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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 Thirteen—The Strangler

            “What’s this technique that you want to show me, then, Malfoy?”

            Harry tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he turned to face Malfoy. He was trying to keep calm around Malfoy in general, in fact, because showing too much excitement might reveal his plans.

            Or, well, at least reveal how important those plans were to him. Contrary to what Ron and George and probably a bunch of other people—including Hermione—thought, Harry hadn’t lost all distrust of Malfoy. But he had decided that he was more likely to get results out of him if he told him the same kind of thing that he eventually planned on telling everyone else, and working with the books that he brought along instead of frowning at them self-righteously and turning aside.

            Hermione still might say that carries risks, exposing myself the way I am by asking for help. It’s giving Malfoy license to get closer to me, listening to what he has to say, putting value on his opinion.

            Harry sighed. That was bound up with the feeling that he couldn’t explain to anyone else, the feeling that woke him sweating from his dreams, the feeling that burned and bounded in his veins as though he was standing on the edge of a cliff and waiting to grow wings before he leaped. It was the feeling that said he could come up with a great many risky things to do, and do them, as long as he was the only one who paid the price.

            If his wild magic killed him, at least he would be the only one dead. If he was the only one who ended up using the techniques that he discovered or pried out of the books, because other people felt squeamish using them, then he was the only one who would pay the price, and the ends they needed would still be accomplished.

            It was acceptable.

            “Potter?” Malfoy snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s eyes, his expression impatient. “I’m waiting for you. I’ve tried to explain what the Strangler is twice now, and you’re staring off into space as though you had much more important things to hear.”

            Harry cocked his head. There was an undercurrent in Malfoy’s voice that he didn’t understand, something thick as treacle tart. Perhaps he simply resented wasting his time, Harry thought. He ought to be familiar with the sound of resentment in Malfoy’s words, after the history they had together.

            “Sorry,” he said. “What is it?”

            Malfoy locked eyes with him and blew out enough air that his lips fluttered. Harry felt his own lips twitch, and tried to fight back the impulse. Malfoy would probably assume that Harry wasn’t taking him seriously if he laughed at him. “It does what you want to do with Fortuna’s Wheel,” Malfoy said, “but with more magic and more spells at once. And it requires less effort and power than your means.”

            “Interesting,” Harry said, “but I don’t believe it.”

            Malfoy turned a look of burning contempt on him. It would have been a lot more effective if they hadn’t been who they were. “Why not?” he asked, speaking between gritted teeth. “You—you have no reason not to believe me. You can look at the books if you’d like, but I doubt you’ll understand half of what’s in them, not with your education.”

            “What, the same education you received?” Harry asked, grinning at him. He had to admit that it was still kind of fun to bait Malfoy. Sure, it would set working with him back a bit, but Malfoy was so insufferably serious. He needed someone to take the piss out of him sometimes, teach him that there was more to life than being a wanker.

            “I learned more than you ever did,” Malfoy said, “from being in Slytherin House, from Professor Snape, from my parents.” He paused, then added condescendingly, “But it’s not as if you had parents, Potter, did you?”

            Harry stared at him in fascination, especially because Malfoy turned pink in the next moment and seemed to regret his words. “You enjoy sabotaging yourself, don’t you?” Harry asked after a pause. “Some masochistic part of you gets off on it.”

            Malfoy turned his back, bowing his head. His breathing came fast and loud in the confined space that was Harry’s room, and when it hadn’t stopped after a few minutes, Harry went up and touched him on the shoulder.

            “I only said that I didn’t believe you because if a technique like that existed, then lots of people would be using it,” he said quietly. “I don’t think they know about Fortuna’s Wheel, or else they think the people who want to use it are mad, but what about this Strangler? It’s written about more, it’s known to work, it takes less power—why in the world wouldn’t the Ministry have used it against us the minute we started the rebellion?”

            “Because a Malfoy invented it,” Malfoy said, his words so snappish that Harry stepped back before he could help himself. “Because it’s never been inscribed or talked about outside our ancestral books. Does that make sense? Are you happy now?”

            Harry reacted before he thought, and touched Malfoy’s shoulder again. “Then do you want to share it?” he asked. “Since you’re the only free representative of your family right now. Maybe you should keep that to yourself—something about your heritage, some treasure, that the Ministry can’t find and strip away.”

            This time, Malfoy whipped around to face him. His whole body seemed to go stiff and still in the wake of his turn, and Harry found his hand sitting somewhat awkwardly on his shoulder. He grimaced and removed it. Malfoy stared at it for long seconds, then transferred his stare to Harry’s face.

            “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m teaching this to you in the first place because I want my parents free, and this will get you to attack Azkaban faster. Or had you forgotten that part of why I was here? Buried it, perhaps?”

            Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected Malfoy to react that way. He’d been—calm, so far. Well, calmer than Harry had any right to expect, when so many people cared so much about the revolution and Malfoy had come to them for a purely personal reason. A reason that Harry remembered now.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you still have to consider whether this is going to work towards helping to free them. I’m going to attack Azkaban eventually. Do you want to give up a family secret to help me do that? Your parents might not share your perspective once they’re free, and I wouldn’t want to come between you and them.”

            Malfoy’s face drooped and blanked with astonishment. Then he shook his head and said, “You can’t persuade me that you care about them, not that way. I haven’t heard you say anything like this to someone else.”

            “Maybe I care about you more,” Harry said. “Because you’re right in front of me or because you’re offering to teach me, take your pick, but I do care.” He paused, expecting an immediate answer, but Malfoy stared glassily into the distance instead. Harry decided to wait for him to respond.

            Knowing Malfoy, even this different version of him, he wouldn’t have to wait for long.

*

            The last thing Draco had expected from Potter was compassion.

            Interest, yes; Draco had been laboring to fix that by offering support to Potter and then ducking away from him, so that Potter would have to chase him down to find out what was going on. Taunting, yes, and distrust and anger and curiosity about what secrets might lie hidden in his books. But not this.

            Draco swallowed and forced himself past this moment of wide-open interaction between him and Potter, as intriguing as it was. He needed—he needed to remember his parents, yes, but in the interests of getting them out of prison, not because Potter had stared at him with bright green eyes and suddenly seemed to transform the system Draco was working inside of. Ministry or revolution, he was still the only one who cared about his parents as people.

            And he had shown a shameful tendency to neglect that over the last few days, spending more time on Potter and devices and tactics to win Potter’s trust.

            Even if it’s ultimately to win them free, I have to focus on them, they have to be the center of my world, not Potter and not the compassion that he can offer me to distract me.

            In fact, that was probably the core of what Potter was telling him right now, distraction, rather than any wish that he could do something for Draco. Draco calmed down as he thought that, and swallowed, finally, the unexpected lump of food that Potter had handed him.

            “I want them free before anything else,” he said. “They can hate me after they’re free, if they want. But right now, their situation is worse than any secret that I can expose to you.”

            “Somehow I doubt that’s true,” Potter said, eyeing him. “Or you wouldn’t have reacted as you did to my suggestion.”

            Draco closed one hand into a loose fist behind his back, where Potter wouldn’t see it. Potter wasn’t supposed to be insightful, or notice things like the twitches of muscles and facial expressions. That was the world Draco reserved for himself and his parents.

            “It’s still true enough,” he said. ‘The Strangler is a spell that closes off the flow of magic in a wizard’s body. Even if he uses another wand, it won’t come to him, or from him; that might be the more important qualifier. And it’ll last as long as you want to, and it can be cast on a great many people all at once.”

            Potter cocked his head. “Why did your father never use it against me during the war?”

            “You weren’t at your most dangerous when you were casting spells,” Draco said. For that matter, neither are you now. While Potter was buried in his books, Weasley was the one leading the real rebellion, answering questions and training people to work together. Potter was a symbol for the ones who wanted to join them and needed an individual to fasten their hopes on. Draco knew, from some of his schoolmates’ tales after the war, that he had been the same thing then, a distant, running figure that made all those focusing on him feel freer.

            “And it probably wouldn’t have worked to use it on Voldemort,” Potter mused. “All right. Is there any chance that someone I cast it on would recognize the spell, or someone else would, and use that to turn against it us?”

            Draco paused. He hadn’t expected Potter to ask an actually intelligent question, he realized. Well, he would get over this shock as he’d got over the last one. “No,” he said at last. “Not unless someone of Malfoy blood was with them, and for the last several generations, the Malfoy line has produced only one child at a time. Only one heir,” he added pointedly, because Potter was looking at him as if to ask why he hadn’t wanted siblings. “There’s no one of the blood who would recognize the spell and still know the secret of resisting it.”

            “All right,” Potter said, backing up a step as though he assumed that the spell would need a lot of room. “We’ll try it now.”

            Draco’s hand clenched a moment before he reached for his wand. He hated to imagine what his father would think of him now, taking orders from someone.

            The way he took orders from the Dark Lord?

            But Draco shook his head to himself. That had been a different situation, an aberrant one, one that would never happen again. His father wouldn’t be pleased that Draco had seemingly ignored its lesson and was committing himself to another war as a follower.

            But what his father wanted didn’t matter very much right now.



            He held up his wand and conjured an illusion of the Minister into being across from them, going by photographs of her he’d seen lately in the papers. Potter started and his eyes narrowed, although he wasn’t stupid enough to attack or ask if Draco had somehow summoned her here. For a moment, Draco debated switching back to the Ministry’s side just so that he could do that someday and fool Potter for a moment.

            Then he scowled. He hadn’t chosen a side. Not as such. At least, not a commitment that he couldn’t back away from if he had to. But he knew what the Ministry would say to such a claim, which made it a little hard for him to take it seriously.

            Facing the Minister, Draco murmured, “There is only one incantation, but you must use all your strength of will to ensure that it takes. Do you understand me?”

            Potter nodded, rapt. His eyes were huge, and Draco thought he would see reflections of his soul in them if he looked long enough. The thought made him grind his teeth in irritation. He wasn’t supposed to feel such sentimental nonsense.

            He wasn’t supposed to feel anything but determination to get his parents free, he remembered. The Strangler would help him do that. And in the end, he would make sure that the choice to remember it was taken from Potter.

            One way or another.

            “Ango veneficium, ango animam, ango pollentiam,” he said, and then began to repeat it again and again, in rushing breaths, doing his best to echo with his words the speed of the magic that thundered through his veins. His breath was coming faster and faster, on the edge of screaming. His body yearned forwards, although he kept it firmly in place. The wand shook in his hand. The world wavered around him, turning dull and blank at the edges. The shout of unleashed strength through his skull was like a wave.

            He would drown in the wave if he let go of the spell. That was the other reason that the Strangler was not more commonly used. True, it didn’t take as much raw power as turning Fortuna’s Wheel did, but it was far more likely to devour the practitioner alive.

            The construct of Minister Clearwater shimmered. Draco felt the magic rush out of him and settle around her in a richly-colored net, which was visible for only a moment, looking like strands of silver set with emeralds, before it faded. Draco nodded in exhaustion, and then stepped back to catch himself with one hand on the nearest table.

            He turned to Potter, intending to tell him that he should cast a spell at the image of the Minister and see what happened.

            He found Potter standing still, transfixed, eyes locked on Draco as if he were the hinge on which the universe turned for the moment.

            Draco stared back. His dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and even a few attempts to cough and work it loose with saliva had no effect. Potter’s eyes might have been pins holding Draco still; the aching air around him might have been metal that would convey an electric charge straight to his groin. That was what it felt like, the burn through him.

            Then Potter visibly shuddered, shook himself loose of whatever fascination had held him, and looked at the floor. He cleared his throat. “So, um, that’s it, then?” he asked, with a horrid attempt at nonchalance. “I reckon that it doesn’t often get cast without an opponent interrupting you.”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. He knew that Potter was reaching for the clumsiest complaint he could to deliberately break the mood, but that didn’t mean Draco gave up the right to be annoyed with it. “If they don’t know what it is, or if you’re attacking in company with allies, they don’t get to interrupt it,” he said coolly. “And once you say the spell the first time, with your target in mind, you have a fix on them. They can’t attack back or prevent it from happening. But you do have to be careful that no one else interrupts you.”

            “What happens if they do?” Potter asked.

            Draco flinched and wrapped his arms around himself. Of course he’d never seen anyone destroyed from miscasting the Strangler, since only his family knew it, but he had read accounts of it happening, and that was more than enough. “You felt the magic I was carrying around with me,” he said quietly. “What do you think?”

            Potter nodded as if that was answer enough for him, and it might be. He faced the construct of the Minister and cast a spell at her without being told to, either, which made Draco—grudgingly—have to revise his estimate of Potter’s intelligence up.

            That didn’t mean it had far to go, of course.

            “Stupefy!” Potter yelled, and the Stunner rushed out of his wand and slammed into the Minister. The illusion that Draco had created wasn’t realistic enough to fall over to the ground in front of the Stunner, but that wasn’t the point. The Strangler was still in effect, and the red beam faded a few inches from the construct’s hand, without touching her.

            Potter hissed beneath his breath and paced in a circle, examining the construct intently. Draco sagged back against the table and smiled at him.

            “But it seems that it would take away your enemy’s magic only to give them a stronger power,” Potter said. “If you can’t use magic on them—”

            “The caster of the Strangler still can,” Draco said. “Besides, you didn’t try indirect magic. The dead zone only extends around their bodies.” He aimed his wand at the floor and said, “Frango!”

            The floor shivered and cracked, a wide split opening at the construct’s feet. Potter watched closely, and Draco had the impression that he was calculating distances of how near the spell could come to the dead zone the Strangler created before it was neutralized. Draco was impressed despite himself. He hadn’t known that Potter would ever realize such mental operations existed.

            “I see,” Potter murmured. “I’d like to know how it feels from the inside, though. Would you cast it on me?” He tossed his wand to Draco, which, despite the way Draco was feeling—as though he had been hit by a Stunner—he caught instead of dropping.

            “But then you’d have to trust me to take it off again,” Draco said.

            “Exactly,” Potter said, and stood there looking at him as if this was utterly reasonable.

            Draco bit the inside of his cheek and told himself to stop being stupid. If Potter wanted to put himself at Draco’s mercy, then he could, and Draco might have the chance to learn something new about his magic. Why was he hesitating so much?

            Because it could be a chance for Potter’s fellow revolutionaries to blame him. And because he didn’t understand why this was happening, and that bothered him. And because Potter wasn’t—well, Draco had come into the revolution and played hard to get over the last few days with the understanding that Potter had one kind of personality. It would throw off too many of his calculations if he turned out to be wrong.

            There were other reasons, deeper than all these, but those were the only ones Draco was going to admit to his conscious mind. He gritted his teeth and raised his wand.

            “You can reverse it?” Potter said just then, with a lack of concern that was astounding to Draco.

            “Yes, of course,” Draco said sharply, and then his emotions escaped his control for a moment and flooded his voice. “You stupid bastard, why would you trust me near you with a wand at all? Do you know what your friends would say?”

            “Yes,” Potter said. “You’re here. They’re not. And if you can’t reverse it, then you’ll have problems that cost you a lot more in concern and worrying about revenge than the pleasure cursing me would provide. That wouldn’t lead to them helping you in any way at all, much less helping you to free your parents. I’ll take the chance.”

            Draco shook his head, but it wasn’t in refusal. Yes, Potter had thrown off his calculations again, but now that Draco thought of it, it was consistent with the way that Potter had spoken to the crowd about turning Fortuna’s Wheel and the way he had used the fire on the Inferi. He must be going mad after all.

            Or—something else.

            Draco cast the Strangler before he could think about what else it might be.

*

            Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t know what the Strangler would feel like from the inside, but he expected it would be uncomfortable. The illusion of Minister Clearwater couldn’t show the pain at all, of course.

            And yet, it felt like nothing in the end except for a wave of cold water breaking over him, which was unpleasant enough in and of itself, but no worse than the Disillusionment Charm. Harry blinked and opened his eyes.

            Then he discovered the difference.

            His magic had hummed comfortingly beneath his heart while he was speaking with Malfoy, while he was killing the Inferi, while he was studying Fortuna’s Wheel, when he burned Minister Duplais, and every other moment of significance he could remember in the past seven years. It was gone, now. He listened for the song and heard dead silence. He thought it would have been better if he’d suddenly been stricken deaf.

            He licked his lips and did his best to face Malfoy without flinching. Malfoy held his wand, but that didn’t matter, Harry told himself, because he was also the only one in the room at the moment who had magic. Harry knew that his wand would have been a useless piece of wood if he’d held it.

            “Potter?” Malfoy was watching him closely.

            That made Harry’s spine stiffen. He couldn’t panic in front of Malfoy. He would either never hear the end of it or Malfoy would give him that kind of careful respect that you showed someone whom you had seen break down once.

            Harry nodded. “It’s interesting,” he said. “And yes, I see why it would be a useful spell. Do you think there’s a chance of the Ministry picking up on it if they hear you cast it in battle?”

            “It would be most useful if we cast it from a distance,” Malfoy said. “And the number of other people I would be willing to show it to are limited.”

            Harry relaxed. “That would also lessen the chance of someone else interfering when we were casting the spell, I reckon,” he muttered.

            Malfoy nodded. “Do you want me to remove the spell?” He looked ashen, Harry noticed, and then realized it probably came from casting that powerful spell twice in succession.

            “Of course,” Harry said. “But only if you can.”

            “Breaking it is much less effort than casting it,” Malfoy said, and murmured something soft as he waved his wand in a curving pattern like the path of a pendulum. Harry watched it carefully, and nodded when he thought he had it.

            “Thank you,” he said, as magic charged through his veins and the song burst into life again beneath the song of his heart.

            Malfoy nodded, tossed his wand back to him, hesitated, and then added, “Why did you trust me to cast it on you?”

            “It’s for your benefit as well as anyone else’s that you not leave it on me permanently,” Harry said, fingering the wand and thinking how wonderful it was to both have it and be able to use it. “And I would have trusted Ron and Catchers and lots of other people to cast it on me.”

            Malfoy turned and left abruptly. Harry stared after him. He wondered for a moment whether Malfoy was insulted to be compared to people like Ron.

            Only later did he wonder how rare casual confessions of trust had been for Malfoy.

*

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Intoxicate the Sun