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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
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Chapter Forty-Three—Harry Potter
            “Do you think they’ll only try me on the charges of enslaving people with an accidental bond that you were talking about?” Harry asked, trying to adjust the collar of his robe around his neck so it was more comfortable. “Or on the original charges of using Unforgivables? That was something I confessed to.”
            “What they told me all concerned the charges that came with the bond.” Changes swept dust off the sleeve of her own robe and gave him a critical glance, then nodded. “You’ll do, I think. Except…” She moved forwards and began to adjust his hair. Harry rolled his eyes, but let her. She would find out soon enough that it never did what anyone told it.
            “And you’re taking advice and instruction from the Wizengamot,” he said.
            Changes glanced at him sideways. “If you have a better idea, I would be happy to hear it. There’s no way to anticipate all the charges they’ll bring up, and I am a barrister appointed by the Wizengamot.”
            Harry winced a little and smiled at her. “Sorry. I know—I know that you’re doing the best you can for us, better than I thought someone who worked for the Wizengamot would.”

            Changes plucked at her own robe collar. “Someone who didn’t do the best they could for anyone they were assigned to would be unethical.” She glanced over Harry’s head and lowered her voice. “Do you think the vassal you freed from the bond is going to testify against you?”
            Harry wished there was a mirror on the wall ahead of him, so that he could look into it and see Blaise that way without having to turn his head and make it obvious that he was looking. “Why? Does he seem sulky?”
            “Sullen, rather,” Changes said. “But I wondered if he resented the release because it meant that he would have less protection than the rest and lose the prestige that comes with being your vassal.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “He wanted to be free. He kept insisting that it was enslavement and that I was wrong and horrible for not considering his will in the bargain. He tried to kill me more than once.”
            “So you have your own Freedom Fighter at your back.” Changes gave another glance at Blaise. Harry hoped that he wouldn’t pick up on it. “Be sure that you do not have a dagger poised at your back, instead.”
            Harry shrugged. “I freed him once I had the power because it was what he wanted. None of the others have asked me yet.” He held back from turning to Severus. He still didn’t know what Severus had done to the bond from his own side, and it was useless asking in front of Changes. He would only grow all the more defensive. And it was still true that Severus hadn’t asked him. Until he did, Harry would keep him in the bond and fight for him.
            Changes glanced somberly at him. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re more ethical than you need to be.”
            “Is that even possible?” Harry grimaced when his little joke didn’t change the expression on her face. “Listen. I did what seemed best at the time. I couldn’t anticipate everything. You just said that.”
            After a few seconds in which Harry thought Changes would argue with him, she smoothed out her lips and nodded. “Yes. You’re right. In the meantime, come on.” The doors of the courtroom were opening.
            Harry lined up behind Changes, and felt his other vassals fall into line behind him. Ron and Hermione had gone off wherever witnesses were supposed to assemble, and the Malfoys and Blaise were still with him, under Auror guard. Harry reckoned that was just because the Wizengamot hadn’t yet got around to ordering a different disposition for them.
            The moment of truth, he told himself as they walked back into the courtroom under the disapproving and bored and blank gazes of the Wizengamot. Or the beginning of the moment of truth, at least.
*
            Draco tried to remember what he had heard about Wizengamot trials in the past, specifically the ones that his father had had in front of them, and if they had all involved the Wizengamot members looking this grim. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. His mind was blank.
            Somehow, he had thought he would be calm until his own trial actually came. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would try Potter first, and that meant he might be doomed before he started. If they wouldn’t decide that Potter, who had saved so much of the wizarding world, was innocent, what would they say about the rest of them?
            Draco swallowed, and did his best to maintain his gaze straight ahead. Looking around and flinching would be the worst thing he could do right now. That might make someone think Potter was guilty, and Draco was worried about them finding out.
            Even though he was worried, he had to keep as calm as he could.
            He felt a small tingle from the shield mark on his arm. He didn’t move his hand to cover it, since that would probably look suspicious, too, but at least it was something, a cool sensation and far more soothing than he had expected, like the touch of water on feverish flesh. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and managed to sit down in the chair provided for him without wavering. At least they weren’t going to make them stand all through Potter’s trial.
            Potter himself was talking with Changes in a low voice that meant Draco couldn’t hear his words. Draco did his best not to fix a desperate gaze on him. That wouldn’t help with making the Wizengamot think they were innocent, either.
            Maybe nothing will.
            Again the bond tingled, and Draco settled back with his hands folded. If the best thing he could do right now—the only thing he could do to help Potter in his trial—was to remain still, then he would try to do that. He didn’t dart glances around. He didn’t stare at the back of Potter’s head as if it was only his hope of salvation.
            But sweet Merlin, it was hard not to.
*
            Does the foolish child still think this will be easy?
            As far as Severus could see, Potter was sitting there with an expression on his face that suggested he did think that. He watched the barrister as she rose to her feet and began to speak, but he betrayed no confusion or fear.
            Severus listened, but he could not feel those emotions through the bond, either. He could have hissed in irritation. The one time such information about the bloody boy’s state of mind, conveyed straight to his, would have been useful, and he couldn’t take advantage of it.
            But he had been the one who chose to blunt the bond. Because he could not keep tabs on Potter’s state of mind, he raised himself out of his lack and focused on what he did have, by listening to the barrister.
            From what little he knew of legal procedure, Changes spoke well. He had missed her introduction to the problem, but she was sharing the meat now, which was more interesting in any case, and prowling back and forth in short, controlled bursts, her eyes on the Wizengamot members. Severus watched in vague interest as she raised her hands.
            “…and Harry Potter is not an ordinary wizard. It would be folly to treat him as one, and not because he is a Lord.” Changes met pair of eyes after pair of eyes, although as far as Severus could tell, she didn’t look at Jenkyns, the wizard who had been so important to the previous farce of a trial. “You know that he defeated You-Know-Who. You know that he walked willingly into the Forbidden Forest and faced him. Later you will hear, if we are permitted to bring her in, from a witness who lied to save his life. He would have been dead without that. He risked death and worse to bring a Dark wizard down. And he intervened to defend victims who had never been friends of his, but were nevertheless innocent victims of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and found himself Lord of them for his trouble.” She glanced briefly back at Severus.
            Severus hoped that his eyes were sufficiently forbidding. He had no interest in serving as a test case or whatever she meant to make him. If she wanted him to testify about his dislike of Potter, then he would. If she wanted him to utter empty praise of his Lord, he would. Whatever would win Potter’s freedom, and, in time, his own.
            Changes turned back to the Wizengamot after a staring contest that Severus thought she had ended because she knew she would lose otherwise. “If you want justice to apply, however, you must treat him as an ordinary wizard in one way at least. Listen to the evidence of his guilt. Listen to the evidence that could excuse him. Listen to the witnesses. Consider, fairly, the words he will speak himself, to try and clear his name.” Severus saw her head twitch a little, as if she was going to spear a look at Jenkyns, but she refrained. “What he did for our world demands nothing less.”
            There was a murmuring undertone of voices then, but it died when Changes glanced in its direction. Changes nodded and turned to the center of the Wizengamot again. Ollondors was there, looking as if she wished her eyes could twinkle like Dumbledore’s.
            “Lord Potter has informed me that he allowed himself to be brought here on charges of using Unforgivables. He also, of course, is under the charge of deliberately forming a bond, rather than accidentally, and taking several unwilling captives vassal. Are there any other charges that we should be aware of?”
            Severus realized that he was holding his breath, and released it with a sharp huff of annoyance. He made sure the huff was silent. The annoyance was for himself, not for anyone else to notice. He would not let this moment seem dramatic to him, whether it concerned his fate or not. There was nothing that he could do to influence the course of events right now. Responding to them with more than calmness was weak.
            Potter leaned forwards in his seat. Severus could barely see the side of his face from here, and he had the impression that Potter’s sharp green eyes were scanning the seats in front of him. He grimaced. The more fool Potter, if he thought that being looked at from Lily’s eyes was likely to influence anyone to do anything. Severus was the only one in the world who might feel that influence, and Potter had lost his chance with him.
            “Honored Wizengamot?” Changes’s words rang now like blows from a hammer. “Would you let me know what you are thinking, and what charges will be pressed against Lord Potter?”
            Ollondors rose to her feet. “The charges you have mentioned,” she said, hands clasped to her chest in what looked like an attitude of prayer, the same one she had worn the last time the balance of power in the Wizengamot changed so dramatically. “And nothing else.” She sat down and beamed at everyone impartially.
            Severus did not close his eyes. But it was hard.
*
            Good.
            Harry smiled at Changes as she glanced back at him, and she gave him a subtle nod. That meant they were going ahead with the strategy they had prepared for this eventuality, and it meant that she was that much more confident of success.
            Changes picked up one of the sheaves of parchment from the small table beside her, and looked through it as if trying to absorb a lot of information at once. Harry knew that the precedents and rules were mostly in her head, and this was more or less a prop for her.
            “We will begin with the charges of the Unforgivables, then,” said Changes, in a voice so calm that one might think she was setting the whole tenor of the court. Well, maybe she was, Harry decided. The Wizengamot hadn’t given her much guidance so far. “Most recently, Lord Potter used the Cruciatus Curse against a Death Eater, Amycus Carrow. His stated reason for doing this was that Carrow had spat in Professor McGonagall’s face.” The Wizengamot made a number of small noises, and then was quiet again. Harry thought it might just be the noises from people who hadn’t heard the charge before. “Is there any witness the Wizengamot wishes to call who can confirm this?”
            She looked blandly around the courtroom. Things were quiet for long enough that Harry wondered what the Wizengamot was playing at. He couldn’t believe they would actually sacrifice the chance to have him tried and convicted of something.
            Finally, someone near the back of the room stood up. She was a woman Harry didn’t know, with a beak-like nose that reminded him of Severus’s and stringy blond hair. She bobbed her head at Harry as though she was going to peck him. “Is that a good enough reason to torture someone?” she asked, and sat down.
            Ollondors, who appeared to have taken Harry’s defense to heart, turned around and smiled at the woman. “I’m sure that your relatives tortured people for much less reason than that, Atropos. Are you really going to start asking us to think about motives and whether people got what they deserved?”
            The woman flushed to the roots of her hair. Harry blinked. He supposed she was a Carrow relative. She just looked away, though, and Changes cleared her throat and repeated, “Can anyone who witnessed this act say anything about it?”
            Harry looked around. No one was going to take up the challenge, he supposed. Well, his friends wouldn’t want to in case they accidentally condemned him, and his vassals hadn’t been there. He stood up.
            Changes glanced back once at him. They had argued about this one. Harry had wanted to speak, she hadn’t wanted him to, and they had agreed to wait and see what other witnesses would come forward. But no one had, so Harry moved smoothly up to stand beside Changes, gazing at the Wizengamot and waiting for them to ask questions.
            “There wasn’t a good reason to torture him,” he said, into their continuing silence. “He spat into Professor McGonagall’s face, and I just reacted. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have done something that would stop him without torturing him.”
            He might have turned and gone back to his chair, but he knew that the Wizengamot would ask him more questions than that. So he stayed standing up obediently, and Changes shot him a quick, assessing glance and a little nod.
            “Then why should we be merciful to you?” Jenkyns was trying to regain control of the Wizengamot the way he’d had it earlier, Harry thought. He had his hand on his staff, but luckily he wasn’t waving it around. Harry would have jumped in between him and Pansy if he’d done that. “If you did it for no noble or heroic reason, just as an emotional reaction, why should we praise you?” He puffed out his chest and looked around as though he was waiting for applause.
            “I thought that the problem was using the Unforgivable Curses at all,” Harry said. “Not whether you used them for a good or noble reason.”
            Jenkyns half-jerked in his seat. “Of course it is,” he said, but he had been caught out, and looked all the more foolish for it.
            “I think that we should discuss this,” Ollondors said. She hadn’t risen to her feet again. She didn’t need to bother, Harry thought, looking at her. She could just sit there and radiate glee and it would be enough. Most of the Wizengamot would probably side with her instead of Jenkyns anyway. “Yes, we most certainly should. Are we here to condemn Harry Potter for his use of the Unforgivables and other crimes? Or are we here to condemn him for not using them for the right reason?” She paused delicately. “The reasons that some people in this room may have used them?”
            Wizengamot members looked sneaky and shifty and as if they wished they could melt into the walls. Harry nodded. “People used them because they were being threatened,” he said. “Right?”
            “Yes,” said Ollondors. “Most of us survived You-Know-Who’s regime. Most people suspected that the Minister was under Imperius. But we weren’t. We went ahead and used them. Are we going to deny that?”
            “But,” said the Carrow woman who had objected before, “we used them because we would be tortured if we didn’t. Mr. Potter wasn’t under threat of torture!” She stuck her arm out and pointed to him. “He’s already admitted that. So the reasons that applied to us don’t apply to him. And you can’t just punish the whole Ministry!”
            “If the Unforgivables are a crime always meriting punishment in Azkaban,” Changes murmured, right on cue, “then you can. Half the Ministry was punished in 1849 when someone cast the Imperius Curse on them and they began using the Killing Curse on magical beings in response. They weren’t executed because of the mitigating circumstances, but they were still sent to Azkaban.”
            “For how long?” asked Ollondors, as serious as a judge. Well, Harry supposed that she was, in this case.
            “For six months,” said Changes. “Perhaps the honored Wizengamot would consider a longer sentence now, since there are no longer Dementors at the prison.”
            Ollondors glanced up and down as though to say that she couldn’t speak for anyone else, but she definitely would. Harry held back his snort. He knew this was all a game. Ollondors had chosen to be on his side. She would want to win, but she wouldn’t want to send herself to Azkaban. It made Harry wonder if most of politics was a game.
            Maybe it was, but it was one that he had no desire to win. He would be happy if his trial could be over soon and he could know what his punishment was, so that he could retire to house arrest or pay a fine, or for that matter, go to prison. The Wizengamot could have a lot of things from him.
            But not my friends, and not my vassals.
            The Carrow woman in the back cleared her throat again. “I don’t see the point of pressing charges against the Ministry when we would have to arrest so many people, and the Aurors are already short-handed,” she said. “It sounds like the precedent Madam Changes is talking about was a rather closely-defined case. This would require months of work to find out who we should accuse.”
            And Merlin forbid that you take your time with the trials instead of holding them all at once, Harry thought. He didn’t want a long trial, but he knew there was an argument to be made that the Wizengamot should have waited until they could investigate things and figure out exactly what they were charging him with.
            He would make them take more care with his vassals. He had his own reputation to protect him, but his vassals didn’t have much, unless he acted like a real Lord and fought for them.
            “I expect that we will have to look into many circumstances,” Changes agreed. “But we also have to look into use of the Imperius Curse by Lord Potter.” She turned to him and stood there as if they had planned all this out and she knew exactly what he would say next.
            “I used it several times when we were breaking into Gringotts,” said Harry. He ignored the little murmur that made its way around the Wizengamot. Sure, he had to be political, but he wasn’t going to waste valuable brainpower figuring out whether that was a murmur of astonishment or excitement. “I used it on a Death Eater and on a goblin.”
            “You do seem to have a penchant for making Death Eaters victims of your Unforgivable Curses,” Jenkyns said.
            “Yes, I do,” Harry said. “Being hunted down by people who would turn you over to Voldemort if they caught you was a big incentive.”
            Jenkyns visibly tried to control his flinch at the name, and didn’t manage. But then he tightened his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forwards, growling a little under his breath. “You admit that you have used them, and with intent, and for little reason?”
            “I just gave you the reasons,” Harry said. “You might disagree with them, but I think you have to agree that breaking into Gringotts is a whole different order of things than cursing someone because they spat in Professor McGonagall’s face.”
            Jenkyns shook his head. “The only question I have is whether we should also be charging you with theft. Why did you break into the bank?”
            Harry lowered his voice. He had already made up his mind what he would do if someone asked about Horcruxes, and the answer was to keep all knowledge of Horcruxes from the Wizengamot as much as he could. Of course he had to do that. The last thing he wanted to do was give more people ideas. “To steal a powerful weapon that Voldemort hid there.”
            “I didn’t think You-Know-Who trusted the goblins that much,” Ollondors said, breaking in as if she was just wanted her voice to be heard.
            Harry shook his head. “He hid it in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. That was why we had to curse the goblins and the Death Eaters to get that far. They never would have taken us willingly.”
            “None of that matters as to why you used the Imperius Curse,” Jenkyns said. Apparently not enough people had been paying attention to how cleverly he breathed his air, Harry diagnosed. “Using the Unforgivables is always wrong.”
            Harry nodded. “Then you’ll punish all of the people who used them in the Ministry, of course? Along with the people who used them at Hogwarts?” That would include Professor McGonagall, who had used the Imperius Curse on Amycus after Harry tortured him, but Harry wasn’t about to tell them that. They would find out soon enough.
            Jenkyns frowned harder. “The circumstances matter there.”
            “They matter or they don’t.” Harry let his voice harden. He didn’t know if he would have fought so hard for himself, when he had been the one to surrender to the Aurors in the first place, but he wasn’t about to let the Wizengamot get away with this massive hypocrisy. “You said that using them was always wrong. Why does that apply in my case but not in yours?”
            Jenkyns narrowed his eyes as if that would give him some answer. Ollondors took over then. “I don’t know if Azkaban would be a very effective punishment, without the Dementors,” she murmured, looking almost angelic. “Perhaps we should try house arrest of a different kind, Lord Potter?”
            Harry gave her a weary smile. “Yes. Or a fine. Whichever you think would be right and fair.”
            “It’s neither right nor fair!” Jenkyns said loudly. “He tortured people!”
            “And you tortured that Muggleborn witch who was supposedly in possession of a stolen wand because Yaxley ordered you to,” Ollondors snapped, turning to him. “I don’t see how you can seriously argue that this is worse.”
            Jenkyns stared at her before his eyes sank.
            Ollondors turned around to the Wizengamot. “Those in favor of a five hundred Galleon fine from Lord Potter and house arrest for a year?” she asked. “For him to go out accompanied by Aurors when he does leave the house, and those Aurors to be the ones who have already shown that they’ve done a fine job of handling him?”
            Harry held back his chuckle. He didn’t think Auror Stone would be thrilled about being assigned to him for that length of time, but, well, needs must. And he was watching hands rise all over the Wizengamot. It seemed that most people were in favor of the punishment Ollondors had proposed.
            Ollondors just nodded as if all of this was a wonderful idea, and hers personally, and turned back to Harry. “With that charge dealt with, perhaps we can move on to the formation of Lord Potter’s Lordship bond, and whether it was accidental or not.”
*
BAFan: Well, if he actually gets to put it into operation.
Kain: For right now, the Wizengamot is focusing on Harry’s vassals. They’re conveniently there.
And they’re frightened of Harry, the vast majority. If they can coop him up, like they have done here, then they think they’ll control these political ambitions they suspect him of nurturing—because they would be, in his place.
As far as I know, it’s canon that Veritaserum isn’t used all the time. For example, it wasn’t used on Sirius at all, despite the fact that they weren’t going to give him a trial anyway. And since Veritaserum can only make you state what you think is true, they might not be all that enthusiastic about using it on Harry anyway.
Yes, Pansy’s accuser will appear again.
Kafica: Yes, and that’s why he doesn’t object so hard to his punishment here. House arrest is probably going to be more peaceful than some other options.
Polka dot: We’ll see.
SP777: Sorry!
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The Only True Lords