Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Six—Defying
            Harry marched into the Auror Department and straight to the nearest office. He had practiced the hardest on his expression. Of course, his clothes were important, too, because he had needed to make them look disheveled. Like he had woken up this morning and flung them on to come in because he just couldn’t take it anymore.
            All of those had been Malfoy’s suggestions. And Malfoy was getting out this week.
            Harry didn’t think he could wait any longer, or the plan would lose its effectiveness.
            He stopped in front of the desk where Auror Peterson was working. She greeted him with a smile. She was one of the ones who had thought he had saved the world, and could do nothing wrong.
            That was only one of the reasons Harry had chosen her as his target, but it was an important one.
            “Mr. Potter, sir. What can I do for you today?” Peterson held her wand and glanced over Harry’s shoulder as though she thought Harry was only the leader of a charge that would bring in more criminals for her to catch.
            “You can arrest me,” said Harry, tragically, and held his wrists out in front of him.
            Peterson wrenched her head around to look at him so quickly that Harry heard something pop in her neck. “What?”
            “I meant what I said,” Harry whispered. Other Aurors were drifting in now, attracted by Peterson’s shout, and so he raised his voice. “You know that I testified to using Unforgivable Curses during the war when I was talking in some of the Death Eater trials? I can’t stand the thought that other people should have justice and I shouldn’t. Just because of who I am!” It was his own idea to make those words a little wail, and he shook his hands back and forth before he reached into his pocket and took out his wand, trying to hand it to Peterson. “So arrest me and take me to Azkaban! It’s only right that I should be treated the same way as everyone else!”
            Peterson was spluttering. Harry watched her carefully from beneath his lowered eyelids. Most of the other Aurors were reacting the same way, but one turned and slipped away from the crowd. He took the corridor that led to the lifts.
            Harry would have smiled if not for Malfoy’s very clear instructions. He would have bet half the Galleons in his vaults that that one was a spy for the Wizengamot, running to let his masters know what had happened.
            “What’s all this about?”
            Kingsley had shown up and waded into the crowd of Aurors, and Peterson turned to him with what was almost a yap. “It’s Harry Potter, sir! Showed up and started babbling about how he needs to be arrested because he used Unforgivable Curses during the war.” She looked back and forth from Harry to Kingsley, a hopeful expression on her face now. “Sir, do you think someone cursed him with Imperius to come here and say these things?” she whispered.
            Harry met Kingsley’s gaze calmly. He couldn’t wink or smile or do anything that would give the game away, only look and try to convey Trust me, please.
            Kingsley evidently decided to, because he shook his head briskly and said, “Potter’s immune to the Imperius Curse. Well-known fact.” He drew his wand and gravely conjured manacles that he clasped around Harry’s wrists. “I’ll take charge of the arrest from here, Peterson. It needs to go straight to the top.”
            Peterson and some of the others looked ready to faint with relief. Kingsley turned and marched Harry off towards his office before anyone else tried to intervene.
            Harry maintained his demure look and gaze on the floor all the way there, but looked up the instant Kingsley locked the door behind him and said, “All right, what is this really about?”
            Harry smiled at him. “Why, sir. I was only reacting to the fact that some of the Wizengamot members told me I was a danger. I want to remove some of the danger.”
            Kingsley snorted and flung himself into his chair, which creaked in a way that suggested he did that a lot. “How can you be sure they’ll hear about this in time?”
            “One of the Aurors ran away. I’m pretty sure it was to tell them, unless there was someone else he just had to spread the gossip to.”
            Kingsley rolled his eyes. “Of course.” Then he leaned forwards and studied Harry intently. “You’re aware a trial might not go well, when so many Wizengamot members are mostly unfriendly to you?”
            “I know, sir. I don’t think they’ll let it get to a trial—”
            A sharp knock sounded on the door. Harry raised his eyebrows at Kingsley, who nodded to him in grim amusement and stood to open the door. The woman who came in was a sturdy one Harry had seen at several of the Death Eater trials, although he didn’t know her name.
            “Minister Shacklebolt, we think,” she began. Then she saw Harry and checked in obviously faked surprise. “Oh, Mr. Potter! Good! We so wanted to tell you what we thought should happen before the trial began. We’re so sorry that someone misunderstood and told you that you were going to be imprisoned for the Unforgivable Curses.”
            “No one told me, madam,” said Harry, and lowered his eyes, aware of Kingsley’s amused, exasperated scrutiny. “But I started thinking of all those people who had to go to Azkaban because they did something wrong. I started thinking of Katie Bell’s great-aunt. I told her that what was important was that Mr. Malfoy had done something wrong, not who he’d done it to.” He leaned forwards and whispered, “Even if I used Unforgivable Curses on Death Eaters, I still think I deserve to go to prison.”
            The woman tightened her mouth in a grimace. Harry beamed back at her, innocently starry-eyed, and the woman finally nodded and said, “How much?”
            “I’m sorry?” Harry kept on radiating the innocence at her. Malfoy had told him he was good at it.
            “How much do you want to keep from turning this into something that will severely embarrass the Wizengamot?”
            “Money?” Harry shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m not after money.”
            The woman stared at him. “Then what—”
            “No more trials specifically to punish people as a lesson to me,” said Harry harshly, and either he looked just that intimidating, or the way he had suddenly changed his manner was, because the woman flinched back. “No more. There was Parkinson, and I overheard some rumbles about lengthening Draco Malfoy’s sentence because I was visiting him. No.”
            The woman lowered her eyes. “I’m not one of the people who thought those sentences would be a good idea,” she mumbled.
            “But you were empowered to offer me the money you thought I wanted,” Harry pointed out sweetly. “So you speak for the Wizengamot. Go back and tell them my price. And in return, I’ll spread the story of how I’m not immune to the Imperius Curse if I don’t know it’s coming, and someone sneaked up on me and made me come in and say all those awful, awful things.”
            The woman stood looking at him for a little while. Then she nodded and murmured, “There was no need to go to this extreme, you know. I already realized that this was a bad idea to challenge you. So did most of the other members of the Wizengamot.”
            “Then why didn’t you tell me so, and that I had allies?”
            The woman said something Harry literally couldn’t hear, except that it had the word “politics” in it somewhere, and then turned and walked out of the office with her step as straight as a soldier’s. Harry shook his head. It seemed to him that the members of the Wizengamot had plenty of courage and strength. They just kept using them in the wrong places.
            “Did they really talk about extending Malfoy’s sentence?” Kingsley asked suddenly. “That’s a rumor I haven’t heard.”
            “It was all over the Aurors,” said Harry, and then looked at Kingsley. “Sir, keep a close eye on some of those Aurors. They’re gleeful about getting to arrest anybody they don’t like, whether or not those people committed a crime. I know that some of them were happy Parkinson went to prison, not because they knew her, but because her family had done something wrong to theirs generations ago.”
            “We know why she was condemned, though,” Kingsley pointed out. “The Wizengamot politics against you. Nothing to do with the Aurors.”
            “But did you ask why she was arrested?” Harry sighed a little when he saw the incredulous way Kingsley stared at him. “Sir, all I ask is that you look into it. What I know is that she was at home under house arrest, because her trial was supposed to be the next month, and suddenly Aurors showed up and seized her and dragged her into the Ministry.”
            Kingsley looked now as though he had become the soldier. “I will. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’m not going to have the Aurors become what they were under Crouch in the first war.”
            Harry nodded back, and left. His mind was ringing with the countdown of the days. Tomorrow, Parkinson would be released from Azkaban. On Saturday, Draco.
            That was what Harry called him in his head these days, when there was no one around to hear.
*
            Draco couldn’t speak.
            His mother was there, and Potter, both of them holding out arms that Draco leaned on. But it seemed like a miraculous dream. There was wind around him, and it didn’t carry Dementors. It was the wind around the boat that was carrying them away from the island, further and further into the cold sea.
            There was sunlight.
            It was weak, coming from behind thick clouds and mixed with thick drops of rain. Draco didn’t care. He tilted his head back and tried to swallow the light, and even the rain.
            His mother was talking to him about the Manor, and how she had kept his bedroom the way it had been, and when he would be able to visit Father in Azkaban. Draco knew all of those things later, so she must have said them, even though he wasn’t really listening to the words at the time. What he knew was—what he knew was that she was there, and holding him fiercely against her. The warmth and pride he had dreamed of when he was in Azkaban were real.
            Potter supported him, and didn’t speak, except for a low murmur of, “Look me up when you need me,” when the boat stopped on the opposite shore. Draco staggered out on legs that already felt stronger, because he was away from the Dementors that literally made him weak at the knees.
            His mother hugged him and held him close, ready to Side-Along Apparate with him. Potter turned to him, and looked at him for so intense a moment that Draco thought he was going to ask a question or tell Draco there was some part of his sentence that hadn’t been served.
            And Draco would go mad if that was true.
            But then Potter bowed, so quickly Draco could have thought he was imagining it if not for his desire to see things that were real even in the dream, and his mother’s soft gasp. Potter said, “You survived. I’m glad about that.”
            Then he shook Draco’s hand once, and went on his way.
            And Draco was left to stand there with his eyes closed, and wonder what the fuck he was supposed to think.
            Well. That was later, honestly. After his mother had taken him home, and he had fallen into the soft bed that was not a dream.
*
Kain: Ron is kind of bored at the moment, honestly. He was for it because it sounded like an exciting thing to do.
And yes, I know it was a light sentence for Lucius, but that was also politics, favors traded in + some people thinking it would be a punishment for Harry since his distaste for Lucius was obvious.
Harry has changed one thing already. However, he isn’t back at Hogwarts, so his impact there is going to be less direct.
SP777: Thank you!
ChaosLady: Thanks!
moon: Thanks so much.
Laenira: Thanks. At this point, there are things going on that make it impossible for me to move, but I’m going to have to next month, so I hope that those things are resolved before then.
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Acts of Life