mistake was in surrendering myself to him.”

            Draco let his mouth fall open a little, in that transparent way he had of being startled when his father remembered something he had said. Then he shook his head and murmured, “The difference between words spoken in public and between friends, Father. I thought you would know that.” He gave Lucius a hard stare. “If I’d known that you would decide to blend private and public life…”

            Lucius was silent, contemplating. He had thought his son had changed his mind on some opinions that might have been excusable in the old world, but were unforgivable in the new one.

            No. He had learned to moderate his tongue, but not his mind.

            Lucius’s last hope that Draco might accept his alliance with Potter died a soft death. He shook his head at Draco and said, “I think of the long-term survival of our family, you only of the short-term. It is unfortunate.” He stood. “From now on, if you meet with Theodore Nott, it will not be in this house. And I will have your promise.”

            “Father. You can’t make me.”

            Lucius knew that tone. Really, the “can’t” was a “won’t” in Draco’s head. And he looked shocked, but not as much as he would have if he believed what Lucius had said.

            Lucius regarded him evenly, and Draco’s shock splintered into the true emotion. He shook his head and opened his mouth further, but no sound came out, because he had none.

            “Your promise.” Lucius made his voice gentle, like first snowfall.

            “I—you’re saying I’m only living here on your sufferance. That I have no independence at all!”

            Draco’s voice was rising. Lucius found it tiresome. What he thought of most was how Potter would have reacted, calm and collected and confident in his magic, that it could destroy Lucius if he turned out to be a threat.

            Draco was not as magically powerful as Potter, but Lucius had tried to raise him to be as confident, to take pleasure and comfort from the political manipulations the Malfoys were so good at. But without skill, Draco was denied that comfort.

            “I’m saying you have no independence because you will permit yourself none,” Lucius said, cutting off the tirade before it could form. “You have not struck back at me, or tried to live on your own, or built up a political base in the Ministry different from mine. You have lived here on my sufferance, yes, and assumed it would extend to any suffering you chose to make me undergo.”

            Draco stared at him, baffled.

            “I have an ally. This ally will gain us power for the sake of a little humility now. Can you put up with it?”

            “Not when it’s Potter.”

            Lucius tilted his head. Draco was not without secrets of his own. Perhaps Draco and Potter had had interactions more recent than the trials that Lucius didn’t know about, and Potter hadn’t seen fit to mention. “What has he done since Hogwarts to make you dislike him so much?”

            Again he got the baffled glare. The one that said there were depths in Draco’s mind that he would never touch. Well, Lucius didn’t think of them as depths as much as shallows, but he still wanted to know what they meant, and he waited until Draco sniffed and said, “Nothing. But he did plenty in Hogwarts.”

            “You’re twenty years old now, Draco,” said Lucius, and made his tone patient instead of coaxing. Draco didn’t respond well to either, but better to the first. “Don’t you think it’s time to give up on a petty schoolboy rivalry? Potter has.”

            “Potter thinks himself so far above me that he wouldn’t see fit to continue the rivalry anyway!”

            “Yes, perhaps not,” said Lucius. “Which ought to be a greater spur to you to move past it.”

“The way he humiliated me—the way he beat me on the Quidditch pitch and the way he stood up at the trial and said that he couldn’t believe I’d really done any harm in the war because I was just a child—”

“It seems,” Lucius interrupted, a revelation trembling through him like a crystal wineglass swayed by wind, “we have both been under an illusion, mistaking diplomatic words for the real thing.”

Draco broke off and blinked at him. “What?”

            “I thought you had changed your mind about Muggleborns because you didn’t say the word ‘Mudblood’ in public anymore. You thought Potter despised you because he twisted his words to make sure that you didn’t get a harsh sentence.” Lucius shook his head. “Well, hopefully we shall be the stronger for having our eyes opened so painlessly.”

            “He didn’t—he wasn’t trying to make sure I didn’t get a harsh sentence—”

            “Yes, he was.” Lucius sighed at the look of absolute blank amazement on his son’s face. “You didn’t understand? You thought he hated you?”

            “Of course he does.”

            “By making the Wizengamot think of you as a child, he kept you out of Azkaban,” said Lucius. He kept his tone slow and soft, the way he would talk to a Kneazle who was poised to scratch. It was the only way he could make sure Draco understood. “It was perhaps an ungraceful tactic, but it served two purposes. It softened them at the time, and it cast no shadow on your future efforts. You could make them think that you grew up later, a natural maturation brought about by your own actions.”

            Left unsaid in his soft tone was the fact that Draco hadn’t needed to worry about that. Draco seemed to sense what his father was thinking anyway. He bristled and stood up with his arms thrust out in front of him to push something unseen away.

            “You don’t need to ally with Potter to get the glory of our name back,” Draco said.

            “I agree.”

            Draco checked on whatever he was about to say, and eyed his father for a moment. Lucius smiled blandly back. He couldn’t help thinking that having to pause and think about what he was going to say would help Draco a lot more than he thought it would right now.

            “But allying with Potter will make our family name stronger in times to come. And strength is less easily won than glory.” Lucius stood. “I will have your promises now, Draco.”

            Draco squinted at him. Then he said, “I won’t.” And he left the room, using the determined stalk that he always did when he thought he had won at something.

            Lucius shook his head slowly, and then went to his study to Floo Potter. He paused while the flames turned green, and raised one hand slowly to his shoulder, wondering if he was imagining the sensation he could feel there.

            No. He hadn’t been imagining it. Velvet fur pushed impatiently against his hand. The sensation of Potter’s magic draped lightly around his shoulders, and hanging down his back, was real.

            Lucius was still smiling when the Floo revealed a face. But it was Ron Weasley’s, not Potter’s. Lucius tempered his smile to the sane one he would use when speaking with many of his allies in the Ministry, and asked, “Is Harry Potter there?”

            Weasley stared at him in silence for long enough that Lucius was about to repeat his request. Then Weasley sighed and said, “I suppose I don’t have any choice but to believe him if you’re here,” and went away with a tragic shake of his head.

            Potter’s face appeared in the next second. His brows rose. “Lucius? Is something wrong?”

            “My son is a fool, and you should guard yourself when you come here.”

            He didn’t need to explain any more than that, not for someone as sharp as Potter. Potter cocked his head and nodded once. “All right,” he said. “I will. It might be better not to meet at Malfoy Manor unless we have to.”

            “I agree.” Lucius watched him with eyes that he couldn’t keep the desire out of, although Potter might mistake it for the desire of power. “And I feel that your magic is here, still keeping watch on me?”

            “Of course. It’s a detached piece, rather like a cloak I’ve given you.”

            Given, not lent. Lucius couldn’t keep his smile away. “You value me that much.”

            Potter looked at him with those honest green eyes, always so stunning after a short time of not seeing them. “Of course. Someone would have to be mad not to value you, Lucius. I thought you knew that.”

            “I am, perhaps, more used to the implicit than the explicit valuation,” Lucius murmured.

            “Well, someone should correct that,” said Potter.

            Lucius leaned in. Perhaps it was unwise, but no one was here save the two of them, and he was in a protected house. “Will you?” he asked.

            Potter cocked his head back, as sharp and searching as a hunting bird. Then he smiled. “That is something we might discuss, Lucius,” he said.

            The Floo closed.

            Lucius leaned slowly back and touched the silky nap of the magic cloak Potter had wrapped in him again. He had to smile—had to—and it was wonderful.

            “Something we might discuss” is more than I ever thought I would have again.

*

            autumngold: Thank you! I am enjoying writing this story.

            Jan: Thanks!
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The Night With Stars