Chapter Fifty-Four of 'The Only True Lords'- The Malfoys, Day Two
Chapter Fifty-Three.
Title: The Only True Lords (54/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Eventual (very eventual) Harry/Draco, canon het pairings
Warnings: Angst, violence, suicidal thoughts (on Snape's part), AU of the end of DH
Rating: R
Summary: Harry ends up accidentally bonding himself as Lord to several Slytherins after the Battle of Hogwarts, including Snape and Draco Malfoy. It’s a long journey from putting his foot in it all the time to at least trying to be a good one.
Author’s Notes: The story’s title comes from a quote by the fantasy and science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin in her essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”: “The Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness.” I became interested in writing a story that would chronicle the transformation of Harry into one of those lords. This is going to be a fairly long story, and not all that fast-paced.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifty-Four-The Malfoys, Day Two
Harry took such a long drink of water that he heard Kreacher squeaking in concern beside him, and Ron and Hermione were exchanging glances by the time he lowered the glass. He shrugged. “My throat hurts.” There was no reason for it not to hurt, when he had spent all that time today talking, telling the details of the visions he had seen of Voldemort ordering Draco to torture people.
Bloody Voldemort.
“I believe you,” said Hermione, giving him a quick smile, and reaching out to squeeze his hand. “It’s just…Harry, did you have to call Madam Ollondors a busybody?”
Harry snorted and rolled his head on his neck. They both ached. “She can’t hate me any more than she does for supporting Malfoys. My trial is past, my punishment assigned. And she can’t hate the Malfoys any more than she does, either.”
Hermione and Ron held another frowning contest. Harry leaned forwards with his hands loosely clasped on the table in front of him. “Okay. Out with it, you two.” They were acting as though they knew something he didn’t. They’d been acting that way since they got back from the Ministry. It was driving him mental.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Ron said slowly. “You said that you were going to fight as hard as you could to keep Malfoy from going to Azkaban, but then you agreed at the trial that you would let him go. And then you gave the testimony that condemned him. What gives, mate?”
Harry gave Ron a hard smile. “I realized I can’t keep Draco out of Azkaban. And I’m giving the testimony that condemns him, sure. The extremely hard and clear and detailed testimony that tells exactly what he did on the torture charge.”
Ron thought about it, then shrugged. “I thought you were doing that, but I don’t think that Malfoy appreciates the difference between you making sure that he doesn’t serve a longer sentence and you making sure that he serves a sentence at all.”
“That’s because I haven’t talked to him yet,” Harry said, and gulped once more from the water glass before he put it down and stood up. “Will you excuse me?”
Ron and Hermione exchanged one of those glances that Harry didn’t always understand, the kind that they gave each other more often since they had got together. But he didn’t mind it that much. He knew they didn’t always understand what the bond was like from the inside, or why he had to relate to his vassals the way he did, but they put up with it. The least he could do was the same for them.
“All right,” Hermione murmured. “But be careful how you explain it. I think he’s already starting to question how much he trusts you, and you don’t want him going too far into distrust.”
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said, grinning at her, and went to find Draco.
*
I’m going to Azkaban.
Draco had repeated the sentence so many times to himself now that it was starting to lose its meaning. He tasted the shapes of the words in his mouth, and felt the shape of the Dark Mark on his arm as though it was echoing them. He tried to remember how he had felt when he took the Mark, his reasons for taking it, but the hatred for Harry and the desire for vengeance had been burned out of him. There was only the flat, ash-laden despair that came with the thought of being in Azkaban.
“The Dementors are no longer at the prison,” his mother had tried to tell him. “You’ll be spared that, at least.”
But she looked at his father with desolate eyes as she spoke, and Draco knew that she either didn’t believe what she was saying, or she was dividing her focus between them. She might be joining them in prison, but they didn’t know that yet; she didn’t have as many enemies. So they had to wait and see.
It was a relief when Harry knocked on the door of his parents’ bedroom, and although Lucius and Narcissa both stiffened and turned their heads slightly to the side, Draco reached out to him. Harry came over, took his arm with the shield mark on it, nodded slightly to his parents, and led Draco outside.
Once they were in the corridor, Harry turned to him. Draco looked at him in silence, not knowing if he could speak any words other than the ones that had been echoing through his head all day.
“You understand why I’m testifying against you?” Harry whispered.
Draco nodded and took a deep breath. Even that fear, which had been so present at first, had retreated against the reality of his going to prison. “To make sure that I’m tried for what my crimes were, not what people think they are.”
Harry gave him a strong, warm smile. “That’s right. And if you do get condemned to Azkaban, I’ll come and visit you every week.”
Draco blinked and shook his head. He still felt a little stunned and bewildered, but he was thinking one thing. “How can you? You’ll be under house arrest. I was conscious for that part of the trial, at least,” he added dryly.
“Yes, but I can leave the house with an Auror escort,” Harry said peacefully. “And they’ll need to let me out to testify at other Death Eater trials and to attend the celebrations that I’m sure the Ministry wants to throw for the end of the war. I’m going to make trouble unless I get to visit you in Azkaban, too.”
Draco put on a smile he thought was watery, and closed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you know how many years in Azkaban I’m going to have yet?” he whispered.
“No,” Harry said, his voice so gentle that Draco found himself nodding along before he even thought about it. “Sorry. I don’t. They didn’t even settle it today how many months you should have for the torture, remember, and they still have to hear the testimony on your other crimes.”
“I know I did wrong things,” Draco whispered, unsure why he was even saying this. It wasn’t like he had to. Harry knew all this. But maybe he needed the shape of different words in his mouth. “But I don’t want…I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Azkaban.”
“I don’t think it will be the rest of your life,” Harry said. “And it’s not going to be the Kiss.” He hesitated. “If they say that you should have some other punishments, like monitoring charms on your wand after your stay in Azkaban is over, would you take that?”
“I have to take whatever they hand out.” Draco just felt numb by now. He would have fought against that a while ago, but now he knew that Harry was doing all he could, and he would have to go along with what happened.
“I know, but Jenkyns might propose other punishments just because he hates Ollondors and he’s going to oppose whatever she suggests,” Harry said, and hugged Draco so hard that Draco could feel Harry’s heart laboring against his chest. “He hates me, too, so he won’t let you walk away, but he might say that you should have monitoring charms and a shorter stay in Azkaban instead of the longer one she wants. Or something like that.”
“You have a plan,” Draco breathed against his neck.
“Not to get you out of Azkaban permanently,” Harry said. “I’m sorry. But something that might spare you from more than a few years there, yes.”
Draco was in freefall. There were so many emotions mixed up in him, hope and despair and anger and worry and longing for it to be over so that he would know what was going to happen to him, that he thought he could happily sacrifice everything for an end to the crisis. “Then yes. Do what you have to.”
Harry hugged him fiercely, again, and led him back to his parents. Draco sat down with his hand in his mother’s, and sighed.
*
“We are ready now to decide on the sentence that Draco Malfoy should receive for the torture of numerous Death Eaters.”
Harry just sat back in his chair and folded his arms. He had done what he could, telling Ollondors and the rest of the Wizengamot about the torture sessions he had seen through the link with Voldemort. Draco had never held them under the curse for long, but he had used the Cruciatus and other curses that Voldemort told him to.
It made Harry’s chest burn that plenty of other people in the Ministry would get away with being ordered by Death Eaters to torture people, because they weren’t politically important and didn’t have fathers who were criminals. But this was the situation they were stuck in, and at least he knew what was going to happen when Ollondors made the proposal she had owled to tell him she would make. Harry thought that was probably a violation of courtroom procedure, to tell him which way she would vote beforehand, but it wasn’t like anything else about these trials had been regular, either.
“I propose that Draco Malfoy spend the rest of his life in Azkaban,” said Ollondors, exactly the way she had phrased it in the letter to Harry.
None of the other Wizengamot members said anything. Ollondors had kept her gaze away from Jenkyns and the part of the Wizengamot he was seated in, anyway, but she did appear disconcerted when the people she was looking at stayed silent.
“Does no one agree with me?” she finally asked.
The Carrow cousin who had objected to talking about Alecto and Amycus as if they were torturers stood up, and Harry tensed. But she only said, “If we punish him that way, with a life sentence right away, nothing else we can sentence him to would have any impact,” and then sat down.
“We could do something else as well as the life sentence,” said Ollondors, turning to stare at Jenkyns now. “Snap his wand. Make sure that we drain the money from his vaults. Something.”
Jenkyns gave Ollondors a long, slow, bored look. “Draco Malfoy doesn’t own enough money in his vaults to be worth taking,” he said. “That particular punishment should be reserved for his father.” He eyed Lucius for a moment. Harry looked at Lucius, too, but it didn’t surprise him to see Lucius matching the expression on Jenkyns’s face. “But I agree that we could snap his wand.” Then he yawned. “But on top of a life sentence in Azkaban? Really? When no one else in the cases that Barrister Changes recited for us has ever been assigned that for torture?” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t do.”
Ollondors was rigid with hatred. She turned to Harry. “I suspect that you think he shouldn’t be assigned it, either?”
“I think,” Harry said mildly, “that he should receive the punishment of eighteen months in Azkaban that Barrister Changes discussed yesterday. That was for someone in the first war, an Auror, who had also tortured Death Eaters with curses he wasn’t allowed to use at the time. That Auror said he was in fear for his life while on an undercover mission and had to torture Death Eaters so he wouldn’t be suspected. The fear of consequences is much the same as in Draco Malfoy’s case. Yes, I think that should be the punishment.”
“You would,” Ollondors whispered.
Harry just shrugged at her. Honestly, was that worth saying? Yes, he thought that Draco should get that punishment. It wasn’t the least he could have received, but a life sentence for crimes that other people in the Ministry had committed and were going to get away with wasn’t fair, either.
Ollondors did some more glaring, then turned to Jenkyns. “You would vote with me for a sentence of eighteen months in Azkaban?” she asked, and honestly, their power plays were naked now.
“A sentence of eighteen months,” said Jenkyns, and gave Ollondors a smile that made Harry think he was enjoying this-the way Ollondors was asking him, more than anything else. “Nothing more than that.” He glanced around. “What do others think?”
There was some more vague muttering and gestures; most of them seemed afraid to commit themselves. Harry exchanged a glance with Changes. She had told him that this would probably happen. Citing legal precedent meant that the Wizengamot wasn’t the one actually making the decision, only agreeing or disagreeing with what had been presented to it by someone else. There were a lot of them who were happy to go along with what wouldn’t get them in trouble.
“And no one wants a life sentence,” Ollondors said, shaking her head. “Has Malfoy bribed all of you?”
“Frankly, I’m tired of looking at their faces,” said a thin woman with white hair who stood up and leaned on a stick-a real one, Harry thought, not the staff that Jenkyns had used to threaten Pansy. “I want to go on to the next trial. My nephew’s in that one. I’m looking forward to giving him a right good thumping.” She sat down to laughter.
Ollondors sighed. “Then the vote for eighteen months in Azkaban on the torture charge is secure?”
A few people didn’t hold up their hands or say anything, but there was a chorus of mutters and waving wrists. Harry turned and glanced at Draco, nodding a little. He didn’t know if he could actually feed emotional strength through the bond when they were this far apart, but he tried.
Draco caught sight of him and gave him a sick little smile. As long as he wasn’t collapsing, Harry thought he was holding up fine. He didn’t think he would be that calm if he’d just heard himself sentenced to eighteen months in Azkaban. The lack of Dementors was about the only thing that could be said for it.
“The next charge,” said Ollondors, “is the attempted murder of Albus Dumbledore, and the murder attempts that happened along the way, as well. Mr. Weasley?”
Harry watched with his heart thumping but, he hoped, no emotion visible on his face as Ron stood up and made his way to the chair at the front of the courtroom. He and Ron hadn’t discussed this at all. Harry didn’t want to influence Ron one way or the other. He would have to be the one to make up his mind about what he wanted to say, and the way he would try to sway the Wizengamot.
Ron sat down and studied Ollondors with an unsmiling expression. He really had grown up during their year on the run, Harry thought, and not physically.
“What exactly happened when Draco Malfoy tried to murder you?” Ollondors asked, her voice soft. Harry snorted. Ron might testify to send Draco to Azkaban, but Ollondors was mistaken if she thought she would fool Ron by talking gently at him.
“He poisoned some mead that Professor Dumbledore was supposed to receive,” said Ron, shaking his head. “I drank it, and I started to die, but Harry shoved a bezoar down my throat, and I came back to life.” He grinned at Harry. Harry grinned back. He had never felt more grateful for having the Half-Blood Prince’s book, despite all the trouble that it caused later.
“There’s no doubt in your mind that it was Draco Malfoy who poisoned the mead?” Ollondors’s voice had picked up the pace a little. Harry wondered if the white-haired witch had poked her with her cane.
“None,” Ron said firmly. “And no doubt that he was attempting to murder the Headmaster,” he added, maybe because he could see Ollondors’s mouth opening and knew that would be her next question. “I know everything because later, I heard about how he was trying to murder Dumbledore because You-Know-Who threatened his parents. So this was part of that.”
Ollondors looked around as though making sure that no one else had questions, and then turned to Ron. “What punishment do you think Draco Malfoy should receive for attempting to kill you?”
Ron’s expression turned mulish. “How come you didn’t ask the people he tortured that?” he demanded.
“Because they are not here,” said Ollondors. “And because murder is a more serious crime than torture.”
Ron watched her with a cynical gaze. Then he shrugged. “I think that it was a mistake. Malfoy’s always been a coward and not very good at getting revenge. Hell, the first year he was always attempting to get Harry in trouble, and he never managed it without getting in trouble himself. And in our third year, he dressed up as a Dementor and tried to get Harry to fall off his broom during a Quidditch match. His plans never work. He wasn’t trying to kill me, he was trying to kill Dumbledore, and I got in the way.”
Harry breathed slowly, glancing at Draco out of the corner of his eye. Draco looked stunned, and something else was coming through the bond, too. Harry frowned. He didn’t like whatever it was. It was cold and slimy and sluggish.
“His plan to let Death Eaters into the school worked,” said Ollondors.
“Yeah, the exception that proves the rule.” Ron crossed his legs and rapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Most of the time, there’s no question that Malfoy couldn’t have killed me. He was aiming for a bigger target. Someone else could have drink that mead, but so could Professor Dumbledore.” His gaze went to Draco. “Not that that would have worked either, because Professor Dumbledore would just have found out about the poison and laughed it off, but Malfoy was getting desperate. I suppose he thought he should try anything just in case it worked.”
Draco stood up hastily. “Permission to approach and speak to the Wizengamot?” he croaked, his eye twitching furiously.
Harry stared at him. Ollondors stared at him. Changes stared at him, which worried Harry most of all, because this meant this wasn’t a strategy Draco had worked out with her.
“Oh, let him,” said the white-haired witch. “At least it might be a little interesting.”
Draco nodded hard enough that Harry winced from the sympathetic pain coming down the bond, and strode up to stand beside Ron. He didn’t look at him, but that not-looking itself was a symptom of all that he was feeling, Harry thought. Draco had never been able to ignore Ron like that when they were together.
“I didn’t intend to kill Weasley,” Draco began in a choked voice. “But I was trying to kill someone, and the poisoned mead would have hurt Professor Dumbledore if he took it. If he drank it, I mean,” he added, maybe suddenly remembering that the mead wasn’t a potion. “So-so Weasley is wrong about me not being good at anything. It was a perfectly sound plan.” He turned and glared at Ron.
Ron looked at Harry instead of matching glares with Draco. Written plainly on his face was, And you’re trying to defend this idiot?
Harry had to admit that he was wishing for a convenient wall to bang his head against, himself. He tried to catch Draco’s gaze, but Draco was simply too focused on Ron and the Wizengamot to pay attention. He looked as though he was satisfied to have gone up there and announced his not complete incompetence at murder.
“He’s a child,” said the white-haired witch, and she sounded more bored than ever. “I thought this trial was to sentence adults, not children.”
“Mr. Malfoy is of age by wizarding law,” said Ollondors. She sounded pleased with herself. Well, she could be, Harry thought, after Draco had practically done some of her work for her. “That means that we can try him as an adult.”
“How old was he when he committed these crimes?” the white-haired witch asked, and this time, it seemed that she had poked Ollondors with her cane, because Ollondors winced too hard for it to be a coincidence. “The ones we’re trying him for?”
“Seventeen when I tortured people,” said Draco, and his face was purple, but fading to white. Maybe he was just beginning to realize how stupid he had been, Harry thought. “Sixteen when I was attempting to kill the Headmaster and letting Death Eaters into the school.”
He fixed his eyes and, it seemed, his will on Ollondors, and Harry checked a sigh. Yes, he understood from the way Draco was looking now, all too well. Draco thought he was going to go to Azkaban for years anyway. But he wanted to be understood on his own terms. If they were going to sentence him for being a threatening criminal, then he wanted to show them that he actually had tried to threaten people.
“Still a child,” said the white-haired witch. “Maybe legally responsible, but you’re a boy, Mr. Malfoy. Or Draco Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy is your father, isn’t he?”
Harry thought he saw Lucius move out of the corner of his eye, but Draco snapped back at her before Lucius could say anything. “I’m an adult! You’re trying me as an adult! That means you have to treat me like one!”
“I’ll treat people like adults when they behave like it,” said the white-haired witch, and heaved herself to her feet again so she could see Draco. “And I don’t think you’re acting like one. I have no time for children. This is a courtroom. That’s what I’m going to tell my nephew, when he’s in here. And if I’d tell my own nephew that, you can imagine what I’m going to say to you.”
“I’m not a child.” Draco sounded a little calmer now, but it was a grinding calm, Harry thought, wearing down on his nerves. “Do me the courtesy of accepting what’s going on here, and accepting the reality.”
“No,” said the white-haired woman. “I don’t think I will. I think we should have a different punishment altogether, appropriate for angry children who get out of hand.” She glanced from side to side, and apparently saw enough interested faces to let her continue. Harry had no idea what she was talking about, himself. “As my name is Bronwen Mollevron, I demand that the Wizengamot consider the Stripping of the Wand for Draco Malfoy.”
Draco shouted a wordless protest, and tried to surge forwards. Ron put out a hand. Draco came to a stop, maybe because he had an ingrained revulsion at the notion of touching a Weasley. Ron smirked at him and faced Mollevron. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that punishment before, madam,” he said. “Is it just breaking his wand?”
Mollevron shook her head firmly. “It means taking his adulthood away from him. Making him a ward of the state-since his parents obviously can’t control him-for several years, until we declare that he’s legally arrived at adult status again. Taking his wand from him; only adults deserve wands. Taking away the freedom to move about unsupervised, or be out after a certain time, or date anyone his guardians don’t approve of.” She smiled at Draco. “Treating him like he acts.”
Draco shouted again, but once again, there were no words in it. Harry stood up, wondering if he would have to go up there and restrain Draco this time. But Ron mouthed at him, I have this, and stood up, calmly, in front of Draco. It really did look like an adult holding back a child, Ron was so much more in control than Draco.
“This upsets him, doesn’t it?” Ollondors asked, and her eyes were agleam. “Like an angry little boy.” She turned to look around her. “Members of the Wizengamot, I vote that we consider Madam Mollevron’s wise words.”
Harry sat back, swallowing through a dry throat. He didn’t know if this would work out, or if Ollondors would only support the punishment as long as she thought it upset Draco.
Then again, looking at Draco’s face, pale and flushed by turns, Harry thought it might really be the worst thing they could do to Draco, other than execute him.
For the moment, Harry only could sit there and await the turn of events.
Chapter Fifty-Five.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/649153.html. Comment wherever you like.