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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 Forty-Two—Caroline Changes
            “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
            Harry smiled at the woman putting her bags and what looked like the world’s largest collection of ledgers down on the table in front of him. “That’s honest, at least,” he said. “And I would rather have an honest lawyer than one who’s anything else.”
            “What about ‘good at their job?’” The witch put her hands on her hips in a way that reminded Harry of Molly Weasley and surveyed them all for a moment. Harry was sitting at the table in the small room the Wizengamot had granted them to meet with their lawyer with Greg standing at his shoulder. Ron and Hermione stood off to the side, as near the door as they could get; Harry knew they were watching the Malfoys and the Aurors, to make sure that no one went for his back. The Malfoys, meanwhile, might have been in their own world, standing among the Auror guard and staring at the far wall. If they did talk, it was only to each other. Blaise was off to the side with his arms folded, his expression more remote than Lucius’s.
            Draco stood about halfway between his parents and Harry, glancing back and forth as though he didn’t know where his first loyalty lay. He caught Harry’s eye and flushed, turning to stare at the floor.
            Severus and Pansy were further back, near Auror Stone. Harry could confirm that much without turning his head, as he felt them through the bond. He wasn’t sure what the barrister, who had introduced herself as Caroline Changes, saw, but after a moment, she nodded and sat down at the table in front of him. She was as tall as Aunt Petunia, but a little plumper, and her dark hair and her purple robes were both held down with a severity that made Harry think she might be able to control even the Wizengamot’s outbursts.
            “Let me make one thing clear,” said Changes, catching Harry’s eye. “I defend people accused of a crime by the Wizengamot. I take my instructions through the Wizengamot and their solicitors, and I know the laws and tactics that they usually employ in cases like this.”
            Harry snorted. “There have been other cases like this?”
            “A point,” said Changes. She had a quick smile, one that flickered and then was gone, and then she clasped her hands in front of her and gave him a pointed glance. “But there have been cases dealing with Lordship bonds before, and even ones that formed accidentally or unwillingly. That is what the Wizengamot has informed me they are charging you with.”
            “So it’s like enslavement?” Harry wondered if that would mean there would be people in the audience sympathetic to the Freedom Fighters.
            Changes shrugged. “There’s no enslavement law anymore, since different contracts were negotiated with the magical creatures and the Wizengamot sees itself as having treaties with them. Or truces, sometimes, or no contact at all. The official position is that one cannot enslave a human. Life-debts and curses and Lordship bonds and the like are all seen as something different. Not treated the same way, always, mind you, because some of them form spontaneously, like life-debts, and are regulated by magic itself. And one can’t really do anything about an Unbreakable Vow formed unwillingly, since the Vow is going to punish the person who took it if they break it, regardless of what the legal authorities might have to say about it.”
            Harry could feel Severus’s breath on the back of his neck in the next instant, as though he had moved across the room until he was standing right behind Harry. Well, he could feel that and the stiffness that had invaded his limbs. Harry almost reached out a hand to touch his arm, but remembered that he hadn’t really moved and it wouldn’t do any good. He did his best to focus on Changes’s words instead.
            Hermione spoke before he could. “Then the Wizengamot doesn’t consider what it’s done to the house-elves as slavery?”
            Changes picked up a piece of paper, put it down again. “No. The ties that house-elves have to their individual families are considered spontaneous magical bonds of the kind formed by life-debts. There’s nothing that can be done to regulate them, and the Wizengamot has declared them beyond their purview.”
            “That’s just what they would say,” Hermione muttered. She turned away again to whisper to Ron. After a minute of watching her, Changes shook her head and turned back to Harry.
            “But Lordship bonds are viewed as a kind of contract that’s entered into,” said Changes. “Not as spontaneously as something like a life-debt. An unwilling Lordship bond would be the equivalent of, oh, forcing someone to surrender a precious heirloom to avoid the threat of blackmail. It puts the Lord or Lady in a position of power that they shouldn’t have. Still, it’s not the same as slavery.”
            Harry nodded. He was glad that the Freedom Fighters were viewed as outsiders and fanatics by at least some people in wizarding society, and he wasn’t the weird one for opposing them. “Okay. And they’re going to say that the bond was accidental, so there’s no way that it could have been willing?”
            “Exactly.” Changes put a hand up to her hair for a second, as though she intended to pat a strand back into place and then realized she didn’t have to. “I’m glad that you understand the nuances. So. What we had better rely on is the contention that, because it was an accident, you did not mean to put anyone under an obligation to you as a vassal. You didn’t, did you?”
            “Of course not!” Harry shook his head wildly, then calmed down a little once he realized that Changes did look as if she believed him. “I didn’t even know that Lordship bonds existed or what they did until after that.”
            Changes smiled. “In that case, your naïveté is our best defense.”
            “What about the things I’ve learned since then?” Harry hunched his shoulders a little. He thought Blaise was looking at him. “I mean, I’ve gained control of the bond since then, and I can release people from it if I want to.”
            Changes sat up. “I assume that you’ve already released one person?” She was turning her gaze from face to face, although Harry didn’t know if she realized just from looking who it was.
            Harry nodded. “If I let all of them go—”
            “Except me,” Greg said, loudly enough to make both Harry and Changes start.
            “Right,” Harry said. “I promised that you’d stay with me, and you will.” He smiled reassuringly at Greg and turned to Changes, who was staring at Greg with a flat expression. “Will the Wizengamot not prosecute me, or them, if I let them go? Is it going to be worse that I still have them with me if I can release them?”
            Changes spent a few minutes frowning, and a few more hunting through the papers in front of her. Harry waited, content to let the minutes pass by. Greg was almost breathing down his neck now, but Harry thought that could be excused. He had had that moment of fright that Harry was breaking his promise.
            The reactions of the others were more controlled: the sparks of nervousness from Draco and Pansy, and then something like a fire burning in a muffled hearth from Severus. Harry rolled his eyes. He wished he knew what the git had done to the bond from his end. Harry only knew for sure that it was nothing he himself had done. He had had to concentrate pretty hard to make the change that released Blaise. It was nothing that could have happened by accident.
            “I think that it won’t matter,” Changes said at last, looking up. “You could still be prosecuted for keeping them under control against their will, the way that someone could still be prosecuted for blackmail even if they destroyed the blackmail material later.”
            Harry sighed. “Good.” He had planned so much on the strategy of holding onto his vassals throughout the trials, at least, so they would be safe, that it would have been hard to start over with planning something else. And he didn’t—
            He didn’t want to let them go, either. He suspected that was probably the bond affecting him, altering his mind, the way that it had altered Draco’s mind to get him to stop arguing. But it had happened, and he couldn’t resent it so much now. He knew that letting Blaise go had been too hard for him to be eager to repeat the experience.
            “In the meantime,” Changes said, leaning forwards and tapping her finger on a piece of parchment she had laid in front of Harry, “my guess is that they’ll try you one by one. And you first. You’re the biggest prize they have, and the most scandalous trial.”
            “Do you think you can get me declared innocent, or acquitted, or whatever the right term is?” Harry asked, looking into her eyes. He saw they had gone flat again, the way they had when she looked at Greg, but at least she didn’t turn away.
            “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “So much is going to depend on the Wizengamot and the questions they ask. You’ve defeated at least one hostile witness, but there could be others. There’s fear of you, and of the way that you manage to get secrets leaked to the press even though you shouldn’t be able to. I don’t suppose you are going to tell me how you did that, are you?” she added, in a tone that said she didn’t expect it.
            Harry gave her a reserved smile. Skeeter’s Animagus form wasn’t his secret to let slip, at least not to someone he didn’t know.
            “Fine,” Changes said. “I’ll try as hard as I can. But I can’t guarantee it.”
            “If I go to Azkaban, do all my vassals come with me?” Harry sat up. He would free them before he let that happen. Even Greg. Greg would be able to find someone else to support him and command him more easily than he would be able to stand Azkaban.
            “What?” Changes’s face had turned pale. “Of course not! You will not—they wouldn’t dare put you in Azkaban. The price for an unwilling Lordship bond is a fine, or other restitution to the families you victimized, and releasing your vassals. Going to Azkaban was never in question.”
            “It might be,” said Ron, coming forwards a step and then stopping as if he didn’t know whether it would be good to intrude on the conversation. “When you consider it’s Harry and they want to stop him and stick him somewhere, they might dare.”
            Changes frowned harder than ever. Harry thought he could see other lines in her face where the same frown had probably made its presence known. “I do not think it will come to that. They know they would face strong public opposition if that happened.” She paused and seemed to evaluate what she had just said. “They must know it,” she repeated, more uneasily.
            Ron shook his head. “They dared to give Harry that first farce of a trial despite everything. They might get desperate.”
            “The Wizengamot is slow and ponderous, not desperate.” Changes straightened her back. “We will use that fact against it.”
            “Then you’ve come up with a tactic to use, other than just the fact that I didn’t know what Lordship bonds were?” Harry bit his lip when he heard the rising note of hope in his voice. He probably sounded childish. And while that might help him in front of the Wizengamot, he didn’t want to sound like it here.
            Changes looked him dead in the eye. “I have, if you agree.”
            “Explain it to me,” Harry said, and leaned forwards. He could sense Hermione doing the same, and Ron, and Pansy and Greg, and even Lucius Malfoy.
            Severus continued to simmer sullenly to himself, and Draco was watching everything with wide, anxious eyes. Well, Harry thought, as he pushed the awareness of them to the back of his mind, he was doing the best he could to preserve their lives and freedom; he would just have to face the less immediate challenges later.
*
            Draco wondered why his stomach should have dropped when Harry talked about releasing him.
            It was the best thing, he knew. If not right now, because they had the trials to get through, eventually. Of course he wanted to be free. Someday he would have to be the Malfoy, and get married, and otherwise do everything he could to carry on his family’s tradition and bloodline. How could he do that if he was bound as vassal to a Lord?
            It wasn’t so much the vassalage itself. His father had been bound to the Dark Lord, after all, if not in the exact same way. But the problem was, this kind of formal Lordship bond was usually undertaken by weak wizards who needed formal protection, and Draco couldn’t have that kind of reputation if he expected people to look up to him.
            Do I want that kind of life?
            Draco caught and held his breath. Then he shook his head. He was aware that Granger was looking at him, but he decided to disregard that. She couldn’t read his thoughts and emotions the way Harry could through the bond.
            Yes, he wanted that kind of life. A Malfoy either had it or had nothing at all. Maybe Draco didn’t like politics and intrigue that much, maybe he wished his ancestors had made a different choice, but the fact was, they hadn’t. And Draco had to do it to safeguard his money and his children and pass on the tradition. Political favors and bribes and like were how the Malfoys had grown their fortune in the first place.
            Except…
            Except.
            Draco swallowed. There were times that he thought he wanted something else.
            Something that had nothing to do with the Ministry or politics or the chance that he might go to Azkaban, the way his father had, the way his father had been threatened with in the first war, the way his mother might be threatened. Something that had nothing to do with the shadows, and everything to do with the sunlight.
            Draco had cast enough Dark Arts during the war to last him a lifetime. If anyone asked if he could do that, sure he could. But he was tired of it. And he was sick of torture, and fear, and suffering. He wanted to be free because he would have no options in Azkaban, but he didn’t want the kind of freedom that Lucius had said he would prefer. He wouldn’t do with it what he knew his father would do with it.
            That means nothing now. You don’t even know if you’re going to survive the trial. You might as well wait and see if you’re getting the Dementor’s Kiss or Azkaban or house arrest or what.
            Draco roughly shoved the thoughts away, and focused back on Harry and Changes. And if he hoped that he could stay with Harry, well, he didn’t really want to think about that, either. The recoil from torture, he thought, was all him. The desire to stay with Harry was more likely to be the bond.
            Maybe he was thinking about that right now because he couldn’t influence his immediate fate one way or the other, so he was thinking about something he could. But either way, he needed to pay attention to what was right in front of him, and understand the tactics. Maybe he could advise Harry if he did something stupid, that way.
*
            “I plan to show the court that you formed the bond out of a protective instinct, but that it was pure luck that it manifested as a bond. It could and should have been a Shield Charm, the way you planned on.”
            Blaise shivered and stared at the floor. Then he decided that wasn’t enough, and shut his eyes and gagged. Potter didn’t notice. Of course he didn’t, since he didn’t have the parasitic connection to Blaise’s soul and mind that he’d had in the past.
            How could anyone doubt that Potter had formed the bond on purpose? Sure, maybe he hadn’t known what would happen. Blaise was willing to believe that in the same way he was willing to believe that his grandfather hadn’t meant to be such a good Lord that he neglected to be a good father.
            Can you hear me, Mother? Can you feel me coming back to you?
            But Potter had to have an instinctive desire for power and control, or the bond would never have manifested at all. Potter wanted to be a leader. Hadn’t he had lots of special training for that? Hadn’t he led the war effort, if only from a distance? Hadn’t he led the Gryffindors and the ridiculous Defense Association that Blaise had heard rumors about and even the Gryffindor Quidditch team?
            No, Potter had the same corrupt desire that Blaise’s mother had told him about and told him to avoid: the desire to enslave someone else’s free will and feed on their strength, until he made the strong weak.
            Maybe she would accept me back if I told her that, told her I understand now. I’m not naturally weak. Potter made me weak.
            “The Wizengamot might still order you to release the other people in the bond,” the lawyer continued quietly to Potter. “But they can’t do much more than that, if they accept and believe in the defense. It would be like punishing a child for accidental magic.”
            Blaise’s eyes popped open before he could stop them. Luckily, the lawyer didn’t appear to notice.
            But of course you can punish a child for accidental magic. They might still break or destroy something. What other recourse would you have?
            Blaise wondered what the lawyer would say if she met his mother, and then shuddered. He was glad she never would. The violence of the encounter would spill over onto Blaise himself somehow, he was certain. He would be to blame for it somehow, even though he wouldn’t know how.
            “I see.” Potter’s voice was low. “But what else are we going to use to defend me? Just that one claim can’t be enough.”
            Blaise nodded grudgingly. Potter had his moments of intelligence. Not enough, in Blaise’s opinion, but the sort that would sometimes pop up and save him and his friends an untimely death.
            “Of course I’ll be using precedent and laws that you know nothing about.” The lawyer’s voice was brisk. Blaise had the feeling that his mother would have liked her if they’d met in other situations. “But you don’t need to worry about them. They’re for me to argue and debate and come up with. I need you to be ready to tell the truth.” She paused. “And tell me the truth about the vassal you freed from the bond. Why did you do it? The knowledge that you could change the bond like that might weaken our position, and make some people think it was deliberate from the beginning.”
            Blaise sat up.
            “It wasn’t,” Potter said. His voice was still irritating to listen to, but at least his contempt no longer stung Blaise’s skin when he expressed it.
            “I know that,” said the lawyer, although Blaise wondered if the soothing tone of her voice concealed her disbelief. “I’m talking about the impression you might convey to the public, which includes the Wizengamot in this case. Not the reality. My impression was that your public hadn’t always been adoring.”
            “You’ve got that right.”
            Blaise blinked. He felt as though someone had poured a reviving trickle of cold water down his throat when he was dying of thirst.
            The lawyer and Potter went on, discussing all sorts of things that probably mattered to them, and would probably also matter to the trial, but Blaise didn’t see a reason to listen to them. He was thinking.
            The Wizengamot would look for witnesses to the bond. They would question the vassals, probably. Blaise discounted any testimony that Draco could give, or Mr. Malfoy, either. It was perfectly clear that Potter had the vassals still under the bond on a leash, and Mr. Malfoy would cooperate for fear of harm coming to Draco if he didn’t.
            But no one had the ability to control Blaise. If he was under trial for his actions during the war, then Potter couldn’t offer him any protection now, one way or the other. He could stand up in front of them and speak his mind.
            He could even lie, if he wanted to. To make Potter look worse than he was. Someone should do it, and they wouldn’t feed him Veritaserum unless he agreed to take it.
            Blaise envisioned himself standing up in front of the courtroom, his voice coming out swift and clear and unafraid, his eyes meeting the gaze of Wizengamot member after Wizengamot member. He had never been in a situation like that before, and hadn’t often pictured it, either. He didn’t have political ambitions the way Pansy did. He wanted to be of use to his mother, and he wanted to be strong. Politics required too much compromise at the lower levels. Only when you got to the higher ones could you be your own person, but you had to pass through those lower levels first.
            But if he could stand up like that, and draw attention to himself, and walk away unscathed—or better, with unfavorable attention directed to Potter, and the insult that had been his own slavery avenged…
            Wouldn’t his mother take him back? Wouldn’t she watch him in the newspaper photographs, or through the rumors of her extensive contacts, and understand that he was becoming a strong person again, someone to admire?
            He could prove that he was independent, in his own way. Capable of assisting her, if she would reverse her judgment about his weakness. Blaise hadn’t broken free of the slavery Potter held him in on his own, but he could do something that would repay Potter a thousandfold, and make sure that he never had the chance to clap like chains on Blaise in future years. If Potter remained free of Azkaban, Blaise thought he would always fear that chance, no matter how small it was.
            He had the chance. He could make his mother respect him, and the public, and Potter.
            It was worth it.
*
delia cerrano: As far as Snape’s concerned, he’s helped everyone as much as he can right now.
slmncpm: Sorry, but Ron is an important character. No Ginny, though.
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The Only True Lords