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Burning Day	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10061 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—An Infernal Charade
            “What do you think was going through their heads?”
            Draco sighed and cuddled closer to Harry’s side in the bed that Hogwarts had built for the two of them. He had shared his memory of the speech in the courtroom with Harry, and Harry had laughed until he started choking on air. But that wasn’t enough, it seemed. Harry was talking about the Unspeakables, Draco was pretty sure. Well, that was fair. Draco could only show Harry what he had seen, not what the Unspeakables had been actually thinking.
            Draco shrugged, though, because he didn’t have much more of an idea now than he had had when he confronted them. “They might have believed me completely. I’d doubt it, though. I think they’re going to try and test this charade.”
            Harry tensed, his hands coming down harder on Draco’s sides. Draco had to breathe in quickly to suppress a moan. He didn’t want Harry to think he was in pain. “They’d just better not try to hurt you, that’s all.”
            “We’ve planned for that, remember?” Draco leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder. “Hortensia gave me that potion that will disable Veritaserum the second it enters my bloodstream.” It had been odd to trust someone that much, to drink a potion Draco had never seen before, but he didn’t regret doing it. Hortensia was odd, intense, focused, but Draco didn’t think she was a spy for the Unspeakables or the Ministry. He suspected she would never hold anything higher than her work, and Harry had given her space and time and permission for that work.
            “I didn’t mean like that.” Harry rippled restlessly back and forth, not physically but with his magic, which Draco could see forming a moving aura around his body out of the corner of his eye. “What if they take you and decide that physically damaging you is the best way to get me out to come out of Hogwarts?”
            “Then they would be smart, because it would be.”
            Harry tensed again. “Don’t make jokes like that, Draco. Please.”
            His mouth was open to make another one, but Draco managed to retract it and nod. “Fine. What I meant is, we’re trying to follow the plan we talked about.” He jabbed an elbow into Harry’s side. “The plan that says they’ll leave me alone not because they’re afraid or me or I’m so personally accommodating, but because getting rid of me is more trouble than it’s worth. I keep the Dark Lord of Hogwarts pacified. How many people can say that?”
            Harry flipped over and took Draco’s hands in his, staring into his eyes. “You do a lot more than pacify me.”
            “I know,” said Draco, trying to sound prim, because they were both talking about things they already realized, or should have, but he couldn’t help the enormous grin that spread across his face. It was still something, to see Harry look at him like that and be so willing to say it. Like the promise that Harry had given to put Draco first in his heart, it was an indication of how much Harry loved him. “But I don’t think we can know for sure how well the plan worked until they make a first approach to me.”
            “That’s true,” said Harry. “I didn’t see anything in your memory that made me think they were going to hurt us right away.” He leaned his nose against Draco’s neck and sniffed as if he was smelling the scent of all the bruises he had left on Draco. “Shall we?”
            “Shall we do what?” Draco asked, wondering if they were still talking about the Unspeakables.
            “Since we can’t predict what they’re going to do, shall we talk about something more productive?” Harry asked, and removed all doubts by beginning to mouth very gently around the lobe of Draco’s ear.
*
            “I have the poison completed, my Lord, if you’d like to see how it works.”
            Harry grimaced a little. He had been talking to Gabrielle Delacour, the one of the Veela who had come to live in his court that he was on the friendliest terms with, and she was describing some very delicate manipulations of the Veela’s tree-souls to him. It wasn’t the best time for Hortensia to interrupt.
            But Gabrielle just smiled a little when Harry glanced at her, and sat back in her chair with the manner of one prepared to wait. And Hortensia would never bother to notice when she was interrupting anyway. Harry sighed and turned to Hortensia. “Can you show me without using the poison to hurt someone?”
            “Of course,” said Hortensia. “All you need to do is show me the golden crystal, and I’ll show you how the poison works.”
            Harry raised his eyebrows. “I thought you knew.” He was sure that Hortensia knew, sure that he had described why they needed the ritual banned from Hogwarts grounds in their last conversation, but it didn’t seem to have stuck. “I got rid of the golden crystal when I was testing to see whether it could be destroyed or contained. I don’t have it here for you to test your poison on.”
            Hortensia frowned at him. “I must say that was careless and uncongenial of you, my Lord. I don’t know how else you think that I’m supposed to test the poison without hurting anyone.”
            “If I can provide a substitute ritual, that should work, shouldn’t it?” Harry asked soothingly. In truth, he hadn’t thought at all of how the poison would be tested. He had supposed that Hortensia would work something out, because otherwise how could she make the potion at all? “It won’t harm me if you use the poison on the ritual?”
            “No.” Hortensia sounded as this was definitely second-best. She crouched on the floor, however, and took out a large flask that she must have been carrying tied to her waist. She set it on the floor and stroked the glass. Harry saw the yellow liquid inside take on a subtle glow. From the corner of his eye, he also saw Gabrielle moving her chair further back. Harry had to snort a little. As much as he didn’t want the members of his Court to distrust each other, he couldn’t blame Gabrielle entirely for her reaction.
            “Now,” said Hortensia. “You should set up your ritual in this room, my Lord. The potion is awake now, and reaching out.”
            “It’s awake?” Harry raised his eyebrows even as he gestured to the stones of Hogwarts, and they began to groove themselves into a deep circle. His bond with the school ensured that he could do it without hurt to the stones. “That doesn’t sound as if it won’t hurt me.”
            Hortensia gave him a mild but speaking look. “I told you that I had to create a poison with a will of its own, my Lord, if I was going to make sure that I could actually oppose the will behind a ritual.”
            “You did tell me that.” Harry dropped a bit of blood into the ritual circle and held up a hand to Hortensia in silent apology. “It won’t hurt me even if it’s my blood that’s powering the circle?”
            “No,” said Hortensia, and gave him the kind of patient smile that Harry recognized from some of his professors when they were dealing with troublesome students. “It’s the ritual that the poison opposes, not anyone connected to it, no matter how distantly or closely they’re connected.”
            Why did you allow her into your Court, if you didn’t trust her? Harry asked himself, and found that he had no answer. He crouched and laid his hand above the ritual circle, adding a little more blood.
            Hortensia smiled, at him or the ritual circle or the poison, and poured out the yellow liquid from the flask.
            It didn’t flow immediately into the circle carved into the stones, the way Harry had thought it would. Instead, it hovered in midair, the bottom of it still curved in memory of the way the flask had shaped it, and yellow tendrils reached out, wavering. They were transparent, but began to glow with light as Harry watched.
            A second later, Harry started. He could feel something brushing against his—his will, he supposed he would have to call it. He suspected he could feel it only because of his bond with Hogwarts, and that a regular person conducting a regular ritual wouldn’t feel it at all, but it was still a creepy feeling.
            The tendrils wavered and slowed to a stop. The poison wound in on itself, like a closing flower, and the sensation of another will brushing against Harry’s went away.
            Then the ritual circle died.
            That, Harry could feel happen, too, and it was an even more creepy feeling than that of the poison touching his will. The sensation of rising power that he had infused the circle with simply faded. The humming stopped. The blood that he had shed from his body suddenly felt no more connected to him than the blood of a stranger would.
            Harry lifted his head, staring. Hortensia bowed from her kneeling position, one hand protectively on the flank, which the yellow potion had flowed back into. “I told you that it would work, my Lord,” she murmured.
            “You did,” Harry echoed, dazed, and then had to grin and shake his head. “Remind me never to doubt you again, Hortensia.”
            “You’ll doubt me a few more times, I think,” said Hortensia. She stood and cradled the flask against her. “I’ve seen the way you look doubtingly at me. You’re afraid that I’ll poison someone in your Court.”
            Since Harry couldn’t hide anyway, he met her directness with his own. “Well, you must know something about how weird you come off to other people. I don’t believe you’ll stupid.”
            “What’s stupid is caring about that,” said Hortensia calmly. “Fear of what you looked like in other people’s eyes didn’t stop you from declaring yourself Dark Lord of Hogwarts, did it?”
            Harry held up one hand. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll try to keep my distrust of you to a reasonable level, then.”
            Hortensia nodded and trotted out of the room. Harry gazed after her until Gabrielle cleared her throat, and recalled him to knowledge of her presence. He really had managed to forget, so intense was Hortensia’s just being there.
            “Forgive me, Gabrielle,” Harry said, turning and sitting down in his chair again. “I just didn’t think it would be a good idea to put that off.”
            “To put her off, you mean.” Gabrielle gave a curious little smile, that had something of a grimace in it. “As long as she doesn’t poison the roots of our tree-souls—which I think she’s capable of—then we’re willing to consider her an ally.”
            “If you say that, I can trust you.” Harry nodded back. When the Veela first came, Madame de Lis, their leader, had tried to fob him off and make up little lies and use their allure on him. He had started dealing with Gabrielle preferentially, because she knew more about him and what it was wise to spring on him than they did.
            “You can.” Gabrielle touched the plan on the desk between them, which showed the expansion of the walls of Hogwarts that she and the other Veela had planned. “I’d like you to look at this, and see if you think expanding to the west would intrude too much into the Forbidden Forest and maybe territory that we shouldn’t take over…”
*
            “Mr. Malfoy. Thank you so much for letting me see you.”
            Draco leaned back in his chair, which occupied a comfortable drawing room near the back of the Manor, and looked at Rita Skeeter with lazy eyes. “I wasn’t aware that it was a matter of my permission. According to my adviser Rosenthal, your owls crowded out all the others asking for an interview. And attacked the owls they were next to, as well.”
            “In this business, you need the best birds you can get,” said Skeeter, and gave him a confident little smile as she touched her quill to parchment. “Now, tell me, were you really afraid of Dark Lord Potter? After the intimacy that you’ve enjoyed with him, too.” The quill rapped a little faster when Draco didn’t immediately respond.
            Draco looked off to the side, and finally spoke, although he let his words falter and hesitate. It made sense for him to still be overwhelmed by the experience of seeing the Dark Lord with black wings on his back, touching his throat and telling him that he was still alive only because he was amusing. “You know, I don’t remember that much about it. If not for the memory, I might doubt it had happened.”
            Skeeter frowned. Draco knew that he wasn’t giving her much material she could work into a usable story. “But you must feel something about it.”
            “Yes,” said Draco, nodding, and looked at her directly, something she didn’t seem to expect, if the way she started was any indication. “It made me feel what a huge responsibility lies on my shoulders.”
            “What do you mean?” Skeeter had gone back to scribbling, though. “It looked to me as though the Dark Lord had made you into a plaything. That’s the opposite of responsibility.” She gave Draco a bright smile.
            She was trying to anger him, of course. Draco responded only with a slow blink, resuming the words when Skeeter made a little gesture with her quill. “No. You don’t understand. I—I could feel, and grasp, and really understand how responsible I am, if I’m the Minister, as the only person who stands between Dark Lord Potter and the world that he would otherwise take out his wrath on.”
            “You believe all his words, then?” Skeeter glanced at him in a way she probably thought was sly.
            “Of course,” said Draco, and gave her a bleak smile. “What happened in the past when we didn’t believe him, when we thought there was no possible way that someone could really have that much power or that much desire to take vengeance for the insults offered him?”
            Skeeter hesitated for the first time since the interview began. “You’re right,” she said. “We must take his threats seriously.”
            Draco nodded and clasped his hands on his knees. This was the part that Harry hadn’t thought would work, with Skeeter’s love of twisting his words around, but Draco had been right. Her sense of the dramatic would make her report the truth, if the truth was dark enough and likely to intrigue her audience. “Yes. And I’m the one that he wants to play with. Who knows why? Our old rivalry, the fact that I’m the one who responded to him the most, the fact that I’m the favorite to win the election? I can’t divine all the reasons, and I couldn’t attempt to fathom the mind of a Dark Lord anyway. I’m only grateful that I can make myself into the bulwark that his power breaks on.”
            Skeeter’s eyes had a peculiar gleam as she wrote that down. Draco didn’t think she fully believed him, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she thought it would make good copy. That was why she reported on silly politicians’ speeches so faithfully. She would relish their broken promises just as often when they failed to keep them, but she could play the believing game at the moment of the speech as well as anyone else.
            “I’m only grateful that Dark Lord Potter has allowed me to keep some independence so far,” Draco continued. “I go to Hogwarts to negotiate with him, but I don’t have to move in there.”
            “He probably realizes that you have to spend some of your time at home and the Ministry,” said Skeeter. “Do you see that changing any time soon?”
            Draco tried out another of the bleak smiles, since they had worked so well last time. “Not as long as I maintain enough free time to answer his calls for his toy in a minute if he needs me.”
            “You call yourself a toy one minute, and a bulwark the next.” Skeeter tapped her quill again to indicate her interest, her intensity. “Does that indicate ambivalence about your role in all this?”
            Draco laughed hollowly. “I don’t think that anyone could escape ambivalence about this sort of role. But I’m a toy to the Dark Lord and a bulwark to my constituents.” He paused and watched Skeeter write for a minute. “At least, that’s the way I hope they think of me. I know that I can’t do much about what Dark Lord Potter thinks of me.”
            Skeeter bent a look on him that was comical in its benevolence. “Do you think that might appear more like a bulwark with help?”
            Draco pretended to consider that. “It would—excuse the pun—help a lot.”
            Skeeter nodded. “Well, I think the brave man I interviewed today should get his chance to count in the public debates surrounding your name and Dark Lord Potter, as well as the man who knelt before the Dark Lord.” She went back to writing.
            Draco relaxed. Skeeter was unpredictable at times, but he understood the silent threat and warning: as long as he gave her new material, and material she liked and that was dramatic enough, then she would do what she could to spread that material.
            “I’ll have to make some additions to my schedules,” Draco said reflectively. “As well as time for the Dark Lord and for myself, so that I can have some oases in the round of my duties, I’ll have to make sure to schedule regular interviews with you, Madam Skeeter.”
            “If that’s what you need to do,” said Skeeter, and lowered her eyelids on her smile.
*
CareLessLover: Mostly fear, and gladness that Draco is the one who has to deal with Harry and not them!
Jester: Thanks! I think Harry resents the loss of his reputation as well, but he made some decisions that he knew would cost him a lot.
SP777: Yes, it shows how things got to the point they’re at in ‘Charming When He Needs to Be.’
BAFan: For Draco as well, but at least he knew it was in a good cause.
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Burning Day