Chapter Fifty-Seven of 'The Only True Lords'- Demonstration
Chapter Fifty-Six.
Title: The Only True Lords (57/?)
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-Seven-Demonstration
Narcissa rose to her feet, her hands folded in front of her. Her face had gone completely blank, snowy and cold. Harry, though, didn’t know much about the way she expressed her emotions in the first place. And she had never been part of the bond.
“I am awaiting my sentence,” she said, when Ollondors stared at her as if she couldn’t come up with a reason for Narcissa to stand.
Ollondors snorted and started to respond, but Mollevron broke in at that point. “May we see a Pensieve memory of the night that you saved Lord Potter’s life?” she asked, so polite that Harry saw he wasn’t the only one gaping at her.
But maybe that was Mollevron’s angle, Harry decided abruptly. She might not care that much for the Malfoys. She might not be there to spare them from rough treatment; at first he had thought she was a hidden ally of Lucius’s, but she had enjoyed comparing Draco to a child too much for that. Maybe she liked Blacks, though, or was related to them somehow.
“I can show it to you, yes,” said Narcissa, and looked around as if expecting to find the Pensieve at her elbow.
“Good,” said Mollevron. She raised a hand, and a house-elf appeared in the middle of the courtroom floor, startling Harry so much that he was glad he was sitting down. Mollevron grinned, but commanded the thing, “Go and fetch the Pensieve that sits on the desk in Madam Ollondors’s office, Otsy.”
“Yes, mistress,” said Otsy, in a voice so squeaky Harry winced, and vanished.
“Funny, Bronwen,” said Ollondors. She had her head twisted to the side as if she wanted to keep Mollevron in full view at every moment, and her smile was sharp and twisted the same way. “I would have assumed that you wanted to use your own Pensieve. I know you have one.”
“I’m sick of you interrupting the trial to pounce on everything you think is favoring the suspects,” said Mollevron in a bored voice. “And you’d accuse me of trying to sabotage something if I used my own Penseive. I hope that you won’t think I could have sabotaged your Pensieve. This is the best way I know of to actually advance things.”
Ollondors opened her mouth, apparently couldn’t think of anything to say, and sat down again. Harry caught Mollevron’s eyes and smiled at her.
She looked back at him, unimpressed, and Otsy returned with the Pensieve at the same moment. It was a large, ornate thing, made of dark wood, in a way that Harry hadn’t known Pensieves could be; he had assumed they would all be of the same silvery metal that Dumbledore’s had been. Otsy bowed to Narcissa and held out the Pensieve, steadily, his arms serving for a table. Narcissa then held out a hand for a wand.
One of the Aurors standing guard in the back of the courtroom stirred and came forwards, handing Narcissa her wand. Narcissa nodded gracious thanks in a way that made Harry reluctantly smile again, then touched the wand to the temple and drew the memory out. It fell into the wooden Pensieve like soft rain.
“I suspect that this will take a rather long time,” said Ollondors loudly then. “Since not all of us can fit our heads into the Pensieve at once.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Mollevron. “At least, if that silver carving on the side of your Pensieve means what I think it does.”
Ollondors stiffened. Then she shook her head. “The projection function, yes. Instruct your house-elf to touch the dolphin’s eye with one finger. I need to cast the necessary spell at the same time.” She raised her wand.
Smiling, Mollevron told her house-elf to touch the dolphin’s eye. Harry had sort of thought that maybe Otsy would just do it on his own once he realized what was needed, but apparently the elf didn’t take instruction from anyone except his mistress. Ollondors’s scowl deepened as she cast the spell.
There was a sigh from the Pensieve, and a gleam like reverse snowfall as the image in it soared up and gathered in front of the audience. Harry watched colors come into it, green and brown and deep silver that he didn’t understand at first until he realized that it was a gleam from the masks of the Death Eaters. Voldemort stretched out an arm and pointed at Harry, lying under the tree where he’d fallen.
Harry did start a little at seeing his body from the outside. He knew what had happened, of course, but it was still weird.
Voldemort told Narcissa to examine him, and Narcissa approached Harry and kneeled down in front of him. Harry blinked. Narcissa showed no emotion at all. Maybe it was just because he didn’t know her as well as Draco and she was hard to read-the way she had been in the courtroom-but he would have thought it would show that she thinking about doing something desperate to make sure her son was still alive.
On the other hand, that would hardly fool Voldemort. Harry just hoped it wouldn’t prejudice the court against her.
Narcissa leaned over Harry’s body and whispered the question, her hand resting on his chest. Harry heard his own voice whisper back, and saw his eyes dart around beneath his eyelids. He winced. Seen from here, it looked incredibly obvious that he was still alive. He didn’t know why the other Death Eaters hadn’t noticed.
Then again, they weren’t standing as close as the audience was in the Pensieve memory. Voldemort and the others stood back, as though Harry might stand up and grab his wand and curse them all in Dumbledore’s name.
Hey, something like it happened when I was a baby.
The memory ended right after Narcissa rose to her feet and announced that Harry was dead, and the Death Eaters cheered and began to swarm forwards. Harry reckoned that Narcissa had thought no one really needed to see the conclusion of the Battle of Hogwarts from her point-of-view. Many of them had been there; the ones who hadn’t had already received lots of testimony about what had happened when the bond formed and Harry “came back to life” in the Great Hall.
When the memory finished, Mollevron cackled. Harry turned to face her, swallowing. Maybe she had decided that this wasn’t a good enough memory to vote for Narcissa’s freedom based on the expression on her face, or the fact that Mollevron was so bored with the case, or something else that Harry hadn’t been able to anticipate at all.
But Mollevron was pointing her cane at Ollondors, who wore a deep scowl. “You knew that it wouldn’t make you look good, to see the memory,” Mollevron said. “You knew. But that doesn’t matter. Mrs. Malfoy was clearly risking her life to say Lord Potter was dead. She did it out of love for her son. There needs to be no other motive. I say that we should let her go free. Or a month’s house arrest at the most.”
“She was still a Malfoy,” said Ollondors between her teeth. “She was still someone who put up with You-Know-Who’s presence in her home, and the presence of Death Eaters, instead of fighting them, and aided and abetted her Death Eater husband and son.”
“And what would you have done in that situation?”
“I would have stood up to You-Know-Who! I would have died fighting!”
Mollevron only leaned back on her seat, her cane down beside her again, her hand and her lips both crooked at the same angle. Her smile and her contempt were so obvious that she barely needed to show them.
Ollondors whirled on Harry, as if it was his fault. “What do you think, Lord Potter? Narcissa Malfoy is not one of your vassals. Don’t you think she should have stood up to You-Know-Who, and been braver?”
“I think she was pretty bloody brave doing what she did,” said Harry peacefully. “And since she’s the reason I’m still here and alive, rather than having Voldemort cast an extra Killing Curse on me just to be sure, I’m glad she did it.”
“You wouldn’t have died if he had cast the extra Killing Curse.”
“What preserved me in both circumstances was something unpredictable,” said Harry. He would discuss his mother’s sacrifice endlessly, but he still didn’t want to mention anything about Horcruxes. With his luck, someone out there would decide he must be evil because he’d hosted a bit of Voldemort’s soul for so long. “I didn’t want to test it. I didn’t really have a plan for surviving that, you know. I went into the Forbidden Forest expecting to die. So I’m grateful that Mrs. Malfoy was there and could help me.”
He turned to look at Narcissa, who was appraising him coolly. Harry had no idea if she would decide this was enough to make up for the life-debt he owed her, but maybe it would start the initial payments.
“Then there’s no more to say,” said Ollondors, voice chilly. Harry kept looking at Narcissa; the temptation to roll his eyes would be too strong if he turned back to Ollondors. Hadn’t she realized that Harry didn’t agree with her on the Malfoys by now? “The Wizengamot will vote on Narcissa Malfoy’s punishment.”
There was a small debate in response, but only between people who had different ideas on what the terms of Narcissa’s house arrest should be. In the end, it was a month, no more, and Narcissa was subject to the same restraints on leaving the house and the charms on her wand that Harry and Severus were.
Narcissa inclined her head when that was done, and sat down, turning back to her husband and son. Harry looked away to give them what privacy he could.
He could feel the bond stretched between him and Draco vibrating like a plucked string, though, and he suspected that he knew what Draco was feeling anyway. And he suspected what kind of confrontations they would have once they were out of the courtroom.
It was inevitable. The only thing Harry could do was brace for it as best he could, and hope Draco’s parents would talk to him a little before that, modify his shouting a bit.
*
Draco stood next to his father, in the anteroom that Auror Stone had ushered them into. It was small but private, and he knew Aurors were guarding the doors, but they were Aurors under the command of Stone, and she would have told them not to interfere. He might not like the woman much, or really trust her not to abuse her authority over him, but if she did give her word on something, she would keep it.
He stared at his father. He didn’t feel exactly calm, but he felt deep and cold, and he couldn’t stop shivering at the thought of what would happen to Lucius.
Maybe Azkaban wouldn’t have been better for me after all.
“Draco,” said his father softly, reaching out and putting his hands on Draco’s shoulders. Draco tried to shake off thoughts of Azkaban and Dementors and Harry and the Stripping of the Wand, and meet his eyes without flinching. “I want you to promise that you will do whatever you must to redeem the Malfoy family name.”
Draco swallowed deeply. “I’ll do what I can, but rebelling against Harry and Auror Stone isn’t going to be easy.”
He wondered a second later if he should have called Harry by his first name in front of Lucius, but his father only frowned at him. “Rebel? No, you mustn’t do that. You must go through this punishment, bear it with dignity, and show your enemies that they cannot crush you.” His hands pressed down, and he swallowed himself. “I would not have wished this for you, I do not wish this for you, but one must look to the future, beyond the next five years. Or the next thirty. It is what our ancestors have always done.”
Draco stared at his father in silence. This wasn’t the sort of inspirational speech he would have expected from him. “But I thought our ancestors would be angry at me for becoming a vassal to a Lord.”
“That is not something you could help.” Lucius released Draco’s shoulders and paced slowly around the anteroom. “The way you act now that you have the sentence is, however.”
There was a shade of condemnation in those words that Draco picked up on easily, because he had spent his life listening for it. “You don’t think I should have protested so vocally in the courtroom, do you?” He winced at the crack in his own words.
“I do not. You know that you should have held your emotions back and only released them in private.”
“I did try talking to Harry in private. He didn’t understand what it would do to me to be a child again! He just said that it would be better than going to Azkaban.”
“And so it is.”
Draco bowed his head. He had entered some dreamworld where his father sided with Harry Bloody Potter. “But how can you say that? You know that it means the loss of dignity. They’ll laugh at our family. I don’t understand how you can support this!”
“Because it is the long run that matters, and dignity in the long run can be earned back. In the meantime, you have done a good job of sacrificing our short-run dignity.”
Draco spun around. His mother had entered the room, and shut the door carefully behind her. She was coming towards him with a rustle of robes that made her stop a moment later and study the hem of them. Finding a speck of dirt, she nodded and swept it away, then looked at Draco again.
“Not you, too,” Draco whispered. “I thought you were going to say that I was right. How can I not be? Harry is doing his very best to humiliate our family and cut our power short! That’s more upsetting than me having to spend time in prison.”
“I think you forget where these proposals originated.” His mother came to a stop in front of him, studying Draco the way she had when he was first about to go to Hogwarts and she seemed to think he wouldn’t survive away from her care. “The Wizengamot. Potter directed them as best he could and tried to make sure that the harshest burden wouldn’t fall on you. Perhaps we can fault him for not being a manipulative genius who would make sure we had to bear no punishment at all. But I do not.”
Draco flushed again at the soft edge to her last words. “Sure, all right, they were the ones who mentioned the Stripping of the Wand. But Harry acted happy about it.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Narcissa, “Lord Potter stopped me now and spoke to me for a few minutes. It is why I am late joining you. He said that he asked you before the Stripping of the Wand was mentioned if you would object to some lesser punishment being proposed, whatever it was. He said that you said you would not.”
Draco clenched his fists. “How was I supposed to know that it would be this?”
“You could not know,” said Narcissa. Lucius was standing back and watching Draco’s mother with an expression on his face that Draco had never seen before. He couldn’t interpret it fast enough; Narcissa claimed his attention again. “The Stripping of the Wand is an old punishment, not often used anymore. I dare say that none of us thought that the Wizengamot would invoke it.”
Draco waited for some more words, and waited. Then, aware of the silent beats of the clock counting away their time, he burst out, “Well? If you think that I couldn’t know about it, why are you blaming me for reacting this way?”
His mother raised an eyebrow at his father, and Lucius stepped forwards and reclaimed his part in the conversation. “Because you cannot control the future or what your enemies do, but you can control your own reaction.”
Draco had to turn away and look at the wall. That, just like the faint notes of criticism in his parents’ voices, was also an echo of old lessons.
You might not be able to control much, but you can control the way you approach your enemies. You can control what you say. You can control the expression on your face.
Lucius had told him that when he was a child. When he came home after his first year at Hogwarts, infuriated at Harry and the way that Slytherin had had the Cup snatched from them. After his second and third years, as his conflicts with Harry grew more intense and it turned out that stupid hippogriff had escaped execution. When he had arguments with his friends and people who resented his family’s influence. During what should have been his last year at Hogwarts, whenever they could get a moment alone.
Yes, he was right. Draco couldn’t have controlled what Mollevron said, or what Harry did-the other way around, if anything-and maybe even a blink and a gasp of shock was acceptable when he first heard about the punishment. It was old, it was unexpected. His parents hadn’t been prepared for everything in this trial, either.
But he could have avoided ranting and acting like a baby, or standing up and snarling at Weasley the way he did. That was really what had started Mollevron saying that he was a child.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“It is not us you need to apologize to,” said Narcissa. “It is your Lord, in command of you for the moment, and your ancestors. And then comport yourself in future the way that you would wish to be seen, rather than simply the way you wish to.”
“It’s so irritating to have someone in command of me.” If Draco talked about it like that, then he thought he could sound calm and rational. Even though it was more than irritating.
“Yes, it is,” said Lucius. “But I have experienced it, with the Dark Lord. And again during the years when I had to bow and scrape to Ministers who did not have the wit to realize what they owed me. Or were so stupid and so fearful that they made my life tiresome with constant firecalls. There are prices for power, Draco. Your ancestors paid those prices because that was better than losing their family forever.”
And now it’s my turn to pay them. Draco nodded slowly. Seen from that perspective, the Stripping of the Wand didn’t matter so much, because at least he was alive to pay the price. And he wasn’t locked up in a prison and deprived of news. He didn’t think Harry would ever do that to him.
Or Auror Stone, for that matter. He might even learn more about the Ministry than he’d know otherwise, if his guardian had been one of those old pure-bloods who stayed in their houses all the time instead of coming out and engaging with the world.
“You understand now,” said his father, letting one hand rest on Draco’s cheek as if it was an accident that it was there.
“I only wish to know,” Narcissa added, her eyebrows tilted up, “why you did not before. Or why you did not come to us and ask why we supported this way of going about things, if you did not understand.”
Draco sighed and looked at his hands. Now that he was seeing it from a different perspective instead of feeling the actual waves of emotion washing over him, he didn’t know why he had hated and resented the Stripping of the Wand so much. The same way that he didn’t know why he had panicked over Azkaban once Mollevron had started talking about the Stripping of the Wand, because Azkaban had seemed like nothing.
“Because I wanted people to see me as an adult,” he mumbled finally. “This was another way of saying that I was a child, and nothing I did really mattered. Well, it mattered to me.”
“We will never forget that,” said Narcissa. “I do not think Severus will, either, if only because he already paid part of the price. And I do not think Lord Potter will.”
“But he did disagree with me and treat me like it didn’t matter when I argued with him,” Draco had to point out. “He said that I should be treated like a child if I was acting like one.”
“They can make him legally responsible for you, part of the time,” said Lucius unexpectedly. “They cannot force him to lock you up, or beat you, or make you go to bed at a certain time. How he treats you is up to him and you. If you do not act like a child, I do not think he will treat you like one in the small things.”
Draco winced, but nodded. His father was saying that it was partially his fault that Harry had treated him like a child in the first place. But the solution also lay in his hands.
And it wouldn’t lie in the hands of a real child. They would just take away all responsibility and capacity to do something right away.
So. That was the conclusion that his parents saw, and that Harry had probably been waiting for him to come to. Draco lifted his head and assumed the most adult expression he could.
“Are you really okay with going to prison?” he asked his father. “Since you seem to agree with Harry that it was a horrible punishment.”
“It would be far more horrible,” said Lucius, “for me to see my family imprisoned than to go myself.”
And maybe Draco could think that way, too, to think that it would be far more horrible if the Wizengamot had taken his claims of adulthood seriously and assigned him a term in prison, or Kissed his parents, rather than assigning him the status of a child.
He could make it through this, for the sake of having his mother with him. Of being there at the end of five years, and outwaiting or outliving some of his enemies who would gradually forget about him. Some of the members of the Wizengamot, including those who had condemned him, were awfully old.
A knock on the door. “I have the Aurors here who are assigned to escort Mr. Malfoy to prison,” said Stone’s voice.
Draco lunged forwards and caught his father in a hard hug. Lucius hugged him back, putting all he could into the embrace, all that Draco knew would never go into words, and then retreated to embrace Narcissa. Draco turned to face the wall, to give his parents what little privacy they could have.
His heart was racing again, but for a different reason this time. He had a goal to live for, one that had nothing to do with enemies or Harry. To be there on the day that his family was reunited.
To have a life of his own, but also one that would serve the family and make his ancestors proud. His parents had thought he was capable of doing that even when he was a real child, or they wouldn’t have bothered teaching him to help.
If he could do it then, he could do it now, with experiences and wisdom that made him more than a boy, no matter what the Wizengamot thought.
And so his face was calm when Auror Stone and the other Aurors came in, and he rebuffed the greedy stares of the Aurors with his own blank face, and walked out under his own power.
Chapter Fifty-Eight.
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