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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-Nine—Pansy Parkinson
            “Are you ready?”
            Pansy had been trying to calm her bubbling anxiety, but she directed it now into a withering glance in Potter’s direction. “What the fuck do you think?” she hissed, low enough that she didn’t think Changes would hear them. “What the fuck do you think? I would rather have this trial over with, of course.”
            Potter just grinned at her. Yesterday, when he had finally come downstairs from his decadent lie-in, Pansy had thought he was going to be anxious himself, and making her anxiety worse by the way he reacted, but instead, he had boiling over with helpfulness and cheerfulness, and some ideas that might actually make the trial easier.
            “Of course you would,” Potter said, and touched her right arm, above the shield mark. “But that doesn’t actually have much to do with whether you’re ready.”
            “I hate you,” Pansy said, and hit his hand away.
            She felt a stir behind her, and turned around, ready with a glare for Greg. He ought to know that she wouldn’t really hurt Potter, and she had always been able to glare him into shutting up or sitting down when they were students at Hogwarts.
            Instead, she met Professor Snape’s dark scowl. He turned from her almost at once, but Pansy had seen enough that she thought she might understand why Potter’s mood had improved so dramatically. Her eyes went from Professor Snape back to their Lord, and she nodded. Yes, Professor Snape stood closer to Potter than he had before. He had also adjusted his stance so that he looked more ready to strike if someone tried to assault Potter.
            “If you’re done analyzing us,” said Potter, his voice so warm and friendly that Pansy smiled back before she thought about it, and then wanted to hit herself, “do you think you can answer my question?”
            Pansy sniffed a little. “I assume that you don’t have any character witnesses to bring in for me, since that was the first thing you told me yesterday.”
            “Oh, we do have one,” Potter said, and instead of speaking, led her gaze to Professor Snape like the irritating little git he was.
            Pansy gave a breathless little laugh, but didn’t doubt much. It was the sort of thing that Potter would come up with—Potter, who had brought a portrait of the Headmaster Professor Snape had killed to testify for the professor himself. “What do you mean? Why would they accept his testimony? They just got done trying him.”
            “And it’s now acknowledged that he’s a war hero, who did what he did at tremendous cost and under tremendous stress, and who is only being kept under house arrest to ease the bruised sensibilities of the wizarding world,” Potter muttered.
            That startled another laugh out of Pansy. “What?” There was no way that Potter had come up with those words himself.
            “You didn’t read the Prophet this morning, did you?” Potter’s eye glinted, and Pansy shook her head back. Frankly, she hadn’t wanted to know what they were saying about her, if anything at all. “Well. You can rest assured that I understand your modesty and your desire to represent yourself well. And that I fully support you in all that you do.” He put a hand in the middle of Pansy’s back to escort her into the trial, and added softly into her ear, “I don’t think that you need much more support than the claims of two war heroes.”
            Pansy only nodded, although she didn’t think Potter would be able to give her much support himself. Everyone knew he had been far away from the school, and if he said what Pansy had told him, well, that was just what she had told him.
            They entered into what seemed to be a fuller court than before, and the first people that Pansy’s eyes fell on, of course, were the Boot family. Terry stood in front of Lewis, his brother who had cursed her in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, but both of them had stares like poison.
            “Revenge,” Terry mouthed at her as they went past.
            Pansy put her head up and felt the shield mark heat. Potter had seen them as well, she knew, and he would protect her. He had promised that she would be tried for what she had done to Terry, which she honestly didn’t even remember doing, but it had to be a fair trial. Not revenge just because someone said so.
            Maybe she would receive the same sentence that her Lord and Professor Snape had. The year of house arrest, and the restrictions on her wand.
            But seeing the glares that came her way from the Boot family, she knew they would push for more than that. Azkaban. Snapping her wand. The Kiss.
            All she could do was trust in the protection of her Lord, and the bond, and her own quick mind.
            And Professor Snape, for all the good that would do her. She couldn’t help giving him a jaundiced look over her shoulder. Why had he changed his mind to decide that he suddenly wanted to be a faithful vassal? Was he going to change it back again? Would he abandon her the moment he had another disagreement with Potter, or if her trial lasted more than one day and he got bored?
            Professor Snape’s eyes met hers, as though he had done nothing since they entered the court but wait for her to look at him. He mouthed a single word, much like the one that Terry had mouthed at her. “Blaise,” he said, and then swept off to a chair that had been set up for him on the opposite side of the court, with Potter, who squeezed Pansy’s arm once before he left her. The people who hadn’t been tried yet, including Greg and Draco, sat behind Pansy on the nearest side of the courtroom to the door.
            And Pansy thought of the way that Blaise had acted, hardly more madly than Professor Snape, and what example that behavior might hold for someone watching it from the outside—someone sane—and had to hide a smile as she, too, took her seat.
*
            Draco felt quiet.
            It was a weird quietness. It felt as though silence had moved into the middle of his chest and nested there, the way that some stranger Dark creatures had nested in corners of the Manor when they escaped from a shipment of Potions ingredients his father had received, and Draco wouldn’t get rid of it any time soon.
            Sometimes he could see Harry looking at him, and then he would turn away again. He probably felt Draco’s emotions through the bond, and wondered what they were all about. But Draco wasn’t going to confront him, not when he had so much to do with arranging Pansy’s defense, and Professor Snape’s, and battling Blaise.
            Blaise…what’s going to happen to him now that he’s not part of the bond anymore? Will he even get a trial?
            But Draco dismissed that notion with a shake of his head. Blaise had been involved in the trials from the way he spoke up, even if he had been free of the bond by then, and he had been one of Harry’s vassals for a little while. That would ensure continued interest in him, and probably Blaise would do all he could to take advantage of that interest.
            But what Draco had to be concerned with was his upcoming part in the trials, and the decisions he had to make in the privacy of his own silence.
            Whether he wanted to continue in the bond after the trials were done—assuming he was still free then and able to continue in the bond, not minus a soul or a wand or memories. Criminals sometimes got Obliviated and sent elsewhere, if their crimes were severe enough. Draco pictured himself wandering Muggle streets, and shuddered.
            How and why he was going to change himself so that he was different from his father and other Malfoys, the way he had already decided he would.
            What he was going to do about the change from Potter to Harry, the deepening of the silence he felt when he looked at his Lord, and what it all meant.
            For now, he stayed silent, and listened to Changes present her position: that Pansy had been ordered by the Carrows and others in Hogwarts to torture other students, that in fact some students who weren’t Slytherins had done the same thing to stay alive, and that trying to escape to the Room of Hidden Things wouldn’t have done any good, since none of the students there were Slytherins and the ones hiding wouldn’t have admitted her, wouldn’t have trusted her. It sounded like a good line of argument to Draco.
            Of course it does. It’s the one that I’m going to have to rely on to save my hide, too.
            Draco grimaced and shifted a little, and received an immediate look from Harry in turn. Draco settled back, more content than he could say, even if it was for ridiculous reasons. That showed that Harry was always aware of his vassals when they needed him and would try to reassure them.
            Of course, no one else in the bond except Greg would be reassured by a mere glance, but Draco was trying not to let that bother him.
            And no one else in the bond could pick up on what he was feeling, either, unless he was foolish enough to display it. Draco tilted his head back and tried to let his feelings course through him and melt away some of the silence. Unless something went badly wrong at Pansy’s trial, something that would mean they had to extend it, it would only be a day or two until Draco had to speak in his own defense. They might put Greg’s trial first, so that his trial and his parents’ would follow each other. It would make for more drama and better headlines.
            Draco had seen the looks that Ollondors sent him, if no one else had. He was sure that she disliked him, or maybe just disliked that there was a Malfoy bonded to the Boy-Who-Lived, and she would make the trials as hard as she could for his family.
            He, in the meantime, would do what he could to ride out his own feelings, and stand as ready as he could be when the moment came to defend himself.
*
            “Harry Potter.”
            When he was called as a witness, of course, the Wizengamot member who did it wasn’t going to call his title. Harry thought that at first, and then rolled his eyes as he moved towards the center of the courtroom. There was a time when he would have been bloody glad of that.
            And that time had only been a week ago. Two weeks ago? Harry found it hard to pin down the moment when his feelings towards the bond had begun to change, although having to relinquish a vassal had sure been a lot harder than he thought.
            He took his place in front of the Wizengamot, in the center of the room, which put him in front of Ollondors. Jenkyns had had to move from that center—probably because his little power games had failed—and Harry wondered if the man would manage to melt Harry’s face with his scowl from the side. Well, at least it would be only one eye that melted, if he did, Harry thought, and smiled at Ollondors.
            “Can you explain to us exactly why Miss Pansy Parkinson should not be tried for her crimes?” Ollondors’s voice was sharp and pious, and Harry caught on. No one had actually said that Pansy shouldn’t be tried for her crimes. That was just an exaggeration that people like Jenkyns would claim Harry wanted. Ollondors was giving him the chance to fight back from a strong position, one that would make him look good.
            “She absolutely should be tried,” Harry said, and sure enough, a surprised little ripple ran through some of the people in the room, including the Boots. Idiots. “I just think the trial should be fair, the way it was for me and Professor Severus Snape.”
            Ollondors stared at him as if surprised that he would call those trials fair, but Harry looked back with an impassive face. He didn’t think that he would be able to maintain it if they threatened Pansy too badly, but he would try as long as he could. Pansy didn’t deserve to be humiliated, threatened, or blackmailed.
            Ollondors finally cleared her throat and said, “But you had good motives for your actions.”
            “Even when it came to the way I cursed and impersonated Death Eaters?” Harry smiled and shook his head when Ollondors frowned. His trial was over now. They could enforce the punishment he had earned, but they couldn’t go back and say they had made a mistake because he had mentioned one of the crimes he was tried for casually. “Pansy might not have had the best motives, either. But she was trying to survive. If she had refused a direct order from the Carrows to curse someone, then she would probably have been killed. And then we wouldn’t be here today, but that doesn’t mean that anyone in the Boot family would have escaped being cursed.”
            “Trying to survive isn’t enough!” howled Terry, down the courtroom. “She should have stood up to them!”
            Harry turned around, and let his eyes go cold. He had really hoped that he wouldn’t have to do this, but on the other hand, he had realized from the beginning that that was most likely a forlorn hope. “And did you?”
            “What?” Terry shook his head as though someone had stuffed his ears with wax.
            “Did you stand up to them?” Harry asked, calmly, politely. “Did they ask you to do something, to curse another student, to lick their boots, to call Muggleborns Mudbloods? Did you resist it? Or not?”
            Terry fell back a step. Really, that was as good as an answer; Harry could hear the murmur that traveled around the room like wildfire. But he kept on staring at Terry, who had his fists clenched.
            “I never rejoiced in it,” Terry said. “Because I’m not a Slytherin. I’m not like her.” He flung one hand at Pansy as though he was trying to push her off a cliff.
            Pansy kept her face still. Harry was sure that he was the only one who realized how close she was hovering to the edge of anger and fear, and he could only know that because the bond was shooting rapid little arrows of those feelings up his shield mark.
            “Fine,” Harry said. “You’re not a Slytherin. But how can you know what she felt? How do you know that every single time she did something, it was because she loved torture and wasn’t simply trying to survive?”
            “That’s not a pure enough motive, I said,” Terry said, and his voice went straight back to the howl, while his brother looked around him. “She didn’t have the right—”
            “I am the one conducting this trial,” said Ollondors, in a freezing voice that made Terry shut up immediately. Harry wasn’t sure if it would have made him shut up in the same way, but he was just as glad not to test it. “I will ask the questions.” She turned back to Harry. “You are sure that she did it because she was trying to survive?”
            “Why don’t you ask her?” Harry tilted his head towards Pansy. She had spoken in her own defense, but not much, mostly only in response for a few direct questions.
            Pansy gaped at him, or it felt like she did, but by the time Harry glanced at her, along with Ollondors, she had smoothed her face out.
            Ollondors nodded. “I think I will. Well, Miss Parkinson. Did you curse young Mr. Boot, and other students, out of sheer love of torture?”
            It took Pansy longer than Harry would have thought it would to clear her throat and begin to speak, but she sounded calm and clear and normal when she managed it. “No. I did not. I did it because I was being ordered to, and I’d seen what the Carrows did to people who didn’t obey their orders.”
            “What did they do?” Ollondors sounded as if she really wanted to know.
            Pansy hesitated and glanced at Harry. Harry nodded subtly at her. He didn’t think she needed to be afraid of telling Ollondors the truth.
            Unfortunately, Terry saw the nod, and interrupted. “He’s controlling her! He’s a Lord, of course he is! He’s suggesting the answers to her!”
            Harry opened his mouth to speak, although he wasn’t sure what he would have said, and caught Changes’s eye. She had such a savage frown that Harry shut his mouth. He was sure that he still needed to respond, though. A lot of the Wizengamot members were so stupid that they would think him staying silent was the same as a confession.
            “That’s not true.”
            Pansy’s voice was soft, but it was shaking. Harry turned to stare at her. The arrows of emotion darting up his shield mark had changed. Now she sounded as though she wanted to rip someone’s face off.
            “That’s not true,” Pansy continued, “and to show that I’m telling the truth and end all this stupid nonsense about someone doubting my motives, I demand my right to drink Veritaserum.”
*
            Pansy could hear the gasps that traveled all over the courtroom after she said that. At least some of them were gasps of outrage, she thought, or she reckoned that they would be.
            She didn’t care. She put her head up and let them gape and stare at her.
            The strongest twinge traveled up her right arm, from the bond that she shared with her Lord. Pansy looked back at him and found him staring at her as though everyone else had ceased to exist. She understood the silent message behind those eyes. Was she sure about this? Did she really want to do it?
            Pansy nodded firmly back to him, and proceeded to ignore everything else until Ollondors restored some sort of order to the courtroom by standing up and waving her hands around. Then she sat back down and said, “If Miss Parkinson demands to drink Veritaserum, who are we to disoblige her?”
            Someone went out to get the Veritaserum, while Changes whispered frantically with Potter and he shook his head and said something back that made the barrister’s mouth tighten. At least she stepped away from the witnesses’ podium and sighed heavily. Pansy was just as glad to not have another enemy to fight.
            She stood there until the messenger came back with the Veritaserum and carried it up to her, looking at her with something suspiciously like awe. Well, maybe this person had been a Slytherin, or on trial at some point, and couldn’t imagine doing what she did. Pansy gave her a superior smile back, and took the stopper out.
            “Three drops only!” Ollondors called.
            Pansy didn’t roll her eyes, but only because she didn’t want to give the wrong impression, now that she had got what she wanted. What pure-blood child of her generation, growing up with stories of the war and the way their parents had (mostly) been arrested after the war, wouldn’t know how much Veritaserum you were supposed to take?
            But she also didn’t want to get into a debate in front of the Wizengamot, so she swallowed obediently, barely placing the drops on her tongue, and holding her mouth open and the vial high so that everyone could see how it was done.
            The effect was immediate. Pansy felt as though someone had driven a nail through the part of her brain that could lie. The nail went all the way through her body, and pinned her feet to the floor, too. She swayed in place for a moment, linked and locked around the unyielding pole. She thought she handed the vial back to the messenger, but she barely knew. The muscles of her face felt strange, different, slack. She stood there, and her jaw gaped.
            “Miss Parkinson?” Ollondors’s voice came from far away.
            Pansy looked up slowly. She felt and heard the murmurs traveling around the courtroom still, but if anything, they seemed more subdued now. Perhaps they had realized, after one look at her face, that there was no way anyone would be able to fake being under Veritaserum.
            “Tell us why you cast the torture curse at Terry Boot.” Ollondors.
            Pansy began to speak, the words rolling down her tongue like dribbles of iron from the nail. “I don’t remember him, exactly. But I know that I cursed all the people I did because I was afraid.” She paused, trying to coax the next words down her tongue, and did it just in time, before she thought Ollondors would have asked another question. “I was afraid that I would be tortured. The Carrows tortured people who fought back. Some of them, some of them they killed.”
            The murmurs sounded like a forest fire this time. Pansy thought she could distantly hear the protests of someone, probably Boot, but it was so far away and unimportant next to the question that Ollondors flung at her then. “Why couldn’t you fight back and take your chances? Why was committing torture better than suffering from it?”
            Pansy laughed, or she thought she did. It was hard to make a sound like that when her tongue would barely move. “Because I’m a bloody Slytherin. I’m a coward. I wanted to survive. There was the chance I could.” She looked around the courtroom, although she could only move her eyes and not her head at the moment. “How many people here were brave enough to fight when the Death Eaters took over the Ministry? How many of them were under the Imperius Curse, and how many of them tortured people without it? I tortured people without it.”
            There was a shuffling then. Pansy was a little amazed that she’d been able to say that much, and ask a question of her own when she was under Veritaserum. She supposed that was her anger, burning some of the mist of the potion off.
            “There was a room where lots of us hid!” said Boot angrily from the side. “You could have gone there. Why didn’t you?”
            “Because of Daphne.”
            There was a general murmur of confusion, but Pansy could turn her head a little now. Boot’s question had given her freedom. She saw his face. He looked as puzzled as the rest, but not his brother. He was hanging behind Terry and looking down. He understood. He knew.
            “Explain what that means,” said Ollondors quietly, with enough support in her voice that Pansy trusted her. “What does he mean?”
            “Daphne followed one of the Hufflepuffs who went to the hidden room,” Pansy whispered. The words rolling down her tongue felt like drops of oil now, still disgusting and heavy, but not as heavy as they had once been. “She knew they were hiding there. She wanted to be safe. She told them that she wanted to come in and be safe. They said they couldn’t allow any Slytherins in because a Slytherin might betray them. And anyway, someday they would have to fight a battle, when Harry Potter came back, and she couldn’t join them if she wouldn’t fight. She came back to the common room crying, and she told me what happened. So I didn’t run. Because there was no escape.”
            Silence. Well, someone was crying. Pansy thought it was Boot’s brother. She honestly couldn’t bring herself to care much.
            Then Ollondors stood up and looked around. “Any more questions?”
            There were none. Someone came forwards with the antidote to the Veritaserum, and Pansy swallowed it without even looking to see who they were. She gripped the front of the prisoner’s box as the sensation of the antidote swept through her, dissolving the nail through her tongue and brain and making it easier to think and speak again.
            But that had been the truth. All of it. Including the admission that she was a coward.
            Now they had to deal with the truth.
            Maybe because she wasn’t a Marked Death Eater, maybe because a lot of people here had never heard her name except as the daughter of her father, the vote was swift. She had a house arrest of six months, to be extended to a year if she was freed of her bond to Lord Potter in the meantime, and one month of monitoring charms on her wand.
            Pansy bowed her head as she was escorted back to her seat. She caught one glimpse of her Lord’s face, and the incandescent relief there.
            And she saw the fear and hatred on the faces of the Boots. Well, she could not heal all the wounds of the war, and her apologies and her atonement would be disdained likewise, since they came from a slimy Slytherin.
            She sat down and turned her back on them in silence, to rejoice in her own future.
*
BAFan: Sometimes, you can see the side that made Severus go to Albus after the Potters died.
delia cerrano: Yes, it may be too late for Blaise to be unbrainwashed.
Ciara_D: He’s decided that he would rather chance looking stupid for asking Harry for mercy and compassion than chance looking as stupid as Blaise does.
SP777: Maybe not for much longer, but for right now, he is.
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The Only True Lords