Consequences for Coerced Actions
July, 1996
In under an hour, the cheerful atmosphere of a peaceful summer in the middle of the nightmare the Wizarding World was turning into had vanished. Not only had the entire house been made aware of Draco’s predicament in a matter of minutes due to the breakdown he was having in the living room and the Minister’s loss of how to calm him (his friends weren’t much help either, as they were barely holding together themselves at the thought of Draco stuck in Azkaban, or the thought of Draco casting an unforgivable), but Bill came home that night, bringing with him early information of more disappearances and more deaths.
What once had been a happy stay at the Burrow was quickly turning back to the darkness Harry had found himself trapped in for far too long. He didn’t know when the world had become this laden in pain, but he wished desperately it could simply end. Of course, there was no way this would end simply, as the prophecy had proven…
But this wasn’t about him, for once, this was about Draco, and the Hearing he awaited in under a week, of which they didn’t know how to avoid.
True to his word, Fudge had tried every means of skirting the law for a teenager who had been forced against his will to kill Albus Dumbledore, but his colleagues on the Wizengamot had claimed the imperiusing of Madam Rosmerta was entirely separate to that. However, it was when Fudge had stopped by for dinner to discuss their options two nights later, and had stayed far past suppertime, swirling a glass of firewhiskey in their living room, that Molly had placed down a tray of snacks for them all and asked why Draco couldn’t try to simply reason with the Madam and kindly ask for her to drop the charges.
“That’s absurd,” Remus said, crossing behind the armchair Tonks was sitting in, placing his hands on the back and squeezing the cushioning in his stress. “Mr. Malfoy used an illegal spell. Just because the victim doesn’t feel any animosity over it won’t free him from Azkaban.”
“Yes, but it might be easier to make him go free without prosecution, right?” Molly prodded, and Tonks turned in her seat to snap her fingers at her, nodding.
“She’s right,” She leaned forwards towards the Minister, “She’s right, right? That could work?”
Fudge pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Theoretically. But that’s all resting on Draco’s ability to persuade her -”
“I’ll do it.” Everyone turned to look at Draco himself, sitting at the dinner table and poking the remains of food that had long gone cold yet he’d still refused to finish with a fork. “I’ve got nothing to lose, right?” He glanced over at the adults circling in the living room, and each carried their own look of despair at his words, but he focused on a boy standing at the back of the room, arms crossed firmly across his chest.
Harry nodded, and in one swift move Draco pushed himself away from the table and strode towards the stairs. “Send a letter then. I’ll meet with her tomorrow.”
Harry was quick to follow him in a second, even when he disappeared and the others continued talking in whispers now of a boy they hardly knew, and therefore had no right to pity, gossip, or dote on. He, however…
“Draco!” He found him in what had once been Fred and George’s, but was now their room, sitting on his bed with Altais nestled at his feet beside Prongs, who raised his head when Harry entered. He gave his crup no acknowledgment, however, not because he didn’t still adore his pet, but because he might possibly adore the boy who gave it to him more. At least right now.
“Draco, are you alright?” He stepped into the room cautiously, sinking onto the bed so that he was sat between the animals and Draco, who hadn’t looked up from something in his lap since Harry had entered, which he could now see to be a wand he was rotating between his fingertips. He recognized the strange form, and the small runes carved across it, and knew it was Dumbledore’s wand.
“This wand,” Draco raised the thin stick up so that it was level with his face and he could examine it with his eyes. “If the stories are to be believed, it once belonged to Gellert Grindelwald.” Draco must have caught the immediate confusion in Harry’s eye because he elaborated, “He was a dark wizard from the thirties to forties, preaching about the ‘Greater Good’ and desiring to abolish the Statute of Secrecy so that wizards and witches could live freely without the fear of Muggle-kind. He was considered to be the darkest wizard before You-Know-Who came along. It was believed by all that Dumbledore was the only one who could defeat him, and he did, besting him in what is wildly considered to be the greatest battle in magical history, and gaining this,” He held up the wand, and now Harry eyed it with new meaning that always came with being told a new truth. One could never look at something the same.
“And now it’s mine,” Draco lowered it, holding it with two hands once more, but Harry didn’t lower his gaze to it, instead looking into Draco’s eyes. “Dumbledore gave it to you for a reason,” He said, “And you know how good his judgment was -”
“And yet -” He whispered, sighing deeply as he suddenly clenched his hand around the stick so tight his knuckles turned white. “I can sense something’s wrong with it, I just can’t work out what…”
“You just need to get used to it.” Draco scoffed and Harry gazed at him sadly as he walked back and forth, and he jumped off the bed and began to pace back and forth. He knew then this wasn’t just about the wand. “I’m sure she’ll listen, Draco, she’s always seemed very nice at the Three Broom -”
“Yes, well, I don’t think she’s ever had a customer control her every move and action for months, has she?” Harry swallowed because, well, he couldn’t really argue with that. Why was it that Draco always had to make things so hard for him?
“I’m just trying to help…” “I know,” Draco stopped his pacing abruptly to turn and look at Harry, sigh, and lean back onto his bed behind him, still sighing as he laid down across it. “I’m just so… exhausted.”
Harry knew the feeling completely, of reaching the end of the line, the farthest breaking point, and yet still feeling like you were being tugged forwards so that the string had begun to fray and snap and there was nothing you could do but scream. He stood and crossed the space between the beds to fall down beside Draco, rolling onto one side and gazing into a pair of stormy gray eyes blinking back at him in the dim light of night.
“You aren’t alone, you know that?” He said, because that was always what he needed to hear in those dark moments, thinking his friends had abandoned him because they didn’t write, or he was evil because he could talk to snakes. Times he’d analyze all those similarities between himself and Tom Riddle and question Dumbledore’s claims of how they were far from the same. All he needed to hear was that he was never alone, and there would always be someone beside him. He’d certainly felt Draco’s presence in Fourth Year, but it had vanished throughout Fifth, and now…
For once, Draco was the first to take initiative, lacing his fingers through Harry’s and smiling so that his cheeks (gradually blooming with pink) pinched in a way that always made Harry’s insides squirm. He still couldn’t grasp why…
“I know,” The Slytherin whispered to his friend, and Harry smiled, letting his forehead fall forwards so that their heads pressed together, and closing his eyes to just breathe in the boy before him. Breathe in the fact that he was real, and that finally they would be able to return to how life once was, and how he’d always felt deep down, in the place where his insides squirmed when Draco’s cheeks pinched, or eyes sparkled, or hair glimmered, or laugh lit of a room - he knew this was meant to be.
Maybe that was what finally clued him into what that squirming meant.
“Harry -” He opened his eyes after a long moment and saw how red Draco’s face had become and realized in the same moment how close the two of them were now, their legs overlapping, their hands tightly interlocked, their heads pressed together… Their lips were just inches away from each other.
No, this was… It couldn’t be…
“Did you hear that?” In a swift movement, Harry had pushed himself off his own bed and away from Draco, slowly sitting up himself in confusion, and was headed for the door. “I think Mrs. Weasley’s calling me. Better make sure I get there before Phlegm does, right?” He let out a short, highly forced laugh, before turning and slamming the door, leaving Draco sitting quietly on the bed, his face seemingly permanently stuck bright red.
“Did I say something wrong?” He asked no one in particular, though the loud meowing from Altais he got in response probably meant she assumed he was talking to her. He sighed and stood to climb back into his own bed, wondering how he’d ended up with the luck of falling for such a boy like Harry Potter.
-*-*-*-
Sunday, July 21st
Harry kept his distance from Draco the next morning, if only to prove to himself he could physically do it, but his restraint didn’t last long before he was foolishly jumping up and volunteering to travel to Diagon Alley to meet Madam Rosmerta with him. Now he was left furiously thinking how he was supposed to brush past the last night around him as he changed into a set of Muggle clothes, Draco changing into a loaned pair of jeans and a shirt behind him.
And if he tried his best to sneakily chance a glance at Draco changing, so what? He just wanted to compare their abs, okay, it couldn’t possibly be anything else because anything else would just ruin everything and make no sense whatsoever and was certainly the last thing anyone needed to deal with right now.
Because Harry was just as and a lot more wanted than Draco, not to mention underage, an escort was still required, so Mr. Weasley walked with them to the Leaky Cauldron and continued to escort Draco all the way to the cafe he was meeting Rosmerta at, leaving Harry alone on the streets of Diagon Alley, taking in how much the place had changed.
He’d bought books here just last summer - painfully he remembered picking up a copy of Defensive Magical Theory for the first time at Flourish and Blotts - and it hadn’t looked a bit like this. Not barren like a ghost town, not missing several shops boarded up or raided, and… Merlin…
He was positive Ollivander had still been here.
Frowning at the boarded up store he had gotten his wand at years ago, Harry wondered briefly how Voldemrot could break a world so terribly that he took away such an old and beloved place like Ollivander’s. But nevertheless, there was no point in lingering before the place when he didn’t need it anymore, as without a real Ollivander he couldn’t bring Draco to ask if Dumbledore’s wand truly belonged to him, and ask about it’s behavior. Instead, he turned and looked up and down the street for any shops still open, eyes falling on a familiar red building.
Tilting his head, Harry stuck his hands into his pockets and walked over to stand in front of Madam Malkin’s, managing a sort of fond smile as he gazed up at the building and thought back to each summer he’d come to get his robes fitted here. And then he recalled his first ever time stepping into the shop.
Closing his eyes and concentrating on the memory, Harry pulled forth an image of a pale boy wearing robes about a size too big getting fitted to be just right, turning his pointed nose up at him.
“Hello. Hogwarts too?”
Sucking in a deep breath, Harry stepped forward. A bell rang faintly as Harry stepped in, and within moments a squat witch stepped around her desk layered in sewing pins and fabrics to smile warmly at him. He nodded, opened his mouth and stuttered a bit, before finally saying, “I, uh… I’d like to look around a bit, if that’s fine.”
“Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you’ll be in yet?”
Madam Malkin smiled and nodded her permission, and Harry stepped through the curtains to the platforms he and Draco had been fitted on years ago. He kneeled down to sit on the one he’d stood upon, staring at the empty platform and imagining an eleven year old blonde standing on it, speaking in the bored, drawling voice Harry hadn’t heard from him in a long time.
“Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
Harry stepped up on top of his own platform, spread his arms out, and turned his head. He could almost see the face clearly, though of course he had to look down and not up, for once, with how much he’d grown since he was eleven.
“But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
Harry winced. He recalled how truly awful Draco had been then, and, not bearing thinking on it any longer, stepped off the platform and crossed to the window through which he had spotted Hagrid all those years ago, now searching for his friend’s face in the cafe across the road. He had sat down with Rosmerta, and the two were clearly talking in depth as they seemed to have not touched their drinks.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose.”
Harry smiled, turned, and swept back through the curtains and out of the shop, sparing Madam Malkin a curt nod and promising to be back for a fitting in August before leaving, headed to meet with his friend who certainly wasn’t eleven anymore.
-*-*-*-
Rosaline Rosmerta considered herself to be a very sensible woman, as one had to be if they’d worked serving drinks to teenagers as long as she had, which is why she couldn’t comprehend why she was doing this. What was compelling her to step through the doors to this small little cafe, bound to be raided in a month or two, and stride towards the only occupied table where a pale blonde boy sat with his back to her.
Rage filled her veins in a second at the sight of just the hair but again, she was sensible, so she shoved it down. What was not sensible was choosing to continue walking, and yet she did, ignoring the waitress behind the counter and instead sliding straight into the seat across from the Malfoy boy and, with a deep breath in, forcing herself to look him in the eye.
(Not before she glimpsed his wand sitting on the table a foot from his hands, however.)
He must’ve caught her eyes flicking to the wand because the first thing he said was, “I come in peace,” With a throw up of his hands in a surrendering motion for effect. She remained silent, simply nodding as a way of telling him to speak.
“First off, I never intended it to last as long as it did. Casting that spell… It was a spur of the moment decision, fit for a fifteen year old, and was never supposed to go on past a month at most. But… I was scared. I didn’t have the heart to kill Dumbledore, I never would, and you…” He looked her in the eye, having been fiddling with his sugar spoon, and saw as she raised her eyebrows expectantly, prodding him to continue despite probably knowing where this train of thought was directed. “You were the easy option out.”
Immediately she scoffed and threw her head back but Draco leaned forward in his seat, spreading his hands out and exclaiming, “But don’t take that the wrong way!” He sighed deeply, leaning back and running a hand down his face, feeling, as he often had throughout the dark months of serving Lord Voldemort, far older than he really was. “There is no way to reason it the right way, but…” He looked up into Rosmerta’s accusatory eyes, thinking of Dumbledore on the Astronomy Tower. He had believed in him, so why couldn’t he believe in himself?
“I had no choice.” He whispered, then folded his arms across the table and sank his head to lay on them, sighing deeply, again a sigh of a man, not a boy.
He tried his best not to flinch when someone laid a soft hand on his shoulder, but couldn’t stop the cringing when he heard Rosmerta’s voice. He slowly began to relax, however, when he understood what she was saying.
“Of course you had a choice. You had the choice to send that letter, and gathered up the courage to face me and plead for your innocence.” He looked up slowly when her fingers brushed his chin and immediately felt his shoulders slacken at the sight of her smiling warmly, eyes glistening with tears. She looked out the window beside them, into the ravaged streets of Diagon Alley, and continued, “It is a cruel world You-Know-Who is trying to turn all of this into, but look,” She gestured to the coffee shop around them, still polished and cozy, though barren from the fear of wizard-kind at the moment. “This place still lives on, and I promise you the Three Broomsticks will if I can help it. You are no different, Mr. Malfoy. Do you think any of these shop owners are cowardly or wrong because they don’t want to risk putting their families in danger or worse? Sometimes… There is no choice.”
“Draco, years ago I knew a boy who made all the wrong choices. Please don’t make the same mistakes he did.”
Draco opened his mouth, and hesitated. Maybe it was true that sometimes one doesn’t have a choice, but Dumbledore had said the opposite - in fact, he’d been quite insistent on the fact that Draco did have a choice to choose good. And why would Dumbledore ever be wrong? Has he, or, had he been wrong before? The thought itself was enough to make bile rise up in Draco's throat but he swallowed it down and instead choked out a, “Thank you, Madam.” To Rosmerta who smiled and nodded back. At least for now, those cruel thoughts on Dumbledore would have to wait.
“Now could you please drink your tea,” He nodded to the no doubt cold cup on her plate. “I paid an embarrassing amount of sickles for it and I’m kind of low on money so…” She raised an eyebrow but picked the cup up complacently, as he waved a hand in a ‘don’t ask’ sort of way.
And she didn’t, and for once, Draco got to drink his tea in silence and not have to worry about anyone questioning his life choices or opinion on the war and his family disowning him. The only reminder of the troubles he currently faced being the weight of Dumbledore’s wand in his pocket. Until of course Harry knocked on the window, and the peace had to end.
-*-*-*-
Wednesday, July 24th
“Now remember, stick to yes or no answers. Don’t speak for yourself, that’s for Tess to do.” Draco nodded along robotically as Mr. Weasley spoke to him and Mrs. Weasley bustled around him, adjusting his cloak or straightening the tie of his suit under it. “And if you are forced to say something always end it with ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am.’”
“I think he’s got it, Arthur,” Tess said, stepping up to the three and adjusting her own dress robes; a maroon pantsuit with a cape falling out the back at the shoulders. “Now if you’ll just let us -”
“Wait!” Mrs. Weasley bent down to her knees, waved her wand, a thin string popping out of the hem of Draco’s robe floated to the floor. She stood and beamed, gesturing him inside. “Alright, now you can go in.” Tess rolled her eyes to the sky with a smirk and placed a comforting hand on Draco’s shoulders, and with a deep breath, the boy stepped inside the courtroom.
Courtroom ten had been requested by nearly every member of the Wizengamot, according to Fudge, due to the ‘severity of the case.’ True, this was a highly illegal act that should get you a life sentence in Azkaban normally, but Draco was a child soldier, so the whole process was being treated with a lot of caution and a fair amount of confusion. They’re thrown dozens of Death Eater’s into this courtroom, but never one below the age of seventeen. The youngest was Barty Crouch Jr, and he was well above age, so naturally, everyone was treading unfamiliar territory here, and Fudge was doing the best he could with a life always plagued by stress from all sides.
That didn’t keep any of Draco’s friends from worrying however, as the Weasley matriarch's turned from the closed door to sigh at the scene of Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and the twins all pacing around anxiously. The couple glanced at each other, each thinking on how all their children had beaten probably every odd in this world to reach such a relationship with Draco Malfoy, yet here they were, standing or sitting chewing their nails or biting their bottom lips, waiting without a shred of patience of the verdict to come.
It was a long wait. Once, Harry walked over to the door and slid against the wood to sit, listening in carefully even though he knew it was fruitless. This was the Ministry of Magic after all; the place had to have a dozen security measures in place.
Still, he sat, and he waited, and soon his friends joined too. So it was that two hours later, when the doors pulled open the Gryffindor trio sprang to their feet and turned to raise their eyebrows worriedly as Draco and Tess stepped through, the former with wet cheeks.
However, he was somehow smiling, and with this realization, his friends softened, enough so that Ron could ask, “So how’d it go?” and Draco could shrug his shoulders nonchalantly, Tess slapping him on the shoulder and proclaiming, “Free of all charges!”
Immediately everyone whooped and hollered, before Fudge shoved his way through the partying to interrupt with, “Now don’t get too excited, Tess is lying to you. He was only half cleared.”
“What?” Ginny asked sadly, slowly lowering her hands that had pumped into fists as everyone else around her too felt their smiles fall and Harry frowned at the Minister, asking, “Why not?” a bit more accusatory than he intended.
“Well, Rosmerta may have removed the charges for the Imperius curse -” “- and I had credible witnesses from a certain ghost that showed Draco was one hundred percent unwillingly coerced into become a Death Eater,” Tess said, winking when she mentioned her witness and leaving the Gryffindor trio to glance at each other worriedly, hoping to Merlin that they hadn’t dragged Moaning Myrtle in for this. “But that still left the sneaking Death Eater’s into the school thing, which was of course a part of the larger conspiracy having to do with you coming here,” She pointed to the trio plus Ginny then at the ground, representing the Ministry of Magic as a whole.
“So while we got him cleared of most things with the coerced actions plea,” Fudge explained, “They were still unwilling to let him scott free since there’s no pretense for such an occasion. One might claim you could have ran out of it, Draco -” “But I’m underage.” Draco nodded sadly, looking down at his feet. “And a child soldier…”
“Right…” Fudge too looked saddened. “So he’s being given one year of Azkaban following his seventeenth.”
“WHAT?” They all demanded and Molly glared at Tess, asking, “How exactly is that ‘free of all charges?’” and George agreed, yelling out, “Yeah! Way to get our hopes up!” whilst Fred asked, “Then why were you two smiling?”
“Because I can obviously make a plea deal and decrease that to four months, maybe five at most in Azkaban by the time he’s seventeen.” Tess explained, and left the others to have a moment to process that and let it sink in. “Oh.” Fred said blankly, and a couple people laughed, while Harry stepped closer to Draco, hesitating for a second, before resting a hand on his shoulder.
“So… You’re okay with this?” Gray eyes flicked downwards to look at the dark hand on his shoulder, and Draco sighed very deeply, but for once, it had nothing to do with trials or Death Eater’s or Voldemort, but the feelings inside of him. “Yeah. I couldn’t be happier.” To further cement this he managed a shaky smile, and Harry, believing in that smile if only to remain happy in a troubled time, threw himself at his friend in a tight hug.
Draco had to thank the fact that Harry had positioned him so he was facing the door now, so that no one could see his face as a tear trickled down his cheek. He may only get four months, but the angry faces of all of those accusers at the stand… The chains lying limp on the chair he sat upon before them… That was enough to know that the law may see him innocent, but the public most certainly did not.
-*-*-*-
Thursday, August 1st
“Potts, what on earth are you doing?”
“Just trust me, okay? Follow along…” Draco rolled his eyes to the sky but did as he was told, taking Harry’s hand and stepping further through the curtains dividing the various fitting rooms of Madam Malkin’s. He had no need to be here, owning plenty of robes that still fit him comfortably enough despite growing quite a bit this summer, and he’d much rather look at books with Mr and Mrs. Weasley, but Harry had been very insistent on dragging him with the rest of the Quartet, plus Ginny, to look at robes.
He didn’t realize why until this very moment, when Harry grinned smartly and bushed him through a final set of curtains, and he emerged in quite a familiar fitting room with two stools and a wide window overlooking the streets of Diagon Alley.
“Here we are!” Harry proclaimed, beaming, and Draco felt his entire body and heart ache. “You remember it, don’t you?” The blonde nodded and, moving on shaky legs, tentatively stepped forwards.
The stool that had once gone above his knees barely reached them now, and the street was far less bustling or bright and alive, but there was no mistaking those curtains, or the exact space between the stools. If he looked to his right right now, and tried, tried really hard to picture him, he could still see an eleven year old boy in clothes practically hanging off of him like elephant skin. And of course the eyes, blinking behind round spectacles and underneath a head of shaggy hair with long, untrimmed bangs. A boy who had caught his curiosity and interest just enough to say, “Hello,” and genuinely try his best to be polite to, instead of commenting on his clothes.
Still, his best hadn’t been very nice at all.
“I was so mean to you,” Draco said at last, laughing weakly in spite of himself and feeling flooded with relief when Harry laughed too, standing up on the stool and breaking Draco’s vision because of how much he’d grown, and spreading his arms out wide. Mirroring him, Draco stood and spread out his arms as well. The boys locked eyes and laughed together, blushing furiously due to how embarrassing the whole scene really was, but also because of reasons which neither had any strength to admit, however brave one could be.
“You know from the moment I saw you…” Draco hesitated, since ‘I liked you’ had been on the tip of his tongue, but after a long swallow he managed to force it down and instead settle for, “I wanted to be your friend. Call it intuition but something about you really interested me, otherwise I’m sure eleven year old me would have wondered how a homeless Muggle wandered into Madam Malkin’s.”
He finished the last part with a bad imitation of his old pompous, drawling voice, and Harry again threw his head back and laughed, gesturing to the mark across his forehead and saying, “I blame it on the scar.”
Draco frowned at the thing. The ugly, cruel scar cutting across Harry’s perfect caramel skin and causing him more trouble (and probably pain) than it ever could be worth. Then he lowered his eyes to see the rest of Harry’s face, however, and smiled warmly. A smile eleven year old Draco could have never been capable of, he was sure.
“If I met that boy today,” He said, staring down at his shoes, mucked up from weeks at the Burrow and away from his refined life at a Mansion, dirtied to the point that his dad probably wouldn’t have let him in the house five years ago. “I’d tell him about the brilliant boy he’s going to meet in Madam Malkin’s, and how he should do nothing but befriend him with kindness, and treat all of his friends the same, because one day they’re going to mean more to him than the moon and the stars,” He stepped off the stool, walked up to Harry and looked up at him, holding onto his hands and beaming. “I’d tell him how one day Harry Potter is going to be his friend, so he should just sit and wait, and one day, he’ll accept that handshake.”
Harry fought back a laugh rising up in his throat and stepped off his stool as well, hugging Draco tight.
“Happy Birthday, Harry,” The blonde whispered, even though it was a day late.
“Thanks for being my friend, Draco,” Harry whispered back, always right on time.