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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54573 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
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Chapter Fifty-Five—The Malfoys, Day Three
            The door to Draco’s room had been locked since they had got home from the Ministry two hours earlier.
            Harry sighed and knocked again, leaning against the wall when it became clear that Draco wasn’t going to open it. “I just want to talk to you,” he told the shut door. “Please? About what you said and why I supported what Madam Mollevron wanted? Please.”
            But Draco didn’t open it, and the emotions flowing through the bond flickered like fire strewn with salt. Harry reckoned that he wasn’t going to get a welcome either eavesdropping on Draco right now or trying to barge his way in. He finally turned his back and began to make his way down towards the kitchen.
            “When you’re ready to talk, I do want to talk to you,” he called to the door.
            It remained shut, and the bond all but silent. Harry sighed and made the rest of the journey, nearly jumping when he saw Greg waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He’d been so involved in his head that anything that intruded from the outside felt startling.
            “Greg.” Harry mustered a smile for him, and reached out along the bond to feel Greg’s emotions. He was calmer than Draco, of course, but there was also a steadiness and a joy there, like a stone tower rising, that Harry had missed. Greg was the only one of his vassals who seemed really happy with the bond. Sometimes, Harry appreciated the reminder that he hadn’t fucked up everybody’s lives forever. “Can I do something for you?”
            Greg nodded. “I think that Professor Snape wants to talk to you about the trial today,” he said, and led Harry towards the library. Harry went with him, more resigned than ever. A conversation with Snape wouldn’t be much more enlightening than one with Draco; both of their emotions were pretty muted through the bond.
            “What’s wrong, my Lord?’
            Greg had stopped, and was looking at him. Harry hesitated, but as long as he didn’t expect Greg to solve his problems, he thought it was okay to talk about them. “I just don’t know how the trial will work out,” he said. “Draco resents me for the way things happened today, and I don’t know what Professor Snape will expect me to do.”
            “He shouldn’t expect you to do anything,” said Greg peacefully. Sometimes Harry would give a lot for that peace. “You’re not really his Lord. After the trials are over, he wants the bond dissolved.”
            Harry shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m still Draco’s Lord. And he’s expecting me to do something that will save Draco.”
            Greg looked a little lost. “Save Draco from Azkaban?”
            “I think so.” Harry knew there was no way that he could ever let Greg know about how Snape had been prepared to sacrifice him as long as nothing happened to Draco. “Or save him from suffering in general, maybe. Make sure that he doesn’t get Kissed. It could be lots of things.”
            Greg frowned in concentration. “Then you should go and talk to him, and see which it is.” And he resumed leading Harry to the library.
            Harry snorted to himself. He thought he had probably come too far in life to find the kind of peace that Greg did in obedience even if he tried to apply himself to it. He would resent being told what to do, and he’d want to go off and do things on his own.
            But he envied it anyway.
*
            “Tell me what your plans are for getting Draco out of this situation.”
            Harry leaned back in his chair and looked at him with what Severus thought was unfair coolness. “The trial? I can’t get him out of the trial. I think the Stripping of the Wand that Madam Mollevron recommended really is the best option to fight for. They can punish him for his crimes that way, and feel like they’re punishing him all the more because it’s something he so obviously hates. But he won’t get Kissed, and he won’t go to Azkaban. They can’t send kids to Azkaban.”
            Severus half-shut his eyes. Any one of his Slytherins would have known what he meant instantly, and without the need for further explanation.
            But it was not as though he needed a further example that Potter was not one of his Slytherins.
            He held his breath until he thought he could calm down enough to speak without shouting, and then started again. “Not the trial. I know that the trial must go forwards. Going to Azkaban is what I meant. Combined with the Stripping of the Wand. Together, they would be a punishment too cruel for anyone to endure.”
            Harry said nothing for long enough that Severus wondered what objection he could raise against something so reasonable and believable. Then he said, “I already told you why they won’t both be happening. You don’t believe me?”
            Something in the quickness of Harry’s voice made Severus look at him hard, but Severus still ended up having to shake his head, because he did not understand. “You must get Draco out of both, not only one. He must not be—”
            “Punished?” Harry interrupted, with a little flash of his teeth that Severus did not like and did not know who had taught him. “I know that you swore an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa to protect her son, but it doesn’t cover things like this, or you would already be dead.”
            Severus pushed down his frustration, everything that made him want to explode, and forced himself to consider the situation as though it was happening to someone else, as though he was reading the incident in a book about the war years later. What advice would he give to that person? What course would he shake his head at and declare foolish?
            “He did not commit enough crimes to deserve either punishment,” Severus finally said. “That is what I wish you would spare him.”
            Harry gave him a look like a hunting hawk, and Severus ground his teeth. He knew it was probably the bond that was giving Harry so many qualities that he didn’t have before, like the ability to make an effective argument, but that made it no less irritating to contend against.
            “He deserves some punishment,” Harry said softly. “If I received some for casting the Unforgivables and you got some even though you were on our side all along, then Draco deserves some. He didn’t go along willingly with everything, but he still did them, and he refused all the best efforts that you and Dumbledore made to help him.”
            “I cannot believe that you will hold that against him,” said Severus flatly. “What was he supposed to do? Jump for joy at the fact that we knew why he was risking himself?”
            “No, but he made the decision to take the Mark,” said Harry. “And everything else followed from that.”
            “Since when are you a Gryffindor paragon?” snapped Severus, and drew back his sleeve from his left arm. “When are you so unsympathetic to Marked Death Eaters?”
            “What you did for, you atoned by years of suffering and trying to make sure that you did the right thing,” Harry snapped back, and then shut his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Anyway. I’m not unsympathetic to Draco. I simply can’t go this far into the trial and then let Draco not receive any punishment. If you even think that I’m capable of influencing the Wizengamot to agree to that, you haven’t been paying attention the past few days.”
            Severus shut his eyes. From beyond his closed eyelids came Harry’s soft voice. “Why are you so determined to keep Draco from being punished, when you weren’t trying to keep Pansy or Greg from being punished?”
            “I failed him,” Severus whispered. “I made an Unbreakable Vow that I kept, as far as the letter of it went, but I failed in the spirit. I should have done something more to help Draco. I should have made sure that he was safe.”
            A hand touched his. Severus started and opened his eyes. Harry was shaking his head at him, and his eyes were unaccountably soft.
            “You can’t blame yourself for not perfectly fulfilling a vow that Narcissa forced you into,” Harry said. “Any more than you can blame yourself for fulfilling the vow that you made to Dumbledore but not having everything work out perfectly. I know that you did what you could to distract attention from some of the students at Hogwarts that the Death Eaters wanted to punish, but you couldn’t save all of them. That is not your fault. I wish you wouldn’t think it was.”
            Severus opened his mouth, and found himself wordless. The words resonated with thoughts that he’d had, but he almost never dared voice them. They would sound ungrateful when it came to Albus, horrible when it came to Draco, a boy who more innocent than Severus however one looked at it.
            “So,” said Harry, standing up. “No, I won’t try to get Draco out of having any punishment at all. But I will make sure that it’s fair.” He looked at Severus with his eyes calm and clear. “Watch me tomorrow.”
            And he left the library, leaving Severus to stare at his hands, and realize that he had no idea what to do or say next.
*
            “We have yet to determine whether it would be legal to send a child to Azkaban,” said Madam Mollevron, and sat down again. Harry thought she only stood at all, with the pain it obviously caused to her leg, because it would attract attention and make people focus on her for a little while.
            “It’s happened in other cases of the Stripping of the Wand,” said Ollondors. But she stood with her arms folded, and her glance at Changes showed that she wasn’t sure.
            “Only after the person in question had arrived back at legal adulthood,” said Changes. She had taken no part in the Wizengamot debates, except when someone asked her a question, the way they had now. She stood there with her eyes alert and passing from face to face. “Then they were sometimes sent to Azkaban for the original sentence, or the original sentence halved. It depended on how they had been treated when they were wards. If they had been treated poorly and locked up a great deal of the time, for example, that was sometimes considered to have substituted for the original punishment of a jail cell.”
            Harry sighed. He hadn’t got much done last night, between trying to talk to Draco (who never would talk to him, and had marched into the courtroom this morning between his parents, and without looking in Harry’s direction) and spending some necessary time with his friends. He needed their calmness and their steadiness to ground him.
            At least he had Ron’s word that he wouldn’t try to ask for more punishments if Draco was legally reduced to a child. In fact, Ron was hoping that the Stripping of the Wand happened, instead of him being sent to Azkaban, because he thought it would be so much more humiliating for Draco.
            Harry could foresee a lot of conflict in the future. Ron and Draco didn’t like each other, and never would. Ron resented Draco for almost killing him. Draco resented Ron for existing, maybe.
            But they had to worry about the trial in front of them first.
            “We could reconsider the Azkaban sentence when he’s an adult again,” said Ollondors, looking cheerful at the thought.
            “We could,” said Mollevron. “Maybe by then, the sight of his face wouldn’t bore me.” She looked at Draco, who glared back.
            “There comes the choice, of course, who we would pass the custody of young Mr. Malfoy to,” said Ollondors, and her eyes were on Harry.
            “Please make it someone who can respect Lordship bonds,” Harry said mildly. “I have a magical responsibility to him that I can’t give up, no matter who you choose.”
            Ollondors started. Harry smiled back at her. She had probably expected him to jump up and down clamoring to have guardianship of Draco. He would have if he’d had someone different trying the case, but Ollondors was determined to cross him in all sorts of ways. She wouldn’t want to let Harry have any say in Draco’s fate if she thought that was a good thing for Draco.
            It was too late to convince her that Harry despised Draco and didn’t want to protect him, of course. Harry had made it perfectly obvious all along that he did. But he could at least try to make sure Draco was comfortable, and he didn’t think that just taking charge of him or abandoning him to whatever guardian the Wizengamot chose would do that.
            “Rather,” said Ollondors, after a moment. “But you could give up the bond if you chose.”
            “Only if he asked me to,” said Harry. “I don’t think he will.”
            At that point, it seemed everyone in the courtroom turned and stared at Draco, and Harry allowed himself to look, too.
            Draco was standing up, as though his back had been too rigid to sit in his chair. He stared at Harry, and the breath huffed in and out of his lungs. Then he turned his head harshly to the right, and looked blindly at his parents. Harry saw Narcissa squeeze his hand and speak softly to him. It didn’t seem to help.
            “How would you feel about having a say in Draco Malfoy’s guardianship?” said Mollevron then. She had evidently decided it would hurt her feet less to stay in her chair and just point her stick at Harry. Harry reflexively tensed when she did that. “As his Lord, you should have some say in what happens to him.”
            Harry looked at Draco again. Draco was giving him a blank mask that might or might not reflect what he really felt. And the emotions through the bond were running into the same frozen dam that they had yesterday. Harry sighed. He would have to go with his own instincts and his own ideas of what would be best for Draco.
            “I know that I want to keep him in the bond, as long as he wants it, too,” Harry said. “And I know that he probably can’t be committed to my guardianship, since I would be under house arrest at the time. But I want whoever takes charge of him not to hate him.”
            “The court will not look for guardians who like him,” Ollondors interrupted him.
            “But if you make him legally a child,” Harry said, letting his voice get a bit cold, “and that person you appoint mistreats him, that’s child abuse. And I will not stand for that.” He might have come to terms with his own abuse, but there was no way that he would stand by and watch it happen to someone else.
            Ollondors perhaps knew he could still cause trouble, in spite of all the horrible things that had been attributed to him during the past few weeks, because she scowled, but nodded. “We do have to find someone with a firm hand, though.”
            “As long as that doesn’t include cursing or beating him,” Harry said, “that’s fine.”
            “Are you ever going to let me talk for myself?”
            Harry glanced over his shoulder. Draco was standing up still, but facing Harry now, and his hands had tightened into fists.
            “Yes, of course, Mr. Draco Malfoy,” said Ollondors, her face bright with joy, “tell us what you would like. Not that it’ll matter, but we would all like to listen to the words of a torturer and a murderer.”
            Harry rolled his eyes, without caring who saw him. Was the Wizengamot ever neutral in a trial? Or did they praise the people they wanted to excuse as much as they blamed the people they wanted to condemn?
            Draco ignored Ollondors as much as she was ignoring Harry at the moment. He walked, vaguely, to the front of the courtroom, but he was really closer to Harry. And staring at him all the time.
            Harry looked indifferently back. Well, as indifferent as he could be to one of his vassals who was in danger. He wanted to hear what Draco had to say, but he also knew that it was probably not going to help the trial. And why Draco blamed Harry instead of the Wizengamot, enough to send the freezing hostility that was occluding the bond right now, he didn’t know.
            Maybe he would get to hear it.
*
            Harry. How can you do this? You must realize that the Stripping of the Wand would be the worst thing they could do to me. Not Azkaban.
            Draco realized that he hadn’t actually said that, because they’d only brought up the Stripping of the Wand yesterday and he hadn’t talked to Harry since then, but Harry had seemed to know him pretty well during their conversations. There was no reason for him to go off and pretend that he didn’t during the rest of the trial.
            “I don’t want the Stripping of the Wand,” he said, looking at Harry more than the Wizengamot. “Azkaban would be better than that. At least Azkaban would show that you recognize me as a—as an adult, someone you can respect.” And maybe he was talking more to Harry than the Wizengamot at the moment, but Mollevron and Jenkyns and the rest would just have to put up with that. “I don’t want to be stripped of my wand and my adulthood for years and years. Years in Azkaban would be better.”
            “Why?” asked Mollevron, looking bored. “They would both last years.”
            Draco turned to her, and ignored the hissed warning that his mother sent at his back. If she couldn’t understand why this was so important to Draco, then she would just have to put up with it, too.
            “Because this would be humiliating,” he said. “You don’t humiliate people that you sentence to Azkaban. You acknowledge that they’re dangerous and they need to be kept away from the rest of wizarding society. If that’s the way you think of me, fine! Or you can think of me as a coward who should have been able to resist—” He had planned the say the name, but his whole throat and stomach closed and rebelled against it. He managed, finally, to shake his head and spit out, “The Dark Lord, fine. I’m that, too. But I’m not a child. No one who has seen as much as I have could be a child.”
            He knew Harry was staring at him. He ignored that. Harry had already proven he didn’t know Draco all that well after all. Now it was his turn to listen, and maybe he would learn to know Draco from that.
            “But you don’t understand,” said Ollondors, and her voice—Draco didn’t think he should look at her face—had a soft, unholy glee. “If it’s the last thing you want, then that’s all the more reason we should do it. Because you should be punished for your crimes. You should not simply escape them.”
            Draco folded his hands together, low down, under the smooth drape of his robes. He was not going to burst out bawling or otherwise show them why he was upset. He was going to stand here and let some of their insults slide off him.
            “Azkaban would be worse,” he said. “Because it would torment me more to be alone in a room all the time with only guards to bring me food and no friendly visitors.” He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, Harry’s head shaking, but he turned his head further to the side, and refused to look. “It would hurt me more. Do you want to hurt me, or do you want to humiliate me?”
            Ollondors was silent, maybe because she didn’t know. Mollevron leaned forwards. “We want to be done with you, and we want you to be quiet,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say, that’s what I want. But I’m an old woman, and I’m allowed to be selfish.”
            Draco bit his lip. Then he stopped. That was probably a childish gesture that would also make them think they shouldn’t take him seriously. But he had to do what he could to calm down and make them rethink what they were doing.
            “The Stripping of the Wand,” Ollondors said. “Should it be allowed to stand in for all his crimes? For the attempted murder and the attempted capture of Harry Potter during the Battle of Hogwarts? Or should it be combined with different punishments?”
            “I think it should be combined with different punishments,” said Jenkyns, and then frowned as if he didn’t know whether he was agreeing with Ollondors. He probably didn’t want to agree more than he wanted to punish Draco. Draco knew that was an insight he could have used in other circumstances, and he would have managed to manipulate his enemies against each other, as he thought Harry was trying to do.
            But he couldn’t listen to that cool little voice right now. He couldn’t listen to Harry right now. Harry wasn’t the one who was on trial for his life and freedom.
            “Different punishments,” said Draco, as calmly as he could. “And then you can shorten how long a time I’m without a wand, right? Because there might be some outrage if you put a child in prison, but there wouldn’t be anyone upset if you put an adult in prison.”
            Mollevron yawned at him and flipped one hand. “I’m growing tired of his voice,” she complained. “Is anyone else growing tired of his voice? I propose the Stripping of the Wand only, but to make the punishment five years. Unless Lord Potter wants to press for him to be charged with attempting to capture him…” She looked at Harry.
            “No,” Harry said quickly. “He didn’t succeed, and he ended up owing me a life-debt. The life-debt is all I want.”
            Draco opened his mouth to scream at him, but Mollevron spoke again. “Good. Then who is with me, for the lengthy Stripping of the Wand? And for custody for young Draco to be shared between his Lord, who would be legally responsible for him anyway no matter what happened, and an Auror appointed by the court?”
            “Why an Auror?” Draco snapped, his head spinning. Most of the time, he thought, people forced to be children were given to members of the Wizengamot or other pure-blood families. “Why not one of you? Or one of the pure-blood families that survived the war?”
            “Most of them harbor just as many Death Eaters as yours does,” muttered Ollondors, her eyes glowing viciously.
            “She’s right,” said Mollevron. “And frankly, I wouldn’t trust most of us to do justice by you. I know that I wouldn’t. I’d hit you with my cane the first time you started whining, and that would be child abuse, as Lord Potter has rightfully pointed out to us.”
            “Could I make a suggestion?” Harry asked, and Draco, dazed and furious, wondered if this “suggestion” would make him want to hit Harry or not.
            “Yes?” Mollevron was tapping her cane on the ground again, but at least she wasn’t actually standing up.
            “You might want to try Auror Stone as Draco’s guardian,” said Harry. “She told me that she was launching investigations into Death Eaters among the Aurors, but she’s fair. She wouldn’t treat Draco with too much generosity, but she would also make sure that he wasn’t hurt or abused.”
            “That would be a good idea,” said Mollevron. “If he lives with you, sharing your house arrest, but Auror Stone is the one who makes any decisions about legal and financial matters that your bond does not force you to make? And she makes any decisions about when he can leave the house and with what escort, of course.”
            Harry took a deep breath. “I agree.”
            “It’s not your agreement that’s important,” Ollondors began.
            “Yes, it is,” said Mollevron. “If we’re asking him to take on part of the legal guardianship of the boy, it is. And the bond would demand some share, in any case. You can’t use the fact that he’s a Lord in some trials and ignore it in others,” she added with a cackle, probably because Ollondors was glaring at her.
            “You don’t need to ask him about the bond,” said Draco, “because I’m going to ask to be released from it as soon as possible.”
            “You can’t now,” said Mollevron, “unless your guardians think it’s a good idea. At least, if people agree with me that this is a good solution?”
            Hands rose and heads nodded all around the courtroom, and Draco, his heart crashing, heard Mollevron say, “Can we wait until tomorrow to try his parents, then? Lunch gave me wind.”
*
delia cerrano: They did, but it doesn’t necessarily matter to them.
SP777: If they had gone on trying him for his crimes in a regular way, it would have been more than 18 months in the end.
MoonlightVampiress: No, Draco didn’t set it up. He still has his pride, and being seen as a child is so humiliating that he really wants it not to help. But Ron might have thought that this was a possibility.
And Draco will have a long punishment. Maybe Azkaban at the end of it; they’ll decide then. Harry’s hope is that at the end of the period of the Stripping of the Wand, they’ll be able to get a more neutral judge.
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The Only True Lords