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The Night With Stars	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 9544 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Five—Before the Wizengamot

            “The Wizengamot calls Mr. Harry Potter to speak.”

            Harry stood and moved forwards at once. He could see as many eyes fastened on him from among the witnesses—this wasn’t a trial, but an open audience, so anyone could come watch who wanted to—as there were from the Wizengamot. He spent a moment wondering how many of their owners wanted him to fail.

            In the end, he shrugged a single shoulder and took his place at the little speaker’s podium in front of the overwhelming wrought iron gallery. What mattered was making his plans sound so good and so sensible that no one would want them to fail.

            “Mr. Potter.” That was a tall, stately witch with white hair as long as Dumbledore’s beard used to be. Harry knew her name was Juniper Mackle, but part of his brain persisted in thinking of her as Madam Mackerel. “Why should we consider passing these laws and making these investigations? Your central reason, please. Laid out as clearly as possible.”

            Harry nodded once. He had hoped someone would ask him a question like that, and Mackle was one of their staunchest allies if they could prove themselves. She was only against stretching out her neck for a position no one else would support.

            “Yes, Madam. I think Muggleborns’ families should be investigated partially for the sake of the wizarding world. The earlier they know about magic, the less chance that their families will blurt out something in shock later, and the better they’ll hide the magic. This way, they’ll have years to get used to keeping the secret.”

            “Only partially for the sake of the wizarding world, though.” Mackle leaned her arms on the edge of the gallery.

            “Yes, Madam. The other part is to prevent things like this from happening.”

            Harry had decided early one that he would do something like his next tactic. He had discussed it once with Lucius, and Lucius had told him that it was his own business. But he would be sitting there with a faint frown now, Harry thought. Maybe he disapproved of shocking the Wizengamot.

            He’ll get used to it, Harry thought cheerfully, and whipped away the left sleeve of his robe, showing the long, pale scar arching along the underside of his arm where Dudley had cut him with a rusty piece of iron.

            Some people leaned forwards to stare. For the ones who sat far enough away that they would have trouble seeing, Harry helpfully conjured a magnifying glass, enlarged it, and then moved it slowly down his arm with his free hand. He could see the way mouths tightened and people gasped and exchanged significant glances.

            “This is one of the scars that you earned from your reprehensible treatment at the hands of your Muggle relatives,” said Mackle.

            It wasn’t a question, which let Harry answer without pause, although he thought the word “earned” odd. “It is. And I would make sure that the same thing never happens to another Muggleborn child at the hands of their own family.” He swept the room with his gaze. “Would anyone here speak against that cause?”

            “We would when we don’t know if it would mean accusing innocent people,” said a woman named Hecuba Jackson. She had a hat so enormous that Harry could only compare it to the one Neville’s Boggart had worn when he put it in his grandmother’s clothes. “It is awful that you suffered, Mr. Potter, but we must make sure others do not also suffer.”

            Harry blinked slowly. “And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

            “No! If you are suggesting we accuse parents who might not have done anything of—”

            “I was talking about the children. Who may be abused or may not, but who aren’t served by the Ministry sitting back and remaining ignorant of their situations!”

            Lucius was suddenly standing at his side, even though they had discussed their strategy and Harry knew he was most definitely going to speak first. He twisted to stare at Lucius for a minute. Then he heard the echoes of his own challenge ringing in the air, and nodded. It was time to sit down when he started raising his voice.

            He retreated to sit down in the chair he’d barely warmed that morning before he had to take the floor. And he watched as Lucius gave a smile to Mackle and Jackson and so many of the others that he’d already warmed them up before he even started speaking.

            Sometimes I wonder if I should learn to seduce people without words like that, Harry thought idly, and then he shook his head. No, it would take a certain magic that had nothing to do with wands if he wanted to do that. He would have had to live longer and not have his scars and probably even be a pure-blood.

            Still, he’d done the second best thing to having it himself by securing someone who did have it. Harry sat back and prepared to enjoy hearing Lucius swirl them all around.

*

            I warned him against showing his scars. No one here deserves to see them.

            But Lucius had learned not to waste moments in regrets. He gave a half-bow to Madam Jackson and said, “No one could accuse me of being overly friendly to Muggleborns in the last few years. But in this case, I cannot help seconding my esteemed colleague’s opinion. We have no idea about the proportions of abused children because no one has any idea when it comes to this.”

            Lucius could see the ripples of calm that his words spread through the audience, the way that hands patted hair and heads nodded along with his words without realizing what they approved. Speech was magic. Calling Potter a “colleague” granted him a different kind of importance than any other word Lucius could have used to refer to him. And he could sound calmer, which gave the Wizengamot the impression that all emotions and consequences were under control here.

            “We might still have to wonder about impetuous accusations of parents if Mr. Potter was part of the process,” said Herman Witters, a Wizengamot member Lucius had always disliked. He seemed to think he should succeed in politics better than he had because of his neatly trimmed white hair and bright blue eyes. A resemblance to Albus Dumbledore was no longer the political tool it had once been, after Skeeter’s biography. “We should have someone else oversee it.”

            “I agree we should,” Lucius said smoothly, to make Witters think Lucius agreed with the whole of his proposal while confining it, for someone attentive to his words, to the last part. Potter hadn’t stirred behind him. Lucius had to admire his self-control. “That is why we need a Wizengamot committee.”

            “Not a Ministry one?”

            That was Mackle. Lucius turned to her with a faint smile. “Mr. Potter has already done all he could to gauge the Ministry’s interest, and to raise it, and to prompt it when they hesitated. They have given him every excuse from lack of time to lack of interest. I think I can say that the members of the Wizengamot, based on your voices in this chamber, at least do not suffer from the latter—reason.”

            Lucius felt several of them, perhaps even a majority, filling in his discreet pause with a different word than “reason.” Mackle and Witters looked thoughtful; Jackson was nodding; even several others Lucius had thought they would have more opposition from seemed drawn in.

            But then Witters asked, “What part are you going to play, Mr. Potter?”

            Part of their strategy had involved only one of them speaking at the same time, smoothly alternating, acting equally. Lucius still didn’t step aside when Potter rose to come back to the podium. Strategies regularly needed adapting.

            Besides, he wanted to be close enough to plant an elbow in Potter’s ribs if his voice rose again, or he had the urge to show someone another scar.

            Keep them covered. They are not badges of shame, but only certain people should ever see them.

*

            “I would like to advise people on what signs to look for,” Harry said. He could feel Lucius’s warmth from this close. He kept his gaze on the Wizengamot, though. They were the ones he had to convince. Lucius had unexpectedly turned into a passionate spokesman for the cause.

            Well, the skill isn’t unexpected, or I wouldn’t have picked him to help me develop this. But the passion is.

            “For example,” Harry said, “someone entering my relatives’ home might not have thought I was abused. I wasn’t in the photographs of their family, but then, a casual visitor wouldn’t have known they had another child living there. The barred window of the room I stayed in from the time I was eleven didn’t look out over the front. The cupboard I slept in before I was eleven didn’t have any signs on the outside to distinguish it. I was skinny, to some people, not starving. Part of the reason my relatives weren’t arrested by Muggles for child abuse was that they looked normal and didn’t draw attention to themselves. I’d like to teach investigators to look past the smooth, shiny surface.”

            “You can’t know whether all the surfaces will be smooth and shiny,” said Jackson at once.

            Harry smiled at her a little. One thing his enemies didn’t seem to understand was how easily they played into his tactics. “Exactly. Because we don’t know enough to say how common that is. But where the cases of abuse are open and unapologetic, I would hope that the Wizengamot would take immediate action.”

            Silence for a second, as Jackson obviously struggled to find some reply. Then Lucius smoothly took up the cause again. “The biggest drag on our good intentions at the moment is our lack of knowledge. When we organize investigative teams that can enter the homes of Muggleborn parents and look around, then we will begin to eliminate that, and learn how necessary Mr. Potter’s instruction is.”

            Harry held himself back from a lot he wanted to say. In the end, the important thing was those Muggleborn children, not how much he got involved. This was bigger than him. If he could step back in the end, or had to step back because too many people on the investigative teams were wary and wouldn’t work with him, well, he could live with that.

            “There’s the problem of scale,” someone else, a new Wizengamot member Harry didn’t know, began.

            After that, more arguments started on how they would organize the teams, how many they needed, how they would decide which Muggleborns’ families needed to be visited first—most of them seemed to favor starting with children near Hogwarts age—and how they would explain the magical world. Harry slowly breathed when he thought no one could hear him. The Wizengamot had cleared the first barrier, the acceptance of the necessity of the teams in the first place, with less trouble than he’d thought they would.

            He felt a hand on his elbow, and started. It was Lucius, though, who bent down as though solicitously, and wound up hissing in his ear, “Come back with me to Malfoy Manor tonight.”

            “Draco might be there,” Harry said, the first thing on his mind the warning Lucius had given him about Draco three nights ago.

            Lucius said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose you would object to having me in your house this early in our acquaintance?”

            Harry muffled his laughter. It might make the Wizengamot start paying attention to them again, and that would be a problem. “Technically we’ve known each other for years. Yes, come if you like. Perhaps at five?” It was two now, and the Wizengamot was supposed to move on to discussing something else by three. That should leave Harry at least a few hours to unwind in private before Lucius visited.

            “Perhaps later.” Lucius eyed him for a moment. “I will need some time to clean up.”

            That left Harry some more time himself. He smiled. He wasn’t sure whether Lucius had done this more for himself or for both of them, but he appreciated the gesture. “Very well. I’ll see you then. You know the Apparition coordinates?”

            “I imagine most people do, since the Prophet chose to publish the location of your house.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “All right, but come in slowly. You’ll have to give me time to lower some of the defensive spells.”



            “You’re protected well, then.” Lucius relaxed a little. “Good. I would hate to lose a promising ally so close to the beginning of our journey.”

            Mackle asked a question, perhaps because she’d noticed that they weren’t paying attention to her, and Harry faded into the background. He watched mostly in silence as Lucius fielded the questions, only adding a bit of information when someone spoke to him directly.

            This is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

*

            Lucius found himself gazing at the protective shimmer of the spells around Potter’s home perhaps ten minutes after five. It was better to be on time than early, but he had wanted to give Potter enough time to lower them completely.

            And as it turned out, the extra minutes spent studying them were well worth it.

            Lucius had seen protective spells that resembled fences, and ones that resembled nets, and some that were interwoven in wild patterns guided by the weaver’s force of mind, which might or might not be sane. They were often beautiful, although the plain ones like stone walls less so. But he had never seen ones like these.

            They resembled trees. The trees were shades of green and silver and gold, mingled in their trunks and leaves. They stood so close together that they flowed into one another and grew in double boles, or they stood far apart enough from each other that only their outermost branches touched. But that didn’t matter. Always, they were close enough that the magic leaped and flickered and danced as a barrier between them.

            Lucius was almost sorry when Potter lowered the protective spells enough to drain them into the earth, or, as Lucius saw happening because of the form they took, opening a path into his lovely forest wide enough for Lucius to walk down. Lucius inclined his head to his silent audience and moved down the path. He heard the crackle of energy behind him as the branches reconnected.

            The energy that brushed against him was as velvety as the “cloak” Potter had draped around him. Lucius stroked it again, and kept moving forwards, over a small patch of bare earth that turned into a garden as he walked, as the protective spells swirled around him and dropped illusions that Potter had cleverly woven right into them.

            Lucius smiled a little as he looked at the calm pools and splashing fountains among the huge beds of flowers, red and gold and silver, a variation on the color of the protective spells. It resembled the estates of many older pure-blood houses. Lucius wondered if Potter had done it on purpose or simply found it beautiful.

            The path he was on curved several times, like a snake, which made good defensive sense, before ending up at the door of the house. Potter leaned out and nodded to Lucius, smiling a little as he watched Lucius study the flowers. “Pretty, right? I got some advice from Kreacher on what to plant. Apparently this is what the Black gardens used to look like.”

            “I did not think the Blacks would plant this many red and yellow flowers,” Lucius remarked, as he took off his cloak. Potter whisked it onto a peg with a spell and motioned him inside the house. It felt smaller than it looked, with thick dark colors on the walls, rooms crowded with furniture, and one low fire. Lucius found he could still see well enough to avoid hitting his shins, which was all he cared about.

            Potter laughed, a low sound that made Lucius turn towards him with more attention even than he had intended to pay. “I might have changed the colors, and only relied on Kreacher for placement advice,” he said. “Tea?”

            Lucius shook his head. “I would prefer something more substantial.”

            “Oh?” Potter sounded surprised. “I can make dinner a bit early, I suppose. I have everything I need for it. I just wasn’t intending to eat until later.”

            “Until after I leave?” Lucius smiled into the silence that followed. “And please do not worry about pleasing my palate. Whatever you have will be fine.”

            Potter narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t worried about pleasing your palate. God, what a way to put it.”

            Lucius put his hands together on top of his cane and watched Potter with a small smile as he turned to the kitchen with another roll of his eyes and began to enchant plates into flying from the cupboards and bread into toasting and knives into slicing fruit. This was the man who took advice from house-elves but obviously had none of them serving him.

            And his political ally, and someone Lucius was moving slowly closer to considering more than that.

            He had wondered if Potter could be more than that before now, of course. But he had thought it might damage the smoothness of their political relationship if they came together and then fell apart. Lucius could ignore personal feelings towards his allies, but he was not sure Potter could.

            And this is a man and a subject on which it would be difficult to remain neutral, even for me, Lucius admitted to himself, as he watched Potter spread butter on a pile of scones, doing it with his own hands and knife instead of his wand this time.

            Potter glanced at him only once. There was suspicion in his eyes, and intrigue at the same time. He didn’t appear to know exactly what Lucius was doing, but to want to find out.

            That he will, Lucius thought, and accepted what he had probably known, in part of him, would be the final step since he had read Potter’s letter proposing an alliance.

            But right now, his stomach was rumbling, and more to the point, so was Potter’s.

            After dinner.

*

            autumngold: Thank you! Draco does need to grow up, but in a way, Lucius is avoiding the pain that confrontation would cause even him.

            phoenix-rob: I think you will like Chapter 6.

            Severus1snape: Thank you!

            Jan: His part in this fic isn’t huge, but he’ll appear at least one more time.
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The Night With Stars