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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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Chapter Eighteen—Dance into Fire
            “I suppose you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing?”
            Draco had wondered how long it would take someone to approach him. He turned around and looked at the woman who had finally had the courage to ask. He was near Knockturn Alley, and had been standing and staring into it. But now he did the same thing down Diagon Alley instead of answering her, and Brightness spread its wings and shrieked above his head.
            “What’s going on? What’s happening?” The woman clutched her basket and looked nervously between him and Brightness, then back.
            Draco let a little more silence stretch before he shook his head forgivingly. He actually wasn’t here to scare people so badly that they appealed to him for help. “I was only looking at places that might burn,” he said.
            The witch looked back at the people who had paused in their own shopping, though Draco didn’t know whether all of them had recognized him. A hovering silver phoenix could get a lot of attention. “They might burn? Why? Is there—is there a lightning storm coming?”
            Draco sighed, deeply. “No. It’s worse than that. The Dark Lord of Hogwarts has heard that people here are plotting rebellion against him.”
            The witch closed her eyes and put her hand on her heart, although she wasn’t that old. “Who’s doing it? You couldn’t tell him that there’s no here who would be foolish enough to do anything like that? You have his ear.”
            Which meant she, at least, had recognized him. Draco gave her a kind smile. “I’m talking to him as hard as I can. But in the end, political power doesn’t mean much against magical power, you know.”
            The witch nodded, a bleak look in her eyes that made Draco suspect she had come into conflict with Death Eaters during the war, and knew it as well as anyone. “But who are these people? How did the rumors get started?”
            Draco looked at her searchingly. “You’re sure you haven’t heard anything solid? Names you could give me? They have to be rumors?”
            “No one here would do something like that.” The woman looked around as though she would find supporters crawling out of the walls. But even some of the people who had been watching them were turning away now, as if they thought the Dark Lord of Hogwarts would slaughter them for looking sideways at his pet Minister. “There has to be—someone who’s started spreading the rumors who isn’t us.”
            “But most of the people here right now don’t live in the alleys, do they?” Draco shook his head sadly. “They have homes elsewhere. So I couldn’t trust them as a source of information, anyway.”
            “Has your Lord thought about—”
            “He’s not my Lord,” Draco interrupted quickly, rabid though the denial made him feel. He had sworn his loyalty to Harry on his knees, but only in a glamoured guise. But the game he and Harry were playing was necessary to their peace, so he had to maintain it. “I just have to put up with the role that circumstances forced on me.”
            The woman stared at him for a second, startled out of her concerns. “And he lets you get away with saying things like that?”
            “He thinks it’s amusing. The last bit of freedom I try to have from him.” Draco folded his arms and gave a shiver that would have seemed theatrical to lots of people who were thinking clearly. But the witch wasn’t, and Draco couldn’t much blame her, considering what she was threatened with. “Listen. It would help if you could give me names. At least that way, not everyone would be transformed.”
            “Transformed? What do you mean?” The woman’s voice was distant and hoarse.
            Draco turned his head towards the shimmer of transparent color from down the alley. “It’s too late,” he whispered.
            The flames curled from the windows and doors of the shops. Draco could hear cries. If he could have smiled—which was asking a lot, given the enormous risk of the plan—he would have done it then. They had contacted the owners of those shops and arranged to pay them an enormous sum to be elsewhere. The cries were all part of the illusion.
            So were the realistic forms that staggered, burning and swatting at the strange flames on their clothes, into the alley a minute later. Sometimes they lifted their arms towards the sky, as though beseeching the unseen Dark Lord not to roast them. Sometimes they fell down and lay still, but always twitching, so that the stunned spectators could see that they were still alive. Sometimes they began growing fangs and feathers right there.
            Draco shook his head slowly. He didn’t think most of the people around him were paying any attention to him at the moment, but they had to think in terms of preserving the illusion of Draco’s behavior as well as the ones that Harry was creating, right now. “He warned me how it would be,” he whispered. “I didn’t take him seriously, and now, other people are the ones paying the price.”
            Once again, no one really looked at or listened to him. They flinched back when the first illusory person turned into a bird, though.
            Harry had a fondness for birds, Draco thought, tilting his head back to watch this one fly. Well, it didn’t matter. He didn’t think that most people outside Ende’s faction of the Unspeakables knew about Brightness and the black phoenix being illusions, and Persephone had certainly been solid enough.
            And it gave Harry experience in shaping convincing wings and feathers for his newest illusions, which was all to the good.
            The next one didn’t form a phoenix, but a strange eagle with red legs and eyes and blazing black, red-touched feathers. It hissed and landed on the roof of a shop, legs flaring out as though to make sure that it didn’t spill over the side when it took its perch. It stared around, and gave another hiss.
            When it leaped, a small waterfall of fire flowed down the side of the house in its wake. The stones of the wall busily began to turn red and green and blue.
            “I don’t know what he intends to do.” The witch near Draco had fallen back, and she had her arms crossed and her shoulders hunched as if the best thing she could do would be to make herself small, as if that might encourage Harry’s notice to travel elsewhere. “What does he think this is going to accomplish?”
            “It’ll ease his temper,” said Draco, and watched as a trunk crawled out of the window of another shop. It had grown legs, and the legs curled under it and became the powerful webbed feet of a duck. It had wings, too, a second later, sprouting from the keyhole and the grain of the wood on the sides. It didn’t change any more, but launched itself into the sky after the eagle. “I think that’s the best we can hope for.”
            “But people are dying.”
            “Transforming.” Draco reached up and touched Brightness, what he could feel of the slightly cool feathers and the heavy feet resting on his shoulder. The phoenix gave no sign that anything was wrong, only watching the imaginary transformation of the buildings of the alley, and now and then cocking its head back as though it wanted to see to the arch of the sky. “The Dark Lord probably thinks of it that way. That they’re transforming the way the world changed when he entered it.”
            “You’re just as bad as he is, if you can see it like that,” the woman whispered.
            “How much time do you want me to spend?” Draco asked her, and sighed and stared at his feet. “It’s already been days.”
            She didn’t have time to respond to that. Instead, the roofs of two buildings apparently fell in, smoldering ashes piling on top of them and whirling up in sparks that settled on the buildings nearby. Now everything was growing legs, and wings, and elbows, and feathers, and the fire was making new images of winged serpents and falcons with glowing talons. They swooped and shrieked over Knockturn Alley.
            Draco opened his mouth. Really, the next part of the plan should have started by now. People were hurrying out of Diagon Alley to the Apparition points, or just Apparating right where they stood, and the next part of the plan wouldn’t work at all if they had no audience.
            Then, Harry was there.
            He appeared in front of Draco, his hands extended and his eyes shining with power. Knowing this, too, was an illusion didn’t diminish the shock of his coming for Draco. He found himself leaping backwards, while his heart performed a similar leap, into his mouth. Harry held out a hand and touched the edge of Brightness’s feathers.
            Brightness rose from Draco’s shoulder and hung in the air over Diagon Alley, crooning a relentless, soft song that made at least a few people glance over their shoulders and then come back, although they hesitated as they did it.
            “Listen,” said the illusion of Harry, his voice projected more powerfully than any living voice could stretch. Draco winced, both from the noise and because he knew that Harry had to be nearby to make the illusion that strong. At least he would be concealed in a safe place, not charging into the middle of danger the way he had been when he burned that apothecary in Knockturn Alley.
            The illusion turned around. Not all of its movements were as smooth as they should be; some looked unnaturally smooth, as though the Dark Lord of Hogwarts was spinning on a turntable. Draco took an anxious step forwards. He hoped that it would look to the people in the alley behind him as though he wanted to guard them from Harry’s wrath, but what he most wanted was to prevent too many of them from getting a good look at the way Harry’s feet moved.
            “Listen to me,” said the illusion again, and at least he had the audience this particular announcement needed, if only because those in sight were too stunned or scared to move. “You will not be harmed.”
            Draco heard someone make a noise like air escaping from a balloon, and had to smile. At least there was someone with enough bravery to stand up to Harry. That was—not what he had expected, exactly, but it meant that the spirit of the wizarding world of Britain wasn’t as crushed as Harry had feared it would be. It was a good thing from Harry’s perspective.
            “You will not,” Harry repeated. “This is a test. I wanted to see what would happen. And I can put things back the way they were before.”
            The illusion turned this time to face the burning, writhing buildings of Knockturn Alley, and raised its hands. Draco was glad to see that this motion looked human, at least, with muscles bunching in the shoulders under the robes. Harry must have worked even more than he had with Draco, with mirrors that would surround him and show him from all sides, to get the creases in the cloth exactly right.
            The sparks that had flown up into the air trembled and gleamed and then reversed course. They began to rain down again, gathering themselves into shapes so swiftly that Draco’s eyes lost track of them. He knew that was part of the point, of course. What someone didn’t see through, they would have a hard time thinking was imaginary.
            The birds that had circled above the alley began to dive back down. The winged trunk became a trunk again, and squeezed through the window it had come out of. The largest falcon, its feathers shimmering blue and silver and other colors that were both part of and not part of fire, landed on the highest of the renewed roofs and broke apart into a huge puff of sparks. Tumbling, burning, they fell on the ground and smoldered for a second in the streets. The next second, they were the front steps of one of the buildings again.
            Draco bowed his head. Let other people think it was out of fear of the man in front of him. It was in silent wonder and homage to Harry’s practice with illusions. One could create an illusion and then reverse it exactly without trouble, but someone would have noticed if Harry did that, of course. So he put the illusion back to “normality” in different ways, which meant coming up with new patterns of color and form and envisioning different ways for them to interact.
            At last, the colored fire was nothing but a wind of power, green and red and blue and violet like pieces of a shattered rainbow, that flew over and settled on Harry’s shoulders and head. He raised his hands as though to welcome them home, and for a second, trembled as he absorbed the power. Draco could feel some of the same tremors coursing through their rapt, watching audience.
            That, too, had been planned.
            Harry finally turned back to face the expanse of Diagon Alley, and bowed. For a second, Draco thought he saw one of his hands go transparent, and grimaced. Even for Harry, something like this wasn’t easy, and he couldn’t do it with the careless grace he would have been able to make the black dragon flap its wings and hiss at the Unspeakables.
            “Do you have something to say to me, Minister Malfoy?”
            Luckily, Harry had managed to seize on that grimace. Draco backed up, shaking his head. “No, no, my Lord,” he whispered. “Only—only that I wanted—to remind you that technically, I haven’t been elected to the office yet.”
            “And maybe you won’t be, if you displease me.”
            This close, even though it was only an illusion and Draco knew most of the burning feeling in the air came from the magic of the other exhausted images, there was still a rumble through his bones that threatened to drive Draco to his knees. He shivered and held Harry’s eyes. Behind them was the intelligence of the man he was in love with, if not right here.
            “But I know you’ll punish me, if I displease you,” he said, and his voice descended to a level that he’d never achieved before. He wondered if Harry would know how to react to it.
            For a second, Harry paused, with one hand raised as if he didn’t know whether to bestow a blessing on Draco or a blow. Then he snorted and shook his head. “I will punish you. Transform you into one of those birds that you saw just now. And what if I don’t bring you back? Are you going to perch on the desk in the Minister’s office and squawk out orders for the rest of your life?”
            This is a game, Draco reminded himself again. A more enjoyable game than some we’ve played in the past. And if we can get those Unspeakables who are hostile to us looking the other way for just a little while longer, then Ende’s people can destroy them and we can end this charade all the sooner.
            He didn’t think his face or his bow or anything else about his body showed that, as he bent before Harry once more. “Whatever you think best, my Lord.”
            Harry waited some more, and then the hand came down in what would look a fairly heavy clap on Draco’s shoulder from the outside. Draco winced, but it was all for show, of course. The illusion had none of the reality that Brightness did.
            “If you can always remember your place that well, I’ll keep you around longer,” Harry said casually. “At least until you cease to provide me with entertainment.”
            Fires leaped around him again, causing Draco to take a jump back in surprise. He had known that Harry would leave—that is, banish his illusion—when the game was done, but he hadn’t thought it would be this way.
            The fires burned back into the stones beneath them, and Harry was gone, along with the drift of ashes and sparks that had settled on him.
            Draco swallowed and turned to face their audience. Audience gained, mission accomplished, and he knew Harry would be traveling back to Hogwarts swiftly enough that no Unspeakables could show up and threaten him.
            I wish I could be with him.
*
            I wish we didn’t have to lie to the whole world.
            Harry lingered in the shop that he had taken over for a moment, even though he knew he shouldn’t, using a Far-Sight Spell to watch Draco talking to the crowd. He was calming them down and stirring them up with thoughts of future danger at the same moment, playing them the way only a born politician could.
            Harry was no stranger to the longing in his eyes. He was tempted, sometimes, to chuck the whole pretense and go live with Draco in a cottage somewhere. Nothing was more important than Draco.
            Except that he’d made promises to Hogwarts, and a bond. He’d said that he would provide sanctuary for people, and stability for magical creatures in contrast with a Ministry that looked increasingly unstable.
            Of course, when Draco took over the Ministry, things should calm down. But Harry knew that he would still have the dance to be danced in public, unless the day came when they managed to stabilize things enough that everyone would accept the Minister and the Dark Lord of Hogwarts as acknowledged lovers.
            And with the fear that we’ve stirred up in them, that’s a long time coming.
            Harry sighed. He couldn’t have complete honesty in front of everyone, but he could do his duty by his lover, and that included leaving once he was no longer needed here. He bowed his head and vanished into the wilderness of Apparition.
*
SP777: He’s faithfully guarding the castle!
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Burning Day