Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 10
- 11
- 12
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven—Full Frontal Charge
            Carvenhoof was steady beneath him as they flew at the door, which Draco appreciated. It meant that he didn’t have to worry about falling, and could concentrate on other things instead.
            Like what would happen when they actually arrived at the Ministry, and people began to do something more than gape up at them—those who could see them. As incredible as it was to Draco, some of the adults walking into the Ministry to go to work must never have seen anyone die, because they continued talking and examining their robes and reading their papers until others began to tug on their arms.
            As the lead stallion reached the back of the crowd, his wings snapped open, and he stuck his head forwards. Some of the people he was herding couldn’t see him, but that didn’t matter. They felt the chill, and the fear of those who could. So they plastered themselves backwards, and soon screams were general.
            The rest of the thestrals, Carvenhoof included, swung out to the sides in that formation they had spent so much time practicing, thestrals peeling apart from each other to hover in case the lead stallion had trouble or wizards began casting spells at them. And some of them were picking up their wands and steadying them, aiming them.
            Hagrid bellowed a wordless command. Draco knew what that tone meant, even if he couldn’t hear the actual order, and tightened his hands in Carvenhoof’s mane.
            Carvenhoof began the dive, his wings snapping out and angling back and forth, complemented by Harry’s mare on the opposite side. Draco caught Harry’s eye and managed to give him one exhilarated, tooth-gritted smile which meant, No one has died yet, and that’s good.
            Then they hit the level where the thestrals’ wings snapped taut and they began to skim above the Ministry workers, hooves angled at their heads. The workers screamed and ducked, and the spells stopped. Draco smiled grimly.
            Someone did conjure a Patronus, but it sprang at the thestrals and passed through the middle of their ranks without harming them. Draco shook his head. Since the Ministry had dismissed Dementors from guarding Azkaban, had education really become that neglected? Surely someone who could cast a Patronus ought to know what it was good for.
            The Patronus did turn, finally, and speed away with a flapping of wings; it was some kind of large water bird, maybe a heron. Draco grunted and nodded. He did like to see some intelligence in their enemies, even if he really shouldn’t wish for it.
            The thestral flight pulled back and up, and Harry’s side joined the lead stallion in urging the Ministry workers into the entrances that led to the Atrium, their wings still spread out and their hooves stamping as they snorted. No one was trying to cast spells now. Instead, they moved with one will towards the Atrium, mice fleeing the cat in a desperate search for the hole.
            Draco smirked behind his hand as he watched them. Idiots. They knew far less than they thought. Maybe it was a good thing to remember, as Harry had argued, that most of the Ministry workers were the pawns of the Deputy Head Auror and his assistants, too, that they didn’t know the truth about Ernhardt because they hadn’t been told it. It wasn’t their fault they were reacting this way. Maybe they would accept Harry and Draco into their hearts when they heard the story they had to offer, the memories they would project via the Pensieve.
            Draco doubted it, personally, but it was nice to have some dreams. And Harry had had enough dreams taken away from him.
*
            Harry kept an eye on Hagrid’s arm, and saw it sweep out in one of the signals they had prearranged. Of course, maybe that didn’t really matter, because the thestrals immediately started obeying the lead stallion’s bugles and prancing in midair, and the humans were along for the ride in this part of the attack.
            The crowd was in full retreat now. Hagrid pulled up on the lead stallion and sat in the middle of the air over the nearest entrance to the Ministry. A few people hesitated then, but most of them looked into Hagrid’s face and continued the retreat. Harry didn’t blame them. The expression on Hagrid’s face was maybe less terrifying than the way the lead stallion stamped and called out, assuming you could see thestrals, but only just.
            The streets were mostly clear. Hagrid turned and motioned, and the other thestrals that bore riders sped towards him. Harry found himself tensing, at least until he caught sight of Draco. Even then, not all the tension left. This first part of the attack had gone unexpectedly well, but he didn’t know how long it would last, and that made him nervous and jumpy. He palmed his wand out and held it at his side. That made him feel better.
            “Yeh know that it’ll take ‘em a while to arrive in the Atrium,” said Hagrid, with a gruff nod of his head. “And then not all of them’ll stay there.”
            Harry nodded. It was a difficulty in the plans. Some of the workers would surely think of their offices as secure, and others would try to pile into the Department of Mysteries, which they had a habit of thinking as having the ultimate defenses.
            “What we discussed?” Prince asked, turning to George.
            “It has to be,” said Hagrid, though he seemed uncomfortable about it.
            Prince gave a little whoop, and spun his arm around, nodding to George. George grinned, and together they opened little bags at their waists to release a cloud of brassy insects. The wasps that George had been working on, Harry knew, but these had modifications to be a little different. They were smaller, for one thing, and their stings weren’t deadly. But they were annoyingly itchy, and the insects would swarm through the corridors and drive anyone who thought about lingering back into the Atrium. In the end, those would be the only entrances that wouldn’t be blocked off.
            And the insects would take over the Floos, too, so that no one could retreat. As Harry watched them simply creeping under the Ministry’s wards—which would have reacted to Dark magic, but had nothing to say about tricks—he shook his head for a minute.
            “What’s wrong?” Draco asked, off to the side. At least his voice showed Harry that he wasn’t the only jumpy one around here.
            Harry grinned ruefully at him. “Just imagining what would have happened if someone had used tactics like this on the Ministry while we were working as Aurors.”
            Draco sniffed. “We would have found a way to combat them. Without us, they have no chance.”
            “You have no regrets?” Harry asked, leaning close enough to reduce his voice to a murmur. George and Prince seemed enthralled with watching their little creations disperse, but he didn’t want them to think he wasn’t feeling confidence in them. “I mean, you don’t want to ever go back to the Ministry?”
            Draco gave him a glance like fire. Harry nodded, relieved. “You don’t.”
            “If you didn’t know that, after last night, you’re an idiot,” Draco retorted, but he reached across the space between the thestral backs and held Harry’s hand.
            Only until the lead stallion and Hagrid stirred, though, and Hagrid sat back with a cough. “Right,” he said. “So this is experimental, and I’ve only tried it in the Forest with trees, and it—it might not go the way we expect…”
            “You explained it,” said Hermione, giving Hagrid an encouraging smile. “We know that you did the best you could preparing us, and if we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be like, then we might as well find out.”
            Hagrid seemed to cheer up at that. He sat up a little straighter on the thestral, anyway, and nodded furiously. “Then let’s go.”
            His arm moved in another complicated pattern, one that he had only described to them because the thestrals wouldn’t practice this motion with human riders on their backs until they absolutely had to, and at the same time, he leaned down to whisper in the lead stallion’s ear. The stallion backed up in midair and kicked, once, with his hind hooves.
            The thestrals began to swirl, the same motion they had used when they were dropping the pamphlets with the story over London the other day. And then they began to fly towards the solid walls of the Ministry, the sound of their wings slower and more like a funeral drumbeat than the quick one that Harry had learned to compare it to.
            Harry winced and braced himself, and exchanged a glance with Draco. Well, he tried to exchange a glance with Draco. He found that Draco was looking straight ahead, his stance on Carvenhoof so perfect and poised and balanced that Harry was immediately suspicious. He’s hiding some fear, some—
            But then they arrived at the wall, and melted into it, passing through the stone like water. Harry felt coolness stroke his whole body, and shivered. It was like plunging into a pool with all his clothes on.
            At least it’s not like stone and brick.
            The thestrals raced downwards, their bodies transparent and glowing like ink lit from within under Harry’s hands. He shuddered uncontrollably, but that was all right, Hagrid had told them. The thestrals wouldn’t be disturbed by things like that. Only leaping off or trying to get a thestral to stop was unadvisable.
            Hagrid had told them the thestrals, passing as they did between life and death, visible only to those who had opened their eyes in both realms, could also take a step—or a flight—sideways into another sort of place, flying through walls like ghosts. They could also take riders with them, though that fact was considerably less well-known. Other than Hagrid, few people made a habit of riding thestrals.
            Harry could see why, as they fell deeper and deeper, and he rode a radiant shadow through other shadows, which broke past him like vertical waves. Maybe that was the closest experience after all, the fall through water, down and down and down and down. He realized he was holding his breath and made himself stop, self-consciously.
            The thestral’s wings flattened out, and she snorted like a steam engine. The sound came closer and closer like the hiss of the Hogwarts Express, and then they burst into light and reality again, and the air was rent with those ghastly cries.
            Harry stared around. They were in the Atrium, hovering in the middle over the restored fountain. The people who had thought them safely left behind outside began to back up and flinch and babble and claw at each other and the walls.
            And there were plenty of people to do it, Harry saw. George’s and Prince’s wasps had done their work. Both Floos and other doors bore a solid, hovering wall of bronze and brass wings and stingers.
            Hagrid cleared his throat, and then boomed out, “SILENCE!” as they had planned.
            That did shut everyone up, and stopped all the pushing, too. Shocked faces turned towards them. Harry exchanged smirks with Draco, and saw Ron and Hermione reaching out to tap hands. Hermione had been a little worried that that tactic wouldn’t work, but Harry had remembered Grawp’s bellow in the Forest. If anything could get a crowd’s attention, it would be a half-giant’s lungs working at full blast.
            So far, everything had gone according to plan, but now, Hagrid looked nervously around and tightened his hold on the lead stallion’s mane as if he would retreat. They had anticipated that, and Harry sent the mare forwards with a drum of his heels on her sides. She did tilt her head back as if to ask him what he meant, doing that to her, but since she then did what he asked, Harry reckoned it didn’t matter.
            “What now?” Hagrid whispered.
            “We take over from here,” said Harry, and squeezed Hagrid’s shoulder. “You did great. It’s okay.”
            Hagrid said something that Harry didn’t hear, he was so occupied in turning his attention to the watching—no, staring—audience. They all looked as if they were about to start talking again any minute, and as if they believed he could smother Ministry workers along with all the other crimes that he was supposed to have committed.
            “You’ll have heard the rumors and read the pamphlets,” Harry told them. “We know the Ministry can counter those with their own rumors and pamphlets. That doesn’t matter. For tonight, you’re going to hear the truth.”
            He turned and nodded impressively towards the back of the file of thestrals. Hermione, who had been in charge of it because she was the one who knew how to cast the best Preservation Charms, opened a saddlebag and held up the Pensieve.
            Harry touched his wand to his head and pulled out a silvery strand of memory about Ernhardt. He dropped that straight into the bowl of the Pensieve. A second later, Draco followed that with his own memories, and then Hermione took out the vial that held Jeremiah’s memories and poured that in, too.
            Only Hagrid’s memories remained, and someone muttered from the back of the crowd, “Can you even combine memories like that? I think it might be illegal—”
            “Illogical!” someone called from the back. “And against all magical common sense!”
            An ordinary crowd of people could cause enough trouble and disrupt the demonstration, Harry knew. How much so when they were a crowd of Ministry workers, the most gullible and credulous lot in the wizarding world?
            Luckily, that was why they had some allies in the Ministry itself, and they chose this moment to act.
            Shadows began to climb the walls of the Atrium. Near the ceiling, they strung themselves out and grew legs. The crowd fell silent again, save for the inevitable screams, craning their necks back so they could see. Harry hid a smirk. This spell was one of Warren’s creations; she knew a lot about the Dark Arts, and she had perfected casting it from a distance.
            The shadows became hinged jaws, leading back to imperfect faces. Shadow-creatures dangled from the ceiling, and locked their legs into the arches. They stretched down until they were perhaps a meter above the thestrals, and lingered there.
            “As long as you listen to us, they won’t come down any further,” Harry told them casually. “But we have lots of allies who are as pissed off as we are that you aren’t listening to anything but the inane rumors that get printed in the Prophet.”
            “Not all of them are human,” Draco added, with a toss of his head at the shadows.
            Near the back of the flight, Harry could hear Hagrid asking a loud question about those non-human allies and why he hadn’t got to meet them. Luckily, Hermione hushed him. The last thing Harry thought they needed was Hagrid clamoring about creature allies, when they didn’t exist and he would reveal that.
            “Now,” Harry said, and nodded to Hermione. She held up the large Pensieve, and then Levitated it above them, biting her lip. A moment later, an honor guard of Prince’s metallic hummingbirds flew up to surround it, extra insurance against someone attempting to tamper with it.
            Hermione took a deep breath a second later. Harry knew why. The projection spell was the trickiest part here, and Hermione was the one responsible for casting it. She had insisted, and Harry thought she was the best choice, but it was still a lot of responsibility to saddle a single person with.
            The hummingbirds hovering around the Pensieve turned towards her and dipped their heads. George was grinning like a fool, and Harry knew that that had been his idea, and his the modifications to Prince’s design necessary for doing so.
            The gesture was silly, but it brought a smile to Hermione’s lips, and she held up her wand. A second later, a shimmery light arose from the Pensieve, and stretched through the shadows that Warren’s spell had created to focus on the back wall of the Atrium, near the lifts. Heads spun to follow the course.
            Harry heard a soft voice whispering, and recognized Jenkins’s Tranquility Charm, the magical equivalent of a Calming Draught. It couldn’t make anyone believe what they were saying, but it should keep anyone from exploding in panic and trampling other people to death. They hadn’t come here to cause deaths.
            The charm settled a second later, and even Harry had to shake his head to fight the half-drowsy effects. He caught Draco’s eye; Draco was making an impressed face. Harry nodded. To take on that many hundreds of people all at once, Jenkins had to be powerful—which they had known already, but it was still something to see it in action.
            Then Hermione began to chant the spell that would raise the memories from the Pensieve, softly at first, but soon louder. They had discussed having her cast this spell nonverbally, so none of their enemies would guess what was going on until too late, but that had deprived her casting of too much power. They would have to take the chance.
            And in the meantime, they had other mechanisms in place for stopping the likeliest enemies from getting a blow in.
            Harry saw some people lifting their wands in the crowd, mostly in the distinctive robes of Unspeakables and other high Ministry officials, and almost all of them gasped and pulled their arms back a second later. He grinned. Hale, and the Montgomery cousins under her control, had been busy. She had made them cast an enchantment on the wand of everyone they could think of who was probably going to cause trouble. The charm heated their wands and made them impossible to use without getting steadily more severe burns on their hands. Let it go on long enough, and their wands would explode.
            The Montgomerys hadn’t wanted to, but they were under Hale’s control, thanks to a charm Draco had cast, and they were good with using ritual magic. They had done as they were told. Harry found it a fitting fate for people who had nearly taken his control of himself away.
            They had missed a few, inevitably. They couldn’t tag everyone who might possibly be dangerous. But Jenkins and Warren, or maybe Hale, took care of those, neatly, invisibly, from their corners.
            “What is this?” someone did demand from the floor, as Hermione’s spell finished with a hiss, and the first memory flew out of the Pensieve.
            “The truth,” Draco drawled.
            Harry had opened his mouth to make a speech about Ernhardt, but he was able to simply close it and grin at Draco. He had been much more effective at condensing all the different things they could have said down to a pithy response.
            The first memory turned out to be one of Hagrid’s, which Harry thought was a good choice. It would show those who didn’t know much about Ernhardt that he did have the ability to possess people, and it would show those who didn’t know about it the kind of power that thestrals had. That might keep some of them from challenging the flight later.
            They watched in mostly silence as Hagrid struggled with the possession and threw it off with the help of the thestral flight, but a few people did make loud comments about, “It’s not real!” “That wasn’t him!”
            Hermione closed her eyes and whispered the spell again in response.
            The next memory that flowed out turned Harry’s stomach, mostly because it wasn’t one he had realized Hermione had. Draco had performed a necromantic ritual in Cuthbert’s Corner that called back an image of the one who had once owned the bones they’d found. And here it was, the image of Ernhardt kneeling, screaming, as blood was poured down his throat—the blood they thought had probably infected him, and turned him into a twisted.
            As that flowed into the memory of the letter that suggested Jared Thacker, the dead man, had probably been long involved in magical experiments that the Ministry knew about and refused to prosecute him for, Harry caught his breath. He hadn’t thought Hermione had a design for this, as such. Now he understood.
            She was weaving the memories together into a story, one that gave the lie to several of the stories that the Ministry had tried to spread, most notably that Ernhardt hadn’t been twisted, but also one that would lead up to the experiments the Unspeakables had performed. Harry could see it all now, although only because he knew how the story was going to go. He could see the people on the Atrium floor craning their necks and staring, as though they didn’t know what might lie at the end of this long road.
            And there were some who were flowing together in the middle of the floor, their grey robes identifying them. They might not have use of their wands at the moment, thanks to the Montgomerys, but they could still carry artifacts that would make them dangerous.
            Harry and Draco drew their wands at the same time. Even with all that was happening, Draco winked at him and murmured, “Wait for it,” then counted to three under his breath so that they cast their Summoning Charms together.
            “Accio artifacts!”
            They hadn’t specified which ones they wanted, and so robes shook all over the room and artifacts that, in most cases, they probably weren’t supposed to have darted out of hidden hiding places and zoomed towards Harry and Draco. Harry found his thestral mare already swinging around to catch his share. He hastily opened one of the saddlebags they had carried along full of more of George’s and Prince’s toys, if they needed them, and enlarged it. Draco was doing the same thing on the other side of him.
            Meanwhile, the memories on the projected screen had reached Jeremiah’s torture, and some people had begun to vomit, others turn away—and still others look for the Unspeakables and Aurors involved in the process, if the way some grey and scarlet robes appeared in unfolding gaps of isolation was any indication. Pointing fingers and withering voices isolated them almost as effectively.
            Harry caught Draco’s eye, and grinned. It seemed that they would be heading off in the right direction after all.
            At least, until someone cast the spell that made all the light in the Atrium vanish—including that projected from the wavering silvery screen that Hermione had created. Harry heard her scream at the same time, in a way that might indicate the tipping of the Pensieve and the spilling of the memories.
            I knew it was too easy, Harry thought grimly, and kicked his thestral around.
*
SP777: The suggestion is intriguing. Maybe in a while. I have a whole bunch of Advent fics that I need to finish first, and two fics promised for donations to victims of the typhoon.
Harry will be happy to follow Draco, no matter what he does.
And yes, but I did want to show the planning so that nothing would be a surprise here. It’s here at last, anyway!
- 10
- 11
- 12
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Chains of Fool's Gold