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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Nineteen—Ende’s Distraction
            “What has the effect of my distraction been on others?” Harry flung himself sideways in his chair, dangling a leg idly over the arm. Briseis, who stood in front of him, gave him a severe look, but since she couldn’t keep her mouth from twitching, Harry knew she was more affected than she liked to pretend.
            “They seem to have decided they should fear you again, my Lord,” Briseis said, and put the newest stack of letters and requests for interviews on the table. “There are a lot fewer people requesting entrance to the Court today.”
            Harry nodded thoughtfully. He had recognized there would be consequences for what he had done, and if he hadn’t particularly wanted these consequences, that didn’t matter, terribly. They were the consequences he had.
            “Then we’ll look through these and see what happens next,” he said, and picked up the first letter from the top of the pile. He paused and stared at the name. For a second, he knew it was familiar, but the familiarity hovered just beyond reach, like one of his own illusions.
            Then he knew, and snorted a little. “She’s at the top of the list,” he said, and held out the letter to Briseis.
            “She is, in fact,” said Briseis, consulting her own list after a glance at the letter. “She’s the first one who arrived for today. But you would have wanted me to move her to the top of the list if she hadn’t been, wouldn’t you?”
            Harry had to grin again at the faint outrage in Briseis’s voice over the disruption to procedure, but he also had to nod. “Yes, I would. This is important, Briseis. It really is.”
            “I still think that Nightshade is a pretentious thing to call yourself,” said Briseis, apparently just making sure she could still slip her two Knuts in, and then snorted and left the room when Harry didn’t deign to respond.
            Harry looked thoughtfully again at the name on the letter. Yes, maybe Briseis was right and it was a pretentious thing to call yourself.
            On the other hand, it was also the name of the hag Draco had met in Knockturn Alley, shortly after Harry had burned Darkest Signs. The hag who had told Draco that she could see how close they were, and how Harry should look for her when he wanted to speak to her. That she had come to him instead made Harry more than curious.
*
            “You must realize that the Dark Lord is out of control.”
            Draco halted the minute he stepped into the room where he had been told the meeting with the Ministry’s representatives would be today, yet another of the secret places located behind the public walls and offices. Instead of the group of council members, flunkeys, Unspeakables, and politicians he had expected, there was a single wizard seated at the head of the table, dressed in red robes.
            Draco leaned against the wall and folded his arms. The man could probably sense his tension already, so Draco would discharge it in whatever way he liked. “I don’t, particularly. Whose control?”
            The man said nothing. Draco didn’t have Brightness on his shoulder right now—he was investigating a huddled, whispering mass of witches and wizards down a corridor Draco had passed through—but he would come in a second’s call. So Draco didn’t draw his wand or react defensively even when the wizard rose.
            “Whose control is not important,” the wizard said. Draco thought for a second he knew the voice, grave and impersonal, but then he realized it was the tone. He’d heard that tone before, mostly when people were discussing “the greater good.” “But anyone who can do what he did to Knockturn Alley, and then reverse it, is too powerful to remain unchained.”
            “And again I ask you,” Draco said, giving him a dazzling smile, “who holds the chains?” He sent a thought to Brightness, and felt the phoenix coming towards him.
            “That is also not important,” said the man, and he gave Draco what Draco thought was a searching look, although the hood over his face made his expressions impossible to discern. “Why do you not understand? You seem blasé about this, when from everything I have understood about you, you are a cunning politician. You should understand.”
            “I understand that you want your hands to be the ones on the chains,” Draco replied, and when the man made a gesture of dissent, “Or the hands of people you trust. You don’t trust him. You don’t trust me.”
            “Who could trust him?”
            The simplicity of those words made Draco laugh aloud, even as Brightness circled through the door and flew over to land on his shoulder, making the wizard start. “Have you thought about what he’s done so far?” Draco managed to add, when he’d subdued the chuckles. “The way he’s held back from destroying so many people who invaded his territory? Instead, he’s taken their wands or put them to sleep or marked them. If you think it’s impossible to trust him, then you haven’t been paying attention.”
            “We could trust many a one of lesser power. His is too great.”
            “Why didn’t you ever make an effort to bring Vol-Voldemort under control?” Draco cursed the tremor in his own voice, but he couldn’t just say “Dark Lord,” not when there was the risk of its being misunderstood.
            “He was not amenable to it.”
            Incredulity cracked through Draco, and he kept from laughing only by reaching up and resting his hand on Brightness’s back. He stroked, and Brightness crooned and dipped down his head to reach him, running a strand of Draco’s hair gently through his beak. The man watched it, motionless. “You think this one is?”
            The man shifted, and Draco had the impression that he frowned, though of course that was an impression only and not something Draco could actually check by looking under his hood. “It is difficult to explain.”
            “No, it’s easy to explain,” said Draco, because it was. “You didn’t try to bring Voldemort under control because he was insane and too terrible. You only think you can do it with Harry for the same reasons that you don’t need to control him: because he’s only killed one person and he keeps holding himself back. You’re terrified of him, but not terrified enough.”
            The man leaned forwards. “Bold words for someone who stands alone in a room with his enemy,” he breathed.
            “Well, now you’ve gone and done it,” Draco said, rolling his eyes, a second after the loud screech from Brightness echoed through the room. “You know that he’s going to know about this now. And you just declared yourself a personal enemy of mine and not only of the Dark Lord of Hogwarts. How do you think he’s going to react, to hear you threaten his pet Minister?”
            The man paused in the middle of reaching for his wand, and gave Brightness a steady look. “The phoenix is not real.”
            “Real enough to save me from the last assassination attempt the Unspeakables tried,” Draco told him, with a nasty smile. “Or are you going to try another one right now?”
            This time, the glance the man gave Brightness was definitely one of dislike. “We should have killed the bloody thing when we had the chance,” he muttered.
            That was as good as claiming responsibility for the earlier assassination attempt, as far as Draco was concerned. He kept stroking Brightness and waiting, watching, not sure what would happen next or when it would happen, but knowing that the phoenix was part of what would help keep him safe.
            “Can’t you speak to him?”
            Draco raised his eyebrows. “Who are we talking about here? The phoenix or the Dark Lord? And why should I convince either of them to listen to the pleas of someone who has admitted that he wanted to kill me?”
            “There are other things we could do,” said the man in a low, charged voice, his gaze passing over Brightness again. Draco touched one of the phoenix’s talons in silent gratitude. Thank you, Harry. You saved my life more than you knew when you gave him to me. “Things that would leave you in power and keep you safe from the Dark Lord.”
            “And I’ve already told you that he knows about those plans and my participation in them, if I was mad enough to join you, based on his spy here,” said Draco, and jerked his head hard at the phoenix, who blinked thoughtfully. “I don’t know what you want me to say, but you can’t have what you seem to want, which is control of the Dark Lord. And you can’t have control of me.”
            The man sighed. The next second, a heavy blanket seemed to settle over Draco’s mind.
            That marks him as fairly powerful, with the ability to cast a non-verbal Imperius Curse.
            And that was all Draco knew, before the comforting numbness and softness took him and told him exactly what he should be doing.
*
            “I suspect that your clever toy told you all about me.” The hag paused with one hand flexing on her chair arm. Harry was already too experienced with politics to think the pause was anything but artistic. “Or should we call him what he is, which isn’t your toy but your lover?”
            Harry had already remembered Draco talking about this hag, Nightshade, and how she knew things she shouldn’t. That kept him from reacting as badly as he might have with no warning. But he still shook his head as he examined the woman who sat in the chair across from him, with her wrinkled skin and her huge black eyes and her blue lips. “There are plenty of people who would say that you’re taking a bigger risk by saying that than by approaching me in the first place, madam.”
            Nightshade began to wheeze with laughter, her hands pressed to her heart as if she thought the next cackle would finish her off. “Madam,” she gasped at last, when Harry was on the verge of demanding to know what was so funny. “Oh, it’s so long since someone last called me that, you have no idea, boy.”
            “I know that you’re using informal titles on purpose,” Harry said. “Just as you’re revealing how much you know on purpose. But I’d rather that we could get past that and just start speaking to each other informally.”
            Nightshade sat up in her chair in a brisk way that made Harry sure they were finally coming to the point of her visit. “Indeed. Well. I told your lover that I have what some ignorant people have called the Sight, for the want of a better name.”
            Harry didn’t know what was expected of him, other than a nod, which was what he gave.
            “There are certain strange and twisted things about that are hard to see the end of,” said Nightshade, and knocked on the desk in front of him. Although Harry thought he was sitting up and paying attention quite enough already, he swung his legs to the floor and sat up straighter, and Nightshade nodded and smiled at him. “Like threads that are braided into each other, threads that twine through the center of a garment and they’re harder to see than the fringe on the outside…Anyway! I can see some of those threads, but not all the twists in them.”
            “One of those twists brought you here today?” Harry asked, unable to imagine what else it would be. Nightshade was presumably one of the Dark wizards who didn’t need sanctuary and could protect herself quite well outside the Court.
            “The sudden clarification of a twist,” said Nightshade, with a satisfied bob of her head. “The thread unwarped, and I could study the full length of it. I had known that a fire was coming, but not what started it or who stood at the heart of it.” She leaned forwards. “You stand at the heart of it.”
            “Well, that was probably something you should have expected, with a powerful wizard running around in the world who’s already started a few fires,” Harry returned, unreasonably irritated.
            Nightshade promptly cackled back at him. “Indeed, yes! But the cause of the fire is also clear to me.” She paused and regarded Harry.
            “Yes?” Harry didn’t permit himself to blink, no matter how childish that made him.
            “The fire starts because you start it,” said Nightshade softly, “in vengeance for the pain of your lover.”
            “This is today?” Harry was standing on both feet before he thought about it, his hands clenched on the edge of his desk. He smelled wood smoldering and looked down to see the desk slowly catching on fire. He yanked his hands away and focused on Nightshade. “Tell me where and when.”
            “The thread can still split and fray,” said Nightshade, not seeming tense at all, which just angered Harry further. “You can still start this fire burning, and teach them all the fear of your power, make them all so afraid that your goals will be achieved and you can cow them.”
            “Or?” Harry snapped out, since it was the only way he would get the information about who and what was hurting Draco and where.
            “Or you can let your lover endure a little danger on his own, and still rescue him, and not burn them.” Nightshade folded her hands in her lap, eyes intent on him. “You might consider the consequences for your reputation if you create this fire. I know that you tire of the game you must play with your lover. I know you want to emerge into reality again.”
            “Do you think it’ll really matter in the long run?” Harry was impressed with himself for keeping his face and voice both bland, when what he wanted was to burst out of the castle and go running to Draco’s aid. “Does anything I do have that much of a consequence on their fear? Or will they always fear me no matter what?”
            Nightshade hesitated for the first time. So she doesn’t see everything after all, Harry thought, and waited.
            “They will always fear you, some of them,” Nightshade finally admitted. “But less of them will fear you if you do not start this fire, and you will be able to emerge from hiding with your lover earlier.”
            “How long?”
            “Not even my intellect can answer that question without more context,” Nightshade said.
            “How long until I can stop pretending to be Draco’s enemy, if I don’t burn them?” Harry clarified, through numb lips. His magic was tugging at him, and he suspected it was the part embedded in Brightness. Draco wasn’t in pain at the moment, but that meant little. He was still in danger, and Harry wanted to go to him.
            “More than ten years.”
            Harry’s resolve crumbled and withered away, and he shook his head. He raised his hand, and the black phoenix flew down and to him, a scrap of light and air not existing and then there.
            “It’s not worth it,” he told Nightshade, and then paused and added one more explanation. “Not in the end. Maybe I’ll finally make people see that they shouldn’t attack me, and that will be a substitute for peace.”
            “Perhaps you should reconsider.”
            Brightness’s scream resounded in Harry’s head, and he shook it. “Your petition for entrance into the Court is granted,” he said. “But not your other one.” The floor opened beneath him, and he began the swifter journey to the edge of Hogwarts’s grounds. The black phoenix was flying behind him, and Harry took comfort, for a moment, in the fact that this phoenix had no name, and wasn’t solid like Persephone, and couldn’t be hurt like her.
            Then he turned forwards. He had Draco and another phoenix to save.
*
            “Come. Sit down here.”
            It was reasonable, Draco supposed, though a while ago it might not have seemed that way. The man, who had flung his hood back the moment he had Draco under control, had led Draco and Brightness through a maze of secret rooms. Brightness had screamed and cried, until the man had conjured a cage for him. That was appropriate, Draco supposed. The phoenix should be quiet, and he smoldered silver. Well, he could do that if he wanted. Just like the man could command Draco if he wanted.
            This was all right and proper.
            The chair was in the middle of the immense room. Draco sat and looked vaguely around. He saw crystal chains, and something that looked like a cage poised to drop on the end of one of the chains. He wondered if the Department of Mysteries—that was where they were, the man had spoken to someone who’d said so—had a problem with rats.
            Big rats, from the size of the cage.
            “You’re all right, Ende?” A woman stepped up to the red-cloaked man and spoke softly to him. “You know that he’s going to arrive soon.”
            Ende sighed and nodded. “Yes, Gloria. And I know now that you were right. What he did in Knockturn Alley—too powerful to be trusted, even if it was just illusion. And the Department of Mysteries can’t afford a schism.” He touched his forehead. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Go and tell Michelle she was right.”
            The woman looked satisfied, and hurried away. Ende turned towards Draco and shook his head.
            “I did hope I could trust him,” he muttered. “I wish he’d been able to.” He glanced back at the crystal cage. “This…it isn’t ideal, but it’s the best we can do.”
            Draco didn’t know what he meant. But he knew that Ende hadn’t ordered him to rise from the chair, so he sat there.
            And Brightness screamed and battered his wings against the cage, and then something began to shake. Something distant, Draco supposed, grinding. It sounded like the vibration of stone against stone.
            Something powerful began to tingle at the edge of Draco’s awareness. He thought it was the same thing that was making the stones vibrate.
            Something was coming. Something was rising.
            Draco sat back, with a vague smile, and awaited developments.
*
SP777: Thank you! Well, some more vivid scenery coming up. And no, as to the theme, that’s just the kind of stories I’m writing lately.
Christopher: The Unspeakables thought they were going to be able to deal with Harry as a human being, but his illusions frightened them. Now they’re back to the plan to capture him.
And Harry is going to end the story in the next two chapters, but if you feel you need to stop reading this story, that’s fine.
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Burning Day