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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-Eight—Speaking
            “Um. I really need to talk to you.”
            Harry put down the book he’d been almost reading. He’d anticipated that Draco would come to him and want to talk, which was good, because otherwise Harry would have sat there all evening only pretending to read and learning nothing. The book had kept the others away, though.
            Or maybe, he thought, remembering the sympathetic looks that Pansy and Ron and Hermione had all sent him as he sat there in the library, the rest of them just understand that there’s not going to be much peace for me until Draco and I talk.
            “Sure,” Harry said. “Do you want to stay here or go somewhere else?”
            Draco shut his eyes and turned his head back and forth for a second as though he was seeking some kind of reassurance invisible to Harry. Then he opened them again and said, “We can stay here. As long as no one comes through the door.”
            “My friends would knock, and I can feel anyone else through the bond,” said Harry, smiling at him. “Do you want to explain what’s bothering you most?”
            Draco had been about to sit down, but he paused and shot Harry a startled look at that. “I wasn’t coming to complain about anything! I was coming to apologize.”
            “Of course,” said Harry, holding back his surprise. He had hoped for that, after the thoughtful look on Draco’s face when he came out of the talk with his parents, but he hadn’t been sure that he should. Draco had been stubborn and insistent about not talking to him before, after all. “I do understand why you did what you did.”
            Draco shot him a look of intense misery. “But that isn’t the same as saying you approve of it.”
            “Well, no,” Harry conceded. “I didn’t approve of it.”
            Draco looked at his hands. “Every punishment seemed worse than the one before,” he whispered. “First, it was horrible just knowing that I was going to have to go through the trial. And then it was the Kiss, or the possibility that they might condemn me to the Kiss. And then it was Azkaban. And then the Stripping of the Wand. It must have been tiresome for you to listen to me.”
            “It was only tiresome when you wouldn’t listen to me,” Harry said. “Honestly,” he added, when Draco glanced at him from beneath lowered eyelashes. “I don’t mind if you get angry and shout at me. The bond gives me ways to handle that. But you were just silent and miserable all the time, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Especially when you shut me out of the bond the way you did after Mollevron first suggested the Stripping of the Wand.”
            Draco sighed and bowed his head. “I really don’t have an excuse for that. It was just—it seemed so overwhelming. But I already told you that.”
            “Do you think you can be happy with me having partial custody of you?” To Harry, that was really the most important question. He wanted his vassals happy, or the bond would be a source of misery to them both. “Because I’m willing to give all of your custody to Auror Stone if you think I didn’t support you enough.”
            “I trust her to be fair,” Draco said in an oddly tight voice. “I don’t trust her to be supportive. I think—I think that you’re going to be supportive. Right?” He lifted his head, and Harry couldn’t stand it any longer. He crossed the room and caught Draco close, almost crushing him.
            Draco stiffened a little, and then sighed and melted against him. Harry felt as though he’d lost a limb for the past few days and only had it replaced now. He didn’t know how much time passed with them in that silent embrace, but he knew it wasn’t enough before Draco pulled away from him again.
            “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve said that yet. Are you going to accept the apology?”
            “Yes,” Harry said firmly. “I understand why you were doing it. And I’m sorry that there wasn’t a solution that was perfect for everyone that I could find.”
            Draco watched him out of the corner of one eye, and then smiled a little, a smile that Harry didn’t think he’d seen from him before. For that matter, the bond between them twitched and gleamed with emotions he didn’t think he’d seen before, warm blue and gold. “I notice that you’re not apologizing for not being able to get my father out of prison.”
            Harry debated, then shrugged. “Well. I don’t want to lie.”
            “Did you ever consider trying to free him?”
            “Not really.” Harry saw the way that Draco’s face twitched, and held back from rolling his eyes with an effort. It was the truth, and he wasn’t about to give Draco a lie when that would work out less than spectacularly. “He’s not my vassal, and I do think he did things that he should go to prison for. But he and I worked out that bargain anyway, when we thought that having character witnesses for you would be a good thing. I always knew that he was willing to go to prison if you could stay free.”
            “That’s what he said.” Draco finally chose a chair, further from him than Harry liked, but Harry tried not to let that show as he took his own. “In the anteroom, when I talked to him. And he said I could visit him now and then.” He was silent, smoothing a knuckle along his jaw in a way Harry had sometimes seen him do at Hogwarts.
            “I hope so. I don’t really know how often the Wizengamot will give permission for you to move around, but that’s why having an Auror as your partial guardian is a good thing. I know that Auror Stone will take you where she thinks you need to go, and she won’t listen to the Wizengamot trying to tell her that she’s a fool for doing it.”
            “You like her, don’t you?”
            “Trust her?” The emotions pouring through the bond had become confused again, or maybe Harry hadn’t been reading Draco’s emotions often enough in the recent past for him to really get a handle on what Draco was feeling. “I think she’s fair. That doesn’t really add up to liking her. I still know that she would have arrested me if she thought that me being a Lord was wrong, like Kislik did.”
            Draco sighed and leaned his head back on his chair. “You know how I told you that I wanted to make a life separate from the one that my father had planned for me?”
            Cautiously, Harry nodded, not sure where this was going.
            “It seems every step I take, I just find myself further and further entangled in that world.” Draco let his hands flop down on either side of him. “I need to think about politics and making my family proud all the time, and I will for as long as I’m a child legally. Five years of that. How can I really get away and make myself different?”
            Harry waited until Draco shot him an exasperated look, then shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t sure if you were really asking for advice or if it was just a rhetorical question.”
            “You know the word rhetorical?”
            “Better!” Harry tried to smile as charmingly as he could. He recognized the confusion dancing down the bond now, at least. It was the same confusion he had felt during his fifth year, when he was trying so hard to find his place in the war and didn’t know how to. “I know rhetoric. Without it, the trials would have gone differently.”
            Draco folded his arms and shot him a narrow glance. “Yeah, and I don’t think you knew that before, either. The bond is changing you so that you’re a better Lord and we fit each other better. Doesn’t that bother you?”
            “Yes and no,” said Harry. “It would bother me more if it was changing me into someone who supported Voldemort or something.”
            “And, of course, if you don’t support Voldemort you’re completely good?” Draco had turned pale as he spoke the name, but he’d managed it. Harry was more impressed than he wanted to show, but Draco smiled, so he could probably feel it through the bond anyway.
            “You see, that thing, right there?” Harry gestured between them. “It’s useless trying to hide this and feeling off about it all the time. I know that you’re going to feel what I feel, and I’ll feel what you feel, and of course that bloody influences me. Like the Wizengamot influences me, and my friends’ opinions, and having to stay cooped up in this house, and House rivalry. It’s everything. The bond is just one more part of it.”
            “But it’s something that you never thought you’d have to deal with.”
            “I didn’t grow up thinking that I’d have to deal with my parents being murdered or being a wizard, either,” said Harry. “And believe me, learning I was the Boy-Who-Lived wasn’t all fun. So I might as well go ahead and deal with it.” He hesitated, then added, “I believe I told you that before.”
            “And I believe you were going to tell me something about how I could both be part of my father’s world and make some kind of life for myself.”
            Harry nodded. “You’re going to see him as much as I can arrange it, but you won’t see him all the time. He won’t control you or make your life all about him anymore. I think that’s the best start. You can start talking to other people and reading books that are about supporting different ways of life.”
            Draco frowned. “Not too different. I still want to make my ancestors proud.”
            “Then I think that you’re the one who’s going to have make most of the decisions about how to be different from his legacy,” said Harry, as gently as he could. “I don’t know what would make your family proud and what would go too far.”
            Draco nodded and stared at his hands again. “I’m amazed that you still want me around after the way I acted,” he muttered.
            Harry put a quick hand on his arm. “The bond ties us together anyway.’
            “And that’s the only reason, right?” Draco’s head came up, his eyes bright and desperate.
            Harry had to shake his head. “I’m just saying that my not wanting you around wouldn’t make that much difference. But I understand the way you were reacting. I don’t approve of it. Please don’t do it again,” he added mildly, when Draco opened his mouth as though to respond. “But I understand. I’ve done plenty of things that I’m not all that proud of, either.”
            Draco peered at him in interest. “Like what? You seemed to get away with breaking all the rules around Hogwarts, and then you’ve been pretty much the perfect Lord.”
            “I didn’t see what was going on with Blaise in time, and then I gave him too many chances. I didn’t see what Dumbledore wanted me to do to defeat Voldemort in time. Severus almost had to die to get the message to me. I had the accidental bond thing in the first place. I made silly decisions with the Aurors, and I didn’t handle the Wizengamot as well as I could. I got you kidnapped, even if I didn’t mean to. I was hostile to you and a bunch of other Slytherins during Hogwarts, as if House rivalry really mattered all that much when there was a Dark Lord after my blood. I kept secrets and didn’t go to the adults for help a lot because I thought I could handle it on my own or everything was happening too quick and someone might die if I waited. I—”
            “Then you have to learn the same thing I do.” Draco was smiling.
            “Pardon? I really don’t know a lot of the Potter family traditions.” Harry wasn’t sure that he wanted to, either. Sure, they might be like the Weasleys, but they were also pure-bloods who had intermarried with a lot of pure-bloods over time. If they were more like the Blacks until his dad, he didn’t really care about being close to them or impressing them.
            “I mean that you have to learn to live your life without a Dark Lord threatening you all the time. Even the bond happened in the first place because of him trying to enslave us.” Draco leaned forwards insistently. “I think it’s just as well that he’s gone now.”
            “Believe me, I’m relieved, too,” Harry said, dryly enough to make Draco laugh.
            “No, I mean, you have to learn your life without him the way I have to learn to live life without my father.” Draco eyed him thoughtfully. “He really has been in the background and controlling you all the time, hasn’t he?”
            “Would you describe your father that way?”
            Draco flushed. “No, but I was counting on his support a lot more than I realized. I think it’s good that we both have the chance to escape spending all our time thinking about them, that’s all,” he added hastily.
            Harry nodded. No one else had pointed that out to him or encouraged him to see his freedom from Voldemort that way. He thought it was worthwhile. “Thanks, Draco. You’re opening up fresh perspectives to me, too, if you ever worry that you aren’t contributing enough.”
            Draco’s flushed deepened, but he nodded regally to Harry and stood. “Thank you for talking with me. I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.” He walked to the door like a diplomat for a foreign power leaving.
            “Draco?” Harry called softly after him.
            No response, but Draco did pause with his hand on the doorknob.
            “I really am glad that you didn’t go to Azkaban or get Kissed.”
            “Yeah,” Draco said, when enough silence had passed that Harry thought he would walk out of the room without saying anything. “So am I.” Harry thought he could see the edge of a nervous smile on his face as he slipped out.
            Harry leaned back, slowly. It felt, for a second, as if the chair he was sitting in would break if he leaned on it too hard.
            But it didn’t. And no one came to knock at the door or sent up a flare of sudden distress through the bond.
            Harry breathed in and out, and waited. Still, everything was calm and peaceful—for the moment—in and out. It probably wouldn’t last long, but for now, it was lasting enough.
            It was over.
*
            “Welcome back to the land of the sane.”
            Draco sat down across from Pansy, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure that he knew what to say, or anything that wouldn’t make him sound pompous and stuck-up. He looked around, and found Kreacher bowing to him and holding out a plate of scones. It wasn’t breakfast time, but the scones were steaming and looked wonderful, and Draco wasn’t about to argue with that. He put several on his plate and started eating them without any butter or marmalade or anything.
            “Well, the land of the marginally sane,” said Pansy, calm and cool judgment in her voice. “I don’t think that anyone who eats their scones absolutely dry can lay claim to that title.”
            “Yes, I know you’re going to say that you were right all along in not fighting the bond, and I should have known that and listened to you.” Draco didn’t bother glancing up. “You can gloat now.”
            “I don’t actually think I can gloat. Not when it took you so many weeks and different trials to see the truth.”
            “Then say that I was a poor Slytherin.” Draco paused to guzzle a lot of milk the house-elf had brought him, not caring about the disgusted expression on Pansy’s face. One thing he wasn’t going to miss was his parents constantly hovering around and correcting his table manners. Maybe he could establish himself as different from other Malfoys in rudeness.
            Not seriously. But he deserved the ability to be un-serious for a while.
            “I would never say that.” Pansy folded her hands in front of her. “You were concerned about yourself and your family, and you didn’t trust other people to have the same investment in your safety. That’s Slytherin down to the core.”
            “What made it so easy for you to trust him?” Draco asked, the question that had bothered him whenever he had a moment to focus on Pansy instead of his own fate or how much he was struggling with Harry or something else that had seemed infinitely more important. “I mean, he was Harry Potter. You wanted to sacrifice him to the Dark Lord at one point.”
            “I had no choice. I knew that my future—the foreseeable future—lay with him, and that no one else would fight that much if I went to prison.”
            “Your parents?” Draco paused in his eating. He had thought it was normal that Pansy wasn’t hearing from her parents, since very few owls or firecalls would have been able to come through Grimmauld Place’s wards. But now that he thought about it, Harry would probably have tried to contact her parents for her, if Pansy had suggested it. She hadn’t.
            “They’re in trouble.” Pansy said it as calmly as she could, but Draco saw the way her fingers curled. “I assume. I haven’t heard. Either way, I knew that calling too much attention to them at the time could cause them more trouble, because their daughter was the one involved in a high-profile Death Eater trial. Maybe I’ll try to find out what happened to them now that I have the time.”
            “I’m sure Harry would help you with that if you wanted. I think family is really important to him.”
            “If you can say that, when he didn’t save your father from going to prison, then I’ll trust it,” said Pansy, seriously enough that Draco had to look down and toy with his food again.
            “My father wasn’t his vassal,” he mumbled. “I know that he would have fought for him if he was. And my father committed crimes against his friends. I think Harry finds that more difficult to forgive than crimes against him.”
            “You did both.”
            Draco winced. “And this is the part where I can say that I didn’t always miss you and that sharp tongue of yours. Unless there’s some special reason that you were sparing me from it in the past few days?”
            “I thought you and Harry had enough to worry about, and Harry wouldn’t have thanked me for diverting your attention. Even though I could have.” Pansy gave him an enormous grin that faded a second later. “Are you going to stay under the bond?”
“I think it’s basically a condition of my punishment. The Wizengamot wouldn’t think it was a good idea for Harry to be my guardian if he released me from it.”
Pansy looked up at the ceiling. “Let me remind myself for next time that you’re still relentlessly literal. I was asking if you wanted to stay under the bond, more than I was asking whether it was legally necessary.”
“Yes, I am. I don’t always like it.” Draco grimaced as he remembered the way that he had yelled at Harry, and Harry had told him to grow up and then walked away. “But it’s the best option for me, and it gives me a chance to recover my family’s pride and dignity and reputation. That’s a good thing.”
            “Maybe you and I can work together, then,” Pansy offered. “Because I think that it’ll give me political advantages, too. We can work out what those advantages are together.”
            “I don’t really want to be political,” Draco said slowly. “Unless I need to, because someone is defaming my family and I need to stand up against them. But other than that, I don’t have much reason to.” He looked at Pansy and remembered the times he’d seen her arguing with the Daily Prophet, circling lines in it and throwing the paper across the room when the politicians did something particularly stupid. “I know you want a lot more.”
            “Someday I want to sit on the Wizengamot and show them why they should have sent me to Azkaban when they had the chance.”
            “By the time you’re there, most of the people who condemned you to house arrest will be long dead,” Draco had to point out. Not all of the Wizengamot were ancient, but a lot of them were, and not everyone lived to be a hundred and fifty years old.
            “It’s the legacy that matters. The political legacy. That’s what I’m going to change. And watch me change other things, too.”
            Draco leaned back a bit from the intense heat in her eyes. “Well, just remember not to roast me. I wouldn’t intentionally get in your way.”
            “And I’d warn you if you did it unintentionally.”
            Privately, Draco decided that he would feel sorry for Harry—not for having Draco as a ward, but because Pansy might be harder to handle than he thought. As long as Pansy stayed within the boundaries of the bond, Harry could probably manage, but he would be spending a lot of time hearing about politics.
            “Will your mum be able to visit you?” Pansy asked, changing direction so abruptly that Draco blinked at nothing before he responded.
            “I don’t know. It’ll depend on what Auror Stone says, and what her Auror minders say.”
            “But she only got house arrest for a month, so after that it’ll depend mostly on Auror Stone.” Pansy made a thoughtful noise. “I think Auror Stone is fair. She’ll make sure that you get to see each other on a regular basis.”
            Draco nodded. He wasn’t afraid of that. “What about your parents? Are you going to ask Harry to contact them?”
            “Right after I get my wand back and I can cast a spell on the letter that reassures them it really comes from me. We were told that we were going to get our wands back, with a monitoring charm on them, but I haven’t seen any sign of that so far. They had better give them back.” Pansy frowned and rapped her fingers on the table.
            “They’ll give them back,” Draco said. “I think Harry would raise a fuss if they didn’t, and there’s still people who would listen to him.”
            “Sometimes you don’t manage to sound completely unconvincing.” Pansy smiled at him and stood up. “Let me know if you want to learn more about politics and work on them instead of just sitting around and waiting for your family’s reputation to improve on its own.”
            She walked out of the kitchen before Draco could retaliate, which he thought was unfair. What if he needed time to think about whether he wanted to be involved in politics or not? What if he had to adjust to the bond and being legally a child and having his father in prison before he did?
            “Master Draco Malfoy is to be eating,” said the house-elf, appearing beside him with another plate and glaring at Draco.
            Obediently, Draco did so. He had to admit that eating was a lot simpler than deciding on his whole future right now.
            And maybe he had all the time to make that decision. The trials were over.
*
BAFan: Yes. And Draco realizes even more in this chapter, seeing it from Pansy’s perspective.
delia cerrano: It will be Drarry, but not nearly as explicit as I was planning before the plot took the turn it did.
SP777: Harry thanks Merlin for them, too.
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The Only True Lords