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Intoxicate the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18051 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twelve—Hail the Conquering Hero

            “Miss Granger, will you come this way, please?”

            Hermione fixed a smile on her face, decided to ignore the deliberate fuck-up on her name for now—everyone had been careful to address her by her married name since the revolution had begun, as if that would somehow remind her that there were Weasleys still on their side—and followed the small, efficient woman that the Minister had hired as Undersecretary down the corridor. She had never been in this part of the Ministry before, the set of branching passageways and unexpectedly large offices that extended behind the Minister’s desk. Of course, her work was more likely to lead to her pleading in front of the Wizengamot than in front of the Minister, and she wasn’t of a high rank in the Department yet.

            And never will be, her supervisor had told her the other day, if you don’t stop fighting so hard for the rights of creatures that no one is interested in giving rights to.

            Hermione clenched her teeth and tried to show no trace of that anger on her face as the Undersecretary came to a stop and opened an oaken door with gilt in its tracings. She had to keep her composure when it came to talking to these people, or she would get Harry and Ron—and the rest of them—in trouble that they didn’t know how to handle.

            “Mrs. Granger-Weasley.” That was Clearwater, sitting upright at the head of the table. “Please have a seat.”

            The chair she gestured her towards was at the foot of the table, and so the focus of all eyes. Hermione moved towards it as nonchalantly as she could, while her gaze made the round of the other people gathered there.

            A tall woman with white hair piled on top of her head and a permanently, sourly-pursed mouth was Georgianna Bountiful, the current Speaker for the Wizengamot—the official who met with Departments in the Ministry and coordinated the different liaisons between them. Hermione knew she wouldn’t be an ally no matter what happened, and silently discarded her from the count. She didn’t know the wizard in purple robes beside her, though the young man slumped next to him, tracing a finger over the patterns on the table, looked vaguely familiar.

            Two Aurors occupied a pair of seats further down the table, seated on either side of a chained prisoner. Hermione didn’t recognize him, either, but her heart quickened at a flash of the Dark Mark on his arm.

            Next to the Minister on the left was a hooded Unspeakable, whom Hermione could see was a woman from her long, fine hands and her painted nails, and on the right was the Undersecretary. Florence, Hermione remembered suddenly. Her name was Florence—something. Hermione didn’t have the patience to hunt down her surname in the labyrinths of her memory.

            She took the chair and noted that subtle charms had been cast on it that would keep it as uncomfortable as possible. She waved her wand under the table and took care of that, then leaned forwards with her hands folded in front of her and flicked her glance from face to face.

            “Minister?” she asked brightly.

            “We know that you are Harry Potter’s friend,” Clearwater said. “And Ron Weasley’s wife.” She paused, as if these were profound insights that Hermione should have some response to.

            Hermione bobbed her head back and restrained her instinctive motion of contempt. This woman is dangerous, she reminded herself. You despise her at your peril. And you know that you have to stay in her good graces to find out what this committee is saying about Harry.

            “Yes,” Hermione said. “But…” She opened one hand on the table and stared at it for a moment, as though she was fascinated by her palm, before she began speaking again. “But there are times when rules have to take precedence over friendship,” she murmured. “Harry was angry with me one day when we were still in Hogwarts because he received a broom from someone unknown and I insisted on taking it away and having it tested for hexes and curses. He wanted to use it to play Quidditch right away. But what else could I have done? People were after him. I had to make sure he was safe.”

            Even with lowered eyes, she saw a nod pass between the Minister and Florence. That made her have to bite her lip to keep from grinning. They would have expected her to lie.

            But that was the coward’s route out. Hermione would always choose truth, because she knew they would check what she said. It was only the attitude and the spin that mattered, and those, they couldn’t check, because they couldn’t see inside her head.

            Unless they get someone to use Legilimency on you.

            Hermione swallowed, and then hoped that the motion wasn’t visible to anyone who watched her. No good, she realized a moment later, since so many people—except the prisoner and the Aurors—were looking fixedly at her. She would have to get used to the audience, and just trust that none of them would know what the swallow actually meant.

            “Introductions are in order,” the Minister said, and gestured to the Unspeakable. “This is Heather Caudill, who has graciously agreed to speak to us about the missing artifacts from the Department of Mysteries and what they could tell us about Potter. My Undersecretary, Florence Rabes, most of you know.”

            Rabes, Hermione repeated to herself, to confirm it in her mind. She thought that was the name of a pure-blood family, but she would check tonight, after the meeting.

            “Speaker Bountiful,” Clearwater went on with a nod. “And Mr. Richards and his son Jacob.”

            Hermione looked at the boy out of the corner of her eye again. By his age, she thought they might have been together at Hogwarts, but she didn’t remember someone of that name in Gryffindor. Of course, the Ministry probably realized that most Gryffindors would be reluctant to betray Harry.

            “Aurors Potkins and Yoven, and their prisoner.” The distaste in Clearwater’s voice was thick, and she moved on without bothering to introduce the prisoner, leaning forwards slightly with her hands on the table. “You know that we are here to investigate the background of Harry Potter, to learn what might have caused him to commit these terrible deeds, and come up with a way to soothe his mind.”

            Hermione smothered a snort just in time. She didn’t like to think what would have happened if she had voiced it; they might have doubted her commitment to their delusions, and she needed to keep them contented and happy for the moment. Soothe his mind? Is that what they’re calling it now?

            “For those of you who don’t know,” Rabes said in a high, squeaking voice Hermione hadn’t heard her use before, “Mr. Potter’s basic background.” She took a number of slips of parchment from one of her folders and handed them around the table. Richards and his son took them helplessly, as though they didn’t know what to do with them; Bountiful handled them with the ease of long experience; the Aurors and Caudill glanced at but didn’t touch theirs, as though to say that they had more important things to do with their hands. Hermione smoothed hers out in front of her and read it.

            The parchment contained notes on the Dursleys and on the ways that Harry had faced danger at Hogwarts in each of his first six years, culminating in Dumbledore falling off the Tower. Rabes explained everything at length, probably absorbing if you didn’t already know it. Hermione took a few of the facts and considered how she could spin them.

            By the time that the Minister turned and looked at her, no doubt hoping to catch her off-balance by the sudden glance, her course was clear. Hermione met her eyes and blinked. “Yes, Minister?”

            “You know him better than anyone except your husband,” Clearwater said, and her voice charged the room with something thicker and stronger than anger. Everyone else stirred in their seats and looked around significantly. “How did the events of his youth affect him? What part did they play in determining his madness?”

            Hermione was glad that the woman had given her a more specific question to answer; the first one was impossibly broad. She sighed and said, “Is it any wonder that he went mad, after such a childhood and such a young adulthood?”

            Clearwater seemed to have been braced for disagreement, because she frowned for a moment, recovered herself with a shake of her head, and then asked, “Why did no signs show themselves before now?”

            “I think they did, but we didn’t recognize them for what they were,” Hermione said reflectively. “I thought, and Ron thought, well, he has the right to be a little strange. He’s a war hero. He was raised by awful Muggles. We had loving families. We didn’t know the first thing about what abuse was like, until we had to confront it in Harry.”

            “Mr. Potter had a loving family, as well,” Rabes said, rushing into the pause in Hermione’s breath as if she assumed that she had to erase any impression of danger or neglect Hermione had made before it had time to settle. “There is no doubt that his parents loved him.”

            “Yes, but they didn’t raise him past the time that he was a year and a half old,” Hermione said, trying to sound temperate instead of snappish. “The Dursleys are responsible for the way his mind’s formed.”

            Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clearwater nodding thoughtfully and Bountiful scribbling something down on her parchment. Let them. Hermione knew—better than anyone here, after having come from the Muggle world to the magical one—that a person was more than the sum of her childhood. Yes, it affected her heavily, but one couldn’t read the details of a story and unlock that person like a character.

            She would heavily encourage that perception in their minds as far as Harry went, though.

            “What kind of person is Mr. Dursley?” Bountiful had her finger on the name, or at least Hermione thought so from the way her hand was on the parchment. “It says here that he kept Mr. Potter locked in a cupboard and didn’t feed hm. Did he hit him?”

            Hermione was glad, then, that Harry hadn’t told her that much about his life with his relatives; it meant that she had no choice but to lie, since she didn’t know the truth. “I don’t know,” she said smoothly. “Perhaps only small touches, the kind that you would give any child who misbehaves or whom you want to shove in a cupboard. Perhaps worse.”

            Glances went back and forth between the Speaker and the Minister, between the Minister and her Undersecretary, and probably between Caudill and the rest of them, too, but Hermione couldn’t see her eyes for the hood. Hermione looked down at the parchment again and forbore to smile. Yes, well, they would see what they wanted to see, and the tendency that people had to always believe the worst or best of Harry would help, too.

            “Rape?” Bountiful asked.

            Hermione winced. She hated that anyone could casually ask that question. “Not that I ever knew of,” she said. “And I think I would have seen the signs. I think that—well, Minister, Speaker, everyone, I think the major effect the Dursleys had on Harry was that they encouraged him to dream of escape and rescue. Coming to Hogwarts was an escape for him. And he’s applying his fantasies now, towards liberating the entire wizarding world. We should have seen the signs earlier,” she repeated.

            All the stronger, she thought as she glanced at the boy down the table from her, the one she suspected had been brought in to testify because he had memories of Harry from Hogwarts to share. That was the way he was like when he was younger, but he’s changed since then. He knows that you can’t just point your wand at the bad people and have them fall over dead, that sometimes the “bad people” are the ones on your side.

            Disquietingly, the phrases about Malfoy from Ron’s letter came back to her. She hoped Harry hadn’t carried that new insight too far the other way.

            “Does he know that he is no longer a child?” Clearwater asked the question slowly, thoughtfully, one finger tapping on the parchment in front of her as though she could change the facts with a touch. “Does he know that he will be expected to stand trial for his crimes like an adult, and that the people he attacks have children, lives, jobs that they must perform? Because it seems as if he does not, aspiring to an impossible ideal of justice, and living still in a boy’s world.”

            Hermione had known that she couldn’t change their minds overnight, and that they would have been suspicious of her if she could, but still it hurt to hear Harry spoken of like that. She kept silent, though, and watched Caudill lean forwards and murmur something too soft to be heard.

            “A good point,” the Minister said, and faced the rest of the table. “Unspeakable Caudill suggests that we allow the witnesses to Potter’s past misbehavior that we have brought into the room to speak, so that they may combine their valuable insight with Madam Granger-Weasley’s.”

            Hermione refrained from rolling her eyes, but it was an effort. Do they think that I’ll be on their side if they grant me a title that I don’t have a right to, yet?

            She faced the Richards boy, whom Caudill had turned towards. He flushed red in moments, and cast his father a helpless glance. His father patted him clumsily on the back and muttered something. Richards shivered and looked at the rest of them.

            “I didn’t know him well,” he said. “I was in Ravenclaw a year behind him. He never paid attention to me. I don’t think we even spoke, unless we met sometime in the library or on the Quidditch pitch.”

            “Anything you can remember would be valuable,” Clearwater said. She was good at this when she wanted to be, Hermione thought grudgingly, lowering her voice as though she was coaxing a feral animal towards her. “Did he ever display mad behavior?”

            “Not that I saw,” Richards said. “We all looked up to him after the war, though. And it was bloody awful when he wasn’t there.” He looked self-consciously at Hermione, as if remembering that she hadn’t been there, either, during the year that they’d been hunting Horcruxes. “He—maybe he let the attention go to his head? Maybe he was frustrated when he came to the Ministry after the war and realized he couldn’t change things by snapping his fingers?”

            Hermione didn’t scowl, but only because she had already known she would hear distressing things. That was painfully close to the way Harry had expected things to go, yes. Hermione would be the last to say that her friend was really arrogant or thought he deserved his fame, but he had got used to the world falling over itself to please him. That had probably played its part in his impatience when he made suggestions and older, wiser heads in the Ministry put them down as the suggestions of an impulsive young fool.

            “That’s very helpful, Mr. Richards, thank you,” the Minister said, and then turned and faced the Death Eater. The Aurors on either side of him held their wands more tightly, and the one on the left—Yoven, Hermione thought—reached out and tipped back the Death Eater’s hood, carefully, as if any close contact with his skin would be contaminating.

            Hermione took a long time to place the face that emerged, but did it when the prisoner began speaking. Rabastan Lestrange.

            “He came to the prison to see us,” the man whispered. “He said that he was there to talk to us about redemption and—and things.” He coughed, but Hermione didn’t know if the sound was meant to be a laugh or simply a remnant of ill health from Azkaban. “But when he was with us, he tortured us and used Dark spells.”

            Hermione opened her mouth to deny that, and then remembered to close it and look at least vaguely ill. But her spirit was crying out in rejection. They can’t believe that. They’d be mad to believe that.

            The way they think Harry is?

            “Are you sure that it was Potter and not someone else?” Bountiful had a quick, snapping raven’s voice, but Hermione had never heard it sound so eager as it did now. She would have leaned across the table and touched Lestrange if she could have, Hermione thought. “Your memories would be confused after such a long residence in Azkaban as you’ve had.”

            Lestrange cast her an arrogant glance. “You have no idea what my memories are like,” he said. One of the Aurors next to him cast a charm, and he sagged back and adopted a pained expression, one that Hermione would have known was false even if she didn’t know he was a Death Eater. “Only trying to help,” he whined, “and I get treated like this.”

            “You’re sure?” The Minister this time, her hands folded in front of her as if she was playing judge in the chamber of the Wizengamot.

            “’Course,” Lestrange said, and gave Hermione a nasty grin. She looked at it and then turned away to Clearwater.

            Who was looking straight at her.

            “Did you know about this, Mrs. Granger-Weasley?” So gentle, her voice, so terribly gentle. “Because I don’t blame you for being shocked. No one had any idea that he was doing this, until one guard at Azkaban spoke to another guard, and they began to realize that just because they had trusted Harry Potter to behave himself didn’t mean he had.”

            Hermione coughed. Then she forced herself to shake her head, although she felt as if she was betraying Harry. “No. I didn’t know. It’s—shocking.”

            And this is a lie that they might get people to believe, since everyone by now knows how strongly Harry feels about justice.

            Hermione would just have to find a way to ensure that not too many people believed it, after all.

*

            “Malfoy! Can I speak to you?”

            Draco turned around slowly, keeping a neutral expression on his face. He had found that it paid to play hard-to-get around Potter in the past few days. That meant those who were suspicious of him, including the Weasleys, had no reason to think that Draco was trying to get special access to him. And it gave Potter a reason to chase him, which Draco found gratifying on its own merits.

            Plus, now that Potter had found him, he had done it in a private place, which would give Draco much more choice about what to report to the Ministry. He folded his arms and lounged against a wall, waiting with the same calm expression as Potter panted up to him.

            “You’re harder to get hold of than a Hit Wizard at five-o’clock,” Potter said, bending over briefly to catch his breath. Then he straightened and fixed his eyes on Draco, before he could respond to the rather odd comparison. “I’ve wanted your advice for a while now about the books that you got me from the Manor.”

            Draco shrugged. “They’re books. There should have been none of them that you couldn’t read. I only brought the unwarded ones, and only the ones in English.”

            Potter shook his head and shot out his hand, hauling Draco along with him towards his rooms. Draco mentally noted that he hadn’t given Potter permission to do that, but apparently permission was something that happened to lesser mortals. Potters took what they wanted.

            “I meant about their contents,” Potter said over his shoulder. “And how can we apply those to the revolution.”

            Draco ducked his head, because someone else might be coming along the corridor and would see—and despise—his smile. So it had happened at last, the change he had been waiting for. Potter trusted him enough, or needed his help enough, to look past the objections that the Weasleys would certainly have raised. Draco was stepping into the position of power where he could offer suggestions to Potter and have them taken seriously.

            It was the position that his father had recommended to him strenuously in the past, especially in those feverish midnight talks they’d had before Lucius’s condemnation to Azkaban. Rule from the back, not the front, his father had advised him, his hand tightening on Draco’s in a hot, damp grip. Don’t be the Dark Lord, but the one the Dark Lord cannot live without, the one he turns his head to find.

            It hadn’t worked with You-Know-Who, and Draco knew why; by the time that he’d summoned Lucius, he was too crazy for anyone to hope to control. But Draco thought Potter was teetering on the edge of madness, not all the way there. There was, at least, hope.

            “What are you thinking about, Malfoy?”

            Draco started. He hadn’t realized that Potter would want to know something like that before he started offering suggestions. He pulled himself sharply back, coughed, and said, “Whether you’re crazy enough to use some of the other theories those books propose. Fortuna’s Wheel is bad enough.”

            Potter shrugged. “I don’t think Fortuna’s Wheel is mad at all. It’s a simple fact of nature—or magic, if you like—that not a lot of people know about.”

            Draco frowned. He would need to correct some of Potter’s mistaken perceptions, he saw, especially concerning what was actually esoteric knowledge and what was not. “They do know about it,” he said. “But the theory is considered crack-pated because so few people can actually make it work. The only reason you can is because you’re powerful.”

            Potter looked as if he’d honestly never considered that before. Then he shrugged and said, “If the others can’t make it work for the Aurors that I want to disarm, then I’ll do it myself.”

            “Or figure out something else to do,” Draco suggested softly, and then watched Potter closely. This would be an early test of his persuasive power.

            Potter blinked once again, caught off-balance. Draco thought that a good thing, overall, but he would have to be careful about inducing this reaction in Potter around others. They might think that he had used the Imperius Curse or some kind of drug.

            “Perhaps,” Potter said. “If you can suggest anything that would work as well, and achieve our goals by making the Ministry unable to accuse innocents as effectively while letting the guilty go, then let me know.”

            It was sarcastic, but Draco knew well now how to come in under a sarcastic defense and launch a blow that would move Potter back. He smiled at him and shrugged a bit. “There’s a technique called the Strangle.”

            “Sounds like a bare-handed fighting technique,” Potter drawled back, but his eyes were alight.

            Draco smiled more widely. “It’s not. Shall I show you?”

            Potter nodded, and this time Draco was the one who led the way to his rooms and the books that waited there, his blood thrumming in answer to the fire in Potter’s eyes and his own hopes of success.

            And the memory of the fire that he had already seen, once before.

            Under my guidance, this may become a real revolution.

*

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Intoxicate the Sun