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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 Sixty—Irreversible Decisions
            “What was she like, then?”
            Draco couldn’t think of anything to say, so he sat in his chair at the table beside Pansy and shrugged listlessly at her. Kreacher appeared beside him with a pot of tea. Draco took the cup and pot from him and smiled at the house-elf, who eyed him a bit before he disappeared. Draco sighed. “She’s not unreasonable.”
            “That’s such an enthusiastic recommendation.” Pansy leaned forwards to peer critically into his eyes. Draco tolerated that, but when she reached out to pick up one of his eyelids, he slapped her hand away. “Did she do something to irritate you? I thought you were all right with having Auror Stone for a guardian.”
            Draco looked wordlessly into his tea, and then into the food that Kreacher brought back—because of course he had only left to get that, not actually to leave for good. “Thanks, Kreacher,” he muttered, and picked up a piece of bread. Kreacher handed him a chunk of cheese. Draco bit into both of them at the same time and finally managed to say, “I never thought she would take it so seriously.”
            That was exactly the word for his meeting with Auror Stone, serious. She had been smiling when she closed the door to the sitting room she’d selected behind them, but she did turn an expression on Draco that he hadn’t seen anywhere but on his parents’ faces. “I know that the Wizengamot made me your guardian to restrict you more than anything else,” she had said, folding her hands on her lap. “That doesn’t mean it’s only a sham guardianship to me.”
            “They made you my guardian because Lord Potter suggested it, I thought,” Draco muttered. In front of Auror Stone, he didn’t want to call Harry by his first name.
            Stone nodded, that flat face remaining placid. “That’s true, if you want to consider things in their most literal truth. But I wanted you to know that I take all my Auror duties seriously. It means guarding prisoners from revenge on the part of people they’ve hurt, even when they’re people I hate personally. And it doesn’t matter how I feel about you. It’s my duty to keep you safe.”
            Draco had considered that. It wasn’t enthusiasm at all. On the other hand, if Auror Stone had said that she really cared about him, he wouldn’t have believed her. And her being an ally of his family, the only way she might have been able to say that she cared about his well-being and gain his trust, would also have made him wary of her trying to enforce Lucius’s will on him. “I understand.”
            “Good,” said Stone, with a smile that Draco thought he wouldn’t earn much, and then had started talking about what his program of training with his new wand would be, and why it was so much harder to learn spells with a new wand when his old wand had been snapped and burned, and about the destruction of psychic bonds between wands and wizards, and all sorts of other things Draco hadn’t known.
            “It was just really—thorough,” he said to Pansy now, looking back and forth between her and the pot of tea. The steam was a good way to hide his eyes, he thought.
            Pansy remained perched on the edge of her seat. Eventually, she realized she wouldn’t get more information than that. “Unfair,” she muttered, and stole some of Draco’s cheese. “I would tell you all about getting in trouble with my parents or what punishments they gave me.”
            “I don’t think that Stone will be big on punishments,” said Draco. “She’s big on duties. Look at this.” He took out one of the long scrolls she had given him, the longest but far from the only one, and unrolled it so Pansy could read it.
            Pansy scanned it, and then blinked in confusion. “A list of history books? And Astronomy books. All right, and books on magical law and wizard-Muggle relations, too. And Defense Against the Dark Arts.” She looked at Draco, cocking her head. “Did someone tell her that you didn’t do well in these subjects?”
            “I did perfectly fine in Defense,” said Draco, a little stiffly. “And Astronomy. And nobody could have done well in History of Magic as long as the Headmaster refused to replace Binns.”
            “Answer the bloody question, Draco bloody Malfoy,” Pansy said, and threw the scroll at him hard enough to hit him in the forehead.

            “Fine,” said Draco. “These are the books I’m supposed to read. Stone said that I couldn’t possibly have got a good education at Hogwarts what with professors appearing and disappearing all the time, but even if I did ‘manage to learn something’ in the first five years, I wouldn’t have had a good education in the last two, what with my focus on being a—a Death Eater. And avoiding Death Eaters.”
            “Well,” said Pansy, “she’s right.”
            Draco gaped at her indignantly. “You want someone to assign you all these books? And essays, don’t forget the essays. She says that she doesn’t care how long I make them, but they have to be good. And I have to write an essay for every book on here, Pansy.” He picked up the scroll and shook it at her. “Every bloody one!”
            “I wouldn’t want someone to assign them to me.” Pansy still looked infuriatingly calm, leaning back and looking at Draco as though she was interested in what she could make him do. “But I might do it myself. Our educations were disrupted. It’s good that Stone realizes that. Not every Auror would. They might blame you for doing some of it yourself.”
            Draco flushed and put down the scroll again. “You were always weird,” he said, shoving enough food into his mouth that no one sane could expect him to talk.
            “If you use that as another word for insightful, then yes.” Pansy looked around as though she expected someone to step up to her and give her an award for it.
            “Did you hear back from your parents yet?” Draco was a little sick of talking about Auror Stone. He might mention more of it to his mother, assuming he was allowed to communicate with her, or to Harry, who he thought would understand. But Pansy kept taking his problems and turning them into something else.
            “No,” said Pansy. “Sent a letter, and that’s all I can hope for from them.”
            Draco paused, but she said nothing, and he said nothing, and sitting there in silence started to feel awkward, so he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “Did your parents really strongly support the Dark Lord?”
            Pansy gave him a suspicious look. “This is the first suitable topic of conversation that occurs to you?”
            Draco shrugged, flushing. “You weren’t coming up with one,” he said, and pursued the subject, because he had nothing better to ask. “I know your dad wasn’t a Death Eater.” He would have seen him coming in and out of the Manor during the periods when he was home this last year, if that was so. “But your mum? Did they support him?”
            Pansy frowned and examined her hands. “Enough that they thought it was safe to send me back to Hogwarts last year,” she finally said, voice quiet. “Enough that they told me to shut up and go along with what the Carrows and Greyback and Snape were doing in the school. Strongly enough to be upset that I’m Harry’s vassal now?” She sighed, a sigh that seemed to take a long time and start somewhere beneath her lungs. “I don’t know.”
            Draco patted her hand, and after that they did sit in silence, with no one breaking it, because he didn’t know what else he would say.
*
            “Can’t you be here for us?”
            Harry started as Ron snapped his fingers in front of his face, and then looked down at the wizarding chessboard between them. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I make a stupid move again?” Of course, that was almost a guarantee when he played with Ron. Ron had tried to teach him how to win, but it wasn’t as though Harry had had a lot of ability to concentrate on making his game better in the past year.
            Ron sighed and sat back. “We can tell when you’re here in mind and body with us, and when you’re thinking about them,” he said. From the bed in the room she and Ron had chosen, Hermione looked over her book and nodded firmly. “I don’t blame you for thinking about them all the time during the trials. But now they’re done, and we’d hoped to have a bit more of you.”
            Harry gave Ron a faint smile. “Sorry, but it’s not like me being a Lord ended with the trials, you know. I still have to think about them and care for them.”
            “Well, not Snape, not after tomorrow.”
            Harry thought he managed to bury his flinch by turning and looking at the chessboard, but Hermione put down her book. “Oh, Harry, has he been awful to you about it? I’m sorry.”
            “Not him,” said Harry. When he could concentrate past the ringing in his ears and the instinctive panic that losing another of his vassals caused him, he thought he could say that. “It’s—he’s been as decent as he can. But you know how I didn’t want to let Blaise go, even though he’d been trying to kill me? This is worse. Snape has helped me.”
            “I do think that it’ll be a relief when most of them are gone,” said Ron frankly. “You can live your real life again.”
            “Greg is going to stay with me,” said Harry, with a glare that made Ron lift his hand.
            “That’s why I said most. I know that you promised not to release Goyle. But Snape wants to go, and I don’t think Parkinson and Malfoy are going to stay forever, do you? Or maybe Malfoy has to remain under the bond until he’s legally an adult again. But I do think that he’ll leave right after that.”
            Harry said nothing. Ron was probably right. Pansy might want to use the bond to fuel her political ambitions, but sooner or later she would want to do something that the bond wouldn’t permit. And Draco…
            The ties that bound Harry to Draco were so made up of apologies and recrimination and past history and obligations that Harry didn’t know how to disentangle them. He did think that trying to separate them when Draco had been under the bond for five years would do worse than hurt him, though. And how would Draco feel about it?
            A brisk knock on the door of the room made Harry stand up. He thought for a second that it was Auror Stone or someone else who had Ministry-mandated access to the house, because he hadn’t felt them approach through the bond, but then Severus called, “Potter,” and he knew why. That muted effect of the bond was still functioning.
            If he hadn’t done that, I might believe that he still wanted to be here, Harry thought, mood tainted, and got up to open the door for Severus. “Yes?” he asked when Severus merely looked down his nose at him, making no move to step into the room. “I thought we’d agreed that I’d sever the bond tomorrow at ten. I’m not going to do it earlier.”
*
            Ungrateful brat.
            But Severus stifled the impulse to snap. He knew exactly why Potter was reacting that way. It was the same reason that had brought him to Weasley and Granger’s room—and didn’t the conjunction of those two names with the word “room” haunt him—instead of simply waiting until tomorrow to speak to Potter.
            Potter’s eyes were haunted, and that alone would have made Severus speak more softly, but he could sense the disapproving stares of Potter’s friends from behind his back. Weights on his tongue would barely let him speak at all, but he had come here, and so he forced himself. “May I speak to you at some distance?”
            “Anything you have to say to Harry, we can hear, too,” said Weasley at once.
            Severus sneered at him, finding some outlet for his emotions in a target who undoubtedly deserved them. “And do you share that confidence in return? Does every bit of sickening nonsense you whisper into your girlfriend’s ears come back to Potter?”
            Weasley began to turn red and splutter. It was satisfying. Severus watched him until Potter stepped out into the corridor and called back to his friends, “There are only so many places he could hide my dismembered body. I think I’ll be safe.”
            He shut the door firmly behind him and turned to face Severus again, crossing his arms in a way that Severus couldn’t remember seeing him do often since the beginning of the bond. “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t change the time of the bond’s severing. So this had better be about something else.”
            Severus exhaled slowly, and found his voice. “I no longer know how much of what I feel is the bond influencing me and how much are emotions I would experience in any case.”
            Potter frowned a little. “I know. You said. What’s different?”
            The clipped tone of his voice made Severus’s bond mark itch. At least it was better than the tingling and other sensations that once would have invaded the Dark Mark. He grimaced, and made himself continue. “I have decided that in this case, my interests must lie with maximizing my happiness and comfort and minimizing my loss.”
            Potter’s emotions, always faint since the modifications Severus had made to the bond, altered from distant ice to distant waves. He was puzzled, Severus knew. “Okay. What does that have to do with ending the bond?”
            Severus briefly closed his eyes. He was not sure if it was weakness or sense that kept him from simply speaking out. He trusted Potter enough by now that he did not think the boy would mock him.
            But that cannot keep me from mocking myself.
            Severus shook away the silly thought, and said, “I thought that perhaps you could change the bond, because you have shown such control of it. Make it into a different kind of bond, one that would have less influence on me and I would find less confining. That would allow me to keep it and remain in a position I have come to find—comfortable in one way, without giving everything up.”
            The silence was so absolute that Severus reached inwards, for his own sense of what Potter was feeling through the bond. He ended up grimacing again. It was far too soft for him to hear.
            When he opened his eyes again, though, Potter was smiling, and he had one hand extended as though he was going to capture Severus’s hand and shake it. He caught Severus’s eye and coughed, retracting his arm, but he went on smiling.
“That sounds wonderful,” he said. “It might take me a little while to make the modifications to the bond. Would you be all right waiting?”
“Yes,” said Severus.
The thorn-sharp feeling of discontent that he had experienced on waking that morning, and on and off since, left him. This was the right decision. Perhaps he might feel ill that it was the right one, but he could not change matters. And at least he would be happier under a bond changed and reshaped by Potter than he would under the original.
“Are you absolutely sure, though?” Potter asked suddenly. “I mean, you hated being bound by anything at all, and having another Lord. Are you sure that you’re not going to change your mind later and decide that you want to be free again? Because I couldn’t stand that.”
Severus winced a little. This boy-man should not be braver than him in showing his emotions and being able to say what he felt.
Generosity, he thought again. Potter’s expression was generous in its way. He laid himself out, open and bare, and let those who wanted to approach him do it. It took a lot to make him reject someone, the way he had rejected Zabini.
            Had he always been that way? Severus thought he would have noticed before now if the boy was that open-minded and mature, and he would not have worried over losing the war so much.
            But if the bond had influenced Potter to be like this, the way it had influenced Severus to feel that he would rather not leave it, this was at least a beneficial change. Severus did not think that Potter would overstep the bounds of the Lordship bond in the way that the Dark Lord always had. And the more solicitous and caring of his vassals’ well-being he was, the better off Severus would be.
            And even Draco. That thought cheered Severus up enough that he could offer a grimace to Potter that he was not ashamed to call a smile, though others might be.
            “I would prefer if you changed the bond so that I can feel your emotions by reaching out, and you can do the same, but that either of us can close the barrier at once,” he said. “I would not want unrestrained sharing.”
            “Neither would I,” said Potter, with a smile that shone in his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. And I’ll tell you when I feel able to do it.” He paused.
            “Yes?” Severus prompted, resigned enough now to be sure that Potter was going to ask him to do something he didn’t want to do. But if the bond was changed and he could have a possible place to belong without being bound in the meantime, then he would put up with some silly bloody requests.
            “I need you to change the bond from your side, too,” said Potter bluntly, and his eyes rose to Severus’s face. “I think that I won’t be able to open up my emotions to you, no matter how I work on it, if you don’t end the Occlusion or whatever you did that’s locking you away from me. That made the bond weaker from the beginning.”
            Severus hesitated once. Changing the bond had taken him a lot of work—
            Work he could complete again, if need be, now that he had the time and privacy to work on it. House arrest for a year would present him with rather limited social engagements and calls on his labor.
            “Very well,” he said. “I can lower the barriers that I raised with a few nights of work.” Perhaps it would come sooner than that, but he was wary, at this point, of promising what he might not be able to deliver. If he accomplished it more quickly, well and good.
            Potter relaxed fully. “Good. Then I’ll go back inside and tell Ron and Hermione the good news.” He laid one hand on the door, a narrow gaze on Severus that invited him to object.
            Severus inclined his head back. This could not be hidden; Potter’s friends knew that he had intended to leave, and they would question why he had decided to stay. And when Potter altered the bond, it was possible that Draco and Miss Parkinson and the rest of them would feel a change as well.
            “Do what you will with informing your friends. I will tell Draco myself.”
            Potter leaned back against the closed door behind him and laughed. It was a sound of pure joy, and Severus realized that Potter could relax further after all, even when it did not seem as if he could. “Thank you! I suppose I should go back to calling you Severus around my friends as well as to your face.”
            Severus shifted his weight uncomfortably. He did not think yet that he could make the corresponding promise.
            “Don’t worry,” said Potter, reading his mind, or his gestures, with frightening ease. “When you’re ready to call me Harry again, I think you’ll do it.” He smiled and waved, then slipped back into the room he had come out of.
            Severus frowned at the wall. That had gone as well as he had imagined.
            Perhaps too well.
            Severus firmly shook his head and turned to go back to the temporary lab he was setting up in a room that once had had that distinction. No, he would not think like that. The point of staying under the bond, once Potter had changed it, was so that he would have a world where he did not need to doubt things like that.
*
            The return owl came more quickly than Pansy had thought it would.
            She had to shut her door and lock it with a few charms that she knew wouldn’t trigger the monitors before she could read it. No one would probably come in and surprise her with it, except Potter, if he sensed her distress through the bond, but still.
            Then she had to sit down on her bed and shut her eyes before she could read it.
            Then she decided that she was being ridiculous, and the only one who was keeping her in a state of suspense was herself, so she snorted in disgust and tore the letter open.
            The writing inside was an elegant scrawl that told Pansy at once that her mother had written to her. Her father was still too impatient, long after Hogwarts, to master the neat hand that “should” belong to the descendant of a pure-blood family.
            Pansy,
            We have read what you have written, and we are well-pleased.
            For long seconds, Pansy couldn’t read the rest of the letter. Hot tears filled her eyes, and she bowed her head, pressing her hands over her face. She was shaking. Until the weight of it lifted from her shoulders, she hadn’t known how much she’d feared her parents’ disapproval. She would have gone on in spite of it, and even pursued her political career, but it would have been a blot that it was difficult to shake off.
            She finally looked up and continued reading the letter, because it was even sillier to avoid the rest of it now that she knew it didn’t contain bad news.
            We are well-pleased that you have managed to connect yourself to someone who will be important in the post-war world—more important, perhaps, than someone with the name of Parkinson could otherwise be. We hope that Lord Potter will take care of you as befits a vassal of his Lord. If you ever need anything from us, or wish to write to us again, another owl will find us.
            It will be wiser if we do not visit you, at least during the year you are sentenced to house arrest. We could not come to you safely, and we do not wish to taint your future. For now, we are well, and proud of you.
            There were no signatures. Plausible deniability, Pansy knew. If someone found her with the letter and demanded to know who it was from, it contained nothing, not even a reference to her as their daughter, that would link it back to her parents. The note about the name Parkinson could be explained as referring to her and her alone.
            But she had their approval.
            Pansy lay back on her bed, put her letter on her chest, and closed her eyes. In a little while, she would go downstairs and find Draco and explain the news to him. He was probably the one who could understand it best.
            But for now, she wanted to lie there and experience the sensation of a soft explosion of light in her chest, for herself and herself alone.
*
moodysavage: Severus might even agree with you on a more rational day, as long as you didn’t use the word “natural”!
BAFan: As you can see, Severus did manage to make a compromise with his pride here.
delia cerrano: Thanks! And Pansy doesn’t have definite plans for next weekend, but next year would be nice.
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The Only True Lords