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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 Nineteen—In Flight

            “Are you sure that you know what you’re doing, mate?”

            Harry looked back and grinned at Ron. They were on the Hebridean Black that he had summoned first, and the dragon was stirring restlessly, turning his head to the left and then the right. He hadn’t liked it at all when they decided to wind leather straps around his back and belly so that the riders would have something to hang onto, or bind cushions to the straps and then cast spells on them that would Transfigure them into more comfortable, wider seats. On the other hand, Harry had talked constantly to him through the jade wheel, and he didn’t think that the dragon would lunge up and take off any time soon. Which was good, since there were still people climbing up to take a seat on his back, or bundling up in warm clothes, or wavering between coming along on the raid or not.

            Draco was in the seat behind Ron. Harry had been sure that he would be.

            “No,” Harry said, in response to Ron’s question. He rolled his eyes when Ron frowned at him. “How can I be? How can anyone be absolutely sure of anything that they’re doing right at the moment? So I don’t really have any choice but to answer you that way.”

            Ron snorted and looked away. “I meant, do you think the raid on Azkaban is going to work?”

            “Well, that’s a different question,” Harry said. “And yes, I do think so. The hardest part will be convincing the dragons to wait until we have all the prisoners out. But we can give them something to tide them over.”

            “What’s that?” Ron looked as if he thought that Harry would suggest human sacrifice. Harry sighed. He’d feel a lot worse about that if he didn’t have to keep his emotions in balance and in check so that the dragons wouldn’t get upset.

            “They’re going to be breathing out to disguise us as much as possible,” Harry said, and then laughed openly at the expression on Ron’s face. “I mean, okay, it’s not easy to hide a pair of bloody great dragons when they’re flying in, especially because it’s dark and their breath will give them away. But I promise, it’s going to work.” He caught Ron’s hand and squeezed it, hard. “Trust me?”

            “I always do, mate,” Ron said softly. “But you have to know that I’m the only one who does, from the looks that most of them are giving you. And that’s a problem.”

            “You’re wrong, Weasley.”

            The voice was so unexpected that Harry blinked for a long moment, wondering who had said it. And then he saw Draco leaning forwards around Ron to give them both a very definite stare, and wondered how he could have mistaken that tone for anyone else’s.

            “I trust him,” Draco said. “Your brother trusts him. Most of the people in the revolution trust him enough to climb up on these beasts, who they know aren’t tame, and follow him across the water to Azkaban. No, they don’t follow him blindly, and they don’t make protestations of loyalty in the way that would probably render you most comfortable, and they don’t bow down and worship him. But they’re here. That’s enough to count for something.”

            Ron stared at Draco as if a dog had suddenly started talking. Harry gave him a small, grateful smile. He hadn’t thought that Draco would speak up like that for him, even if they were on their way to rescue his parents.

            Draco flushed abruptly, as though he hadn’t thought of the past between them until now, and then leaned away and folded his arms. Harry whispered his name, but he didn’t look around. He probably wouldn’t until after the raid.

            “You need to do something to get back their trust other than tame dragons,” Ron said, and held up a hand when Harry opened his mouth to protest. “I know they’re not tame. I’m just using the word as a convenient shorthand. And I mean it, Harry. You’ll have to find something else. What in the world is it going to be?”

            “I don’t know yet,” Harry said, and felt the second dragon, who was lying down while similar straps were fastened across her, stir against his will. He turned, hands ringing with fire as he held them out to her. She sighed and rubbed her horns against the ground, but stayed still as the fastening went on. Harry could see the revolutionaries testing the buckles on the straps warily. Well, they would want to, wouldn’t they, when a single strap swinging loose could mean they’d drop over the dragon’s back straight into oblivion? “But I’ll find something.”

            “I’d feel better if you knew what it was now.” Ron lowered his voice as he leaned forwards, as if he imagined that that would somehow exclude Draco from the conversation, or keep from attracting attention.

            “Yeah, me too,” Harry said.

            “Harry.”

            Harry smiled and ignored him, showing fire to the dragons when necessary, watching the wary glances that the humans darted him, and hissing Parseltongue commands that the wheel translated. None of them were looking at the wheel anymore, he noticed, except George, who had pride and satisfaction in his eyes, and Ron, who looked uneasy, and Draco, who couldn’t keep the curiosity from his face.

            Well, that was because they were the smartest of those who had chosen to follow him tonight. The others seemed to think the wheel would summon two dragons to their aid and enable Harry to speak with them.

            Harry stroked the base of the wheel, and then touched it to make sure that it could still turn freely after the way he’d used it. The spokes clicked musically, and he relaxed.

            There was more to come.

*

            There were tons of rumors in the folder that Clearwater had given her.

            Hermione sat back and wiped at her eyes. She had been reading for hours, and although it wouldn’t affect her this way most of the time, now it made her eyes burn. She sipped at the glass of water beside her and regarded the folder again.

            Most of her, the part that worked under the curse to try and be obedient to Clearwater, was fascinated by the variety and depth of the rumors about Harry.

            The guarded corner of her mind was appalled.

            And fascinated, she had to admit. Hermione turned back a few of the pages that she had already turned over and read them again, shaking her head. She had known Harry had enemies, but nothing like the bitterness that powered some of this gossip would ever have occurred to her. He had ended a war and reduced the most powerful Dark Lord the world had seen in generations to dust. That was worthy of respect, or at least tolerance.

            But not to the people who said that he had tortured prisoners in Azkaban. Not to the people who alleged that he had stolen millions of Galleons and funneled them into his own vaults (and that he was now using the funds to finance the war). Not to the ones who whispered that his gift of Parseltongue and the Dark spells he had been “known” to cast meant he had inherited Voldemort’s spirit, and would someday crush the wizarding world beneath his feet and execute Muggleborns by the hundreds.

            Hermione touched a small pile of parchment pages she had already put aside. Those were the rumors she had thought people might believe, the ones that accused Harry of corruption, trading on his fame, and jealousy of Minister Duplais because he had wanted the position for himself. They also accused him of losing his temper regularly. There was nothing unusual about any of that, and yes, many people would believe it.

            But she wondered if she should increase the size of the pile. If some of the other rumors could get started in the first place, and had enough circulation to receive a respectful listening-to at the Auror offices, then they might swallow anything.

            And just like that, her plan of action, the one that would satisfy both Minister Clearwater and the guarded corner of her mind, occurred to her.

            She only had to choose the rumors that sounded both most juicy and least explicable, and begin circulating them. Enough people would eat them up—people of the kind who eagerly read Rita Skeeter’s articles—that it wouldn’t seem to the Ministry that they were too unbelievable, and at the same time the rational ones would begin to pull back and regard what came out of the Minister’s office with a more skeptical eye. It might take a while to tilt the balance in that direction, but Hermione thought time was an asset she did have. The Ministry would want to take weeks, perhaps months, to make sure that the public understood Harry’s “true nature” as much as possible.

            She smiled, and began to make a new pile, while the guarded corner whispered more plans to her and the obedience to Minister Clearwater lashed and wriggled in her head like a living thing.

*

            Draco had never flown like this before.

            He had dreamed of flying on a dragon, of course. Most wizarding children did. A dragon must exist, somewhere, who was both tame and friendly and who would choose you to be their companion in return, seeing that you were special and wonderful, unlike all the other children around you and even your parents. Then it would land beside you, extend a wing and let you climb onto its back. Draco’s version of the private dream had included him making a noble speech forgiving everyone for their sins against him before the dragon carried him off to his adventures.

            But he had grown up, and learned more of the facts about dragons, and had decided that he wouldn’t want someone trying to introduce him to one. Tame dragons were figments of imagination and nothing more. Draco had calmly accepted that some childhood stories were more real than others, and gone about his life.

            Now…

            Now he was living the dream, and seated behind the man who had made it come true.

            Draco kept trying to divide his gaze, between the rushing, blackened ground below, and the great wings beating beside him as the Hebridean Black sailed through the night, and the straight, slim back ahead. Now and then Potter touched his wheel and hissed a command in Parseltongue. There would come a spark from the jade eye in the center of the wheel, and the dragon would turn right or left, closely followed by its companion. Draco had to admit he was impressed with the level of Potter’s control over the beasts. Two dragons in close quarters like this would normally be fighting by now.

            But he was more impressed with the man who had done this.

            Draco folded his fingers into a loose fist and massaged them for a moment before he sought his wand and cast another Warming Charm. Rushing along at a speed that outstripped any broom, jolted up and down by the motion of the wings, they were far more necessary here than Draco had ever found them during Quidditch.

            Potter was the one who might give him his parents back, or at least the best chance of rescuing his parents.

            But Draco could picture his father turning his face away, his mother lowering her eyes if they learned of Draco’s choice of his side. Accept the gifts that Potter could hand him, surely, but wholehearted support was something else. Draco was supposed to lead from the front, or at the least from behind the throne. And while Potter seemed to value Draco more than he had done before the shadow hounds came hunting him, Draco knew he was far from the position that Weasley occupied.

            What worried him most was not his dreams of what his parents would say about it, or even the fact that he might never learn what they would say about it. What worried him most was that he couldn’t bring himself to care.

            At least, not much. He still didn’t want to roll over at Potter’s feet like a dog or a Weasley. But if Potter never did anything but smile at him and perhaps take him as his lover, Draco would still be satisfied. He didn’t need a position of extreme trust.

            He didn’t need as much power over Potter as he knew Potter had over him.

            Draco closed his eyes and felt a slow shiver travel over his body, hard enough to make him jerk and shudder. Well, it seemed that part of him was still concerned about that particular admission. Good. That might keep him from getting too complacent.

            But as long as Potter continued to be powerful, beautiful, compassionate, and considerate, Draco wasn’t sure that even that part of him could protect his sanity. Potter was asking questions with every gesture, turning to the fighters who had disdained to follow him or found him too frightening to follow and asking them to reconsider. Draco could feel the silent questions pressing against his brain, too, and he might be one of the few in the revolution experienced enough in power dynamics to realize what the end result would be.

            A schism in the revolution. Those who found it intolerable to follow Potter would desert, or decide to fight the war in their own way. Those who could follow him would become the kind of loyal bodyguard that Draco knew Potter must have dreamed about, even though he would deny it if someone asked him. Didn’t everyone dream of being a king or a queen at one part?

            There was no real question about where the Weasleys’ choices would fall, and there ought not to be a question about others among the rebels as well, though Draco suspected Potter would hold out hope long after a sensible person would give it up. But Draco?

            There was no question about him, either.

            Even if there ought to be.

            He shut his eyes and listened to the steady beating of the wings for a time. That was the most sensible course at this point. Remind himself of the inevitable, that he was being carried closer and closer to Azkaban, and to irreversible decisions, with every wingbeat.

            As inevitable as other decisions that he would soon have to make.

*

            George leaned back on the cushioned seat and grunted. They could try their best with charms, but a dragon’s back was still a bloody damn uncomfortable place when it came to one’s aching arse.

            You felt it, Fred murmured in the back of his head, his voice more subdued than usual, but also more urgent. You know you did. The way that the powers shifted and boiled and churned around Harry. The way that the world shifted when he called the dragons.

            I felt it, George admitted, since he knew answering his brother aloud would cause his fellow passengers to become more upset than was strictly necessary. But I don’t know what it means.

            Neither do I.

            George blinked. It was unlike Fred to admit that, proud bastard that he was.

            It doesn’t mean that I won’t know what it means in the fullness of time, Fred said haughtily. George recognized the tone that Fred had used to try and convince Ronniekins to eat bugs when they were all younger, and rolled his eyes. No, really, Fred insisted. I’m sure that I can find out. Something about the shifting seemed—familiar. It doesn’t mean that I know for certain what it is, but I can find it out by tracing the similarities back.

            George shrugged. He had to admit that that was the major difference between them: George had always been fascinated by small problems, Fred by big ones. George was the one who had figured out the spell that would let them make a swamp in the middle of Hogwarts when they left in the middle of their seventh year. Fred had wanted to make a swamp that would perpetuate itself and be impossible to dismiss, a much more wide-ranging and (in the end) insoluble problem.

            Well, tell me when you’ve figured it out, then, he said, and leaned over the dragon’s side to see if he could tell where they were.

            Not really, he thought a moment later. The clouds that sometimes raced past them masked most of the land below, and the darkness did the rest. But when he closed his eyes and concentrated on his nose, he realized that he could smell the salt that indicated the sea. They were getting close to Azkaban, then. George took a deep breath and gripped his wand harder. He had to admit that he had no idea how well the jade wheel would work when they got there. Okay, summoning two dragons, fine, but more than that? Did Harry have that much control, that much will, that much fire resistance?

            I’ve been thinking about it, Fred said suddenly.

            George started, and then tried to convince both his twin and himself that he’d meant to do that. Have you? Good. Then we can decide what enchantments we should work on Harry when we actually get there.

            Fred snorted at him. I wasn’t thinking about fire. I was thinking about those forces I feel shifting in the world when Harry uses his magic.

            George cocked his head to the side. All the times that Harry uses his magic? That was the first time he’d heard about that. Then again, the only big magic George had known Harry to use before the jade wheel was Fortuna’s Wheel, which he had only seen once, and the fire that burned up the Inferi, which George wasn’t there to see.

            Yes. Every time. Fred’s voice was iron, which meant he was hiding at least a bit of uncertainty. George waited him out, and finally Fred sighed and admitted, Well, this is the only time I’ve felt it. But—something’s not right, George. Our Harry didn’t have access to that sort of power during the war, or he would have used it against Voldemort. I’m sure he would have. Why does he have it now?

            George gave a mental shrug, although he probably could have made it a physical one and no one would have noticed. Most of his fellow passengers had their eyes closed in prayer or were watching the dragon’s wings with an expression of awe, not looking at him. It’s been seven years since the war. Time for his magic to grow and develop?

            Something more than that, Fred muttered, and paused, irresolute.

            The booming of the sea passed underneath them. George braced himself with a hand on the scales—pleasantly warm against the cold of this height—and leaned over to look down. He could see the faint white gleams that marked the tops of waves. Well, let me know when you’ve figured it out.

            Fred retreated into the back of his mind the way he would do when George had got him sufficiently angry. George grinned and looked to the right, what he thought was the west from here.

            He felt it happen again—the jolting and shifting of great forces, like feeling a muffled earthquake. Fred made a triumphant sound in the back of his head, but didn’t say anything aloud. George nodded, conceding the point. If this happened just from Harry using the wheel, then it was something worth investigating.

            The silent call of the wheel boomed out across the sky. George grinned at nothing, wondering what the people who rode with them would do when they figured out what had happened. Two dragons were enough to ride to an attack on Azkaban, but not enough (probably) to actually destroy the prison, especially if the guards stood their ground and managed to hurt them. So Harry was calling others.

            The first flash of bright wings crossed George’s vision at the same time as someone cried out in shock. Harry held up his hands, fire shining between them. He was the only one, George included, who wasn’t clutching desperately at the leather straps that bound them inadequately to the dragons’ backs.

            He’s fearless, George thought in some admiration.

            Yes. Fred was nodding so hard his head could have fallen off, if he’d had one. That’s part of it. That’s important.

*

            They were here.

            And the other dragons were coming.

            Harry turned from dragon to dragon, holding out the pattern of fire that explained his soul. They hissed, and their hisses made his body ring. Their wings beat, and he knew a single gust could sweep him from the seat where he sat, not very securely, kneeling up in the leather straps so that he could gain some height and show off the pattern. The darkness all around him flared with light, fire and the moon reflecting off different colors of scales and eyes that studied him in what Harry couldn’t be entirely sure was friendliness. He wondered what would happen if one of them breathed. He might be immune to fire, and so might the dragon he was riding, but the other people—Ron, George, Draco, Wheelwright, a dozen others—weren’t. He had to protect them. He was responsible if they died.

            Oddly, that burden seemed to settle him, rather than making him frantically convinced, as it had only a short time before, that it meant he had to take all the risks and it was unacceptable to ask them to face danger. He knew better now, thanks to Ron and Draco. He rose fully to his feet—making Ron yelp and grab his ankle because he apparently feared that Harry was about to topple over the side—and held his hands up as high as they would reach, until his arms ached.

            He wondered what would happen if he leaped from the dragon’s back. The way he felt now, with fire turning inside his body as well as without and his mind resonating with the cadences of translated Parseltongue, he thought he might fly.

            But he wasn’t about to try finding out, because that really would give Ron a heart attack. He held the fire higher still as an Antipodean Opal-eye circled lazily past, sides glowing crystalline, studying the fire. He wondered how far it had come from, and if it was as far as the breeze that had caressed his head earlier that evening.

            No place to run, no backup plan if this didn’t work. He was as committed to this as a small hatchling dragon staggering forwards with wide-spread wings and plunging into the air for the first time. Drop or rise, sink or swim.

            Fall or fly.

            It might have been the soul-fire that did it, or the thoughts in his head that resembled a dragon hatchling’s. Either way, the Antipodean Opal-eye sheered off, and so did the Hebridean Blacks behind it and the single Chinese Fireball, and began to circle the dragons they rode at a distance. Harry watched the rippling effect of their wings and tails, and nodded.

            Yes. He understood now. The whole of the night said We will follow. Hold us back until you need us.

            He hissed his thanks through the wheel and sat back down. Ron only let him go when a full minute had passed. Harry flashed him a faint smile and then turned his head so that he was looking at everyone else on the dragon’s back, insofar as that was possible. He made especially sure to catch Draco’s eye.

            “You’ll need to go down there and free the prisoners after we’ve dealt with the guards,” he said. “I don’t think I can leave the dragons without something, um, unfortunate happening.”

            “Like them burning a bunch of people alive,” Draco muttered.

            “Yes, that.” Harry studied pale circle after pale circle of faces in the gloom, and raised his eyebrows. “Does anyone have questions?”

            There were none.

            Harry turned and rested his hand on the dragon’s neck, speaking to the wheel. Once again, the cavalcade moved forwards, ready to call down doom and fire and storm upon Azkaban.

*

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Intoxicate the Sun