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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-Nine—Parents
            “The next best thing to freedom, I call it.”
            That was Auror Stone, handing over wands. Harry picked his up carefully; he had no trouble recognizing it, even though it looked like a few others. It sang to him, and he smiled and waved it. A stream of sparks shot out of the end, the way it had so long ago in Ollivander’s shop. Harry sighed happily.
            “A very dangerous first spell, Lord Potter,” said Auror Stone, her face so impassive that it took a second look for Harry to realize she was joking. “I’m going to have to report that, you realize.”
            Harry grinned at her, unable to care that he would still have the monitoring charms on his wand. At least he would be able to use magic now. That was already an improvement over a very long period of his life, namely the summers he had spent in the Muggle world when he was a Hogwarts student. “You can tell them whatever you like. I know you’ll report the truth.”
            “Would the others like to stop listening at the door and come collect theirs?” Stone added, turning her head to regard the door that led out of the sitting room.
            Harry turned around in surprise. Most of the time, he thought, the bond would have alerted him to Draco and Pansy and Severus being there, although maybe not to Greg’s constant warm presence; Harry was so used to Greg by now that he didn’t even register as someone separate from Harry’s own magic most of the time. But he supposed he had been too caught up in the happiness of having his wand restored to notice.
            “Of course,” he said, and gestured at them. “Come in.”
            Pansy had a prim look entirely the equal of Auror Stone’s as she led the way in. Severus was blank, Greg grinning, and Draco eyeing Stone with a nervousness that he couldn’t hide no matter how hard he attempted to. Stone looked back at him with calm interest.
            “Take your wands,” she said. “You’ll still be monitored, as your sentences demand, but you can have them back now.”
            Pansy rushed in to claim hers, and her hand trembled as she reconnected with it. Severus turned away when he picked his up; he probably didn’t want anyone to see the expression on his face, because it would be vulnerable or some bollocks like that, Harry thought. Greg accepted his back with the same simple warmth that was behind his grin.
            That left Draco, standing there and looking back and forth between the single unclaimed wand and Auror Stone as if he thought part of what a guardian would do was place poison on it.
            “You and I will have to talk about the limits of my guardianship and what you can and can’t do,” Stone told him. “And of course, starting over completely with a new wand means that you won’t be able to do most of what you could do in the past anyway. But I’m not going to keep you from casting any spells that are in the range of household charms or ones that will make your life easier, such as Summoning Charms, once you reach that level. I take it you’re smart enough not to do things like Summon Dark Arts books you shouldn’t be reading?”
            Draco picked up the new wand, but he looked a little stunned, the bond pulsing with regular waves of emotion. Harry couldn’t quite read them, and wondered what Draco had heard in Stone’s words that he hadn’t.
            Draco gave the tiniest of bows to Stone and said, “Do you want to talk to me about the guardianship now?”
            “Yes,” said Stone. “Come with me.” And she led Draco out of the sitting room without a glance left or right.
            Pansy was the one who spoke first when Draco and Auror Stone disappeared out the door. “I didn’t realize they would give him a new wand. I thought they were going to make him watch the breaking of his old one, and then he wouldn’t get a new one for the five years that his legal minority lasts.”
            Harry shook his head. “I thought the same thing, but Auror Stone put me right. It was up to her to determine what happened to Draco’s wand, and she thought snapping it in front of him would be needlessly cruel. It’s snapped, though, and she decided to bring a new one for him. He’s still going to have to start over with it.” He cradled his own holly wand against him possessively. He could still remember trying to use Hermione’s and Draco’s old one and how it wasn’t the same as one he was comfortable with, easy in his hands. “So he’s a child practically, like an eleven-year-old trying to use his new wand.”
            “I suppose that’s a reasonable and fair interpretation of the law,” said Pansy, and spun her wand a little.
            Harry grinned at her. “If you want to, you can go and argue with Auror Stone about it and see what she says.”
            “I’m more interested in my guardians than Draco’s,” Pansy said, and turned to regard him. “I’m going to write a letter to my parents and cast a Signature Charm on it so they know where it comes from. Can you make sure it’s sent?”
            “I will,” Harry said, a little stunned. Pansy had shown no sign of wanting to contact her parents before, and in the drama with Draco’s parents and Blaise’s mum, Harry had forgotten about them. “Just make sure that the charm won’t sting the owl or anyone else who touches it.”
            “Trust me not to forget that,” said Pansy, with a bit of the bite back in her voice, and strode out of the room.
            Harry turned to Greg. He had been too preoccupied with Draco in the last few days, he thought. But now Pansy’s reminder had told him about someone else he should have remembered. “Do you want to write to your parents, too, Greg?”
            “My mum,” Greg said simply. “My dad was a Death Eater, you know. He’s probably already locked up. I don’t want to go to Azkaban.”
            Harry nodded in acknowledgment. “Then write her a letter, and I’ll make sure it’s delivered, just like Pansy’s.”
            Greg hesitated long enough that Harry expected to feel the bond tremble, but it didn’t. Greg still had that absolute faith and trust in Harry that was hard to deal with sometimes. That made his hesitation all the more unusual, and Harry calmly waited it out. He supposed he could have ordered Greg to speak, but this time, he had the sense it would have been the wrong thing to do.
            “I’m not so good with writing,” Greg finally mumbled. “I could firecall her, though. Could I do that?” He looked at Harry with so much trust that Harry found it hard to remember the thick boy he had mocked as Malfoy’s minion, and had thought was only good for beating people up.
            “Of course you can do that. Just give me her Floo address, and we’ll work out a time when you can talk to her and we can lift the wards.”
            Greg smiled. “She lives in the Turtle’s Back. Thank you, my Lord.”
            Harry nodded, and turned to Severus. He had stayed silent ever since he had reclaimed his wand, and now turned around to face Harry only, Harry thought, because the waiting silence Harry had given him was becoming too loud to ignore. “Is there something I can give you?” He knew Severus didn’t have living parents, but maybe there was someone out there he wanted to contact. Someone at Hogwarts, maybe.
            Severus’s expression was hard to read. “I believe that you and I have a bond to discuss.”
*
            “Have you decided when you want the bond severed?”
            Severus kept his back turned, touching his wand to the fireplace to make the flames roar. He, of course, had had access to a wand during a long term of the imprisonment that the others had not, but that was nothing like having his own back again. It was warm and responsive in his hand, power denied until now leaping and playing around him. If he were fanciful, he would say that the wand rejoiced as much to have him back again as he rejoiced to be with it.
            If he were fanciful.
            But he had never felt less like being fanciful in his life.
            “I know that you’re putting off the moment when you have to speak with me.” Potter’s voice was comfortable. “I just don’t know why. I thought we’d both agreed that you didn’t really want the bond.”
            “I never asked for it,” Severus said, turning around and sitting on his bed. Potter, this weirdly comfortable and adult-looking Potter, had taken the chair across from him, and continued watching him with intelligent eyes.
            “Fine,” said Potter. “Then you should be able to tell me when you want the bond severed. The earliest I think I would feel ready for it is the day after tomorrow. It’s pretty hard for me to do, you know, and the trials wore me out.”
            Severus said nothing, but studied him, waiting for the moment when Potter would lose his temper. The infuriating thing about this new Potter was that he didn’t lose it. He only sat there and waited, and looked as if he would be open to any reasonable conversation that Severus wanted to have.
            And perhaps some that are not so reasonable. Severus had to admit that the amount of sacrifices Potter had made for Draco, and the demands he had attended to, were beyond what Severus himself would have done. Potter could be trusted as Draco’s guardian in a way that Severus would never have dreamed of when the bond was first established.
            And that meant it was up to Severus to speak.
            He bit the inside of his mouth in vexation as he did so, but tried to keep all trace of that away from his face and voice. “I would prefer to wait a few more days. There is the possibility that your vassals who are staying under the bond might blame me for your exhaustion if you did it immediately, although both you and I know that you have other calls on your energy.”
            “You’d, what? Fear the wrath of Greg and Pansy?” Potter stared at him.
            “I notice you do not admit Draco among the number of your vassals.”
            “I don’t know where he really considers himself at the moment.” Potter waved a hand. “He’ll stay under the bond for now, he told me that, but he’s still reeling. I think he should concentrate on what’s going on in his head and heart. He doesn’t have enough to spare to consider my feelings, or yours.”
            Severus turned his head away, then stood up and paced to the fireplace again. What he hated most of all, he thought to the flames, was that Potter had grown up unexpectedly generous. Severus could have understood anything else better, even cool intelligence and plans to work with him. But generosity defeated him.
            “Severus?”
            “I wish to be free of the bond,” said Severus. “And I do not want you to exhaust yourself. What can that be but a sign that the bond has affected my mind in ways that I never wanted it to?”
            Silence, and Severus nodded bleakly. Potter’s own generosity was strong enough to defeat even Potter himself.
            Then Potter said, “That you have some compassion for me?”
            Severus turned around, his hands locking together behind his back. “Then that means the bond must have influenced me, because I had no such compassion before.”
            Potter sighed. “Of course not. You only tried to save my life and nearly sacrificed your life to give me those memories and sent you Patronus to guide me to the Sword of Gryffindor because of your promise to my mum. There was nothing else. You couldn’t have felt upset that the war might fail or felt compassion for the Slytherins that you put yourself in front of when Voldemort cast that curse. Or you couldn’t be affected by the way that you saw I fought for Draco. Of course not.”
            Severus paused. Put like that, Potter’s ideas were rather punishing. “Perhaps I could be affected that way. But it is still not natural for me.”
            “I’ve given up on trying to think of what is natural for me, because I don’t know how the trials would have gone without the bond.” Potter stood. “That’s another world, one I don’t know about. So there’s just life with the bond. And in a few days, you won’t have to worry about it, because you’ll be free. Should we say Tuesday?”
            Severus watched in silence as Potter walked from the room, and then sat down on the bed and frowned at his walls and ceiling again. This room had been sufficient to contain him such a short time before. He did not understand what he had done wrong that it was not now.
            Perhaps Potter was right, however. In a few days, all of Severus’s ideas about compassion and influence would be moot.
            I should be more cheerful about that than I am, Severus decided, and spent the rest of the day worrying about how the bond had affected his mood.
*
            “Mum?” Greg whispered, trying not to shake as his mother’s face formed slowly in the flames of the library. She wouldn’t like it if he was shaking, and neither would Greg. It might mean that he was a weak vassal to his Lord.
            “Greg.” She nodded to him, and spent a moment looking at him. Greg spent a moment looking at her. She seemed to be all right. She had a mark on her chin that looked as if she had landed on it, but she also had a hand that she reached towards him, and she had her wedding ring on that hand. So her enemies hadn’t taken away everything good.
            “I want you to know that I’m a vassal of Lord Potter’s.” Greg knew that his mum might already have heard the news from the paper, but on the other hand, maybe she was hiding and hadn’t heard. And he really wanted to be the one to tell her.
            From the way that his mother’s face slowly brightened, Greg knew she hadn’t heard the news before. He sighed. She sat up straight and nodded. “And you are happy? Your Lord treats you well?”
            Greg knew she was thinking about his dad. His dad had trusted the Dark Lord, and even Mr. Malfoy a little bit, and bad things had happened.
            “He’s different from the Dark Lord, Mum,” Greg said. “He fought so I could stay with him. I got a trial, but they just said that I had to have charms on my wand and house arrest. And it’s okay because I’m with my Lord.”
            His mum studied him again. Greg thought she looked a little strange. Her eyes were trembling. “Mum?” he asked uncertainly.
            Then he saw that she was blinking back tears, and she stretched out a hand as though she really wanted to reach through the fire and clasp his. Greg lifted his hand up on the other side of the flames so she could see it. They couldn’t actually hold on, but sometimes seeing somebody else’s hand was enough.
            “I’m so happy,” his mum whispered. “I thought maybe you were dead, that you were lost. When the battle ended, I stopped getting reports from Hogwarts. No one else has come to the house and demanded to see me or tried to take me away, but I thought that was because they probably didn’t know I was still here. I’ve hidden. I didn’t want to try and go out and search for you because I was afraid I would make it worse. Can you forgive me?”
            “I’m fine, Mum,” said Greg gently. “I understand. You could have made things worse. It’s fine. I have a Lord who understands me. I thought that would make you happy,” he added, because his mum had mentioned she was happy. But maybe that was just because he was alive, not because he had a Lord. Greg wanted her to be happy about him being a vassal, too.
            His mum blinked rapidly again, and then said, “Yes. That’s the best thing of all. I worried about how to protect you, because both you and your father had the Mark. But if you’re safe, and you’ve had your trial, that only makes your father someone I have to worry about.” From the way she looked around, Greg knew she hadn’t heard from him at all.
            “He chose to follow his Lord,” said Greg, “and I chose to follow mine.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to see his dad. He would be happy to know he was alive, but on the other hand, Dad might think he had to kill Lord Potter, and Greg would have to fight him. “We just have to do what we chose to do.”
            “I’m so glad that the stories I told you helped you to a happy ending.” His mum gave him a misty smile. “I’m glad something did.”
            “You were always a good mum,” said Greg softly, because he thought that was what she was referring to, and he didn’t want her thinking that she wasn’t. “You always helped me. You always wanted the best for me. But I got to the age where I had to make my own decisions. I don’t think I made bad ones?”
            He couldn’t help the way his voice went up on those last words, and his mum clucked and shook her head. “You made the best ones you could. I just wish I had left more decisions open for you.”
            “You were always a good mum,” Greg repeated, feeling a little helpless. Did his mum need a hug? Did she need him to say it some more? He didn’t know how to comfort someone who he wasn’t right there to hug and talk to, and someone who had always seemed like she was just fine.
            “I know I was.” His mum seemed to stand a little taller. “I just wasn’t sure of it until now. I wanted you to land in a safe place, and it seemed so impossible.” She took a deep breath, and Greg thought she shook off some of the sadness. “I want you to promise me that you won’t try and contact your father. I think he’s running, and he could be betrayed by an owl. And he has to make his own decisions, like you said.”
            “I promise,” said Greg obediently. If he got an owl from his dad, he knew, that was a different thing, or else his mum would also have made him promise not to read any owls. “I really am happy, mum.”
            “I know you are.”
            After that, they just sat there and looked at each other for a while, and then his mum started asking questions about the trial. Greg answered her carefully. He knew he probably didn’t understand everything that was going on, and that he had missed the nuances that led to Draco’s trial. But he could repeat most of what he had said, and most of what Lord Potter had said, and some of what the Wizengamot had asked.
            By the end, his mother’s hands were clasped in front of her, and she was smiling without any sadness. “Then things went the best way they could, and they played to your strengths.”
            Greg smiled. “Good.” His mum and dad had often told him to play to his strengths, but his mum could only give him advice about a few things, and his dad seemed to think that just saying it should be enough—like the Dark Lord thinking that he could order Greg to torture people and that was enough. Neither his mum nor his dad had ever thought he would be in the middle of a Wizengamot trial, Greg knew, so they hadn’t given him advice for that.
            At the end of the conversation, his mum looked like she was wiping away tears again, but she also smiled at Greg. “I’m glad that you have a home, and please talk to me again,” she whispered.
            “The only way I wouldn’t is if my Lord forbade me to,” Greg promised her. “And I don’t think he would forbid me any such thing.”
            “No,” said his mum. “Good-bye, son. I love you.”
            And the Floo shut down, and Greg sat there for a while, feeling happy and sad both at once, before he went to find Lord Potter.
*
            Pansy walked around the letter waiting on her desk. Then she scowled and looked away from it again. It wasn’t like it was waiting there to attack her. She was the one who had come up with the words. If she was dissatisfied with them, then she was the one who would have to change them before she sent the letter out. That was the way things worked.
            But she didn’t know any better way to say it.
            She flopped down in her chair in front of the desk and read the letter again, trying to see it the way her parents would, if it suddenly showed up at their window—or cave, or wherever they were right now—on the leg of an owl.
            Hullo Mum and Dad,
            I know you might have heard that I’m a vassal of Harry Potter, because he started an accidental bond that covered me and a bunch of other Slytherins when the Dark Lord tried to enslave us. I’ve also been through a trial. The Wizengamot ruled that I have to spend some time in house arrest and have monitoring charms on my wand. But I don’t mind that much, because it should convince a bunch of people that I’m harmless, and they’ll be all the more surprised when I come out of hiding and take the political world by storm.
            Potter has promised to help me. The bond can actually give me an advantage, because it means that people might take me more seriously, and other people might not distrust me as much as they could if I’m associated with a Gryffindor. So I’m going to stay under it for now. Potter could free me, but I don’t think that he really wants to—you know how the Lordship bond affects a Lord—and that suits me fine.
            Things aren’t all bad. Professor Snape is here, and I trust him. And Greg and Draco are here, and it’s nice to have company. I’ve already received my punishment, and it was a lot milder than it could have been.
            I hope you’re well.
            Then came her signature, and Pansy had no idea what else to write. She leaned her cheek on her hand and stared at the letter for a long, long time.
            Finally, she sighed and stood up, then began casting the charms on the parchment that would reassure her parents it had come straight from her quill and nowhere else. Her hand trembled on the wand, and she had to close her eyes and stand still for a bit.
            But she was still going to do this. She was going to. She would force herself to.
            This was the beginning of reclaiming her life.
            She might still feel a little uncertain when the owl was finally winging away with her letter, but at least it was done.
*
delia cerrano: Harry and Draco’s relationship will continue to grow, but it’s not going to be all that explicit, sexually.
BAFan: Sorry! It’s kind of a disappointment to me, too. But hopefully this story will have some good scenes of their coupledom anyway.
SP777: This really has turned out more like a gen story, hasn’t it? I think that’s where a lot of the length comes from.
Kain: I’m sorry to hear about your computer problems! I hope you get them fixed soon.
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The Only True Lords