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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Nine—Changing Definitions

            “I told you that it was the Ministry’s definition of twisted that was causing all the trouble.”

            Draco folded his arms and said nothing. Probably because he could say nothing, Harry thought, as he paced back and forth through the kitchen in front of Draco. He knew Harry was right, and although he might not agree with it right now, he would have no choice but to come to agree in the future.

            Harry swung around and braced himself against a counter. He thought Kreacher would pop up and frown at him, but he didn’t. Which was just as well, because Harry’s thoughts raced and clashed through his head, and he was in no mood to be treated like he was a brain-deficient child, the way Draco had tended to react in the past when Harry argued that the Ministry’s treatment of twisted was wrong.

            “They thought I was one simply because I had a flaw and a track record of not following the rules,” Harry told Draco as he went back to pacing. ”Their rules, remember. They never thought you were one, although you had a flaw, too. And Jenkins and Warren don’t seem like the most obedient Aurors to me, but the Ministry never set out to destroy them the way they did me.”

            Draco stirred at last, for almost the first time since they had come down to the kitchen after Hannah’s confession. “I’m glad to see that you appreciate the danger you’re in, at least,” he told the ceiling, tilting his head back. “That gives me hope for the future.”

            “But not for right now.”

            Draco shot him a startled glance. Harry smiled grimly back at him. “I’m more adept at reading your inflections than your words by now,” he said.

            Draco paused once, then nodded. “It’s good that you believe the Ministry was targeting you, and unfairly,” he said. “That means that you might fight them in the future, if they try to do it again.”

            “But you don’t think it’s their definition of twisted that causes the problems,” Harry said, and stalked towards the table, until he stood in front of Draco with his arms folded and shaking himself. “Why not?”

            Draco eyed him. “Because they couldn’t have categorized you as twisted by following that definition, which you say is too restrictive,” he replied. “We were the ones to discover that not all twisted fit all five standards the Ministry proposed, not the rest of the Aurors. I don’t think they really believed that you were mad and Dark. It was a convenient excuse to get rid of you, nothing more. Perhaps it was even what Hannah believed to be the truth, nothing more. You know that torture is unreliable in forcing confessions.”

            “And in distinguishing between what someone believes is the truth and what the actual truth is,” Harry said, nodding. “Just like Veritaserum. I know,” he added, watching Draco’s eyebrows rise in the meantime. “And yes, I can call what I did torture, because it was. It was only acceptable to me because it left mental scars instead of physical ones.”

            Draco leaned forwards. “And because you did it, instead of me.”

            “Of course.” Harry folded his arms more tightly, wondering where Draco was going with this line of questioning.

            “Tell me how the Ministry could categorize you under the definition of twisted they use,” Draco said, changing the subject. Harry grinned. He thought he had got good at telling when Draco did that because he wanted to and when he did it because he couldn’t think of any counters to the argument that Harry had brought up. This was the latter.

            “Because I practice Dark Arts,” Harry said. “Because I have a flaw. Because I have no Healing skills, and I’m so inimical to Healers that they banned me from St. Mungo’s.”

            Draco stared incredulously at him. “That had everything to do with Healers’ tempers, and nothing to do with your magic.”

            “But it makes a convenient excuse, don’t you think?” Harry asked, cocking his head whimsically. “And especially for people who want to think that there’s something especially wrong with me, something that they didn’t detect before, but now know about.”

            Draco said nothing. His frown only grew more pronounced, though. Harry leaned forwards and continued counting off on his fingers. “I have to have a symbol.” He pushed his fringe back, revealing the scar.

            “But everyone knows that came from the Killing Curse…” Draco trailed off.

            Harry shrugged. “You’ve read the files as well as I have. You know that sometimes the symbols the twisted of the past adopted were neutral in and of themselves, without evil meaning before they made them so.”

            Draco said nothing, but kept his eyes fastened on Harry.

            “And as for the followers, I have my devoted friends, and I’ve corrupted you, a fine Auror.” Harry had to smile as he watched Draco nearly start to his feet in indignation. “I’m just saying what they would say.”

            Draco’s nostrils flared, but he nodded. “Then I suppose there are people in the Ministry hierarchy who might believe it,” he said. “What matters is whether Hannah and her immediate superiors did.”

            “Not even that,” Harry said. “They could use it as an excuse to get rid of me, or they might really believe it and be horrified that the Ministry was sheltering a twisted—the way that more of them would have been about Ernhardt becoming Head Auror, if they’d thought of it in those terms and not in terms of the embarrassment that it brought the Ministry.” He turned away and went to make a cup of tea. He needed some kind of movement to calm the excitement that continually broiled through him. “It would work on all the levels. And someone probably believed it about me the first minute I had the visions.”

            “Why assign you to work in the Socrates Corps, though, hunting twisted?” Draco’s eyes were almost painful on the nape of his neck. “There must be someone who would think that you had loyalty, of a sort, to your own kind.”

            “Why?” Harry asked, looking over his shoulder. “Ernhardt didn’t. They knew that most twisted didn’t cooperate and work together. As we learned more about people like Healer Alto, who other twisted kept attacking, they would think more and more that I could be a useful weapon to hunt down other mad Dark wizards, as long as my madness was controllable.”

            Draco leaned back and closed his eyes. Harry nodded to him as he began to boil water. “I don’t think it was admirable,” he said. “But it fits in with what we learned about Ernhardt. Ernhardt and the other people who wanted me gone, and then you gone once you fitted in with my cases instead of messing them up, were working for the same goal even if they didn’t have the same motives. Ernhardt wanted us dead because we might have been able to identify him. The others wanted me gone because I was dangerous and embarrassing.”

            “But me?” Draco whispered. “They could only have wanted me gone once they saw how effective we were as a team. Why did they assign me to you in the first place?”

            Hannah had told them that, and Harry could only surmise that Draco was taking some time to face it because it was so harsh. He hesitated one more time, and then said, “Because you were going to be a sacrifice. Someone without close family anymore, whose partner had just died, but who was rules-bound enough, they thought, to object if I did something wrong. Or you would draw me in—I’m sure they knew how attached I got to my partners, how devastated I was by Lionel’s death—and then leave me. If you failed, it was no great loss. If you tripped me up, it was what they wanted.” He turned back towards Draco and held out his hands to him. “The one thing they never anticipated was that you would fall in love with me back.”

*

            Draco took a deep breath, and when he let it in, it seemed to him as though he was absorbing, instead of air, all Harry’s suspicions and arguments and attempts to convince him about the twisted. They settled inside him, and they seemed more and more solid now, building muscles and bones of their own, a second skeleton inside his.

            But once they were there, Draco had to wonder just what the hell they were going to do next. So he asked.

            “If the whole Ministry is against us,” he said, and cursed himself a little as his voice wavered, “the whole Auror Department, then what are we going to do? How do you expect me, or you, or us, to do anything about them?”

            Harry grabbed his hands and smiled at him. Draco swallowed. Of course he had wanted to see that sun glowing in Harry’s eyes; of course he had wanted him to move around the kitchen and gesture with that much energy. It made sense that it would hearten him to see Harry turning against his enemies at last.

            But the energy awed him and worried him at the same time. It made him wonder what Harry would do next, and whether he would contrive to sweep Draco away with him while he did it.

            “There are a few allies of ours in the Ministry,” Harry whispered. “Warren and Jenkins. And not all the Aurors can believe the same thing, or even know about it. There are still people who would support me in other Departments if they knew about it. I have to believe that.”

            “Support us,” Draco reminded him. Even if the main force of the Ministry’s plan to destroy Harry had been directed against Harry, Draco was still angry that he had been used as a sacrifice. An appendage to the main plan, expendable, because they thought that way they could control Harry.

            “Of course,” Harry said, with a faint smile and a bob of his head. “And what we do is make this public, along with evidence of Ernhardt’s activities. I don’t think we can make the Ministry fall, but we can do tons of things to diminish the public confidence in the Aurors. They’ll either have to admit the truth and clean out their ranks, or bribe us with something—anything we want—to keep quiet.”

            Draco studied him warily. Frankly, it sounded like too practical a plan for Harry. “And how does that connect to changing their definition of twisted?”

            “Because we’re going to talk about that, too,” Harry said. “And the people we’ve been killing, the people who should have been arrested and tried the way that other Dark wizards were. I don’t think that the Ministry established the Socrates Corps out of the goodness of their hearts. I think they established it because they were frightened of Voldemort and wanted to make sure that no one like him could ever gain power again.”

            Draco blinked. “That seems like a good idea to me.”

            “But they did it by killing people whose only crime was that they resembled him a little,” Harry snarled. “In fact, I know that he wasn’t insane when he was young, and he didn’t go insane just because he studied the Dark Arts. It was for another reason.” Draco looked at him, but Harry turned away and stared at the kitchen table, although he kept hold of Draco’s hands. “And would you say that Healer Alto was insane?”

            Draco grimaced and shook his head. “Arguably not Alexander, either. He at least had a plan that made sense, although it was a stupid one.”

            Harry nodded. “And not all the people affected by his globes were going insane, either, or fit into the other categories that the Ministry defines. They just had the wandless magic. I don’t—things have to change, Draco. I think things are only going to change if someone makes the public announcement about the Socrates Corps and how much things suck the way they are now. That someone has to be us. We’re the only ones with any compelling reason to.”

            “All right,” Draco said. “But you keep talking about talking. You haven’t said how we’re going to do it, or why the public would believe us and not the lies that the Ministry are immediately going to tell to counter us.”

            “That’s easy enough,” Harry said, staring at Draco as if he had babbled nonsense. “We make a public display of our Pensieve memories, as large as we can, projected on a screen like in a Muggle telly.”

            Draco folded his arms, breaking the hold that Harry had on his hands. He knew what a telly was, and the notion just made him disapprove further. This was Harry’s grand plan? Doing something that would make most people who heard about it think of Muggle devices?

            “Where and how are you going to set this up?” he demanded. “What could we do in public that the Ministry couldn’t immediately block and destroy?”

            “We need to think about how we’re going to get the memories to people who aren’t there,” Harry said. “But we’re going to do it at the Ministry itself, of course. That’s the only place we could.”

            “Go back into the heart of enemy power,” Draco echoed dazedly.

            “It shouldn’t be the heart of enemy power.” Harry was leaning forwards again, and his eyes were dazzling with their fire. “It should be a servant of the public, the way that Aurors are supposedly taught to be, not a servant of a few corrupt people who are afraid that they might have to change the way they do things. We’re going to change that, Draco. We’re going to get rid of the corruption and move the Ministry back to the side it should be on.”

            Draco stood up and took a deep breath. “All right, Harry. But you have to know that this isn’t only going to be hard, it’s going to be impossible. People have tried to cleanse the Ministry of bribery and corruption before, and it didn’t work.”

            “That’s because they were interested in too many different Departments, and too many different kinds,” Harry said firmly. “I only want to get rid of the particular strain in the Aurors that says they can sacrifice anyone they like, that it’s better than giving trials to people who might not be insane by conventional definitions.”

            “That would mean we could be tried for murder.” Draco felt as though he stood on a high cliff looking down over the valley of Harry’s ambitions, and he didn’t really like the picture that appeared.

            “It would mean that.” Harry inclined his head. “But if we don’t do something like this, then everything else is going to fall apart. Your parents will get away with what they did to you. We’ll be hunted by the Ministry until we slip up or they seize us or we flee the country. And we’ll be tried with murder that way, too. I think they’re going to try and charge us with Ernhardt’s murder.”

            Draco wrapped his arms around himself. Harry was there in seconds, taking his hands back and looking into Draco’s eyes so appealingly that Draco had to bite his lip savagely so he wouldn’t melt.

            “This is the way things have to end,” Harry whispered. “Either with truth, or continuing on with the Ministry’s lies. I think, either way, that we’re going to be on trial. At least this way, it’s going to be a trial that we chose, and we can represent the murder as a condition of our jobs. And self-defense, in the case of Ernhardt. The Ministry was so incompetent that they didn’t even realize they had a mad wizard for a Head Auror. We can fight with that, cast doubt on their ability to recognize other twisted, too.”

            Draco gave a light snort and shoved Harry a little. “You care more about saving future victims than the chance to clear our names. Don’t lie.”

            “Well, I might, at that,” Harry said, and gave him a winsome little smile. “But only because I think I’m right when I say that we’ll probably end up on trial no matter what happens.”

            Draco shut his eyes. He didn’t really need more proof that he was important to Harry, did he? Only proof that he was more important than his enemies. And sometimes he still doubted that, especially now, with the way that Harry seemed to argue they should risk their lives for an abstract moral principle.

            “I don’t really want my job as an Auror back,” Draco said, stroking the back of Harry’s hands with his thumbs. “Do you?”

            No response, so Draco had to open his eyes to see the headshake or the nod. Harry was studying him with a fierce gaze.

            “You don’t want the job back that you sacrificed your family over?” Harry asked. “That you gave up so much to have? That you were forced out of unfairly? That they wanted to sacrifice you over because you were a good Auror instead of the sacrifice and the stumbling block they wanted you to be?”

            It was difficult to breathe. Draco backed away from Harry and wrapped his arms around himself again. He knew he wasn’t alone, knew he hadn’t been from the time that Harry had fully accepted Draco as his partner in all senses, but Harry’s words felt as though he had been pushed out into the snow on a high peak.

            “I would want to be an Auror again if it was possible for the Department not to be corrupt,” Draco said finally, bowing his head. “I don’t really believe that’s possible. Not really. Do you?” he added, lifting his head and scowling at Harry.

            Harry just met him with another one of those brilliant, disarming smiles. “That’s what I think we should do,” he said. “Challenge the Ministry and get rid of that strain of corruption. If anyone can do it, we can.”



            “You don’t have any solid plans,” Draco told him flatly, pushing the hair out of his own eyes. “You don’t. Wanting to present everything in front of the Ministry and anyone else who wants to attend doesn’t mean we can do it.”

            “But we have life and determination and the truth, now,” Harry said. “And that means we can make solid plans. And I know you’ll add to and refine them, and give me criticism on the parts that are unworkable.” He reached out for Draco’s hands again, and scowl as Draco might, he was powerless to stop him. “Besides, I thought of one other ally we have in the Ministry besides Warren and Jenkins.”

            “One?” Draco muttered dryly. “What a windfall. Who?”

            “Mind-Healer Estillo.”

            Draco closed his eyes. “Yes, she’s an ally,” he said. “And so might some of the other Mind-Healers be, if you could convince them that what they might be asked to do otherwise would go against their Healers’ oaths. That doesn’t make them the same thing as actual allies, people who have already agreed to defend us. Do you—Harry, do you actually understand this, or are you so used to setting off against the world with a few people to help you that you think it’s possible all the time?”

*

            Harry could feel a grin tugging at his lips, and it was probably a good thing that Draco wasn’t actually looking at him right now, or he would explode.

            “Some of that,” he admitted. “But, Draco, watch.” He gestured with his wand, but waited to complete the motion until Draco had opened his eyes and turned his head reluctantly in the direction that Harry wanted him to face. Then Harry gestured sharply and whispered, “Ostendo memoriam.”

            The air swirled and tightened near the kitchen counters. Kreacher appeared behind it, hands spread wide as though to protect the Black pots and pans from any dangerous nonsense that Harry might want to inflict on them. Harry ignored that. There was no way that Kreacher’s presence there would disrupt the spell.

            The air ended up turning silver. No credit to Harry for that inspiration, he thought; he was just basing it on the color that Dudley’s telly sometimes turned in the seconds before an image showed up.

            On the screen formed his face and Draco’s, and the Black kitchen. And Draco began to speak the first words of their argument, even as the spell pulled back to show more and more, and make it clear that the scene was whole, like a Pensieve memory.

            Draco was still and silent. Harry glanced at him and found him watching the screen as though he hadn’t lived through it. Harry decided that he could do with the same thing, if only because he didn’t know which details Draco would argue about the second time through, and watched it, too.

            The memory ended as Harry waited with his wand up for Draco to open his eyes. Draco blew out sharply through his nose and turned to study Harry. “All right,” he said. “But that works when it’s a private scene that we both know is real. What happens when we have to show it to a huge group of people, and someone is trying to disrupt it in the meantime?”

            “That’s where the Mind-Healers come in.” Harry waited patiently for the obvious question, and Draco finally rolled his eyes and gave in, although Harry could see his fingers writhing like impatient spiders beneath the sleeve of his robe as he did so.

            “Right. When did you come up with this plan? A while ago, and you’re only now deigning to explain it to me?”

            “Just now,” Harry had to admit. “When you started asking about what allies we could have when we faced the Ministry, and I came up with this. The Mind-Healers can enter someone’s mind with permission, you know.”

            Draco’s face was a study that Harry was glad he had lived to see. “And you think our enemies are going to let them in willingly?”

            “No,” Harry said. “But they can also enter minds without permission. And while most people in the Ministry are watching these memories of our battles with Ernhardt and your parents and the ritual the Montgomerys tried to put me through, the Mind-Healers are going to be searching out the minds of those people who try to cast the spells to stop it. And entering them. And finding out the truth.”

            “What truth?” Draco was practically trembling in place like an enraged scorpion now, his arms folded and his foot tapping. “What kind of truth do you expect to find, other than that they hate the two of us and want us dead?”

            “I think there are probably a lot of people in the Ministry who would qualify as potential twisted,” Harry said quietly. “A lot of people with flaws. Think about it. All of us in the Socrates Corps have flaws—except maybe Latham, who died before we got to know him—and we just all happen to be there? No. I think the decisive factor that involved them pushing us into the Socrates Corps was that we faced people—or creatures—that could be explained by the twisted definition, and we had to be encouraged to think of them as Dark, insane wizards. Otherwise, we might have talked about it inconveniently, and discovered that lots of people have gifts of wandless magic. People with flaws are more common than people who fit the twisted definition, I’d bet. A lot more common. Think of the way that Alexander created those globes that were supposed to take flaws away and prevent people from becoming twisted. He didn’t have a few random targets. He had a lot of people he wanted to scatter them to.

“This is—I think that the twisted definition is a useful bit of insurance, something politically motivated after Voldemort came along, but once they’d written it, a lot of wizards in the Ministry started to realize that it could be applied to them, too, unless all five standards were pretty strictly applied. But Aurors who came in contact with twisted, as opposed to Aurors who had flaws, were pretty rare. They could push them into the Socrates Corps when they did see something that might have started them thinking, and teach them about twisted, and force them to think that, instead of a level of magic spread throughout the wizarding population of Great Britain, this is just something that only happens to a select number of people. Only a few wizards study the Dark Arts and go insane. Only a few people have a flaw and a symbol and companions and all the rest of it.” He met Draco’s gaze evenly. “But lots of people have a flaw.”

Draco was blinking, his mouth open, his eyes soft and dazed. Then he said, “What—what made you think of this?”

“Because once I started paying attention, I noticed things,” Harry said grimly. “Your mother has a flaw. Montgomery has one, I think. Elder had one. They’re just too common, Draco. They might go unnoticed as long as you didn’t know what you were looking for, but once you do? They’re everywhere. But you’re not mad despite having one, and neither am I, and neither is Warren, and neither is Jenkins. I’d call Elder mad, but because he was a Light fanatic, not because of Dark magic. This goes a lot deeper than just Ministry dislike of me, I think.”

He took a step forwards, never yielding Draco’s eyes. “I want to stop it, and make them see that they shouldn’t be persecuting people who have flaws in an attempt to stop the public from wondering who in the Ministry hierarchy has them. That’s what I want to change, and show. That will prevent them from hurting us, but also prevent people like Ernhardt from ever getting into a responsible position again, if we know what to really look for. Will you help me?”

*

Sasunarufan13: Harry thinks it’s a legend. But he knew all the arcane knowledge Hannah has would probably convince her it was real.

Draco would have caused as much pain as would still leave them capable of talking.

SP777: Yes, but now Harry has proved Draco wrong in a way Draco doesn’t like, so he’s sulking.
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity