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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 Fifteen—Before the Hunting Horn

            Draco had told Potter the truth. These dogs could only be controlled by a Dark artifact that it was rumored the Ministry possessed. And Draco knew a Dark spell that he thought could get rid of them.

            But that was as far as the truth went. He had never performed the spell before, and he had read about the artifact only once or twice as he browsed through his family’s books in search of something else. He had remembered the fact mostly because Fudge had been going through one of his phases of proclaiming that the Ministry destroyed all Dark artifacts that it confiscated, rather than handing them over to the Department of Mysteries as rumors persisted in saying. And even then, Draco had simply sneered and passed on.

            But then he had seen Potter sag in his arms, his cheeks paling and his eyes so wide and glazed that Draco knew he was seeing the artifact really work. That was death. Potter had died. And at the very least, if he didn’t die from the hounds’ repeated attacks on his mind and body—which Draco thought he very well might, since those attacks included stopping his heart at least some of the time—then he would go mad.

            Draco’s plans could stretch to include a mad Potter, but he preferred the one he had been working with so far, who at least seemed in control of the more peculiar manifestations of his lunacy and aware of what other people might think of them. Trying to work with Weasley to free his parents would be impossible.

            Draco knelt down in front of Potter and rested his wand on the man’s collarbone. Potter stared back at him, his lips set as if he resented the necessity for asking for Draco’s help. Draco relaxed at the familiar sight.

            “Incendio animam,” he said.

            Potter’s eyes widened, probably because he recognized the first word of that spell, but Draco had already clamped a hand on his shoulder, holding him before he could move. And the fire that grew from his wand a moment later looked exactly like the books said it should, pale, curling silvery fire that walked on slender feet up and down Draco’s wand.

            “What does the incantation mean?” Potter whispered, in a papery voice. He winced suddenly and clutched at his head. Probably hearing the bays of the hound draw closer and closer, Draco thought grimly. Well, he could only work so fast.

            “I burn the soul,” Draco said, and clamped his hand down again as a shiver flooded through Potter’s muscles. “We’re not nearly done.”

            Potter went still and frowned at him. “You were saying something like that in my dream the other night,” he muttered, distracted. “I can’t remember the context of the dream, but I remember the words.”

            Draco shook his head, deciding that the pain and the fear flooding through Potter’s veins had probably made him delirious, and repeated the incantation. This time, the coil of silver fire assumed a definite shape. A long muzzle poked at Draco out of the flames, and bright eyes watched him for a moment before they dissolved.

            Again Draco said the spell, and this time the creature formed fully, sitting on the end of the wand and twitching its tail as it regarded him.

            It was a fox, but a fantasy dream of a fox, the eyes large and exaggerated, the paws large and soft as a rabbit’s, the ears poking up at an absurd angle. Draco would have liked to reach out and caress the thick pelt. He restrained himself, because he was pouring enough will into the spell already without the distraction.

            “You know what you came for,” he said, “what you were made for. There are hounds to run from.”

            The fox twitched and then leaned around him to stare at an empty patch of corridor behind him, the same one Potter kept focusing on. Draco was willing to wager that the hounds conjured by the spell were right there, although he couldn’t see them. Well, he would use the fox to keep track of them; Potter looked too out of it right now to keep track of anything.

            “Don’t you want to lead them a dance?” he whispered. The book had talked about the importance of persuasion. “Don’t you want to lead them a chase? Don’t you want to show them what real prey is?”

            The fox trembled with sudden eagerness, then paused and looked at him again. Draco tilted his head down until his nose was an inch from the thing’s fine whiskers.

            “You could escape them,” he whispered. “That they would catch you isn’t inevitable. There are a lot of them, but your paws are fleet, and your tail is all they would ever see. You can keep them from biting your tail off, couldn’t you? Because you’re a swift fox. The swiftest fox the world has ever seen.”

            The creature danced back and forth, tail whisking around it, its muzzle rising and falling as it apparently yipped. Draco couldn’t hear the yips, if that was the case. Draco turned around so that the fox could see Potter.

            “That’s what they hunt right now,” he told the fox, “through his mind. A pitiful specimen, I’m sure you’ll agree. He can’t even run.”

            The fox held up its head and sniffed agreement. Potter just stared at them both for long moments, until his eyes closed in a spasm of pain and he brought his hands up to grip his head.

            “So much better,” Draco said, coaxing and seductive by turns. He would have felt ridiculous talking this way to a fox conjured of magical fire if he let himself, but he had done a lot worse with many other spells. “You could show them so much better. You could be so much better. You’re the most beautiful fox ever born. You’re the fastest. You’re the cleverest. You’ll be licking sweat from your whiskers while they’re still trotting up and down, belling and trying to find your trail.”

            The fox wavered, body squirming for a moment as though it was going to spring past him and rush into Potter’s mind all on its own. Then it turned and gave him one more doubtful look. Draco cooed at it, and hoped that Potter wasn’t awake enough to hear him and think that he was a ponce or a pushover.

            The fox seemed to dip its head in a final nod, although Draco was probably imagining that, and then sprang. For a long moment, its diminishing, fading body was stretched out before him, like an image stretched out in a painting. Draco watched and wondered if that was what the hounds looked like to Potter as they came hammering home to his brain.

            Potter gasped, his eyes fluttering open wide. Draco leaned closer to him, as much to keep someone else from coming down the corridor, seeing him like that, and blaming Draco as to support him, and waited.

*

            Harry couldn’t believe his mental eyes. One moment, he’d heard nothing but the bays, seen nothing but darkness behind his eyes, because every defensive image he tried to conjure up out of long-ago memories of Occlumency lessons dissolved the next time the hound cried—

            And now he could see forest glades. They were bright and green, so many of them appearing to him that he wasn’t sure whether they were all separate images or just the same place seen from different angles, and through each of them a stream ran, singing. It was a bright day, with sun reaching everywhere under the trees. They were high and thick, grass barely able to grow beneath the branches, but Harry could still see.

            In the middle of one clearing appeared the silver fox that he had last seen balanced on Malfoy’s wand, its whiskers quivering so hard that Harry wondered if it was frightened. But it didn’t run. Instead, it stood there, its tail moving, and then glanced over its shoulder with a motion that reminded Harry of Ginny when she flirted.

            The hound appeared, hurtling through the clearing. It had started to bay, but when it saw the fox, it cut the sound off in mid-cry and stared, its tongue spilling over its teeth.

            The fox lifted one delicate foot, turned around slowly, and proceeded to walk into the trees, brush swinging high behind it. The hound watched it go, glimmering eyes stretched so wide that Harry wondered if it was afraid, if it would take the bait that he suddenly knew the fox was.

            Then the hound opened its jaws wider than Harry had yet seen them open for him and hurled a yell into the open air. It bounded forwards, and behind it, flooding the forest with purple shadow, hurtling along with it as it shone, came the other hounds. Dog after dog after dog, an immense hunting pack, fanning out so that the trees were full of them and there was never a moment when one of them wasn’t springing over the stream.

            Harry stared. He thought that was all the hounds he had seen when he looked at them in his room, though of course he couldn’t be sure. And they continued to come, piling into his brain. They were baying, but the baying no longer hurt him. Instead, it was all focused on the fox, which coursed ahead of them with the same shy and flirtatious manner. It was running faster than Harry knew he could ever have gone.

            That was what Malfoy had done. He had created something that the hounds wanted to pursue more than they wanted to pursue Harry. Harry didn’t know why—maybe it was because they were dogs and it was a fox and that would always be more tempting than human prey—but he didn’t care. He was free.

            He opened his eyes. Malfoy was watching him, still leaning absurdly close, one elbow on Harry’s left shoulder, his wand right under his collarbone.

            Harry nodded. It took him a moment to find the saliva or the will to speak, but he managed it quickly, he thought, considering what had happened to him. “Thanks. They’re chasing the fox now.” He paused as he watched Malfoy close his eyes and nod, then gave in to his curiosity. “Why did you call that a Dark spell?”

            Malfoy opened his eyes and studied him again. “I had to persuade the fox into your mind. The spell creates prey clever enough to trick the hounds for a little while, and tempting enough to compel them to chase it. The problem is, that means it’s also intelligent enough not to just obey orders, but to have to be persuaded.”

            “For a little while?” Harry repeated.

            “They’re going to tear it apart,” Malfoy said. “What I said to it was flattery, not the truth. The Dark part comes from creating an animal that lives, in a way, and then sending it to die in your place. Its death will be for real. You won’t feel it,” he added quickly, perhaps because Harry’s expression had changed. “You don’t have to see the rest of the hunt, if you don’t want to. Keep your eyes on other things, think about other things, and it shouldn’t come back to haunt you. The connection between you and the fox was broken soon after it took your place in the hunt.”

            Harry shook his head. “I know it’s only a piece of magic,” he said, when he saw Malfoy looking narrow-eyed at him, and guessed the next words would be something about not being stupid. “But—I’m conducting this war on the principle that I can make the sacrifices and learn the necessary knowledge alone, and even use things like Fortuna’s Wheel and the Strangler by myself if no one else wants to use them. To have someone else die in my place feels—wrong.”

            Malfoy leaned nearer still. “What?” he whispered.

            Harry stared back. He didn’t understand the mood that had come over Malfoy, which meant he instinctively distrusted it. “I think you heard me,” he said.

            “I did.” Malfoy sat back on his heels and examined Harry with a frankness that was disturbing. “I simply thought I hadn’t, because what you are thinking is so phenomenally stupid. You really believe that the rebellion can afford to lose its symbol, and the one who will draw more new people than anyone else can. The cornerstone of our story. The rebellious hero who creates a legend for us, by standing up to the Ministry and showing people that it can be done.”

            Harry shook his head, not sure whether he was more surprised by what Malfoy was saying or by hearing him call the rebellion his own. “I was only needed to do that at first. Now people are coming in because they can see that what we have, works. I’m not really the leader anymore. Ron is. I’m the engine.”

            “The engine,” Malfoy repeated, looking so blank that Harry blinked. Then he remembered that Malfoy hadn’t been reared around Muggles, and probably wouldn’t understand the metaphor exactly the way Harry meant it.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “The driver. The thing that keeps the revolution spinning with new ideas. But someone else can take that over if it kills me. I think even you could, but George, certainly.” Malfoy’s eyes were wide and locked on Harry, and he didn’t look inclined to say anything right now, so Harry continued. “If I have certain ideas right, ones that I need to find more information on, then I can do something for the rebellion that no one else can, but I know that something else might kill me before then. I just don’t want it killing anyone who didn't choose to take the risk.”

            Malfoy bent forwards, his head in his hands. Then he said, “You’re actively suicidal, then. You have a death wish.”

            Harry sighed. Hermione had said the same thing the last time she wrote to him, but he didn’t understand why. It made sense to him that he should run the most risks, because he was the one best-equipped to resist them. He had stronger magic than anyone else. True, he didn’t think that even his magic would have resisted the assault of the hounds like Malfoy’s spell could, but he had a better shot than most other people. And he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t want to preserve his life so badly that he would flinch from what had to be done.

            “No,” he said. “It’s just that preventing the Ministry from condemning innocent people to death is important.”

            “And your survival isn’t?” Malfoy stared at him from beneath his fringe.

            “Not as important as some other things.” Harry leaned forwards with a gentle hand on Malfoy’s arm, wondering why the man who had saved his life tonight needed reassurance at the moment. “Letting our people survive, for one thing. They willingly came to follow me. You willingly came to follow me. I want to show that I care about them, about you, that I take the responsibility for their lives on my shoulders. Not asking them to face danger if I can face it is part of that.”

            Malfoy sat still for some moments, his head still bowed, one of his hands keeping his wand pointed somewhere in the vicinity of Harry’s sternum. Harry waited. He had the feeling that Malfoy was going to say something, and it would be important. At the moment, an acknowledgment that he had understood would be enough for Harry.

            So few people did.

*



            Harry Potter was worse than mad, worse than the Gryffindor hero that Draco had been picturing him as when he thought about the way Potter acted in the last few weeks.

            Harry Potter was an idiot.

            He honestly thought that he could keep people from danger by putting himself out in front of them as a huge target, as if the only danger would come from the old books that he was investigating, from the ancient ideas that he was stirring and bringing into new life. As a matter of fact, it was hard for Draco to think of how those ideas would endanger Potter, unless his control over Fortuna’s Wheel slipped when he was turning it or Draco’s father found out that he now knew the Strangler.

            But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Potter would be able to control the danger from that direction as long as he didn’t mention what he was doing to anyone else, or if he waited until he had thoroughly tested the old magical ideas.

            The Ministry was a different matter entirely, as their little stunt with the Shadow Hunt should have proven to Potter.

            But no, instead he leaned towards Draco and tried to explain things in this breathy, kind voice, as though the only thing that mattered was how much Draco understood.

            It made Draco sick, to know that the man he was depending on to free his parents had such a shallow conception of the world. The Dark Lord had been insane, yes, but at least he understood power dynamics and the need to maintain himself as supreme and destroy threats rather than just stand in the way like a human shield. For the first time, Draco thought he could understand why his father would have wanted to serve such a man. It was better than some of the alternatives.

            “You can’t keep us all from harm,” Draco said at last, when he thought enough moments had passed to impress the truth on Potter. “It won’t matter how much you struggle. Someone’s still going to die.”

            Potter sighed, and the hold of his hand on Draco’s arm tightened. “I know that. But at least I can try.”

            Draco sat back, exasperated enough to speak the next words before he fully considered them. “But you can’t, because the trying will fail. And is that what you want to do for the rest of your life, try uselessly to protect people from threats that are going to stalk them anyway?”

            Potter blinked as though he had never anticipated that objection, though with some of his friends, Draco was sure it would have come up eventually. “But it’s not useless. I can defend plenty of people from the Ministry, plenty of people from the ideas that I might come up with, and—well, all the other things that you’re thinking of,” he finished a little lamely, as he finally seemed to have realized that Draco hadn’t mentioned the threats he was thinking of by name. “I defended plenty of people from Voldemort during the war.”

            Draco controlled the flinch that still sometimes wanted to work its way through his body—being near Potter brought up more memories of the Dark Lord than even being in Malfoy Manor did—and shook his head. “That was a special ability, a one-time thing. I don’t think you could do it again, could you?”

            Potter cocked his head, and his eyes narrowed. “Maybe.” His face started to get that glazed look Draco recognized by now. He was thinking of the ways that he could research the idea and then put it into operation.

            Draco snapped his fingers in front of the unfocused green eyes. Potter blinked, then frowned at him with a resentful expression. Draco tried to ignore the second shiver that moved through him. He had always known what color Potter’s eyes were, and he had seen them filled with resentment more often than any other emotion. There was no reason it should affect him like that.

            “Listen,” Draco said. “Right now, we need to think about ways to keep people safe, not duplicate one piece of good luck.”

            “But that’s what I was thinking about,” Potter replied, lifting his chin. “And I don’t see what it matters if I run risks, as long as I decide of my own free will to run them, and bear their price myself.”

            Draco exhaled hard. He didn’t think that some of the words he wanted to say would make much impact on Potter, so he sought for a different way to convince him. “What do you think your friends would say to this?”

            Potter hesitated only a moment, but that was enough for Draco to notice. “They’d understand. Ron’s the same way himself.”

            “You’ve said that he can lead,” Draco murmured, leaning closer. That hesitation was the crack in Potter’s armor, the chink Draco could lean on and open wider, so that Potter would think about ways to come up with ideas and further the rebellion rather than ways to die. “But how can he do that when he has to worry about you blowing up or otherwise self-destructing? Let him be the leader and the trainer. I have no quarrels with that.” Well, of course he did, because he didn’t see how Potter could possibly forego the honor that would have resulted, but then again, he had always known that he would use the gift of fame and power differently—much more rationally—than Potter ever had. “But you need to give him someone to lean on. Don’t give him another concern to worry over.”

            Potter bowed his head and toyed with his fingers. Draco knew his words had struck home, but that there would probably be other complaints. He waited, keeping his hands in place, on Potter’s shoulder and not far from his breastbone. Potter shuddered with his breath, his warmth pumping through his veins. Draco had to admit that Potter was more alive and vital than most other people he’d known.

            Especially my parents, at the moment.

            The thought was a lucky one. It let Draco recoil and lift the barrier between them, higher than it had been before. He’d been stupid to let it fall that far.

            “But this is the only role I can have,” Potter whispered. “If I don’t fulfill it, then I lose the respect of the revolution anyway.”

            Draco nearly smiled. So Potter was human in some ways, not a blind hero, and he did want other people’s respect and attention.

            I could help him with that.

            Draco reminded himself of his parents and responded calmly. “If you act more rationally and explain the theories behind your ideas, instead of simply testing them on yourself and then asserting that they work, I think you’ll find a new level of respect and cooperation from your followers.”

            Potter opened his mouth, then shut it. “It feels like cheating, somehow,” he murmured. “As if I’m backing out on my promise of running the risks.”

            Time to squash that. Draco leaned in. “Right now, everyone thinks you’re mad,” he said quietly. “Because you appear to have a death wish, because you control everything, because you would be perfectly willing to die and you don’t seem to care about what that would do to the people you leave behind. Change the way you act, and it’ll convince them otherwise. It won’t make them think that you’re cheating. What a stupid concept,” he had to add, because he was still himself.

            For a long, tense moment, their eyes held. Then Potter began to smile. Draco had to look away from the warmth behind it.

            “Thank you,” Potter said.

            Draco narrowed his eyes at him. “For what?”

            “For saving my life, of course,” Potter said, but he’d let a silent beat pass, and his eyes were brighter than they had been.

            Draco inclined his head. He didn’t say you’re welcome, because this ought to have been something Potter could figure out for himself. But he gave Potter that nod, and hoped that things might grow out of it.

            Like my parents’ freedom.

            Remember what you’re here for, Draco.



*

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Intoxicate the Sun