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Sympathy for the Predators	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 14906 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Sympathy for the Predators
- 2-Tiger
- 3-Cheetah
- 4-Wolf
- 5-Fox
- 6-Falcon
- 7-Jaguar
- 8-Killer Whale
- 9-Lion
- 10-Dolphin
- 4
- 5
- 6
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part V. Fox.

Dancing to hypnotize the rabbit, avoiding the trap.

            “You’re sure?” Harry stared at the piece of parchment that Hermione had handed him and shook his head several times. He was already sure, even before Hermione replied, but it was an extra confirmation, and that was pleasant when his head was swimming with bewilderment and wonder.

            And suspicion.

            “Yes. He really wants to meet with you, Harry.” Hermione leaned forwards, biting her lip. “Apparently he takes the threat from Catham, or the people that Catham might stir up, seriously. There were rumors running through the Ministry that he intended to do it after the cartoon, but I didn’t think it would come to anything. Or at least not such an open decision, and so quickly,” she added as an afterthought.

            Harry nodded. The Ministry was not exactly known for swift action, particularly when one of their precious political positions was threatened.

            Yet it had happened this time, and he only wished he knew what made this situation so different from any other. He looked down at the letter and read it again.

            Dear Mr. Potter:

            We are concerned about the agitation that is breaking out in our community, concerned about the erosion of long-held wizarding traditions, and concerned about those who feel that their voices are not being heard. To reconcile these competing claims, which are always present but seem to be especially prominent on the house-elf issue, we have decided that we will include as many representatives as possible of all sides in a meeting. We would like you to attend as the representative of those who feel disaffected from the Ministry and in need of a revolution.

            We look forward to your prompt reply.

            Minister Osgood Superbus.

            Harry was quiet for a long time after he’d finished the letter, turning it over and over in his hands, and resisting the temptation to crumple it up into a ball. He had known Superbus was smart; he had come out of absolutely nowhere when he felt he was ready and organized a shaky coalition of different people into one machine with the driving purpose to get him elected. He’d easily ousted Shacklebolt, who hadn’t made enough friends during his time after the war, and maintained control ever since by oiling the machine that supported him with bribes, concessions, threats, and a mastery of rhetoric that Harry could see in this letter. Harry had never thought the Minister was stupid, only too lofty to be concerned by the relative minority position that Harry represented. Most people were still more willing to work with the Ministry than to try and survive outside it. The offers to court Harry back had been made to him as an individual, and by people who probably acted with the Minister’s approval but were not him.

            And now…

            “I don’t know that I like this,” Harry said slowly. “For one thing, speaking like this—”

            “Writing like this,” Hermione corrected fussily.

            Harry smiled in spite of himself. She wouldn’t be Hermione without a few pedantic corrections. “Writing like this, he controls the conversation. He’s making me out to be leading a revolution, and I’m not. He’s acting as though I regularly attend meetings like this, and I don’t.” Hermione looked unconvinced, so Harry gave the final and strongest reason, but also the reason that he knew Hermione would oppose. “He’s acting as though I’m some sort of leader of all the artists who have taken great risks,” he finished quietly, “instead of someone who’s funded a few of them and done a lot of sightseeing and rowing with the Ministry.”

            “You know that people like Catham think of you as a leader,” Hermione insisted. “Would she have drawn that cartoon if you hadn’t told her about the issue? If you hadn’t asked her to?”

            “I don’t know,” Harry snapped. He rubbed his forehead. It had felt as though a twinge had run through his scar, but he knew that wasn’t true. It hadn’t hurt since Voldemort died. When he was stressed, though, it felt that way. “And anyway, because Catham thinks it doesn’t make it true. Can you see someone like Risa Turner calmly obeying me? Or Giles Burne-Jones? Or, God forbid, Luke Thornsley?”

            Hermione laughed reluctantly. Like Ron, she knew all about his dispute with Thornsley. “It’s less about obedience and more about cooperation, Harry. You’re still the best-known person who works with them.”

            Harry sat gazing at the letter for some time more, then shook his head. “There’s just too much in the wording of this that I don’t like,” he said. “You’re much more the expert on legal matters, Hermione. Ron can go if they want someone to talk about the corruption in the Auror Department. There are artists who still work for the Ministry sometimes if they want a voice about art. But if this is really about the house-elf dispute, I’m not the best person. And if it’s not about the house-elf dispute, then I still don’t want the whole thing to be identified with me and not the people who are actually doing the work.”

            Hermione sighed. “You could do so much good by lending your voice to this, Harry—”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “Do you think I’m not lending my voice enough already? And my face?”

            Hermione sat in silence for a minute, biting her lip. Harry watched her curiously. Once, her agreement that he was doing all he could would have been instantaneous.

            Now, Hermione took a deep breath, and met his eyes, and said, “It’s just that you could do more. You could let people paint your portrait and work out bargains with them in return. You could establish a counter-organization to the Ministry, instead of championing individual artists, and lots of people would join in a heartbeat. You could pay for artworks that got the message you want across instead of paying for artworks in general. There are lots of things you could do, yes.”

            Harry smiled. One of the reasons he and Hermione had stayed friends after Hogwarts, when they no longer had schoolwork or fighting Voldemort to tie them together, was that she was one of the few people who wasn’t afraid to be honest with him. Ron was honest, too, but he tended to blurt out things that were not quite true by Harry’s standards. Harry could punch him, if necessary, and then forgive him. It was different with Hermione, who had a way of phrasing things that made Harry calm down and listen.

            “You’re right,” he said. “You’re completely right. What I object to is not so much doing that as the consequences of doing that.”

            “What would the consequences be?” Hermione stared at him earnestly.

            “That I’ll wind up with a lot of power I shouldn’t have,” Harry said. Hermione started to speak, but he shook his head. “No, hear me out. I don’t mean that I’m not fit to wield power or that I’m not worthy or any of those other spineless Gryffindor martyr-sayings I would have used ten years ago. I mean that, for the future of the people who are trying to build something outside the Ministry, it’s better that I don’t have that control. I’m one person. I can be corrupted or bribed or get tired. If I don’t take over, though, then there are a whole bunch of people still working and doing good, a whole bunch of different centers. And decentralization of the wizarding world was one reason I started all this in the first place.”

            “Yes, I can see what you mean,” Hermione said at last. “So what are you going to do?”

            “Give Superbus my congratulations and my condolences,” Harry answered, picking up a quill that lay on the table nearby, “and not go.”

*

            The cartoons by Catham continued to appear. And then Lucius started hearing a new song, hummed by the younger people at first and then turning up on the wireless, about a crusty old pure-blood who was so obsessed with rebellion among his house-elves that he didn’t know his manor house was literally falling down around his ears. It was harder to attach a name to that one, but Lucius recognized the signature nasty little choruses of Angela Washburn, one of the singers the Ministry had frowned on after she started acting like one of the old satirical bards.

            Everywhere he looked, he saw the Potter-led effort to resist the new Ministry law gaining momentum. People might not have known what they were responding to, but they did respond, and the legislation was discussed far and wide among people Superbus must have hoped would never hear about it, or care if they did.

            And it was sparking new resistance movements among those who might not care about house-elves, but could see the consequences of a law like that clearly enough. The werewolves were organizing meetings. The merfolk who lived in the lake outside Hogwarts came to the surface and demanded to speak with a human who knew their language. For the first time in history, there were rumors that the Centaur Office in the Ministry had been used by an actual centaur, though no one Lucius knew could confirm them.

            Things were moving.

            Lucius knew what Potter would say without asking him. There were certain words that seemed prone to spring to that mind of many colors, those green eyes that liked to pretend they were helpless and dull but were the furthest thing from that, that bright careless bundle of racing thoughts and unknown influences. He would say that the rebellion had been building for a long time underground, and that the people taking the opportunity to say their piece weren’t people he commanded or could ask allegiance from. They were self-interested actors or beings who might be surprised to know that there was any friction between Harry Potter and the Minister.

            Potter would say that, yes. But it wouldn’t make it true.

            Lucius moved through his days with his eyes more open than ever before, his mind tuned to the pulses of the common mind around him. Usually, in tune with the common mind was an awful place to be, but he did not find it so this time. Someone had induced that muddy, sluggish, frequently yawning and easily entertained mass to think.

            Someone who could do that, and not even realize that he had done so, or demand the credit for it, was someone who tightened Lucius’s groin and throat, and made his blood race with new interest.

            The world swirled and raced and surged. Lucius had sometimes likened the currents of society to the currents of a stream. One could be swept away by them, yes, but wizards had been damming waterways and using them for pleasure as well as power centuries before Muggles had thought of the idea. If one knew the proper system of gates and locks, when to raise a dam and when to destroy it, one could wash away those who opposed certain convenient policies and strengthen those who stood on one’s side.

            Potter had done it from a position outside the center of society, and in such a way that other people got the idea from him and did the heavy lifting. He wasn’t tirelessly attending meetings or urging people forwards; in fact, Lucius had learned from impeccable contacts that he had avoided the highly publicized meetings Superbus was using to try and hold back the waters. He went on quietly doing what he had always done. The ripples spread out from him. Encouragement, and not pushing, was his philosophy.

            Lucius paid more attention than he had ever done because this was evidence that Potter’s philosophy worked.

            And that was the situation in which things stood on the morning that Draco came back from France.

*

            Harry hesitated as he stepped into the pub where he was supposed to meet Ernie Macmillan. Their first meeting had gone well, but Macmillan had admitted that he would need more support than Harry had yet decided to give in a month when he’d also purchased Risa’s studio, so they had agreed to talk it over a second time. That was normal.

            But something was wrong.

            People weren’t talking in the way they should be. They kept their eyes on their drinks, and drank hastily, as if they thought they should get out of here as soon as possible. Harry saw more than one person crouching down and shooting swift glances at the door as if they expected someone to recognize them and didn’t want that to happen.

            Harry looked over his shoulder, but no one had come in behind him. When he turned back again, he realized that the free-floating nervousness had focused on him, as if he were the one that had promised violence.

            Harry shook his head. He had wanted to meet at the Broken Barrel, where people would ignore him most of the time, but Ernie had preferred this Feral Werewolf, and Harry hadn’t cared enough to argue. He wondered now if he should have.

            Still, for the moment there was no enemy showing himself, so he went to the bar and asked for a Firewhisky. The bartender shoved it at him, and Harry caught the glass neatly in one hand before the drink could spill and dropped a few Galleons in response. Then he turned around and sat down at a central table that no one else seemed intent on occupying.

            At that point, someone unfolded from the shadows at the door and strode towards him, and people began to scramble out of his way. Harry, eyes narrowed against the glare of light from the door, thought it was Ernie at first. But he didn’t understand the aggressive way the bloke was walking. Had he heard that Harry had cheated someone, or was he simply that angry about their failure to come to an agreement?

            Neither, Harry saw when he got closer, because it wasn’t Ernie. It was Willowwand.

            Harry didn’t have a wall to put his back to, but he palmed his wand and raised an eyebrow. The appearance of unconcern could sometimes do the work of the real thing. He doubted that would happen this time, with Willowwand so enraged, but it was something he had often kept in mind, and sometimes weapons he didn’t think would fend off an enemy did.

            Willowwand slashed to a halt in front of the table and slapped it with both hands. “Did you think you could get away with what you did to me?” he hissed.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said, and found himself drawling the words. Who am I imitating? he asked himself, and then knew it was Lucius Malfoy. He would have rolled his eyes, but Willowwand would have thought the gesture directed at him, and the last thing Harry wanted was to escalate the situation. “Are you the messenger of official punishment from the Ministry?” he added, in a tone that he kept as uninterested as possible.

            “No,” Willowwand said. “They seem frightened of your power and influence, and refuse to punish you at all.” He drew his wand.

            Or else they recognize that you’re a little tit and deserve it, Harry thought. He watched Willowwand’s hands carefully. He didn’t have Auror training, and therefore it was inevitable that he didn’t know all the spells and curses Willowwand knew. On the other hand, being around artists had taught him some magic that outsiders would be surprised they knew, and he was utterly sure that Willowwand would underestimate him in his anger. “So this is vigilante behavior?” he asked.

            “Nothing vigilante about it,” Willowwand said, aiming his wand, “compared to what you did to me. You didn’t need to do that.” For the first time, audible hurt crept into his voice to be a companion to the rage. “If you wanted to avoid a date with me that badly, you could have said.”

            “I tried,” Harry said tiredly. “You didn’t listen.” He cocked his head. “Do you really want to do this?’

            “More than want to,” Willowwand said. “It’s a holy passion with me now.”

            And that’s the problem with him all over, Harry thought. If he had looked like that but not said it, he would have seemed a bit noble, not pathetic and ridiculous. I like people who are subtle, who don’t shove everything they are in your face on the first meeting, who let you draw your own conclusions.

            People like Lucius Malfoy.

            Harry did hiss in annoyance this time, though it was annoyance with his own brain and not with Willowwand, but his thoughts didn’t distract him enough to keep him from casting before Willowwand could. He’d begun another speech about how much he hated Harry and everything to do with him; Harry was using a spell he’d seen Risa use when she wanted to cover her canvas.

            “Miniatus.”

            The ceiling appeared to tremble, and then an enormous wash of red paint fell upon Willowwand. It splashed hard enough to make Harry raise a hasty Shield Charm in his own defense, and he saw a few people ducking under their tables. Others sat staring, mouths open, and didn’t appear to notice when they nearly swallowed the paint.

            And then, after a stunned silence Harry didn’t think his little effort deserved, there came the laughter.

            Willowwand, trying futilely to wipe paint out of his eyes, gave Harry a look like he wanted him to burn alive. Harry shook his head, stood up, and tossed some more Galleons at the bartender without taking his gaze away from the furious Auror.

            “I was supposed to meet a friend here,” he said. “Tell him there was a bit of a delay, but I’d love to see him this afternoon at the Broken Barrel. And let me know if there are any damages.” And he turned and strolled back into the afternoon sunlight.

            He thought, briefly, of appealing to the Ministry and asking them what they intended to do about the behavior of one of their Aurors, but someone who opposed the Minister couldn’t ask him for favors. And besides, Harry thought word of what had happened here would travel back to the Ministry fast enough.

*

            “Good morning, Father.”

            Lucius looked up from his lunch of smoked goldenfish and nodded to his son. He had felt the wards move when Draco entered the house, so at least he was not caught by surprise. “Draco. Did you have a pleasant time in France?”

            “Tolerable,” Draco said with a sigh, taking a seat across from Lucius. Lucius had chosen to lunch in the High Dining Room, so called for its position in the front of the house that allowed him to see across the neatly manicured gardens and over the gates to the brawling, coarse world beyond. Generations of Malfoys had enjoyed the view for the contrast between their domain and the one outside. Lucius liked it as a way of reminding himself that that world never ceased to exist merely because he had left it behind for a time. “I’d forgotten the tedium of the secrecy that goes with adultery. Ellen was more nervous of revealing our joys to her husband than she has been.” He paused meditatively. “To tell you the truth, I think she wants a child, and of course she can’t risk bearing one to me.”

            Lucius nodded and cut another piece off his fish. He was glad to find that Draco was not so lost to all propriety that he needed to remind him to guard against bastards. To bed someone was one thing, to sire a child outside of the direct Malfoy line another entirely, since they might someday make trouble over the inheritance.

            “I heard an interesting rumor in France, Father.”

            Lucius looked up. The fish was properly cut, and he had only to lift the fork to his mouth. From the intense way Draco was staring at him, however, he doubted he would be allowed to eat it in peace. He resigned himself to sitting back and raising an eyebrow. “Did you? Do tell.”

            “The rumor says that you intend to take another lover,” Draco said. By now he was leaning forwards, his hands gripping the edge of the table. Lucius flicked a glance at the grip, and Draco sat back in his chair as if burned, but he didn’t stop staring, so Lucius had not accomplished everything that it might have. “They say you’ve chosen Harry Potter to fill that place.”

            “The rumor is incorrect,” Lucius said peaceably, while he debated whether he should ask Draco to identify the source of the gossip. No, he would not; it was just as likely that the source was Draco himself as someone else who could be found and silenced. Besides, only the cowardly acted as if they were afraid of rumors and could not allow them to spread. “I don’t seek Potter as a lover.”

            Draco blinked at him. “But before I left, from what you were telling me—”

            “I seek Potter as a companion,” Lucius said, “a conversationalist, someone to talk to. He has interesting opinions about art and about politics. It is good to remember that not everyone speaks my language, and not everyone holds me of account or importance in the same way I hold myself. At one point, my enemies fulfilled that role for me, but now most of my enemies are dead or have no quarrel with me. I hope that you will learn the necessity of having someone like this for yourself, Draco. It is always good to remember that our viewpoints are not the only ones that exist. A few of your ancestors supported people who had tried to kill them in luxury, at least as long as they would tell them the world’s honest opinion of them without flinching.”

            Draco sat still with his mouth open, which Lucius had always thought an eminently unattractive habit. He frowned, and Draco shut it again and ran his fingers through his hair.

            “So Harry Potter will never come into the Manor?” he asked doubtfully. “So he will never sleep in my mother’s bed?”

            “I am afraid that I cannot gratify your first wish,” Lucius said. “He has already visited to speak with me, perhaps because he is concerned about the very rumors that you mentioned.” He would not tell his son the real source of that visit, because Draco still did not understand the extent of the Malfoy fortune and was jealous of anything that he thought diminished the amount of Galleons he would inherit. “As for the second wish, of course he will not.”

            Draco sighed in relief.

            “Narcissa kept her rooms feminine enough that I am afraid they would not at all suit Mr. Potter.” Lucius shook his head. “A pity, as some of the colors would flatter him, but one cannot argue with taste.”

            Draco sat upright as if someone had pulled on all the strings that controlled him at once. “You told me that you weren’t considering him as a lover,” he whispered harshly.

            “Not only as a lover,” Lucius said delicately. “As a conversationalist and someone who can remind me of the limits of my own vision, yes.” He gestured at the window and the fence. “Extensive as our estate is, it does not cover the globe. I will do all the better for having someone in my bed and at my side who does not have the same standards as I do.”

            Draco said, “I won’t let you dishonor my mother’s bed by bringing someone like him into it. I’ll act against you. I’ll cast a Memory Charm on you.” His face in the light of the sun looked thin and pale and desperate.

            Lucius watched his son with detached disappointment. He still had not learned that, when threatening someone, the first rule was never to reveal one’s exact plans.

            “I’m sure you might try,” he said, when some moments had passed and Draco had done nothing but tremble like a desert flower in the breath of rain. “But I will not permit it to happen.” He lowered his voice for emphasis, because he did want to reach his son and he thought this might suffice for that. “Your mother has been dead for seven years, Draco. That should be enough time to recover from her loss. Enough time to think that I might take someone else. You know I have had my share of lovers, as you have had.”

            “A lover is one thing,” Draco spat, closing his left hand into a fist as though he gripped a nettle. “But a permanent companion is something else. Even if you get rid of Potter later, how are we going to last through the laughter?”

            “Do you know many people who would laugh at the acquisition of Harry Potter?” Lucius asked in surprise. “I must confess, I do not. Yes, he will prompt speculation and gossip if he leaves me.” I do not intend that he should. “But that would be the case with any lover I took. Only the degree, not the kind, of interest would be different.”

            Draco turned his back with a sharp motion that reminded Lucius of a hawk wheeling around its perch with a broken wing, and walked across the room to stare out the window himself. Lucius took his long-neglected bite of fish and watched Draco’s back, waiting for his decision. He would like to have his calm agreement with this decision, or, failing that, his indifference. Draco hardly made Malfoy Manor his home anymore, and he must know that Lucius would never marry again or sire a child who would compete with Draco for the inheritance. There was no reason for him to care about this alliance.

            Unless…

            “Does the rivalry of your childhood still trouble you?” he asked curiously, and had the satisfaction of seeing Draco flush rose before he turned around.

            “Of course not,” Draco said too quickly. “I just don’t think this can last or be real. You know that he has reason to hate us. We were on opposite sides during the war.”

            “Some people choose not to let the war define their lives.” Lucius took a few more neat bites before he continued the conversation; Draco waited in suspense until he did. “Potter has not, or he would be an Auror by now and still only in communion and association with Gryffindors. Instead, he is a powerful patron in the art world. And in politics,” he added. “I do not know if he realizes how powerful.”

            He hoped that Draco would pursue that interesting line of inquiry, but Draco twitched his head and just kept steadily following the less interesting one. “It doesn’t matter, Father. We’re always going to be different, and if you reach out to court Harry Potter, you’re trying to bridge a gap that you’ll fall into. And won’t you look ridiculous then?”

            Lucius smiled. It was the first conversational move his son had made since his return that deserved applause, and had it not been for the emphasis that ruined the effect, it would have been perfect. Lucius did hate to look ridiculous, and Draco had known that and sought to use it against him.

            “I do not believe I will fail,” Lucius replied calmly, “or I should not have begun this hunt in the first place.”

            “Hunt.” Draco seized the word, which Lucius had cast out partially because he was curious how Draco would react. “Potter hates to be hunted. You know that. He hates the pursuit and the attention. Word has it that he hasn’t dated anyone since his Weasley died, no matter what the Prophet says. How are you going to court him when he hates the process of courting?”

            “By giving him what he wants, and needs, and enjoys,” Lucius said. “And because I do not intend to press. I will draw back and give him space if he needs it.” He could have laughed at the look on Draco’s face, but he politely refrained. “He is a beautiful wild creature, Draco, or like one, in his love of the open and his love of extension and depth and height. That is another reason I think he might come to prefer me. I can afford to give him those things where many others might not be able to.”

            Draco shook his head stubbornly. “He’s too different. He’s too alien. He’s Potter.”

            Lucius smiled. “That has ceased to matter to me since I realized how beautiful he was.”

            Draco paused, eyes narrowed. Lucius suspected his words mattered to his son in a strange way, but he didn’t know why. Draco snorted in the next moment and said, “Beauty. Are we talking about the same man? Potter wouldn’t know what beauty was if it bit him on the arse.”

            “He dresses well,” Lucius said. “But that is not what I mean. He carries a beauty within him that shines through his features.”

            “Is he more beautiful than Mother?” Draco pressed forwards as if he intended to make a charge and upset Lucius’s plate into his lap. Lucius did not bother to steady his utensils, however, because he knew that Draco would never be so vulgar.

            “Is Sirius more beautiful than the Pole Star?” Lucius shook his head. “I am attracted to him, Draco. I was attracted to your mother. I want him, and I wanted her. That is the simple truth, and that is the reason that you will not convince me to put him aside, if you want to convince me of that.”

            Draco lowered his eyes and said nothing for long moments. Then he turned away with a harsh grinding of his teeth and said, “I can’t prevent you from doing this, Father. But I think you’re making a mistake.”

            “Thank you for your gracious permission,” Lucius said, with lighter irony than he might have used otherwise. Draco had given in too easily when he had objected for so long. He was planning something, and Lucius would be alert to what it was and break its neck before it left the nest.

*

            Harry smiled tightly as the magnificent bird landed in front of him. She was a black owl with white slashes along her wings, and she had enormous golden eyes that usually made Harry feel like she was considering how many pieces she could tear him into with her massive talons. She was Minister Superbus’s owl, and she fit her owner.

            After looking at him for so long this time that Harry thought she had almost made up her mind not to let him have the message after all, she huffed slightly and extended her leg. Harry took the parchment from it, never glancing up from those wicked claws, and then retreated to a safe distance. The owl fluttered her wings into place and turned her head away from him.

            Harry had better things to worry about than the opinions of owls. He opened the letter, which was sealed with the Minister’s personal family seal of snakes crawling over a tree draped artistically with strands of ivy, and settled down to read the scolding it undoubtedly contained.

            Dear Mr. Potter:

            You have made your position clear, and given satisfactory reasons for excusing yourself from the meeting. But the disturbing rumors that have undoubtedly reached your ears by now—the rumors that concern the punishment of Aurors by ordinary citizens and the continued mocking of dedicated Wizengamot members by scurrilous artists—make your presence imperative. No one else has your range of allies, or your skill with diverse areas of the wizarding world. You remain a hero to all of us, and your input is needed as well as desired.

            Attend me in my office at one-o’clock on Thursday afternoon.

            Osgood Superbus, Minister of Magic.

            Harry folded the letter carefully along its original lines. He knew he was smiling, but he was also aware that the smile touched nothing but his lips.

            So it has come. An open challenge from the Minister himself.

            Harry had known it would happen someday. He simply hadn’t envisioned it happening quite so soon. After all, the Minister knew, if his spies told him anything like the truth, that Harry commanded nothing. He could request, and that was all he could do. The other movements that might be happening at the same time were discrete groups getting fed up with the paternalism of the Ministry. Calling him in wouldn’t make those movements stop.

            On the other hand, seeing Harry Potter surrender to the Minister would be a potent symbol, and a message to the rest of the non-rebellious wizarding world that Superbus had things well in hand.

            On the whole, Harry thought, his thoughts crystallizing and drifting together with delicious slowness, I am disinclined to give him even that much.

            He turned back to the owl, who surveyed him with scorn that Harry was sure made the air feel colder in front of her. That was another reason not to approach too closely, though he hardly needed a second one given what he was about to say.

            “No response,” he said.

            The owl’s feathers around her eyes stood on end. That was all the warning he had before she spread her wings and launched herself at him.

            Harry dropped to one knee; he still hadn’t entirely lost the reflexes that a few months of Auror training had imprinted him with, or that the war had given him before that. The assassination attempts had slowed, but never stopped, and there had always been the odd people who wanted to become his lovers and wouldn’t take no for an answer. The owl went overhead and sailed back around again in a circle. She never screamed. That was what made the assault so eerie. She simply extended her talons, ready to rake and pierce and part flesh.

            Harry raised his wand and murmured another useful incantation he’d picked up from Risa, though not the same one he’d used to deal with Willowwand. He didn’t see any point in soaking the Minister’s owl with red paint. “Abi, res accola,” he murmured.

            The owl’s claws vanished. She pulled up, hovering, screaming now with anger. Harry chuckled as he stood. The spell was one that Risa used to clean paintbrushes; it vanished whatever small object was nearest the wizard or witch but not actually being held on his or her body.

            “That ought to be a more than adequate response,” he said casually.

            The owl took her first route out his window, never looking back. Harry had to admit that he would have been disappointed if she had. This was his answer to the Minister. He wanted to see how Superbus was going to look when his favorite bird came back minus a body part.

            The best thing was should it go to court, Harry could easily claim he’d been defending himself. Veritaserum or Pensieve memories would show beyond a doubt that the owl had been swooping at him.

            Harry shook his shoulders to try and settle some of the tension boiling through him. He couldn’t stop smiling. He hadn’t envisioned the challenge coming this early, no, but it wasn’t a bad thing it had.

            Let him come. I’ll never abandon my principles, no matter what the temptation.

            Oddly, the image that came to him when he thought of temptation was not the money or honors that Superbus would surely offer him, but Lucius Malfoy’s smiling face as he laughed at something Harry had said in Malfoy Manor.

            At least that had the effect of sobering some of his triumph and turning his determination to steel.

            Not even a temptation like that can make me turn aside.

*

            Lucius was sure from the moment he entered the breakfast room that Draco had a secret. It was written in every movement he made, from the way he looked up with a calm smile to the way he nodded and said, “Good morning, Father.”

            But Lucius had determined that he would not question Draco, because Draco thought it made him look weak. Lucius nodded and sat down at the table across from his son. Bell at once appeared with a bow and handed him a plate with small, fluffy chunks of quail already prepared. Lucius accepted it and began to eat.

            Draco raised an eyebrow. “The decadence is starting a bit early in the morning even for you, isn’t it, Father?”

            Lucius said nothing, but went on eating. Draco didn’t know it, but he had told Lucius more with that remark than he would have with any other method, save explaining his business outright. For Draco to pick on something so small meant he was hiding something else momentous.

            Draco sighed. “It seems that decadence never starts too early for a few other people, either,” he remarked to the ceiling.

            Lucius could have said something about Draco’s grammar, but he only looked an inquiry and put another chunk of quail in his mouth.

            It seemed Draco had been waiting for that. “Harry Potter’s been arrested,” he said with obvious relish.

            Whatever result he had wanted, however, he was disappointed. Lucius swallowed and looked blandly at him. “Has he? Was it for breaking into the Ministry on his own and attempting to arrest Superbus? He does have an exaggerated moral stance.” Or else he would never have made the vow that is likely to be such a problem for me.

            “It doesn’t say, actually,” Draco said. And yes, his face was tight and his voice so thick with tension that Lucius could have sliced it more easily than some of the toast he’d been served when Narcissa was still alive and had more control over the meals the house-elves cooked. Draco shoved his chair back from the table and glared at Lucius. “I would have thought you would be more interested, Father.”

            Lucius held out one hand. “If they aren’t defining the crime, then the arrest is either unjustified or was made for a reason they fear would exasperate the public and endanger their Savior’s future if they named it,” he said calmly. “Either one intrigues me, but does not lessen my interest in him. I wonder that you think it would.”

            “He’s a criminal,” Draco said, stressing certain words in the sentence more than Lucius thought they needed or deserved, especially when small flecks of spit leaped from Draco’s mouth into Lucius’s plate like diving kingfishers. He carefully performed a drying spell before he continued eating.

            “As I said,” Lucius said, “he is either innocent, or a Dark wizard. And in either case, I have an interest in speaking with him, seeing him, perhaps possessing him. It would depend on what Dark Arts he has used, of course,” he added thoughtfully. “Some of the spells are sordid enough that sleeping with someone who has used them would be like rolling in rotting flesh. I wonder about Rabastan Lestrange sometimes, I truly do.”

            Draco rose to his feet. “I have nothing else to discuss with you, Father,” he said haughtily, and then sailed from the room.

            Lucius finished his breakfast, because good food was never something he wished to see go to waste. Then he held out his hand and closed it into a fist three times. The air near his chair trembled.

            The creature that appeared next to his chair resembled a house-elf in the same way that a sparrow resembled a falcon. Lucius waited as it bowed to him and spoke in a gravelly language that he understood perfectly well. While Lucius cherished beauty, he had never let ugliness deter him from learning useful knowledge. The knowledge could then be used to protect the beauty, and everyone won or succeeded.

            “What can Ichor do for Master?’

            “I need certain information that can be located in the Ministry of Magic,” Lucius replied in the same tongue. “Information concerning the arrest of Harry Potter. Come back to me when you have learned it.”

            “Master,” said Ichor, with another bow. Lucius eyed the gleaming iron claws on his hands with appreciation. He had nearly lost an eye to one of those claws when he first tamed Ichor. Some creatures had the strangest requirements before they would enter service.

            Then he was gone, and Lucius stood up and went into his study. He had more information to request, but it would give him pleasure to inquire after it himself and thus remind several people that he existed and they should have his best interests at heart.

            And depending on what I learn, there are certain other people who may need to be reminded of who I am.

*

            “I don’t think you can actually hold me here without a trial and without telling me what I’ve done,” Harry said helpfully, smiling at the Auror they’d assigned to guard him. He shifted to ease the tight pressure of the rope around his wrists. “There are laws about that kind of thing.”

            The Auror turned her back on him. She was tall and far too slim. Harry wondered if she was one of those who thought that being able to feel your ribs meant you were healthy. Her hair was an odd dark maroon color, which to Harry said “accident with Dyeing Charms,” and coiled on top of her head. She hadn’t spoken to him yet, but she did twitch and look guilty when he talked to her, so Harry decided to keep at it.

            “All I did was dump paint on an Auror,” he said, “an Auror who was about to assault me. And he’s Cale Willowwand. I doubt that many of you in the office like him, either, or I would have been arrested when I tied him to the ceiling.”

            His guard’s eyes flickered to him and then away. Harry leaned forwards, coaxing. “You can tell me. Do you like him? Does anyone, except maybe his reflection in the mirror?”

            That time, he definitely got a quiver of the lips and a tiny shake of her head.

            “Then, logically,” Harry said, stretching the word out until he saw another quiver of her lips, “there can be no objection to what I did to him.”

            The Auror coughed and stood up straighter, as if she was trying to remind herself that, after all, he was a criminal. “He is a good Auror,” she said. “He has the record for most arrests in the Department.”

            “And what if half his arrests were like this one?” Harry raised his bound wrists again. “Or simply obvious? I don’t think there’s any great skill in Apparating to the scene of a disturbance and arresting someone who has his wand out and is obviously guilty.”

            “They aren’t always like that,” the woman insisted, but Harry could tell from the weakness in her voice that she didn’t believe it herself.

            Harry leaned in confidingly again. “Even one like that is too many, don’t you think? And I know that no one who ever tried to talk up Cale Willowwand ever mentioned how annoying his personality was.”

            It seemed she might have answered, but someone knocked at the door of the small, blank office Harry was being kept in then, and she had to go answer it. Harry leaned back against the chair and shook his head.

            They’d arrested him in the middle of the night, somehow under the impression that that would terrify him to the point that handling him wouldn’t be a problem. Harry smiled. He always cast a Seeing-Eye Charm on his face at night before he went to sleep, which meant he could sit up and see his “faceless attackers” perfectly in the darkness.

            When he’d recognized the Auror robes, he had made a snap decision. He would go along with them and let them make the arrest. For one thing, they both looked uneasy about it, their “hard” voices wavering, and Harry was sure they hadn’t wanted to be there, so it was useless to punish them for something their superiors up the ladder had decided. For another thing, Harry was eager to see what political fallout Superbus would create for himself if he actually took Harry into custody.

            There was no way that the news would stay secret. One of the Aurors would probably talk, and then there were so many people who still watched Harry’s house avidly for a story of some kind to prop up one of the many small, wavering saplings of newspapers that had become popular in the years after the war. Harry wouldn’t be able to control all the publicity, but he would control enough.

            Ginny would be disappointed in what I’ve become, he thought, as he settled back in the chair and waited for the furiously whispering Auror at the door to come back. He would make her an ally if he could.

            But Ginny was a precious memory to him for more than one reason, in this case because she could remain untarnished and bright in his heart, like a silver ring he didn’t handle often, and then cased up again. He loved her still, but he’d had to learn to live without her.

            And to live in the world, he thought, wondering what could be taking his guard so long.

            When she came back to him, her face was ivory, and she simply pointed over her shoulder for an explanation. Harry looked, fully expecting that Superbus had come to him for a slow waltz of intimidation and threats.

            Instead, Lucius Malfoy stood there smiling at him, his hands encased in silver-grey gloves just as they had been the last time Harry saw him in the Ministry. He stroked his cane as if it was a real, living snake he must soothe. His eyes contemplated the chair on which Harry sat and the bonds around his wrists with a bit of disdain.

            Harry arched his eyebrows and let himself slump more. If he still desires me, this ought to quench it. Why would he want someone who’s still scruffy from last night’s interrupted sleep, someone who, as he would see it, let the Minister arrest him?

            “Good day, Malfoy,” he said. “Come to gloat?”

*

            Lucius had once learned the statistics about how tall and heavy the Ministry of Magic was, and how many offices it contained. He reminded himself of these facts now because it meant that he was less likely to bring down the building with an inappropriate winter wind of rage if he thought about how much weight would fall on his head.

            And Potter’s.

            His eyes were still undimmed in their brightness, his hair not much wilder than it usually was. But the bonds they had put on him had chafed his wrists, and the chair they had seated him on would hurt his back if he remained in it for the hours and days Lucius was sure they had intended him to remain. Because he looked cheerful and inquiring and even as if he had chosen this did not mean he deserved the indignity.

            But Lucius felt a sweet icy burn race through him when he realized how challengingly Potter looked even at him, instead of cowering and wondering what would happen if Lucius took a photograph of him captive and sold it to the papers. So many people Lucius had known who attained a kind of celebrity became slaves to the rumors and reflections of their appearance.

            That is one way in what I know about him does not fit with the way he behaves. He bears the careless arrogance that might make one think he was confident in always appearing attractive, but he is not conscious of his beauty.

            Lucius’s hand twitched on the cane with the impulse to reach out and stroke Potter’s cheek. He restrained it. It would imperil both his ultimate goals and the reason he had come here today.

            He conjured a chair for himself and cast Cushioning Charms on the one Potter sat on. That earned him a narrow, considering glance, as if Potter was trying to fathom why he would have bothered. Lucius sat down and arranged his robes before he spoke.

            “I have come to ask your pardon. It appears that you were arrested on the instigation of my son, Draco.”

            Potter’s eyes widened a gratifying amount at that, and he glanced at the door as if he expected to see Draco following Lucius like a shadow following a falcon. Then he said, “And you got in here by presuming on other connections like the ones that allowed your son to get me arrested in the first place, I suppose?”

            Lucius smiled, for he understood the distaste in Potter’s voice as well as he would have the tarnish on a piece of silver. “Yes. But such connections to the center of power are not always a bad thing, Mr. Potter. If one is joined to the sun, one orbits it in company with other planets, many of them of great power and beauty.”

            Potter appeared to miss the emphasis Lucius had wanted to put on the last few words, and the new softness of his tone, completely. In fact, his eyes had taken on a hard glitter that reminded Lucius of the jewels that many sculptors had used for his eyes in statues of him down the years. Small the chance to find emeralds that would match them, of course.

“But the Ministry is not the sun,” Potter said, voice so soft that he sounded as if he were threatening someone, “and connections may be tethers.”

Lucius inclined his head. “Of course the exchange of favors does become tedious. Of course all of us would rather be free to act as we please. But such independence is impossible in the world we actually possess. Even you have acknowledged that, or why would you seek to act in cooperation with artists?”

“I’m less interested in talking about politics in general than politics in particular, right now,” Potter said. Lucius frowned. He had many things to thank his son for in this matter, but among the more distasteful was the jarring note in Potter’s voice that interrupted the music it made for Lucius. “I had my own theory. Several times now, after an initial disagreement, I was supposed to meet with an artist Giles Burne-Jones had recommended to me, to see if he wanted my patronage. Each time, he wasn’t there. And the first meeting he missed, Cale Willowwand ambushed me instead. I dropped paint on him and left the pub. I’m sure, now, that this artist accepted money to set up meetings where I could possibly do something that would give the Ministry ‘good cause’ to arrest me, though only the first one worked.”

“I have asked connections if something like that might have happened,” Lucius said. “But they have revealed that, even if those matters complicated the business, it was my son’s direct request that brought you into this situation.”

            Potter smiled. Lucius delighted in that smile. It had the dark shine of jade. “And why should I trust your word?”

            “You need not,” Lucius said. “I myself find an exquisite pleasure in distrust. Turning the words of compatriots and co-conspirators over in my mind and finding the way their luster diminishes or increases based on the light that I show them to is one of the many ways I amuse myself.”

            “And you amuse me,” Potter said, letting his gaze linger on Lucius as if that would enable him to figure out the truth. “Why is that, I wonder?”

            Lucius would have frozen if he had been capable of so vulgar a stillness. Potter said that he did not trust him? But this one statement revealed far more of his inner heart than Lucius had heard him expose so far. Potter avoided statements about himself as if they were statements about a badly-written poem.

            Here he was, handing this fact about himself to Lucius, speaking casually at the same time. That indicated that he felt comfortable enough to turn the conversation so that it touched on his emotions, comfortable enough even not to notice.

            It filled Lucius’s mouth with water and tightened the sympathetic line that often seemed to run between his throat and his groin.

            “If you keep staring at me like that,” Potter said, “I’m going to get a complex, or at the very least start thinking that I have food in my teeth.”

            Lucius allowed his stare to linger for a moment anyway, because beautiful gift should be repaid with beautiful gift, and then said, “Yes. I imagine that you want to be free. I have already arranged that. Draco’s connections to the Ministry are more recent and less powerful than they should be. Some wizards still respect tradition, Mr. Potter, and others respect raw power or artistic skill. You are felt, by a certain proportion of the wizarding community, to have a fair amount of both. They have pulled certain strings, and you are free now.”

            Potter twitched in his bonds. Then he said, “Would any of those strings connect to Superbus?”

            “Our beloved Minister is another such as I am,” Lucius said. “Desirous of being the sun, not the orbiting planet. No, none of my requests have touched him, and though you were not arrested at his command, he will no doubt be annoyed to find you gone.”

            Potter still hesitated. “I thought I should stay here, so that I could allow the controversy over my arrest to do him evil in the eyes of his enemies. It almost feels like obliging him if I leave too early.”

            “You do have another choice,” Lucius suggested. “Publicize the reason you were brought here. That would control an eruption that you may not be ready for, humiliate Draco, make wary the people he might depend on to try and inconvenience you like this in the future, and indulge me.”

            Potter blinked. “This eruption you mentioned. You think it will come without this?”

            “Oh, yes.” Lucius revised his estimate of Potter a bit. It seemed that he was not so aware of the changing currents around him, and how much the earthquake would take him as its epicenter but not its fault, as Lucius had thought. “And you need not worry about making an enemy of Draco, if you are. This is the best way to incapacitate him. Otherwise, he will assume that you were freed because the Minister simply chose to let you go or was afraid of you, and he’ll try again.”

            “Why would it indulge you?” Potter demanded.

            Lucius rose to his feet. “Because Draco, and certain other people, would know the real reason he sought to have you imprisoned.”

            “Which was?” Potter stared up at him.

            Lucius smiled at him. “Because he knows that I seek to have you, and he does not want anyone to take his mother’s place.”

            Potter’s stare altered. Lucius was pleased to note that astonishment charged his face with new depths of sunset-like light.

            “You are beautiful in this way, as in all others,” Lucius said, and then nodded towards the tall Auror, her hair dyed some vulgar color, as she came back towards them with an unhappy expression. “She will undo your bonds. Do enjoy your freedom, Mr. Potter.”

            Potter’s stare changed again. Lucius chuckled as he strolled away from the Ministry, because it had its element of fury.

            But he trusted in even that as an attractive element. It was indifference that made people into motionless Muggle portraits, not fury or amusement or interest. Potter would come to him and yell at him, or demand to know why.

            And Lucius would have answers that would tug him further into a world lit with many colors.

*

            Mia: Thanks so much! Poor Harry, he doesn’t even realize how much Lucius is influencing him.

            mucunagos: Thank you!
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Sympathy for the Predators