Morality for Beautiful Slytherins

I.

He won.

Case: In re the Estate of Black. Verdict: The property at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, London, awarded to Narcissa Malfoy, Sirius Black's next of kin. So technically it wasn't his win. It was his mother's. Who cared? The house was as good as his. Though they refrained from stating anything publicly, Lucius and Narcissa agreed that should they win the case, the house would go to Draco. It meant too much to Narcissa to sell to some stranger, but they saw no reason to move out of the house they already owned, their home for over twenty years. The logical choice, they determined, was to sign the house over to Draco. He could spend his life there, raise a family, and keep the house-elf lineage tied to the Black line. He had a career and a flat of his own, of course, but none of his property had the ties to his family history the way the house on Grimmauld Place did.

The Malfoys smiled and shook their barristers' hands when the verdict was announced. Draco was acutely, wonderfully aware of Harry Potter's slumped posture at the next table, of the expression of shock on Hermione Granger's face. He made sure to look over at the two of them still seated in their wooden chairs and smile slowly. For once, it was his turn to be on the winning side. Granger's fight for Potter's ownership of the house was admirable, and Draco had to give her some credit for creativity, but now the dispute was over and none of it mattered. With no will, nothing in writing, Potter didn't stand a chance at getting the house.

Granger's tactic was to go for the judges' hearts, which even Draco saw was not the right thing to do. No one disputed that Potter was Black's family by choice, but this wasn't a matter of who pulled harder on the heartstrings. Money and bloodlines and legal documents, or in this case lack thereof, counted. Sometimes Draco wondered why Potter even bothered. He couldn't believe that Potter didn't see this coming; the courtroom was the one place where Potter's fame and fortune couldn't get him what he wanted.

Outside the courthouse reporters crowded together on the concrete steps, and it annoyed Draco to see that more than half of them wanted only to talk to Harry Potter, The Man Who Defeated Voldemort. Draco's stomach turned every time he heard that nickname. He knew the real story. He knew about the prophecy made before Potter's birth, that Potter never had a choice in any matter that involved Lord Voldemort. Not that Draco had any sympathy for Potter's fame. Prophecy or not, choice or not, Potter granted every interview requested of him once word got out that Lord Voldemort was gone for good. The fear of speaking and printing the name disappeared from the wizarding world with the final flash of light from Potter's wand, and as Draco expected, Potter didn't let anyone forget that. A person couldn't walk two feet down Diagon Alley without hearing the name Harry Potter, or seeing his face on the cover of every magazine, or catching whispers of "So brave, and so young," or "Saved the world, heavens knows where we'd be without him." Potter, above all things, was a whore for the spotlight, same as he'd been since his first day at Hogwarts.

Draco unwillingly stood silent beside his father, shivering in the March air while Narcissa spoke with the press. He wanted to run to where the reporters hounded Potter and drag them to his side, to the real story, the one that involved the wild notions of law and justice. He clenched his fists at his sides and pressed his lips together while flashbulbs blinded him. When the crowd began to thin and the purple spots faded from his vision, Draco turned his head to the side, to where Potter was standing against the wall in a cluster of reporters.

There was something that struck Draco about the way Potter stood, and Draco had to study him for a moment to figure out what unnerved him. Potter didn't make much eye contact with the reporters and kept looking to Granger as though she had the route of escape. He slouched and he looked haggard, like he'd been operating on nothing but adrenaline. Even though he couldn't hear him over the din of reporters firing questions, Draco could tell that Potter's shame and sadness were real. The house was more to him than just a building. In the courtroom, he fought for his sentiments, however ridiculous and misguided they were.

Seeing Potter like that, defeated and almost vulnerable, disturbed Draco. Harry Potter had a very definite role in Draco's mind. All the memories he had of Potter involved some degree of inflated ego and people giving him all kinds of credit he didn't deserve. Potter always got the best of everything he wanted and the best of everything he never asked for. The general wizarding public, in Draco's opinion, was much too forgiving of Potter's flaws. Undeniable talent on the Quidditch pitch coupled with those "sparkling green eyes," as Witch Weekly put it, let Potter get away with murder. Draco, however, knew that he saw Potter for what he truly was.

A sharp tap on his shoulder took Draco's focus off Potter.

"We're leaving, Draco," said his father. "Your mother and I are going home, and you may join us for dinner if you'd like."

Nodding, Draco maintained his silence and followed his father down the steps. He restrained himself from looking back over his shoulder at Potter and the frenzied crowd of reporters who all wanted to be the first to print their lack of exclusive in-depth interview with Harry Potter, The Man Who Lost His Court Battle. Draco could see the spread in the Daily Prophet already, with columns of opposing viewpoints and letters to the editor regarding who the winner of the court case was, or should be. He resolved to get up early the next day to read the papers before work, skipping all the letters and editorials in Potter's favor, of course, and then maybe in the evening he'd go to his new house. He'd only seen it once but remembered it being enormous. Now that his mother was declared the rightful owner of the house, Draco knew she'd have a team of house-elves working around the clock until she deemed it fit for Draco to live in.

Over dinner at his parents' house, Draco offered opinions he'd kept to himself for the duration of the trial on the advice of his parents' barristers.

"I think the turning point in the case was Remus Lupin's testimony," he said between sips of wine. Personally, Draco didn't have anything against Lupin, who always seemed like a nice enough man. To a panel of judges, however, he wasn't much more than his werewolf registry number. "A werewolf giving testimony had to be one of the Mudblood's harebrained ideas. He had no ties to the house and even if everything he said was true, it wasn't any good to Potter without a written will. Completely useless."

"I agree, Draco. More than that, I think having any creature considered inherently dangerous give testimony was a bad idea. Then he verified the fact that my cousin thought himself immortal and saw no need for a will." Narcissa smiled. "Anyone could have told the judges that. Of course, those words coming from a werewolf sealed the case against the Potter boy."

It was just like Gryffindors to think that Lupin would have helped them, figured Draco, even though his last day at Hogwarts was eight years ago. Although Lupin retained a calm composure the entire time he was on the witness stand, his face was white and his eyes shining when he stepped down. It was clear to everyone in the courtroom that even though he had no claim to the house, he had a definite preference for who he wanted to see live in it. Draco almost admired Lupin's ways of maneuvering around the questions he answered concerning Sirius Black's character and intentions.

Lucius raised his glass, his smile matching Narcissa's. "To the end of the trial, and Draco's new home."

Draco grinned and raised his glass but didn't speak much for the rest of the meal. The full impact of the verdict was just starting to sink in, and he let his mind wander, thinking it over.

The trial, Draco realized, had sixteen years' worth of evidence and history. It wasn't until Draco was twenty years old that the Ministry accepted that Sirius Black was really dead, and he was twenty-two before they formed a cohesive picture of the facts regarding Black's innocence in his involvement in the death of James and Lily Potter, and therefore his link to Voldemort. The press went crazy once the Ministry went on public record regarding Black's role in the first war. Half of them vindicated everything Black did, and the other half questioned the Ministry's sanity. Story after conflicting story littered the Daily Prophet for two months. After the Malfoys were mentioned unfavorably by a reporter obviously desperate for any angle the other papers hadn't covered, Lucius strengthened the privacy hexes around the Malfoy property. Narcissa had to talk Lucius out of giving clothes to all the house-elves. Draco turned the press away at every opportunity and focused on his job, determined to have something in his life that didn't have anything to do with wars, his family history, or Harry Potter.

"Draco?"

Most of the background information about Sirius Black presented at the hearings came from some Ministry peon Draco had never heard of named Kingsley Shacklebolt. Apparently he was the one in charge of finding Black in the years between his escape from Azkaban and his death, and Draco figured he was going to swim in a lake of Sirius Black legal shit for at least the next year. Lucius told his family that Shacklebolt most likely had ties to Dumbledore and his cache of conspiracies, but no one could prove it. The Quibbler ran some nonsense article about Shacklebolt's knowing Black's whereabouts perfectly well for years, and even knowing exactly when he died, but neither Shacklebolt nor anyone else would talk about the matter. Certainly not to the Quibbler, in any event.

"Draco!"

Blinking, Draco returned his focus to the dinner table. "Er...yes?"

"Your mother asked you if you'd like anything else to eat."

"Oh. No. No thank you." He laid his silverware over the top of his plate and placed his napkin on the table. House-elves ran forward from their places along the wall of the dining room and Draco's plate disappeared almost instantaneously.

After dinner, Narcissa and Lucius celebrated their victory with a drink. Draco declined participation, citing a mild headache. That was more or less the truth. The image of Potter surrounded by reporters, pale and distracted, wouldn't leave him alone. The expression of loss. The sunken eyes. The way his robes hung on his shoulders like they were meant for someone else. Potter's clear indication to Granger that he wanted nothing more in that moment than to get the hell out of there. Draco didn't like to admit it to himself and he would never admit it to anyone else, but he almost felt a little sorry for Potter. Sirius Black was, in the short time they had together, Potter's guiding adult figure. It was understandable that Potter would fight for the strongest tie he had to Black. Potter's demeanor always changed when he spoke of Black on the witness stand. His voice was wistful and he never looked directly at the person questioning him, always up and to the right as though his memories were etched on a wall or ceiling. For all Potter's egomania, Draco knew that he had loved Sirius Black the way any child would love his parent. Even he could see that.

Lucius went to bed early that night, but Narcissa and Draco, as was their tradition whenever Draco visited, stayed up late talking over tea in the library. Raised a Malfoy, half a Black, Draco knew the importance of keeping his family tree in line and he enjoyed these times with his mother when she talked about family members who died years before Draco's birth. Tonight he could relax and chat, but tomorrow it was back to work.

Even though he enjoyed what he did for a living, Draco always looked on his career with a sense of bitterness. He and Lucius argued for months when he announced his decision to try out for professional Quidditch four years ago.

"You're meant for better things, Draco," Lucius said. "It's a short-lived career at best. You need to invest your talents in something that you can support yourself with when you're older. You'll have the family investments, of course, but I will not allow you to live on those."

Draco was prepared for this argument. "I don't expect to live on them. I expect to support myself by having a career in professional Quidditch and investing my earnings wisely. Do you think I've learned nothing from you? I've done the research and I have some ideas for what I'd like to do once I'm no longer on the Quidditch field. What I'd appreciate right now is a little support from you." Prepared as he was, he wasn't used to talking to his father that way.

Lucius sat silent, and to this day those minutes rated as the longest in Draco's life. "What do you plan to do if you aren't accepted?"

Years later Draco recognized this question as a sign of Lucius's concern, but at the time he saw it only as a lack of faith in his abilities. "I have a few ideas. I'm not bad with potions. I could do research with some of those people you know in Ireland. I have a lot of possibilities. But I want to try this first."

Lucius dismissed him after that, and Draco went to tryouts unsure of his father's feelings. Regardless of blessing or curse, he performed very well at tryouts and won a spot on the Montrose Magpies. For two years, Draco enjoyed a successful career as Seeker and trained as a reserve Chaser. Determination to show Lucius that he could handle his own affairs overshadowed many of the temptations that being young and a professional Quidditch player offered, and within a year he purchased his own flat. Until his accident, he managed quite well.

In November of his third year playing for Montrose, Draco was practicing with his team on their usual field. The day was unseasonably warm, and with too much time in the hospital to think, he wondered if he was too careless with regard to the swift winds. As a professional Quidditch player he was used to sudden gusts, but either this one was faster than usual or he let his guard down a second too long. He fell off his broom from the highest point on the pitch, and no one could stop him in time.

When he regained consciousness in St. Mungo's, he learned that he shattered his right shoulder and arm, two ribs, and his hip. Several vertebrae were knocked out of alignment in the fall, too, damaging nerves in his back and legs. The Healers repaired his broken bones without too much trouble, but repairing nerve damage was highly advanced, delicate work. Draco saw several specialists and endured weeks of paralyzing pain that both frustrated and humiliated him, but eventually the Healers concluded that Draco would always suffer back problems, pain, numbness, and occasional weakness in his extremities and was better off in the swimming pool than a hundred and fifty feet in the air. Professional Quidditch was no longer an option after that. It had taken him months just to be able to function like a normal human being and he still didn't have a hundred percent of his mobility. Even though he was more or less fully healed now, his right side still ached in warning of rain.

The long, boring weeks in recovery gave Draco a lot to think about in terms of his career. Truth be told, he didn't want to work in a potions lab of any kind, regardless of his skill. He loved the sun and wind of the Quidditch field, the excitement of the games, the strategies, the planning, and playing in front of thousands of screaming fans. He couldn't coach and he didn't want to sit in a commentator's box. At that point, he figured his choices were limited at best, and in the lonely hours with no visitors he made lists of possible careers, their pros, and their cons.

It was Lucius of all people who suggested that Draco look into professional Quidditch management.

"I know some people," he said. Draco lay on his back, silent, looking at the ceiling of his hospital room. "Should you desire, I will make the introductions, but know that my reputation is on the line as well as yours and I will not be disappointed."

Management wasn't an angle Draco had considered, but he'd be damned if he didn't rise to that challenge. If he was going to be permanently relegated to a desk in the British and Irish Quidditch League offices, he decided, he was going to be the best that desk ever saw. He proved himself an intelligent worker, shrewd with money and the press, and quickly became known as a leader in European Quidditch. He traveled the world and always had the best of accommodations, and although Lucius never mentioned it, he was sure his father was proud of him. In the long nights after everyone left the stadiums, however, he secretly raged at the misfortune that grounded him. While he enjoyed seeing his old friends during the Montrose games he supervised, said misfortune often had him in a position of managing games for Harry Potter's team, Puddlemere United.

It all came back to Harry Potter, he thought bitterly, running his finger around the rim of his empty teacup, his jaw tight.

His mother's voice brought him back to attention. "Draco? Are you all right?"

He shook his head. "Sorry, just...thinking."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Although he knew his mother would listen to anything he had to say, Draco wasn't in the mood to ramble about his lingering pain and his ultimately unwilling if successful life as a desk jockey. She would never understand how he felt as he sat watching the one person who deserved success less than anyone he knew achieve fame. Again. "No, that's all right. I think I'm going to go home." He put his teacup on the end table and stood to kiss Narcissa good night.

"If you do decide to talk, Draco, you know your father and I will listen."

"I...I do know. Thank you. Good night."

After Apparating home and undressing, he lay in bed for a while with one candle burning, staring up at the heavy canopy. Trying to meditate to sleep like he did on the nights he spent in pain didn't work. He kept seeing Potter in his mind's eye. It was the same image over and over: Potter turning down requests for an interview, dark circles under his eyes and his robes wrinkled. All that fuss over a house. Draco figured that Potter had never wanted anything so badly in his life, but he understood why. Potter was going to explode when he learned that Draco was promised the house, and Draco was going to laugh.

If he could ever get Potter out of his head.