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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.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty—A Wilderness of Faces
            Harry closed his eyes and retreated into his mind for just a few moments as they surged into the courtroom. The Aurors escorting him had to slow down for a minute, anyway, to urge a path through the spectators. It only got worse when people turned around and noticed the hair, or the scar, or however they recognized him. He had time.
            He reached towards the bond, and it sparked to life in his mind immediately. It was probably all the more ready because Harry hadn’t touched it much in the last few days, letting it recover from the debacle with Blaise and the confrontation with Draco.
            Now he envisioned that gleaming silver cord that was the easiest way to picture the bond when he was thinking about it only in his mind, and pulled it towards him, slowly, easily, wrapping it around him like a great snake. The image was only frightening until he remembered his ability to speak Parseltongue. He hissed to the bond, and it coiled around him, lifting its head and flicking out a forked tongue.
            Harry opened his eyes before the metaphors and the imagery could suck him too deep into his own mind. In the meantime, he did have an audience, and some of them would take a pair of closed eyes to mean that he didn’t care about the trial. He wanted to silence that particular cluster of rumors before it began.
            He glanced down at his arms, and saw the silver fire flickering into being around them. Harry smiled. That had been an effect described in some of the books, but they’d also warned him that he had to have really good control over the bond to do it.
            Which meant he cared about his vassals. Which meant this harmless fire might be able to do more than making him look impressive, or defending his vassals in a pinch if they were attacked. It would show that he was invested in this bond, that he couldn’t be easily swayed or dismissed, and that he had taken the time to learn about the bond and command it where before, he had probably appeared reluctant.
            Harry lifted his head, ignoring the murmurs spreading out from him, and fixed his eyes on the packed rows of the Wizengamot ahead of him.
            They were easily visible, since they were sitting in a gallery of seats lofted over the heads of the crowd. All of them wore robes that went a step beyond dress robes, into blistering formality. Harry swallowed a surge of discomfort. He missed Dumbledore and his robes that were a mixture of green and yellow and peacock blue and whatever else he felt like wearing at the moment. Dumbledore had been secure in his power, secure enough that he didn’t mind looking ridiculous.
            Dumbledore had also been the one responsible for making Snape kill him and making Harry almost walk to his death in the Forbidden Forest. But Harry was learning to feel more than one emotion for a person. If he could respect Snape and want him in the bond and be completely exasperated with him at the same time, and if he could want Blaise to be his vassal and also to be free, then one dead Headmaster wasn’t a problem.
            The front row of the Wizengamot was the most important one, Hermione had taught him, and Harry focused on the white-haired wizard in the middle. For whatever reason, he had very long hair, flowing almost to his waist, but his beard was trimmed short, and only came down to the top of his chest. His eyes were grey, like Draco’s, but far more distant and remote than Draco’s had ever looked.
            Well, speaking to Lucius Malfoy ought to give me some practice for that, then, Harry thought, and lifted his chin higher. He would not despair. He would get his vassals fair trials—and if they were sentenced to Azkaban, it would at least be because the Wizengamot had considered the matter justly and decided that that was the best outcome, not in an orgy of fear and hatred and vengeance rather than justice.
            “Mr. Potter.” The voice was cool and quiet, but at the same time, seemed to echo from every direction. Harry decided that was probably a trick to intimidate the criminals who normally stood in front of the Wizengamot. He kept his eyes focused on the white-haired wizard in the front row, and sure enough, he saw the subtle motion of his wand towards his throat that bounced his voice. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
            “Do you want me to begin with any particular formula?” Harry asked, and smiled directly at the man, shaking his head a little. “Or does the trial of someone accused of bonding and defending people always begin this way, and I can say anything I want, too?”
            There was a noise, sort of like the hungry mutter that Harry remembered moving through some of the corridors of Hogwarts when rumors were circulating about him being the Heir of Slytherin. It swept around the room and up and down the rows of the Wizengamot. The white-haired wizard sat bolt still, observing him, but the others were leaning forwards and whispering to each other and nodding.
            “A true Lord would never be disrespectful,” said a tall woman who looked as if she was leaning out of her seat like a vulture, above the wizard.
            Harry turned his head a little so that he could watch her without taking his eyes off the central wizard, and replied, “Would a true Wizengamot take a vote beforehand on the guilt or innocence of someone who saved the wizarding world, and already have their minds made up about what they were going to decide?”
            There was a deeper sound this time, and then a deeper silence. The white-haired wizard had raised his hand. He stood up, and a thick staff appeared next to his hand, made of twisted black wood. Harry blinked. He didn’t know if that had been there all along, concealed by the way it leaned next to the chair, or not.
            The wizard aimed the end of the staff slowly at Harry. Harry could see that there was more or less a straight line between it and his heart. He didn’t move. If the man thought he was going to impress Harry that way, he was mistaken.
            Or, well, not really mistaken, but there was a difference between being impressed and showing that he was.
            “You listened at the door,” said the wizard, and pointed the end of the staff at Auror Stone, who looked back at him as if she had this kind of thing happen every day. “Our Aurors were not doing their jobs properly.”
            Stone only shook her head. “Mr. Potter just now arrived in the Ministry and came down the lifts, sir,” she said. “He didn’t listen at the door. We were with him all the time, and he couldn’t have.”
            The words seemed to shatter on the rock that the white-haired wizard had turned himself into. “It would be beneath any true Lord to stoop to tricks like eavesdropping,” he said, and the staff swung back to Harry. “You will tell us how you know that.”
            Harry opened his eyes very wide. His mind was racing, and he felt the way he sometimes did in a Quidditch game, when he didn’t know what move he was going to make next. He only knew that it would be good. “Then you’re admitting that you took the vote, sir? That you aren’t a true Wizengamot in the sense I said?” He swept his gaze from side to side, trying to make the movement of his head as slow and terrible as the sweep of that staff. “That none of us can hope for a fair trial, because you already made up your mind about us beforehand?”
            “There is no saying that we made up our minds about you.” The white-haired wizard was doing the trick where he threw his voice again. “The vote is only a preliminary. It is not binding.”
            “But you took the vote,” Harry said, and let his eyes roam around the room disapprovingly. The crowd was watching in breathless interest, and the other members of the Wizengamot were trying to kill him with scowls. “That means that you’re not a true Wizengamot, the way I said.”
            “You listened. You are not a true Lord.”
            “Well, then we’re well-matched, aren’t we?” Harry smiled at the wizard and folded his arms, making the silver fire on his arms dance and spark and crawl up to his shoulders.
            There was a heartbeat when Harry thought some curse might boil out of that dark staff and straight at him, although he had never known a wizard who could cast spells with a staff instead of a wand. Then the wizard lowered the staff with a sound like a snort of disgust and took his seat, almost immediately assuming the posture of a statue again. The other members of the Wizengamot sighed and settled back in their chairs, too.
            “We did not come here to debate semantics,” the wizard said. Harry didn’t point out that he had started it, even though he badly wanted to. “We came here to decide if you are guilty or innocent.”
            “And my vassals,” Harry said. He knew he was pushing it, but he wanted everything out in the open, honest, where the Wizengamot wouldn’t have any maneuvering room with the little secrets and tricks they liked to pull out of their arses. It was why he had gone ahead and mentioned the information Skeeter gave him about the vote. A gamble, but it paid off; it didn’t look as though anyone in here knew about Skeeter’s Animagus form. “I know that my vassals who are Marked Death Eaters are to be tried for their crimes while they carried the Mark. Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Malfoy are to be tried for helping the Dark Lord in general. The vassals of mine who don’t have the Dark Mark are going to face trials for other crimes they may have committed that weren’t linked to the Dark Lord but to pressure from Death Eaters.” It couldn’t do any harm to plant that idea now. “I’m…” He tilted his head back and surveyed the ceiling for a second, frowning hard, then looked back at the Wizengamot. “What exactly am I going to be tried for, again? Saving the world? Trying to get other people treated fairly instead of just tossed in Azkaban and never mentioned again? I’d like to know.”
            There were people chuckling in the audience now, although most of them shut up when the white-haired wizard glared impartially around the room. He turned back to Harry finally, and even though he must have seen that the trick with throwing his voice didn’t work now, he tried it again. “You are to be tried for bonding vassals without their free choice.”
            Harry nodded. “Right, right. So you’re going to bring in experts on accidental bonds and show how it could have been consensual?”
            “This bond is not accidental.”
            That’s the tack they’re taking? Shit, what idiots. Harry grinned a little. He didn’t know if it was the help of the bond that was letting him see through so many of the Wizengamot members’ arguments, or if it was just their idiocy in general. “Then you can call witnesses that were there and will agree that it wasn’t accidental?”
            “Better. We can call magical theory experts.”
            Harry had the distinct impression that he was supposed to fall down and cower at those words, but sometimes there were advantages to being an uneducated ignoramus about magical theory, as Hermione had hinted he was the other day. He nodded. “Of course. I’m sure they’ll be more convincing than a Great Hall full of eyewitnesses to the formation of the bond.”
            The white-haired wizard didn’t stir, but the vulture woman behind him did, leaning forwards and bringing her hands down on the arms of her chair with a ringing sound that Harry thought was supposed to impress him, although he actually wasn’t very impressed. It sounded like Aunt Petunia trying to swat a fly. “You impertinent child. You were not raised in the wizarding world. What do you know about the mechanics of bonds?”
            “Enough to know that there are sometimes accidental ones,” Harry said, smiling up at her. “And unless you’re going to argue that a Shield Charm has ever blocked an obedience curse before and resulted in this kind of bond, then it seems that has to be accidental, because no one would know what it was supposed to look like and be able to create it. Especially someone who, as you point out, wasn’t raised in the wizarding world.” He paused, then added, “Ma’am.”
            The witch leaned back in her chair with a disgusted snort. Harry looked around, seeing the rigid expression on Auror Stone’s face and feeling little spikes of emotion from the bond. His vassals probably felt that he was taking inappropriate risks with their safety. Auror Stone probably felt that he wasn’t acting like the compliant prisoner he had promised her he would try to play.
            But he could see the smile of fierce pride on Hermione’s face, and Ron—someone who had been raised in the wizarding world, and had proved that he knew a little about bonds—was nodding at him.
            Fortified by the approval of his best friends, Harry faced the Wizengamot again.
*
            Does he have the slightest idea what he’s doing?
            Draco didn’t think he did. He could see his parents, and they were clasping hands, and his father’s knuckles were entirely white. Which meant that he didn’t think Potter had the slightest idea what he was doing, either.
            But when Draco looked back at that almost calm, almost relaxed figure with the silver fire flickering around his arms, he felt a strange swell of pride and satisfaction. Maybe it was just the slavish devotion a vassal was supposed to have for a Lord, the kind of thing that his father was starting to hint the bond had imposed on him when it made him stop disagreeing with Potter.
            It could be something else, though. Draco tried to remember the last time that someone other than his parents had fought for him. Well, Professor Snape had tried to prevent him from killing Dumbledore and then keep him safe during the year after, but that was different. Professor Snape had been compelled by an Unbreakable Vow. Mother had told him what she’d required the professor to do, and Draco was almost sure that another vow came into it somewhere.
            I suppose I could say that the bond is the only reason that Potter’s doing this, too.
            But it felt different than that. Potter didn’t have to meditate that hard on the bond just to fight for them. He didn’t have to call up silver fire or retort to the Wizengamot members like that. He could have just asked Professor Snape, and Draco, and Pansy, and maybe Greg, to help him come up with a defense.
            He didn’t have to let Blaise go.
            For now, Draco decided, he was going to think that Potter was fighting for them. Not just to avoid Azkaban or being responsible for a bunch of people who were in Azkaban. After all, none of them were there yet.
            He was fighting for himself, too, but he included Draco in his group of people important enough to struggle for.
            Draco watched him, eye and ear attuned to every movement, and something small and warm beginning to flourish in him.
*
            Potter’s doing better than I thought he would.
            The thought had barely crossed Pansy’s mind when Potter lifted his head and added, “Are you going to call your magical theory expert witnesses now? Or not? I think we should get on with proving that the bond is accidental.”
            “We will.”
            Pansy rubbed her ear. The way that the speaker’s voice boomed everywhere around the room made her head hurt, and she supposed that he probably wouldn’t stop doing it just because she asked him to, either.
            Almost instantly, the speaker’s staff pointed at her. Pansy stared down it, and shivered. The bands of silver on the staff made it look like an illustration in one of her father’s books. That illustration depicted a staff that could fry someone’s soul simply by pointing at them.
            “I will give you one moment to take your hand away from your face and state your plot,” said the white-haired wizard.
            Pansy swallowed. She knew what they were doing, of course. Potter was proving too strong a target for them to attack, especially since most of the people in the background were starting to sound like they were in sympathy with him. So they switched to someone that most of the spectators had no particular reason to love, and hoped it would be enough.
            From the silence and the way they stared, the members of the Wizengamot expected an answer right away. Pansy folded her hands in front of her, and decided that the vassal could do worse than imitate her Lord when the Wizengamot was behaving this ridiculously. “My plot was to make my ear stop itching, sir.”
            “Lies,” said the white-haired wizard, and really, how addicted was he to the spell that threw his voice around? Pansy’s father had once told her that some spells that weren’t Dark Arts could be just as addictive, if the wizard didn’t cast them in the right way. “We know that you were doing something more than that.”
            “How, sir?” Pansy asked helplessly. She didn’t know what else to do. Yes, she wanted to go into politics, but it was the kind of politics where she would have time to lay her plans and build allies. She didn’t think that a sudden trial in front of the Wizengamot was an exam that she could be expected to pass on the first try.
            But Potter was looking encouragement at her, radiating it, really, and Pansy straightened up and asked, “How do you know, sir? Did I have something in my thoughts that told you I was plotting some sort of evil?”
            “Legilimency is forbidden by the Ministry,” said the white-haired wizard.
            Pansy didn’t believe that for one red-hot second, but she didn’t think now was the right time to say so. She had already gone so far, and Potter was probably the only one who could get away with going further. She lowered her eyes, and nodded meekly. “Yes, sir. I was just wondering how else you could know.”
            “Slytherins always plot evil.”
            That made some of the people in the audience and the Wizengamot hiss. Pansy, her mind spinning, knew the reason for that, and for what the white-haired wizard had said. He was trying to play on the anti-Slytherin prejudices that a lot of people who had gone through the war would have. Even if they had seen some of the Slytherins being tortured or suffering, they would still think that they had got a better deal than people who died.
            But on the other hand, the Wizengamot itself was full of former Slytherins. Precisely because they were the sort who tended to go into politics. Not all of them were like Mr. Malfoy, preferring to keep their power plays behind the scenes and control other people discreetly.
            So Pansy just nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” and looked at Potter. Potter took over in a second, his silver fire flashing and coiling around his arms. Pansy wondered if he could teach how her to do that, as long as she remained under the bond. It would be an impressive effect to have in the future, if she ran for office, and might make her look prettier.
            That was when she realized what she was thinking. She would survive and walk away from Azkaban, and she would remain under the bond.
            She swallowed, and then smiled.
*
            Harry smiled at the white-haired wizard, feeling very nasty inside. He’d just done something stupid. The wizard, not him. The speaker of the Wizengamot.
            Why are so many people stupider than me?
            Harry shrugged a little. Maybe the bond was helping him. Maybe it was what Hermione had said long ago, about the greatest of wizards not having much logic. Or maybe they just tended to underestimate Harry, because he was young and because he was supposed be the gentle savior who sacrificed his life to save the world and didn’t live to trouble them afterwards.
            You’d think the Heir of Slytherin nonsense would have cured them of the notion that I’ll always do what they want.
            “If Slytherins always plot evil,” he said, “what about me? I’m a Gryffindor. What do we plot? Sir.” He wanted to appear respectful on the surface, just in case they tried to throw him out of the courtroom and try his vassals without him. He didn’t think they would, though. It was simply too tempting for them to accuse him along with all the others.
            The white-haired wizard watched him with frozen eyes. They probably would have made Harry shut up when he was in his fourth year and still convinced that some of the adults in the wizarding world knew best.
            But not in his fifth year, when his anger was exploding, and not in his sixth year, when he had learned exactly how much the war could cost, and not in his seventh year, when it seemed like no one else was doing anything.
            “The answer to that is simple,” said the white-haired wizard at last, when it seemed that the silence had gone on long enough to wear grooves in the floor. “You have been taken in by Slytherins. Used by them. I said the bond was deliberate, Mr. Potter. That does not mean that you were the one to cause it. I believe that the Slytherins caused it, that they wanted your political protection, the protection your name could give them, from the trials that they knew would happen once the war was over and they no longer had Albus Dumbledore interfering for them.”
            Another stir from the audience. For all Harry knew, that was the kind of story that the vast majority of the crowd would like to believe. Something that made him misguided, instead of evil.
            Too bad that Harry wasn’t interested in having them believe it.
            “Will you explain how they could cast it when You-Know-Who was casting a spell at the same time and no one else except me and Dumbledore had ever managed to stand up to him?” Harry asked in an interested tone. “Because it was Voldemort’s spell that I stood up to, you know.” Yes, there was the flinch, running like a wave through the Wizengamot. “I’d be interested in seeing what your magical theory experts have to say about that.”
            The white-haired wizard turned to face the far door of the courtroom, opposite the one that Harry and his vassals had entered by, and it opened. A hooded figure stepped in, but Harry knew her from her movements.
            “Healer Kislik,” he said. “You do have a varied career.”
*
Kain: Well, Harry’s flying from moment to moment right now. It’s about the only thing he can do with the Wizengamot so determined to ambush him.
…Let’s just hope that applies to the bond with Greg, too.
polka dot: I never got the impression that the Wizengamot were too concerned with legal procedure in high-profile cases like Sirius’s or the way that Harry was tried before his fifth year. They’re rushing this one through, in any case, before it gets tried in the court of public opinion.
moodysavage: I am trying here, but sometimes they just refuse to be longer!
BAFan: Yeah, what Snape did is going to have consequences.
SP777: Thanks! I think Greg is an interesting character to write.
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The Only True Lords