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Chains of Fool's Gold	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Title: Chains of Fool’s Gold
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Blood, gore, violence, torture, angst
Rating: R
Summary: The Ministry has driven Harry and Draco, formerly Aurors of the Socrates Corps, too far. Now they’re turning at bay, and they’re going to take the whole Ministry down with them—if they have to.
Author’s Notes: This is the sixteenth fic in the Cloak and Dagger series, following “Invisible Sparks,” Hero’s Funeral, “Rites of the Dead,” Sister Healer, “Working With Them,” This Enchanted Life, “Letters From Exile,” Writ on Water, “Evening Star,” The Library of Hades, “There Was Glory,” A Reign of Silence, “Dictionary of Losses,” Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity, and “The Horn That Was Blowing.” I don’t yet know how many chapters it will have, although somewhere between fifteen and twenty is a good guess. It will be updated every Wednesday.
Chains of Fool’s Gold
Chapter One—Wings of Owls
            “They’re coming.”
            Draco looked up. He was still making a list of people who might be persuaded to help them for an adequate reward or revenge on the Ministry, and didn’t like to be shaken out of it. But Harry’s announcement had the sound of something important.
            It was, he saw. Harry held a parchment between his hands, and the black owl that Warren had lent them sat on the temporary perch they’d installed in their bedroom, grooming its feathers in a way that said it had no intention of leaving any time soon. Harry’s hands trembled a little, and he turned towards Draco.
            Draco smiled. Maybe Harry was trying not to show it, but there was no way he could dim that glow in his eyes.
            “Your friends accepted your invitation to stand with us, then?” he asked, turning to face Harry fully.
            Harry nodded, and then broke into a grin and flung himself on the bed. “They’re going to be able to know everything I do for the first time in more than three years, Draco. I think that’s worth celebrating.” He grinned at Draco and patted the bed beside him.
            Draco looked at his list.
            “Oh, come on.” Harry sat up and reached for him. “You can spare a few hours from that to give me what I want.” He was gently smiling now, and Draco found himself putting the list aside and reaching out to take him in his arms. Harry kissed him hard enough to hurt and tugged him towards the bed again, so that Draco almost fell out of his chair.
            A sharp pop interrupted them before Draco had more than one button on Harry’s clothing open, though, and he turned around with a growl of annoyance. Kreacher stood there. He was ignoring them, though, or at least his eyes were only on their faces, like the eyes of all trained house-elves. He bobbed his head as Draco glanced at him.
            “Masters Harry and Draco are having a visitor,” he announced.
            “What?” Draco drew himself reluctantly back from Harry. He knew that Harry’s friends, even if they had the Apparition coordinates now, wouldn’t have come so soon, and Warren and Jenkins usually let them know by owl when they were planning to visit. It wasn’t as though they could get into the house if they didn’t, given all the wards. “Who is it?”
            Kreacher sniffed. “Kreacher is not to be knowings all random wizards with mats in their hair,” he said, and then leaned forwards and confessed in a hoarse whisper, “Kreacher is thinking that this wizard not be bathing.”
            Draco bit his lip, hard. He knew that Harry, like him, was looking at the way Kreacher’s ear-hair clustered in matted tufts around his ears. But Draco nodded and said, “All right. Then we’ll come out and see him. Does he look as though he’s looking for the house, or just wandering around out there?”
            That got him another offended glare. “Kreacher is not being reporting wandering wizards as visitors.”
            Draco nodded again and repeated, “All right.” He felt Harry flowing to his feet beside him, reaching confidently for his wand. Draco made sure that they were standing next to each other as he reached out for Harry’s arm. They couldn’t Apparate through the wards, but they would do it the minute they were outside them.
            And besides, a moment when they could touch was never a moment wasted.
*
            Harry recovered from the Apparition, and looked around. He thought the wizard Kreacher had told them about might have been hiding. Even if someone knew they were here, they could still be an Auror from the Ministry trying to surprise them, or they could be trying to hide from Aurors.
            But a big dark shape loomed against the stars and surged towards them. Harry felt Draco plunge his hand down towards his wand, hissing muffled curses. They had something to do with Kreacher not reporting that their “visitor” had shoulders like a plow and hands like a bear’s, and they were reaching for them.
            Harry squeezed Draco’s wrist before he could fully draw his wand, and stepped forwards, grinning, to fling himself into the visitor’s arms. “Hullo, Hagrid,” he whispered, when he could get his breath back from the bone-crushing hug he received.
            He heard Draco sniff behind him, and knew he would hear about it in a little while, but he didn’t care. Not when his head was resting in a thick beard that tangled almost down to his knees, and he was feeling a lightness of heart that he hadn’t in a very long time.
            “Harry,” said Hagrid, and there was a rumble behind the name that told Harry Hagrid would probably start crying in a minute. Harry couldn’t blame him. He clung, and Hagrid clung back, and then he did sniffle, and large tears were plopping down on Harry’s head. Harry just held him tighter.
            He’d given Ron and Hermione permission to tell anyone they thought they could trust, anyone who would stand with them. He and Draco and Jenkins and Warren—and the people they’d compelled or coerced to help them—could use all the allies they could get.
            But this, he’d never expected.
            Harry knew why, and could feel it in Draco’s pointed stare on his back, as Hagrid finally let him go and Harry stepped away to beam up at him. Hagrid couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. Most of the time, Harry knew, Ron and Hermione never would have told him. But they must have included something in the owl telling Hagrid to go immediately, and not to linger long enough to tell anyone what he was doing.
            “Harry,” Hagrid said again, and drew a handkerchief out of his pocket to crumple it against his nose. Harry had a hard time seeing it in the darkness, but he thought it was red with white spots—the same kind Hagrid had carried when they were at school. “It does me good to see yeh again!”
            He ruffled Harry’s hair, which was the equivalent of flattening his hair with a pole and almost pressed him into the ground. Draco cleared his throat pointedly, and Hagrid turned to look at him. He sniffed a little, although with the sniffling he was already doing, it was hard to tell. “Never did unnerstand what yeh saw in that Malfoy to keep fightin’ with him,” he said, shaking his head. “But it takes all sorts, I reckon.”
            “Draco’s a friend, now, Hagrid,” Harry said quietly, and felt Draco stiffen in offense. He turned and raised an eyebrow. He’d used the word “friend” because he’d thought that Draco wouldn’t want Hagrid to know about their relationship, but if Draco wanted to speak of it, then Harry was hardly going to forbid him.
            Draco scowled at him and faced Hagrid. “We’re partners, and lovers, and friends,” he said. “So try to understand that, if you can.”
            Harry rolled his eyes and pressed down on Draco’s arm, not over the Dark Mark, but hard enough on the muscles to make Draco hiss a little. Hagrid was looking between them in what seemed like painful bewilderment, but a second later, he drew a breath deep enough to make his own ribs creak.
            “Any friend o’ Harry is a friend o’ mine!” he said determinedly, and stuck out his hand.
            Draco stepped forwards and shook it. Hagrid still considered him as though wondering what had made Harry change his mind about someone he’d hated at Hogwarts, but then he cleared his throat and turned to Harry.
            “Yer friends said that yeh needed some help with takin’ down the Ministry?”
            Harry blinked. He hadn’t thought Ron and Hermione would put it that plainly. “You would be okay with that?” he asked cautiously.
            “Yep!” Hagrid nodded firmly enough to make some of the matted hair that Kreacher had described fly forwards around his ears. “The Ministry’s been nuthin’ but trouble to me for years. They wanted to take Buckbeak away!” He seemed to have forgotten the part Draco and his father had played in that, and Harry relaxed a little. “They wanted to sack me!” Hagrid’s eyes glittered, and Harry found himself remembering that he was, after all, half-giant, and the kind of harm that Grawp could cause when he wanted to. “And now they’re doin’ all these stupid things to yeh.” He reached out a finger and poked Harry in the stomach, gently enough for him, but which made Harry still whoof out air and step back a bit. “Bloody right I wanna do somethin’ to them!”
            Draco said something indistinct beside him. Since Hagrid didn’t seem to have heard it either, Harry decided that meant he didn’t need to respond to it. “Good,” he said, and grinned at Hagrid. “I wonder if you could bring some creatures into battle with you?”
            Hagrid’s face immediately became anxious, and he shuffled his face. “Well, yeh know, some of ‘em, like the unicorns, they don’t wanna leave the Forest,” he muttered. “And I don’ think the giants would be a good idea…”
            Harry nodded. “Oh, I know. I was thinking more of the thestrals and the hippogriffs.”
            Hagrid jerked his head up and grinned. “Oh, they’d love it, they would!” he said, with a bellow of a laugh that made Harry glad there were no neighbors immediately adjacent to Cuthbert’s Corner. “They’ve been waitin’ years for a big fight!”
            This time, Harry clearly heard Draco say, “And how does he know that?” but he didn’t turn around and ask questions. If Draco didn’t know why Hagrid might know more about creatures than other people, then Harry didn’t consider it worthwhile trying to enlighten him.
            “Good,” Harry said. “Then why don’t you come into our house and we can discuss it more, Hagrid.”
            Draco grimaced at him, but Harry shrugged when he turned around. He knew that the walls and ceilings were high enough for Hagrid in at least the rooms on the ground floor, if not upstairs, and Kreacher had spent a lot of time cleaning up dirt and cobwebs and stray Dark magic. Harry didn’t think even Hagrid would do worse than maybe make a pet of some of the animals that might be running around inside the house.
            “Yeh have one?” Hagrid stared around. “It must be hidden!”
            He was loudly admiring when they led him inside the wards and showed how concealed Cuthbert’s Corner was from the outside, and Harry was glad to see Draco relax a bit, since he had done some of the work on the wards. This strange alliance just might work after all.
            Of course, he thought the real test wouldn’t happen until Ron and Hermione got there, and that didn’t happen until the middle of the afternoon the next day.
*
            Draco had given himself a stern talking-to that he thought even Granger might approve of, and that meant he stood back and watched Harry hug his friends and didn’t even feel jealous. Well, only a little, anyway. And that wasn’t actually jealousy that Harry’s friends were hugging him; it was jealousy that Harry had people left who would do that for him, people who weren’t Draco.
            Weasley held onto Harry like he’d been starving for him for months, and muttered incoherent words into his shoulder. Harry patted his shoulder back and muttered something in return. Granger stood by, her face soft but her foot tapping, until she finally reached out and poked Weasley in the back.
            “Some of us would like a turn with Harry sometime soon, Ron,” she hissed.
            Weasley fell away with an embarrassed chuckle and a glance at his wife that made Draco burn with a different kind of envy. Then Granger stepped forwards and fell on Harry, and Draco knew it would be a while before they surfaced.
            Weasley turned to him.
            Draco stood stiff and tried to keep his most neutral mask on his face as he looked at Weasley. It shouldn’t be that hard, he thought. He had faced down people in the Auror Department who hated him, and his parents, who thought of him as a disgrace to the family line. Compared to that, what were the little squabbles and quarrels that he and Weasley had got into when they were in school? Nothing but children’s fights.
            Weasley examined him with a faint frown. Draco wanted to sneer—what, do I not fit your image of the high and mighty Auror and what they should be exactly?—but managed to subdue his anger long enough to give a sarcastic bow instead.
            “You’re not what I expected,” Weasley muttered.
            No one could remain silent in the face of that provocation, and Draco didn’t think Harry would notice anyway, preoccupied as he was in trying to answer the questions Granger forced out between sobs and little affectionate slaps on the back of Harry’s head. “What you expected?” he drawled. “You’ve known me for how many years, Weasley? Did you manage to forget the color of my hair in that time?”
            Weasley only remained there, his eyes so cold that Draco decided that he had decided he wouldn’t be moved. There was no other reason for Weasley to have that lack of reaction to Draco’s needling, which Draco knew was expert. Weasley just lifted his eyebrows a bit and murmured, “You’re more attentive to Harry than I expected. And more tolerant.”
            Draco didn’t know what to do with that first assertion—maybe Weasley could spot the way that Draco kept his eyes on Harry and checked in with what he needed from time to time—so he attacked the second. “I haven’t cursed you yet, but you’ve only been here a few minutes. Give me time.”
            Weasley only went on looking at him, and Draco scowled. He would have preferred the red-haired, hot-headed idiot of his memories. If Draco had to deal with a new Weasley, he might either die of the shock, or not work efficiently when he was confronted with a threat. Either was bad news for Harry.
            “You just did it again.”
            Draco reminded himself that, since Granger hadn’t let go of Harry yet, Harry couldn’t be expected to step between him and Weasley, and faced Weasley with a politely pained expression. “What are you on about now?”
            Weasley gave him a contained, nasty smile. “You keep checking with him, looking at him like you’re looking for something else you can sacrifice for his sake. You already gave up your family and your career. You’ve done more for him than a lot of people would.”
            “I didn’t give up my family,” Draco snapped. He was sure that Harry wouldn’t have told his friends about the recent events with Draco’s parents. “They stopped speaking to me the day I became an Auror.”
            Weasley just smirked at him. “But you gave up every chance that you had to return to them when you took Harry as a lover, and then insisted on keeping him. I’m sure of it. They might have wanted you back because you were their only heir, but Harry would be the sticking point, wouldn’t he?”
            That was so exactly what had happened, down to the offer Draco’s parents had made to accept him back (while they still knew who he was) as long as he dropped Harry, that Draco couldn’t say anything against it. He just folded his arms and scowled at Weasley, who examined Draco with piercing eyes and then nodded once.
            “Both Hermione and I would do anything for Harry, too,” Weasley said calmly. “And now he’s finally allowing us to. He shut us out for years because he had no other choice. I understand that now,” he added, because Draco’s mouth had opened and Weasley probably knew that Draco would blast him for being so stupid. “But it was hard, and it hurt, and then I got suspicious when I heard you were standing at Harry’s side. I thought you’d either enchanted him or you were using him for your own personal gain. Now I’m convinced that you’re not, however much it might have started that way.”
            Draco got his breath back, and said dryly, “I see that years have sharpened your brains, but not changed your Gryffindor tactics.”
            Weasley nodded. “Think of it like that,” he murmured. “As long as we don’t kill each other, I don’t think Harry will mind what we do much.”
            “That’s what you think,” Harry said, stepping back from Granger and turning around on them. Draco started a little. He hadn’t realized that Harry was listening. “I would mind a lot if you started comparing penis length and got too caught up in that to remember exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.”
            “Don’t worry,” Draco said, stepping past Weasley and slinging his arm over Harry’s shoulders. To his intense pleasure, Weasley’s face had turned red at Harry’s comment, and it didn’t seem likely that he would stop spluttering any time soon. “I already know that mine’s longer.”
            And Granger was the one who laughed, and Draco felt a bond that could be compared to a steel circle settle into place around them. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that it would solve all the things that would go wrong, or could, but it was better than he had ever thought to get along with two such…
            Such…
            Gryffindors.
*
            “I don’t know about Ginny.” Ron was frowning, his eyes hooded as he looked down at the list of names that Harry and Draco had drawn up. There were a lot of Draco’s allies on it, people that he said would welcome a chance to get back at the Ministry, but Harry and his friends were steadily adding names, too. And foremost of the names that they were adding were Weasley ones. “She’s been kind of strange the last few months. Distant.”
            “She got possessed by Ernhardt,” Harry said quietly. “I can’t blame her for not wanting to have anything more to do with us.”
            He caught Draco’s eye, and Draco shut his mouth on the other words he had been about to say, other things they had learned about Ginny in the intersection of their case with her—private—activities. It didn’t matter. They could tell Ron and Hermione about that later, or not. What mattered most of all was getting them comfortable enough to all work together.
            “Fine,” Harry said, and put a little X next to Ginny’s name. “What about George? I know a lot of his customers come from the Ministry.” They had had a good long laugh about that, years and years ago, that Ministry employees wanted to skive off work more than Hogwarts students wanted to skive off classes.
            “Doesn’t matter.” Ron’s smile was full and satisfied. “Half the time they want to bargain with him and drive down his prices, and he’s got several who’ve threatened to shut down his whole shop because they found out he was selling to other Departments. I think he’d welcome the chance to hurt the whole corrupt lot of them.”
            Harry nodded in appreciation, and circled George’s name. Then he turned to Hermione. She had been conspicuously quiet through this part of the conversation. Harry had thought it was because most of her allies were in the Ministry itself, rather than outside it like Ron’s or Draco’s, but he was starting to think it was something else. “What?” he asked. She hadn’t raised many moral objections so far, but they couldn’t be long in coming.
            Hermione saw his raised eyebrow and rolled her eyes in response. “I never would have come this far if I intended not to participate,” she said firmly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
            Harry nodded and touched her arm for a second, wondering if he would need to reassure her the way he did Draco. She drew herself up, which meant he didn’t. “But?” he prompted, since he could feel that coming, even if nothing else did.
            Hermione drew a long, deep breath. “What do you want to do?” she asked. “Expose the truth about the Ministry, the way you said you did in your original letter to Ron and me? Or fight them? Bring them down? Bring them to a standstill?”
            “It amounts to the same thing,” Draco said.
            Hermione shook her head at him, but Harry was the one she went on looking at. “You told me that Hagrid talked about bringing thestrals and hippogriffs to the battle.” Hagrid wasn’t with them right now; he claimed he’d seen an Acromantula’s nest down one of the corridors in Cuthbert’s Corner, and they had been more than happy to let him go investigate it alone. “So that makes it different. In the first scenario, you leave the Ministry standing, and even let them go on talking to people as if their opinions were real, but you expose the truth between the Socrates Corps and the way they treated the twisted. In the other, you knock the whole Ministry down and rebuild again from the ashes.”
            “We have to do that,” Draco said. “They won’t let us get away with anything less.”
            Hermione turned on him this time, but luckily, Harry recognized the flush in her cheeks as the one she got when she was talking about any spirited debate, and he didn’t think she’d insult Draco or treat him as less important because of what he had said in the past. “No, that’s not true! You have a little band of allies, and some Aurors, and Hagrid, and us, and maybe a few Weasleys and whatever creatures Hagrid can bring along. That’s not enough to reform society!” She swiveled around to stare at Harry. “You couldn’t even anticipate that Hagrid would come. So, what are you going to do? What’s the big plan?”
            Harry winced a little even as he sucked in a deep breath. “You’re right,” he admitted. “The forces we have aren’t enough to knock down the Ministry, and I don’t really want to, anyway. I don’t want to be Minister. It was hard enough saving the world once.”
            Hermione nodded, as if she had fully anticipated that, her eyes rapt on him. “All right. Then what?”
            “They’re to get us an audience,” Harry said quietly. “I was thinking of using Parseltongue to summon snakes, and I think I’ll still have to do that, to hold back the Aurors and the others who would try to interfere with us. But we need to get inside the Ministry first, and stop the Aurors from killing us the minute they see us, and gather a large enough crowd that the Ministry can’t just hush what we have to say up. We can’t warn anyone that we’re coming, though, or someone will leak it.”
            Hermione sat back and considered him doubtfully. “And all these forces are just to get you that far?”
            “Yes,” said Harry and Draco at the same time.
            Hermione sighed as though she was doubtful about that, but nodded. “Then I can see the need for George and his pranks. What about your parents, Ron? I know Arthur might be loyal to the Ministry, and this could put his job in danger.”
            Harry turned and became aware that he was meeting both Ron and Draco’s eyes, at the same time. He grinned at both of them, too. This was like the planning sessions he’d engaged in with his friends, before Draco came along.
            Except it’s better now, because Draco is here.
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Chains of Fool's Gold