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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 Seventeen—Before the Crowd

            Harry watched the crowd file into the converted amphitheater. He watched their eyes and their faces, as he hadn’t done much of in the last little while. Before, when he explained his ideas, like Fortuna’s Wheel, he had only wanted to get across the words that piled up behind his lips before he forgot something or his brain jumped to another idea. It had been like being drunk, he thought. Not very different from the fire flowing through him the night he burned the Inferi.

            But he couldn’t do that anymore. It made people think he was mental, and they were less likely to listen to him then. Harry might be used to the mad ideas that saved the world—most people wouldn’t have thought that his standing in front of the Killing Curse without defending himself would work—but they weren’t.

            They were his fighters. They were the backbone of the revolution. They were the ones who had believed in the same ideals that he did, or else trusted him enough, to follow him away from the Ministry and into this war.

            It might not be his war, but it could still be deadly.

            Harry had to treat them better than he’d been doing.

            Catchers didn’t walk past with the others, but stepped up to him and stared at him levelly from a short distance away. Harry raised his eyebrows and waited. Catchers would only do that if he had something important to say.

            “You cursed me during your escape from the Ministry,” Catchers said. “And I still came to you.”

            “I know.” Harry looked back at him, unabashed. It had still been Catchers’ choice to come to him, and Harry had put aside the guilt that he’d felt at first about hitting Catchers with that spell.

            “I put everything on the line,” Catchers said. “My pride, my honor, my family. The Ministry might have left them alone so far, but there’s no law that says that’ll be the case forever. And I’ve convinced a few people to join up through persuading them, too. If something happens to them, I’ll feel responsible.”

            Harry nodded. He was intimately familiar with all those feelings, although he didn’t have a blood family for the Ministry to attack. But they could go after the Weasleys, and only the messages that Ron and George passed to Hermione, who gave them to the rest of the family, had reassured them that Harry really did have a plan so far.

            “Show me that it’s worth it,” Catchers said, with a slight nod, as though Harry had already given him what he wanted, and then faded back into the crowd. Other members of his training group crowded around him, giving Harry bright, suspicious looks. Harry winced. He hadn’t realized how bad that had got.

            But he could and would make up for it. It was the least he could do, when he had caused the situation in the first place. He moved forwards, light on his feet, and took his place in front of the crowd.

            Draco was behind him. He looked as though he would rather have hidden, and Harry gave him a considering look, wondering if Draco had really given him permission to tell other people that he had saved Harry. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Harry had coerced it out of him.

            Draco saw him looking. In an instant, the shutter that he kept closed almost all the time went across his face, and he straightened his shoulders and met Harry eye to eye, as though he assumed he would be slaughtered if he didn’t.

            “That’s very important to you,” Harry murmured, without thinking.

            “What is?” Draco gave him the same kind of abrupt look that Harry had seen from Catchers, or rather the other side of the abrupt look. This one said that he didn’t want Harry to make his “desertion” up to him and would rather that Harry not try.

            “Not to show emotion of any kind,” Harry said. “Not to show a handle that someone could catch hold of.” He reached out and put a hand on Draco’s shoulder. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t do it.”

            Draco drew into himself as if into a shell, and shook his head. “Even if you could guarantee such a thing, Potter,” he said flatly, “you couldn’t keep your little pets from doing it. And Weasley will do anything he can to stop me if he thinks that we’re getting close.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Ron’s not that dense. He’ll understand once I explain the situation.”

            “His hatred of me isn’t rational,” Draco said. “It’s traditional. You think that you can stand in front of us and demand that Weasleys and Malfoys cease a feud that’s occupied us for generations, on your say-so?’



“If you both want to be close to me,” Harry said, “yes.”

Draco stared at him, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, unblinking. Harry looked back and felt a soft thrumming just under his ribs. It was Draco’s heartbeat, he knew, his magic giving him a magical equivalent of it. It had done that a few minutes ago, when it had told him that Draco wasn’t asleep behind his bedroom door as he’d pretended to be.

“You’re dangerous,” Draco said, breathless, as if he honestly hadn’t expected that.

Harry grinned savagely at him. “You shouldn’t sound so surprised. You saw me destroy the Inferi.” And he turned away and walked across the platform to hold up his hands for quiet.

*

            No, Draco hadn’t expected that.

            He had known that Potter was still running the manic edge that he’d seen when the bastard destroyed the Inferi. But he had thought he understood that, and how it operated. Concern for individuals wasn’t part of Potter’s plan. He would work towards the greater good, which meant the revolution as a whole. Even though he would implement the raid on Azkaban, Draco fully expected to be responsible for his parents’ safety. Who would help him? Weasley would remember what Draco’s father had done to his little sister, if Potter didn’t, and Draco would have to be clever and strong and quick simply to save his parents in the initial raid, never mind keeping other people away from them afterwards.

            But Potter looked at him and demanded his allegiance, and knew things about him that he shouldn’t know, and diagnosed him, and left him reeling.

            And when Draco looked at him with his head on one side and his eyes squinted slightly, rendering his observation of Potter less than direct, he could see tiny flickers of flame opening around him, like eager mouths.

            Potter was using magic, somehow, as he stood there. Draco didn’t know how, because he had never seen anything like it. Of course, he had never seen anything like the flames that burned the Inferi, either, but that at least fit more into magic as he understood it; it was simply an extreme version of some common spells.

            He knew of no spell that would stir up barely-there flame, or allow one’s magic to give one information like a messenger.

            He could still have cast a spell to tell whether I was asleep or not, and be phrasing that in an odd way, Draco told himself. He moved forwards to stand behind Potter, watching as the attention of everyone in the hall turned irresistibly to him. A few people who had been shifting and muttering to themselves, hostile, fell silent and rapt in an instant.

            The fire around Potter arched up and out, to assume a position as a near-imaginary cape of flame hovering just beneath the roof.

            Draco swallowed with a dry mouth. For a moment, he wondered if Potter knew he was doing that, and then remembered Potter’s references to studying his wild magic through books and learning to control it. Yes, he did, although he might not be able to answer questions about the way it worked any more than anyone else could.

            Wonder touched Draco, and something bright and silvery that snaked through him and hooked his attention as thoroughly as Potter’s magic hooked that of everyone else. For the first time, he thought, This man could get my parents out of Azkaban, and what is more, he will.

            Then Potter began to speak, and the future surged up to meet them like a rising wave.

*

            “I know I haven’t been the leader that you deserve.” Harry started out with the truth, because any attempt to cushion it would only make it look as though he was trying to spare himself. “I know that I’ve been hiding in my rooms and letting you take the risks. I thought I would stand between you and the fighting, but that’s ridiculous. Many of you are far better fighters than I am right now, because you’ve trained more.”

            Cautious eyes watched him. Ron stood to one side and judged the mood of the crowd with frowns and short jerks of his head. Harry didn’t know how everyone was feeling, because Ron could take their temperature better, but he knew Ron would warn him if things got dangerous. That was all he could ask for. He waited until the small muttering clots of people broke apart and attention returned to him.

            “And the consequences of my decisions fell on me pretty quickly. The Ministry took my self-worship seriously and used an artifact that sent hounds after me. Shadow hounds,” he added, because he could see people’s mouths opening to ask if someone had tracked him to the manor and put the rest of them in danger. “Hounds that run through the mind, track you down, and make you feel as if you’re dying. I died a few times. It wasn’t pleasant.”

            Dry chuckles rose up, and Harry smiled. This was easier than he’d thought it would be. He had to admit wrongdoing, sure, but as Ron knew better than anyone else here, that was hardly unusual for him. What was unusual was that he had a means of atonement at hand, rather than having to flail about for a bit before he found something that would work.

            “Draco Malfoy saved my life.”

            The crowd went right back into their communal silent stare. Draco flinched as though he expected Harry would pull him forwards by one arm and make him face those eyes. But Harry only stepped to one side and waited, allowing Draco the room to step up if he wanted.

            After a few moments that felt as though Harry’s heartbeat was ticking them away like a metronome, Draco did. He moved with his hands clenched low at his sides, his nostrils flared and his mouth working as though he expected to have to make excuses. But he did it, and even managed a more relaxed posture than Harry thought he could have if he was facing a crowd of Draco’s friends and allies.

            “He cast a spell that turned back the force of the artifact,” Harry continued softly. “He explained what was happening to me so that I didn’t panic and make the situation worse. And he also told me some hard home truths about the way I was behaving and the effect it was having on the revolution, on you, on all of you who are putting your lives at risk to fight the Ministry.” He turned and smiled at Ron. “Then Auror Weasley here completed the transformation. He can be eloquent when he wants to be, and on the subject of my mistakes, he often is.”

            Ron looked as though he didn’t know whether to be more surprised, pleased, or upset that he had to share Harry’s praise with Malfoy. He stared at Harry and opened his mouth in a silent plea. Harry shrugged back and turned to the watching fighters again. Some of them were muttering to themselves now, and didn’t stop when he talked. Well, that was fine. The ones who really wanted to could still hear.

            “I know that I’m not as essential as I was,” he told them. “That was what I’d planned from the beginning. I thought I’d fade out and leave someone else to lead. I had other things to concentrate on, and I thought it would be all the better if people didn’t join the revolution just for the chance to follow the famous Harry Potter.

            “But I know now that it doesn’t work that way. I started this, or did something that started the fire burning, and that means I’m in it. And I’ve decided on the first thing I need to do, if what I want is to stop the Ministry from trying innocents and letting the guilty walk free. I’m going after Azkaban.”

            A sigh rippled through the room, followed by shouts. Catchers managed to get his voice to sound over everyone else’s, at least to the platform where Harry stood. “What prisoners are you going to let go free? There are a lot of them there.”

            Here was the moment Harry would have dreaded if he had let himself dread anything about this. But because he was atoning, he could bury his fear in the greater purpose and move onwards.

            “All of them,” he said.

            This time, the shouts were incoherent for the most part. With rage, Harry thought. Ron was staring at him with a dropped jaw. Draco was quiet beside him, his arms folded as if he was cold when Harry looked at him.

            “You can’t!” Catchers had made himself audible again. “There are people like Death Eaters who really deserve to be there.”

            “That’s debatable,” Harry said, and made himself not look at Draco. “Yes, they took the Dementors away from Azkaban after the war. Do you know what they decided to do instead? They leave the prisoners alone except at meals or if they’re sick. They don’t talk to them. Tell me that you could endure that without going mad.”

            “They deserve it,” Catchers repeated.

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t think that I can say. Especially in the last few years, when so many of the people the Wizengamot sent to Azkaban were of the wrong blood rather than the people who did the wrong things. I want to get them free, bring them back here, and decide which category they fit into: people who need to be caged, people who need to be set free, and people who need to be helped because of the punishments inflicted on them there.”

            “We don’t have enough space for that,” said Wheelwright, the woman who had gone along with Harry, Catchers, and Ron to Hogwarts, her eyes wide. She seemed to be looking at a vision of the future and not liking what she saw.

            “There are several wings in the mansion that I haven’t put anyone in,” Harry said coolly. “Except for their doors—which have wards and locks on them—I haven’t modified them on purpose. They’ll hold the prisoners.”

            “Why can’t we decide when we get there who we should take?” Ron asked from the side.

            Harry gave him a hard smile and turned to George, who had arrived at the beginning of the meeting but lounged against the wall. “Because the method we’ll be using to free them doesn’t admit of that much discrimination,” he said. “George?”

*

            Knew he would call on us when he needed moral support, Fred said with a chuckle in the back of his mind.

            What do you mean, “moral?” George responded, and strode down the aisle. The wheel was safely in his hands, and he could feel eyes focusing on it, including Malfoy’s. Well, they could look if they liked. No one could use the wheel but Harry.

            Harry smiled at him as he sprang up on the stage. George smiled back and touched the small device in his pocket, the one that should keep Harry sane, wondering if he should present it in front of everyone. Better not, he decided. These people had enough doubts about Harry’s sanity as it was.

            “You’re right,” he told Harry, concentrating on him for a moment as if they were the only two people in the room, because that would make everyone else lean nearer and wonder what they were talking about. “The method we use will call powerful allies, but those allies—and their magic—aren’t going to leave the prison standing.” He produced the wheel and cradled it so that the crowd would see a flash of light from the metals and jewels that made it up and nothing else. “We have to move the prisoners out before Azkaban can fall.”



            “That’s what you say,” said the young man who’d been speaking before. George thought his name was Catchers; Fred found him annoying. “But how do we know that’s the truth? Why can’t you simply tell us how you’re going to make the raid, and let us decide for ourselves whether it’s too dangerous to leave the prisoners inside?”

            George turned around and prepared his best withering look. Of course, it had twice the force that anyone else’s would have, since Fred was doing the same thing behind his eyes. The man blinked and took a step away, uncertain.

            “Because then someone who knew about the method could run straight to the Ministry,” George said. He didn’t say you idiot, but he’d always been good at implying it. The man flushed and turned to glare at Harry.

            “You’re giving spies for the Ministry the information they need, anyway, just by telling them that there’s going to be a raid,” he said.

            “No.” Harry had his arms folded now, his body language less open than it had been when he’d been practically laying himself out as a sacrifice for the crowd to devour. George approved. Harry had made mistakes, but his extreme form of atonement didn’t necessarily make them better. These people wanted to follow a strong leader, not one who wallowed in guilt. “Because with this magic that we’re going to use, it doesn’t matter if they know we’re coming. They won’t be able to resist as long as they don’t know how we’re coming.”

            Uneasy glances flickered around the room like fire. Fred pointed out that, considering the weapon’s use, this was a pun. George snickered.

            Harry held out his palm, down flat, and George willingly handed over the wheel. It was made for Harry, and some of its magic sparked to life only when he was holding it. Harry seemed to feel the same way, from the heavy sigh he uttered a moment later and the greedy way he stared at it.

            “Does anyone else have objections?” Harry asked. “Does anyone else think that we shouldn’t conduct this raid on Azkaban, or that we shouldn’t free all the prisoners?”

            There were lots of objections, of course. But luckily, they weren’t George’s job to handle. He just leaned back and listened to Harry handle them, now and then making a comment when he thought something was sufficiently amusing to warrant it. Harry heard him and had to bite down on his lip more than once. Malfoy heard him and stared. George returned the stare mildly, not sticking out his tongue the way Fred wanted him to, and Malfoy jerked his head away as though someone had caught him trampling on the edge of a wound, his face heating up.

            George grinned. He did enjoy playing with people, especially the ones who were so arrogant that they tended to think they couldn’t be played with.

*

            “Hermione.”

            It was a new thing for the Minister to call her by her first name. Hermione made an effort to sit up and intelligently focus her eyes on Minister Clearwater’s face. “Yes, madam?” she responded, and Clearwater’s face relaxed a little, as though she had expected insolence.

            “I suspect that you are as tired of these meetings as I am.” Clearwater turned away from her and prowled over to the window that dominated the far wall of her office. Once she had accepted that Duplais was dead, Hermione thought, she had settled in and made changes. The window showed a wide plain with golden grass stirring in sunshine before it succumbed to a change to rain. Clearwater seemed to find the sight soothing, but her voice remained distant as she stared at it. “Of course, we must ensure that the public knows the truth about Potter, not the insane lies that so many people are spreading.”

            Hermione bit her lip so that she wouldn’t unleash a curl of laughter, which could all too easily turn hysterical. “Yes, Minister.”

            Clearwater sighed and leaned an elbow on the window. Hermione wondered for a moment if enchanted glass that looked out on nothing real scratched like normal glass. It was something she’d never studied or thought to care about. But someone ought to, she thought, and so surely someone could tell her. “The meetings are the source of many rumors,” Clearwater said. “Only truth should come out of them.”

            Hermione weighed the words in her mind. They didn’t sound like a threat or a question, which meant she had a hard time thinking of a response. She went with the standby she had used once before. “Yes, Minister.”

            “I wish you to take charge of disseminating that truth, Hermione.”

            Bells clanged in Hermione’s head and, she thought for a moment, outside it. She sat bolt upright and licked her lips. “Minister,” she said, “most people would question that decision. They would say that since I am Harry’s former best friend, I shouldn’t be doing anything that might make him look more innocent in the eyes of the public. Are you sure that you want me to do this?”

            Clearwater turned around. Her hand rested on her wand, but that was such a habitual gesture for her by now—she seemed to think Harry would crash through the walls any minute—Hermione didn’t think it was worth noting. “Yes,” she said. “I trust your loyalty to the Ministry. You could have fled by now and joined Mr. Potter the way your husband did, or you could have at least tried to pass information on to him. Just because you don’t approve of his tactics doesn’t mean that you would approve of ours. Instead, from what I can find, you have stayed loyal to us, and used every opportunity to benefit our cause.”

            The bells increased. Hermione didn’t let herself shift or breathe for several long seconds. Then she shook her head.

            “I am honored by your trust,” she said. “But I can’t do this.”

            For some reason, Clearwater smiled, a slight twist to her lips. “So your devotion to the rules and the Ministry does have its limits?”

            “It would undermine what you’re trying to do,” Hermione said, possibilities twisting in her head. She felt on the edge of exhaustion even though she’d only risen from her bed an hour ago. She wanted to convince Clearwater her protests were genuine so that the Minister would brush off the danger and give her the position anyway, but she couldn’t go too far in the protesting. “Which is make people trust the Ministry. You should give the position to someone beyond reproach.”

            Clearwater sighed. “You’re absolutely right. Especially because some people will think that our information on the torture of prisoners is unreliable anyway, since much of it comes from Death Eaters. But no one beyond reproach exists. That means that we must create one.”

            She was good. Her wand twitched before Hermione could see it rising, and a deep, dreamy feeling settled into Hermione’s mind. She could hear the words that Clearwater spoke, and they were at once important and nothing to do with her; she had to obey, but the consequences of her obedience wouldn’t fall on her.

            “Imperio.”

*

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Intoxicate the Sun