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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54573 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Fifty-Two—Draco Malfoy
            Pansy knocked briskly on the sitting room door, then waited for an answer. When she got none, she frowned and knocked again.
            The door opened abruptly enough to send Pansy reeling back. The shield mark on her arm flared to life in the same moment, dazzling with moving shades of green and silver. Staring at it, Pansy nearly forgot to stare at the face that appeared in the narrow gap of the doorway and prevented her from seeing inside.
            “Yes?” Potter asked, his normally warm voice cool enough that Pansy winced. “I’m busy.”
            Pansy leaned in until she was nearly nose-to-nose with him. Potter had a forbidding enough expression on his face that it was hard to do, but fuck that; Pansy had a mission here, and she wasn’t letting it go until she was satisfied. “You’re also distressing your friends, confusing Greg, upsetting Snape, and making everyone turn to me as though I was the one who ought to solve your emotional crises,” she announced. “You might as well come out of that bloody room and eat a little, and let Greg see you. That would comfort at least some of them.”
            “I have someone else I have to comfort now.”
            Pansy opened her mouth, then closed it again. It wasn’t so much the expression on Potter’s face that stopped her, or even the colors coruscating on her arm as if her shield mark was about to fly away. It was the way that Potter was looking over his shoulder into the depths of the room, which he still kept carefully sheltered with the door so Pansy couldn’t see it.
            Of course. That was the real reason Potter hadn’t come to his lunch, or his dinner, and the real reason that he stood there as if he would lash out at Pansy if she tried to press him. Bloody Potter was being a bloody Lord sacrificing everything for one of his bloody vassals. And while Pansy couldn’t deny that Draco might need the comfort right now, when Ollondors had looked at him with hatred in her eyes and he knew the Wizengamot wouldn’t be neutral, she couldn’t restrain a tiny bubble of contempt.
            I didn’t need that comfort. Greg didn’t need it. And neither of us had reason to think that the Wizengamot was going to be neutral.
            But getting Potter to leave someone he could sacrifice himself for was bloody near impossible. So Pansy just nodded and said, “Can Kreacher bring some food up here?”
            “Draco’s too sick to eat.”
            The answer was so quick, but so soft, and Potter was peering over his shoulder again, which meant he missed the—eloquent, Pansy was sure—expression on her own face. “But there are other people in the room who might need to,” Pansy said. “You don’t want Draco to feel guilty for your growling stomach, do you?”
            Potter finally focused on her again, looking more than a little irritated. “This is just a ploy to try to get me to eat.”
            Pansy folded her arms. “At least it has that much justification to it. What is yours, a ploy to make people feel sorry for you because you’re hungry? Or some diabolical plan to punish your stomach because it’s been rebelling against you?”
            Potter gave her a strange look. “I haven’t been vomiting or anything.”
            Pansy looked around, but there was no soft patch of wall nearby to bang her head into. With a sigh, she turned back to face her Lord. “It was a fucking joke, Potter.” She normally wouldn’t have sworn, but Potter had been cooped up in the sitting room with Draco for hours. What was he doing, listening to the story of Draco’s life from birth on and trying to determine what had gone wrong that way?
            “Oh.” Potter looked over his shoulder again.
            Pansy tugged on his arm, and did it until he looked at her. “There’s no reason for you to suffer,” she said. “Let Kreacher bring up the food under a Warming Charm, and you can keep it here until both of you are ready to eat.”
            Potter paused, thought about it, then nodded. “That’s a really good idea, actually. If the charms are strong enough, then the scent of the food won’t provoke Draco.”
            Pansy hesitated. Well, maybe if Potter heard this from her first, then she would stave off an explosion later. Because she knew that Professor Snape was probably going to say it the moment that Potter came out of the room. “Don’t you think that the bond is influencing you too strongly when it comes to him? I mean, you were his enemy, and now you’re spending all day in a room with him and worrying about what he could smell.”
            “You can think of it as concern for my clothes if you want,” Potter said, lowering his voice. “I don’t want vomit all over them.”
            Pansy gave him another stare. “Some people might accept that conclusion, but I happen to know that you aren’t worried about any such thing.”
            “What kind of answer do you want from me?” Potter’s voice lowered further, but lost the hushed tone that Pansy thought he had been adopting for Draco’s comfort. “Yes, the bond is influencing me to stay with Draco. Yes, it’s not something I would have done a month ago. Yes, he wouldn’t have come to me for comfort a month ago. But what use does standing around and saying that have? I would still want to comfort him, and he would still need it. And I know that you aren’t stupid enough to think Professor Snape or his parents would be much use, in a crisis like this.”
            Pansy opened her mouth, then shut it again. It was true that Professor Snape would probably start talking acidly about the bond, which was hardly likely to help Draco in this particular situation. And Potter was looking at Pansy with his piercing eyes, and Pansy couldn’t find anything in them to refute what he’d said, either. The bond was influencing them. Fine. Potter had already accepted that and got past it in the way that Professor Snape apparently couldn’t. Draco either didn’t care or was too sunk in misery to care right now. Why not leave them alone to get on with it?
            Pansy took a little step back, and bowed. “I still think the food is a good idea,” she said. “You know, so that you don’t fall and bang your head because you’re dizzy or anything.”
            Potter nodded. “It is a good idea, and I didn’t think of Kreacher and the Warming Charm before. Thank you.”
            Pansy smiled at him. Perhaps the bond was influencing her, too, to make Potter’s thanks such a welcome thing, but the green and silver bands had stopped waltzing their way across her arm, and that was enough for happiness. “Then I’ll tell him to bring it up.” She didn’t ask what Potter wanted to eat. Kreacher would cook enough hearty food, since Draco had Black blood and he was already upset about Potter’s shutting himself up, to feed any two people.
            Potter had already turned around and shut the door with a final nod, so he could return to Draco. Pansy proceeded slowly down the stairs, something turning over in her head. The amount of time Potter and Draco were spending together, the way that Draco had almost collapsed into Potter’s arms when they came out of the trial, the way that Potter kept turning to check on his position as if he was afraid Draco might have fainted without him…
            Then Pansy shrugged a little. If they want to do anything to make their relationship deeper than that between a Lord and a vassal, that’s their business. Professor Snape might worry about it more than she was, but Pansy was not, thank Merlin, Head of Slytherin House.
*
            “Is she gone?” Draco knew that his voice sounded pathetic, but he really didn’t think he could stand for Pansy to see him like this.
            “She’s gone.”
            A second later, Harry’s comforting weight was back beside him, one arm curved around his shoulders. Draco turned and let his face fall into Harry’s shirt. He held himself stiff, so that he didn’t weep or quiver, but inside, he felt his stomach turning over and over, dissolving in anger and panic and regret.
            He hadn’t felt this bad even when the Dark Lord assigned him the task of killing Dumbledore. Although he hadn’t acknowledged it to himself at the time—after all, there was no way that he could, without the Dark Lord finding out—Draco had held onto the hope that the Boy-Who-Lived would stop the Dark Lord and spare Draco from having to choose between a seemingly impossible task and his parents’ lives. There was someone out there who would save him.
            Nothing and no one could save him from having to endure the trial. And although Harry had done a lot for all of them so far and had even spared Greg and Professor Snape from having to go to Azkaban, Draco wasn’t sure that he would stand up and protest if Draco went to Azkaban. What could he do? Nothing at all. The Wizengamot would enforce the punishment, and they might make things difficult for Harry and the rest of them if Harry protested too much.
            He might spend years in Azkaban. His wand might be snapped. And all for a stupid decision made when he was sixteen years old and had thought that what he wanted most in the world was vengeance.
            It had only taken one look into the Dark Lord’s eyes to know that wasn’t what he wanted most after all. What he wanted most was to live, and to have his parents beside him. But it had been too late to back out then.
            And it was too late to come up with mad plans to avoid the trial now.
            “This was what I tried to tell you earlier,” Harry whispered to him, when they had been sitting there in that silence for some time longer, and Draco could still feel the waves of rippling shock spreading through him. “That your father’s arranged for some of his friends to testify for you.”
            Draco looked up, blinking. He didn’t remember any trace of Harry saying anything like that, but then, he’d been pretty out of it for a while there. “What do you mean?”
            Harry reached out and moved a strand of Draco’s hair out of his eyes. His own eyes showed no contempt, although Draco didn’t think he’d ever shivered and fallen apart before a challenge like this. “He has some friends whose testimony might be able to spare him from Azkaban. But he’s agreed that they’ll testify for you instead and say that you’re a good boy and you wouldn’t need Azkaban to reform you. I wasn’t going to tell you at first. But now the trial is tomorrow and they’ll show up and…I think you need it.”
            “Like a potion,” Draco muttered, but his heart wasn’t behind the bitterness that he put into the words.
            Harry nodded gravely. “If you want to think of it that way.”
            Draco sat back and drew a hand over his face. Merlin, he must look a mess. He hoped that he could avoid his mother for a while after he left the room. She would take one look at him and know he had been frightened. “I don’t know why I’m shaking like this. I don’t know why you put up with it.”
            Harry snorted, which sounded a little more like the boy Draco knew. “What do you suggest I do? Toss you out of this room on your ear?” He shook his head when Draco stared at him. “Your reaction might not be—I don’t know, adult or professional or whatever you want to call it, but at the very least, it’s more mature and less damaging to the bond than Professor Snape’s was.”
            “You didn’t know that he was going to alter the bond like that, though,” Draco whispered, and glanced over his shoulder a little, wincing. Then he remembered that Professor Snape wasn’t in the room, and would have no way of hearing about this if Harry didn’t tell him. He cleared his throat, awkwardly.
            “I didn’t,” said Harry, and his hand was strong and steady on Draco’s shoulder. “But I stand by what I said. He might not have known the consequences of him doing that, either. But it could have resulted in him going to Azkaban for a long time, if that magical theory expert wasn’t willing to lie for us. I’ll remind him of that, if he objects to the amount of time I’m spending with you.” He gave Draco a warm, open smile. “He’ll help you if he possibly can, too.”
            He seemed to be on the verge of telling Draco something else, too, but in the end, he shut his mouth and shook his head. His arm curled strongly around Draco’s shoulders.
            Draco felt calmer now that he knew he wouldn’t be alone—well, alone except for Harry—in the trial, but there was something else he wanted to know. “Why don’t you despise me for crying like this?”
            “I already told you,” said Harry.
            “But I mean, Gryffindorily,” said Draco, and flushed when he saw the smile creeping up Harry’s twitching lips. “Look, I know that’s not a word. But I thought Gryffindors despised people who cried all the time, and cowards, and I’m both. My father would deplore my dragging the family name through the mud like this, and I know that you don’t think that. But why am I not getting rolling eyes from you? Why aren’t you biting your tongue when you talk to me?”
            Harry hesitated for a long time. Draco didn’t ask again, though, because he was now sure that an answer was coming. He just had to wait and see what happened.
            “I don’t know how much you know about my childhood,” Harry finally began.
            “You were raised by Muggles,” said Draco. “And…that’s all I know, really.” He had been about to say that he’d always thought Harry had been raised with knowledge of who he was and with knowledge of being rich and all the rest of it, but the more he thought of it, the more he realized that couldn’t be true. Harry had been too wide-eyed when Draco met him for the first time. Too much like a chattering child who had walked into a wonderful dream.
            Harry nodded. “Well, that much is true. Dumbledore was afraid that I would grow up with a swollen head if he left me with someone in the wizarding world, so he gave me to my aunt and uncle. My mother’s sister, and her husband.” He paused again. Draco was learning to read those pauses, though, or maybe just learning to read the warm silence that pulsed through the shield mark on his arm. He waited without growing impatient, and in time, Harry began again.
            “I not only didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know that magic existed. Sometimes I did things that I didn’t think were normal, like being able to end up on the roof somehow when I hadn’t climbed there or my hair all growing back in one night after my aunt cut it, but there was never anyone to tell me I was a wizard. Until the night of my eleventh birthday when Hagrid delivered my Hogwarts letter, anyway.”
            “That’s why you like him!” Draco felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. He had only known that Harry had made friends with Hagrid before he came to Hogwarts somehow, and he had always supposed that Hagrid was one of his guards, or maybe he lived near the Muggle neighborhood where Harry had grown up.
            “Well, I also like Hagrid because he was loyal to me, and he tried to help me, and he was the first person who ever got me a birthday gift,” Harry said, and his voice was a shade cooler. “If you start attacking him for being a half-giant, then I’m going to stop telling you this story right now.”
            Draco sighed, a long, hard noise that made Harry look at him with a puzzled expression. “Give me credit for having learned that much,” Draco said, and shook his head. “No, I know he’s special to you, like Granger and Weasley are. I may not ever like them, but I don’t insult them for the same reasons anymore. I can do the same for Hagrid.”
            “Thank you,” Harry said, and he grinned. “I have to say, if this is a result of the bond, it’s a surprisingly nice one.”
            Draco would have disagreed with that, but he was safe and warm, sitting next to Harry, and he knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. He wasn’t even sure that was part of the bond. Harry, the git, just seemed to have that effect on lots of people he met.
            “But what does the way you grew up have to do with me?” Draco asked.
            “Oh.” Harry hesitated again. “My aunt really didn’t want me there. She hadn’t had any contact with my mum for a long time before she died, and then Dumbledore dropped me on their doorstep with a note saying who I was and that they had to take care of me. So I grew up—I mean, they didn’t—it wasn’t very nice.”
            Draco leaned more heavily on Harry, and said nothing. Sometimes, that was more effective than words.
            It was this time, too, because Harry started talking again. “My first bedroom was a cupboard. They called me names and told me I was worthless. I had to run away from my cousin all the time, because he would beat me up. And sometimes I lay awake in the cupboard and cried when I was a kid, because I wanted someone to come and take me away and tell me that it was all a mistake and my parents were still alive.” His arm tightened around Draco again. “I know what it’s like when you don’t have any hope, and you’re trying as hard as you can just to keep hope alive. I would never make fun of you for that.”
            Draco opened his mouth, and found nothing to say this time. But he honestly didn’t know if that was because of his throat tightening up, or because of outrage. That the Boy-Who-Lived got treated that way…
            It made him wonder what else Harry had gone through, the things he wasn’t saying. And whether he had started hating the wizarding world, because it had probably seemed like something he could escape into, and then it turned out not to be that way at all.
            It did make Draco ask one more question, though. “So Hagrid was the first wizard you met?” He could call a half-giant a wizard for Harry’s sake, he told himself virtuously. He could. It made his tongue itch, but that was nothing next to the amount of displeasure that flowed through the bond if he insulted Harry’s friends.
            And honestly, he didn’t have much left to insult Harry’s friends for. He had fallen lower than they ever could, in this world where they and not he had fought on the right side of the war. They could taunt him for his standing, and they would be perfectly correct. They wouldn’t want to exchange places with him, while before, Draco thought that at least Weasley had been envious of his wealth.
            “Yes,” Harry said, and smiled at him again. “And he was the one who told me that I was famous, and a little about Voldemort. He didn’t call him by that name, of course, except when he really had to, because I’d never heard of him. And he was angry with my aunt and uncle for not telling me anything about myself. It was the first time someone had ever got angry at them on my behalf, instead of about Dudley or something.”
            He still looked as though the memory kept him warm at night. Draco licked his lips and asked another question. “And I was the second wizard you met?”
            Harry gave him an odd look. “Well…I suppose so. I mean, after all the people in the Leaky Cauldron who wanted to shake my hand. But you were the second one I really talked to. They didn’t want to listen to me, unless I was going to make a speech or something.”
            “Then why did you turn against me on the train?” Draco asked. “If Weasley was the third wizard you met, and I was the second one?” It still made his throat scorch, but he thought that was from the effort of asking the question at all, and not because he was calling Weasley by his name instead of his nickname.
            Harry blinked once. “Because Ron was already my friend,” he said. “You talked to me about Hogwarts and stuff, but you weren’t my friend. You reminded me of my cousin.”
            Draco sat up with his face flushed. Maybe he could no longer deny most of the things that Harry said to him, but this, he wasn’t going to let Harry get away with. “How dare you say that! I never chased you and tried to beat you up.”
            “You would have had Greg and Vincent beat me up, if you could have,” Harry said in a level voice that made Draco want to hide.
            But while he needed someone to support him right now, and teach him better how to be part of the Light and independent of his father, he didn’t need someone to cow him. So he lifted his chin and said, “Yeah, but they weren’t with me when we met in the robe shop. Why did you turn against me?”
            “You were pompous and already talking about prejudices,” Harry said quietly. “And I understood later that you were asking about blood when you asked about my parents. Ron didn’t care about that. He just wanted to talk to me and explain everything, and he was the first person other than Hagrid who was ever nice to me.”
            Draco stared at him, his jaw hanging open a little. If he’d been more polite to Harry, he would have been his best friend? Weasley wouldn’t have been able to come between them?
            No, he saw as Harry looked at him with eyes as stubborn as his own. No, he would have had to be nice, not just polite. And that might have been a little beyond his eleven-year-old self.
            “I…fine,” Draco said. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. And I trust that you won’t make fun of me, and maybe I feel a little better about the way we met when we were kids than I did.” And it had given him something to think about besides the trial, he realized abruptly. That was probably the real reason that Harry had talked to him like this.
            But he had wanted to share the truth, too, and he had argued back enough that Draco didn’t think Harry would go along with everything his vassals wanted just because they were his vassals. It was the bond, but it was so much more complicated than that. Harry seemed to already be living in that more complicated world.
            Draco wanted to join him there.
            “I’m sorry for anything I did that made you feel genuinely hurt, instead of just stung,” Harry said, and Draco snorted in spite of himself. Harry grinned at him and tugged him close again. “So. You know I’ll have your back in your trial tomorrow?”
            It took long moments for Draco to swallow and nod his assent, but he managed it. It wasn’t Harry’s support he doubted. It was his own strength, once he was up in the front of the courtroom and the focus of all those eyes.
            But he would have Harry behind him, and if his own strength ran out…
            “I’ll be your strength,” Harry breathed into his ear. “I’ll be there.”
            If Harry was there, someone who had survived living in a cupboard and growing up without knowing about magic, then Draco thought he could probably make it, too.
*
            moodysavage: In some ways, the way that Greg has been raised is sad, but since this is what he wants, Harry will do his best to give it to him.
            SP777: Well, one interlude chapter, first.
            Polka dot: No, but since the Ministry won't try all the other people who don't even have the excuse of being stupid, Harry doesn't care.
            Ciara_D: Thank you!
            Kain: I see what you're saying, but, as Harry explains in the next chapter, the people like the other Hogwarts students who tortured people and the Ministry workers who were adults and did horrible things out of fear are, more than likely, not going to be punished at all, because it would take too much work and would implicate the Wizengamot itself. He's also facing people who don't hate Draco because of what he did during the war; they hate Lucius, and they're inflicting that hatred on Draco. Harry's not going to get a fair trial if he just steps back and says that the chips can fall where they may. In between the distorted trial that the Wizengamot would give his vassals and letting them go with no punishment at all, Harry is trying to steer a middle course. He's actually willing to let more happen to Draco than the others, because he did more wrong in the war, but he's not willing to let Draco get Kissed, which is what some people are pushing for. He thinks Draco deserves punishment, but not the ultimate punishment, and not the punishment that comes out of the minds of people bent more on vengeance than on justice. I'm trying to show a Harry who believes more in justice, and in mercy, than in vengeance.
            Further chapters will show if I succeed or not.
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The Only True Lords