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Chains of Fool's Gold	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Two—Forging a Unit
            “You should have asked me for help a long time ago, you know.”
            George’s voice was low and charged as he leaned across the table and gripped Harry’s arm. He seemed to ignore utterly the fact that Draco was standing there, or maybe it didn’t matter to him. He kept shaking his head at Harry, though, and his free hand tapped the top of the table as if the motion would soothe him. Or keep him from blurting out all the things that raced across his mind when it came to Harry.
            Harry gave him a wan smile in return. If he could keep George at their side, then he would take the scolding.
            “I could have helped you,” George said again, leaning back in his chair and glancing around Cuthbert’s Corner. The glance seemed to say that they would be staying in a better place by now if only they had admitted George to their confidence. “I could have made sure that you didn’t get on so badly with the Ministry. Didn’t have to run.” He turned around and cast a dark little smile at Draco and Harry both. “It’s wonderful what some of my jokes that tamper with the memory can do.”
            Harry raised his eyebrows at him. “And you think that would have attacked what we want to attack?”
            George put a hand on his chest. “Harry, you wound me to the heart. What problem can’t jokes solve?”
            Draco shifted behind him, and Harry nodded his head, understanding the silent message. Draco wanted them to get on with things and stop wasting time in speaking about the past, which they couldn’t change, or jokes that couldn’t help turn the tide of the battle. “What did you bring with you?” Harry asked, leaning forwards in turn. “You keep saying that you could have done us so much good with jokes. Let’s see some.”
            George stood up with a sly little grin in Draco’s direction. “Does he want to see them, too? He keeps looking at me as though he’ll hex me if I breathe wrong.”
            “The effects of long Auror training,” Draco said with stiff formality, bowing to George. “I’m sorry that I look like that. But you must understand how tense we’ve been as the Ministry has hunted us.”
            Harry eyed Draco sideways, trying not to look amazed. He hadn’t thought Draco was capable of that kind of restraint. But then again, he hadn’t known George as well in school as Ron and Hermione. They were coming together on a different footing, Weasley and Malfoy rather than long-time enemies.
            And if Draco didn’t think of himself as a Malfoy anymore, as he’d hinted to Harry that he didn’t, then even that footing was different. He might not be part of a family that had a blood feud with the Weasleys anymore.
            “Thank you,” George said, and pulled out something yellow and small from the satchel he’d tossed pretend-casually in the corner of the bedroom when Kreacher showed him in. “This is the first thing I brought.”
            Harry examined it from a safe distance. It looked as though it had a part that detached itself and flew, but he couldn’t be sure what it was meant to do. From the way George winked at him, that was deliberate.
            “It looks like a child’s toy,” George said, in the long, drawling voice that Harry suspected he used to convince reluctant clients to buy something. “But when you draw the string and speak a certain command word…” He pulled a tiny silver thread that hung down from the bottom of the toy and hissed something too soft for Harry to hear.
            The top part did detach, and flew up. As Harry watched, it unfolded little feet, pronged ones, and wings. The insect hung between them near the ceiling, a mechanical wasp at least two inches long, and turned its head fiercely back and forth.
            “It’ll attack anyone at my command,” George said fondly. He nodded at the stinger that extended down from the wasp’s tail, something Harry suspected had been hidden inside the body of the toy. “Perfectly safe for children to menace each other with, of course. The command word isn’t sold with the toy unless it’s being used for something special, and it doesn’t fly unless it hears the command word.”
            “And it isn’t something that would be spoken in ordinary life?” Draco was eyeing the wasp as if he appreciated it and could see all the ways it could turn on its owners at the same time.
            George shook his head and extended his hand. The wasp zipped down onto it. He touched the stinger, and it became even stiffer. George popped it back onto the top of the toy. “I should hope not, considering it’s a bit of Parseltongue that dear Ronniekins taught me.”
            “You never said that Weasley was a Parselmouth, too.” Draco stared at Harry.
            Harry shook his head. “He knows how to imitate a few sounds of it, that’s all.” He grinned at George. “Pretty easy for someone to command in our camp, then?”
            “That’s what I thought.” George set the wasp-toy gently down and took out something else. “Our friend here ought to recognize this. Or rather, what it used to be. Ordinary Peruvian Darkness Powder.” He ignored the way that Draco tensed, turning the bag back and forth as if he was going to perform a magic trick with it. “It caused darkness when you flung it. But Ron and I decided that wasn’t enough.” He took a pinch of powder from the bag and deliberately turned away, blowing it at the far wall instead of at them—something that Harry, at least, appreciated. He noticed Draco covering his face, but Harry didn’t, although he suspected the powder might be meant to go up their noses. He wanted to see what it did.
            The powder caused a brief bloom of darkness to rise high into the air, crashing against the ceiling, and then Harry began to sneeze. It didn’t feel as though something had gone up his nose; instead, it was as though someone had simply pressed down the button in his mind that commanded him to sneeze. He felt his body shaking, his shoulders shaking in time to his sneezes, and they were horrid and wet and he couldn’t stop them. He reached for his wand, and it shook out of his hand and rolled across the floor. He saw George stroll forwards and reach down casually to pick it up in the seconds before the sneezes claimed all of his attention and he could no longer see anything.
            At last it yielded. Harry sat up, shaking his head, unable to remember when he’d hit the floor. “Sneeze powder?” he asked, when George had held his wand out to him and he’d used it to clean himself up a bit and clear his glasses.
            George nodded cheerfully. “It turned out to be simple to make,” he said. “Not so simple to come up with a less powerful formula that wouldn’t kill people.” He frowned. “Not that we did kill anyone, but there were some test subjects that needed a few days in hospital before they were right again.”
            “And with these tricks, you propose to defeat the Ministry.” Draco’s voice was odd. Harry glanced quickly at him, ready to reassure Draco that he was all right if Draco needed it, but Draco was just standing there, staring at the patch of floor that was still covered with Harry’s snot. Harry blushed and cleaned the rest of it up.
            “Not defeat, from what Ron said.” George answered Draco with calm normality, closing his bag of powder so that nothing could come out. Harry felt gingerly at his nose. It was still raw. “We were just going to find a way inside the building, and then keep people from leaving. Yeah, I think some of these wasps will do that.”
            “Some?” Draco widened his eyes.
            “A swarm.” George smiled. “I have them.”
            “And what will the powder do?” Draco folded his arms. “If people are too busy sneezing to listen to us, then we aren’t any better off than we were before.”
            George’s face twitched. Knowing him as well as he did, Harry thought he had barely resisted the temptation to stick his tongue out at Draco. “I only brought it along as an example,” he said. “I think the wasps will be more useful. We don’t have to use them or the powder, specifically, to open up the Ministry, though.”
            Draco looked as though he didn’t have any more questions, and also as though he hated that. Harry pressed a hand on his shoulder and said to George, “Can you think of anyone else we could bring in, someone who would believe you rather than the lies the Ministry has been spreading about us?”
            George paused and looked as though he was chewing over the potential consequences of that statement. “Not many,” he said at last. “A few I would trust, but not with you and your secrets, Harry. Or with the safety of my brother and sister-in-law.”
            “Then we don’t trust them,” Draco said at once. “We can’t take any risks that we’ll fall into the hands of our enemies before we can launch the attack proper.”
            “Not many doesn’t mean not any,” George said, and rolled his eyes at Draco. “One of them may have already helped you a bit, in fact. He was contacted by a former Auror named Diane Athright, who wanted to know what he knew about a researcher named Jared Thacker. He’s used to walking the edges of spells and magic, like me, that the Ministry wouldn’t say were Dark but that they wouldn’t want to exist. So I think it’s safe to call on him.”
            “What’s his name?” Harry asked, before Draco could say something that started the conversation off in another non-productive direction.
            George smirked, which made Harry narrow his eyes. At least he knew right away why when George answered. “Nero Prince.”
            Draco stiffened. If he hadn’t known Professor Snape’s heritage during their sixth year, Harry thought, he did now.
            “How close a relation?” Harry asked.
            George shrugged. “Some kind of half-uncle or something of Eileen Prince. He’s quite old, and he was cast out of his family for ‘non-proper behavior,’ which of course might have meant almost anything in those days.” George sighed, his eyes distant for a second. “I have the impression that it was something great, though. So far, he won’t tell me when I ask, but maybe someday, when he trusts me enough…”
            Draco interrupted again. “He’s been living in the Muggle world?” Harry reckoned that was the only way Draco would accept this Nero Prince being someone he’d never heard of before.
            “Yes,” George said. “Since he was kicked out of his family and burned off the tapestry, I think. He’s not above slipping back into the wizarding world for a bit of fun, though.” He grinned at Harry, more than Draco. “I think this qualifies.”
            Harry glanced at Draco, who met his eyes and flickered his own brows in a facial equivalent of a shrug. Harry nodded. “Go ahead and contact him.” He thought that Draco might actually like working with someone else who was pure-blooded, despite the circumstances. They shared the experience of having to leave their families behind, if nothing else.
            George stood up. “Then I’ll go and send him an owl, and make sure that I bring more tricks with me next time.” He glanced almost defiantly at Draco, but Draco said nothing against it. George shrugged and turned to Harry. “What about Ginny? Ron told me that you’d thought about bringing her in, but that there was some problem.”
            From the tone of his voice, it was clear that he thought the problem was Draco. Harry winced and met George’s eyes as evenly as he could. “Ginny’s been tangled with us enough. Possessed and used, and there was a question of whether one of her boyfriends had been a criminal. I think it’s just as well to leave her out of this.”
            George gave him a funny little smile, but nodded and said, “All right.” Then he left, already whistling in a way Harry recognized. It meant that mayhem was on the way, and George pitied all the people who wouldn’t be able to get out of the way in time.
            “Do you trust him?”
            Harry leaned back in Draco embrace and turned his head so that his lips pressed against Draco’s cheek. “Not to mention this little affair to Ginny, you mean? Yes, I do.” He stroked Draco’s hair. “Do you trust him enough to work with him?”
            “Yes.” Draco’s body was still tense and unhappy against Harry’s own, though, and Harry kissed him again, coaxingly enough that Draco relaxed a bit.
            “What’s wrong?” Harry whispered.
            “You’re bringing so many allies in, and I don’t have anyone to bring,” Draco said, after long enough that Harry thought the words might have clogged together in his throat and wouldn’t let him speak. “Even if I dared to contact my old friends, most of them wouldn’t see any potential for advancement in a rebellion against the Ministry. And a lot of them turned against me after I refused to say that Daphne was innocent, anyway.”
            Harry delicately touched the back of Draco’s neck. He knew that Draco’s fiancée had been arrested for murder not that long after they became betrothed. “You’re enough by yourself,” he whispered. “All your courage, and all your fierceness.”
            Draco shifted. Harry wondered if the problem was something else, and decided they might as well talk about it. Leaving things to fester did no good, as he had seen recently with the painful healing he’d had to give Draco after he tangled with a necromancy spell. “Or do you just feel uncomfortable working surrounded by Gryffindors?”
            “No,” Draco said. “If that was the case, I wouldn’t have stayed in the Aurors this long.” He paused, then added, “Besides, was Hagrid in Gryffindor? I thought it was Hufflepuff. Even the Gryffindors I know have more discretion than he does.”
            Harry swatted Draco on the back of the neck, and Draco sighed and lowered his head until his chin was touching Harry’s shoulder. “I can’t bring as much,” he said. “So that means that I’ll have to make up for it some other way, and add what only I can bring to this.”
            Harry smiled at him, feeling dazzled all over again by the way Draco looked, by the steely gleam in his eyes when he lifted his head. “You’re worth the rest of your family all by yourself,” he whispered, and relished the way Draco seemed to swell with power before his eyes before Harry kissed him.
*
            The half-giant landed in front of Cuthbert’s Corner the next day with an entire flight of thestrals, which Draco felt reinforced his point about discretion.
            But Weasley stared at him when he brought up the point as they went outside to meet the bumbler, and pointed out, “It’s not like most people will be able to see them. Unless they flew over a whole bunch of wizards who’d seen someone die. And I think they probably kept too high for that.”
            Draco bit the inside of his cheek and reached out a hand to the second thestral in line, behind the one that Hagrid rode, as he came up to the group of them. For a moment, the great creature arched its neck and stared at him, and Draco wondered if he’d been presumptuous and would be lucky to escape with his fingers. He hadn’t always had the greatest relationship with beasts that honored Hagrid.
            But a second later, the thestral snorted and lowered its head, letting its breath, which smelled of rotting meat, sweep Draco’s palm. Draco smiled a little, feeling absurdly thrilled.
            “He likes yeh!” Hagrid boomed out from behind him, making Draco tense all his muscles in an effort not to jump. “That’s Carvenhoof, and he’s pretty choosy.” He didn’t say anything else, but Draco thought he could read the judgment: Carvenhoof being choosy enough to pick Draco was a surprise.
            Draco stepped closer instead of running away, the way he had half-wanted to when he first saw those staring white eyes and curving fangs. Carvenhoof lowered his head and sniffed at Draco’s hair. Draco grimaced, but stood still. The stink of the thestral’s breath was a lot worse close up.
            Then Carvenhoof put his chin on Draco’s shoulder.
            Draco stood there, gaping a little, and wondering what he should do. No one else seemed to be saying anything, or moving forwards to rescue him. He thought that Hagrid might not have paid attention; at the moment, he was discussing something with Harry and laughing so hard that Draco winced.
            But Carvenhoof remained where he was, eyes closed when Draco managed to turn his head to look at him. When he felt Draco looking, though, Carvenhoof turned to him again. He gazed calmly back, eerie with those blind white balls for eyes, but radiating a sort of solid strength that made Draco raise a hand to his mane.
            It was bristly and largely hard under his touch, but even that made Draco want to bow his head. He had been feeling left out only yesterday, when he and Harry had spoken with yet another Weasley and he saw all the friends Harry had. He wasn’t jealous, but he was envious. He wanted to bring something to the table, something other than his skills as an Auror, which Harry also had, or his flaw, which wasn’t very useful except as a passive warning system.
            Now he thought he had something—or at least something a thestral found attractive. Carvenhoof sniffed him thoroughly, his nostrils lingering in Draco’s hair as though he wanted to be sure of knowing his scent if they met again. When he backed away and dropped his head to the ground, sniffing for the track of an animal, Draco had to smile.
            “He likes yeh,” Hagrid repeated from behind him, sounding wary. “Never seen him take to anybody that quick.”
            Draco turned around and smiled at Hagrid, who looked as if he was struggling to accept the fact that one of his treasured herd could like a Malfoy. Draco wondered for a moment if he would accept it. Perhaps he would have to hold the fact over Hagrid’s head, at the price of having it held over his if he didn’t.
            But then Hagrid broke into a big smile, and held his hand out to Draco. “Knew there was some good in yeh,” he said happily. “Knew Harry couldn’t have taken up with someone who didn’t have any.”
            Draco arched his eyebrow, but let Hagrid engulf his hand. As long as it didn’t cause tension that might break their little group apart, then he was all right with this.
*
            “The rumors have got worse.” Hermione put down the Daily Prophet in front of Harry as though she was handling a Muggle bomb. “I don’t…oh, Harry, no one can believe such bollocks. Can they?”
            Harry shook his head a little as he picked up the paper. “People believe rumors all the time, Hermione. Even good and loyal people. Remember when Molly thought you were my girlfriend in fourth year?”
            Hermione sighed and sat down in the chair across from him. “And I thought that was in the past,” she muttered.
            Harry raised an eyebrow at the headline, which said, KIDNAPPED AURORS? He skimmed down to the story underneath it, catching only glimpses of the sentences. That was okay. The Daily Prophet printed so much shit there was no point in reading all of it, anyway. You always had to wade through it and pick out the few good points.
            Or points that aren’t good but tell you what they think, at least.
            The paper said, Kidnapped Aurors…Aurors gone missing…Head Auror very grave…”We believe Potter and Malfoy might have something to do with our missing people”…”Yes, it’s very hard, but we must keep our hopes up and wait for their possible return”…no Dark Arts beyond them…Socrates Corps…multiple murders…
            Harry laid it down and raised his eyes to Hermione, who was sitting with her hand over her mouth as though waiting for him to explode. “So they’re saying that we’re stealing Aurors and killing them with Dark Arts?” he asked.
            Hermione nodded and slowly lowered her hand, then reached out to pick up the cup of tea Kreacher had brought, all the time keeping her eyes on him. “Yes. Or they’re implying that you’re converting them to your side with the Imperius Curse or something. I saw that brought up more than once. About how you used Unforgivable Curses during the war, and didn’t regret it.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course they would say something like that. Once a mistake is made, it’s never forgotten.”
            “Not if you’re a political enemy of the Ministry.” Draco stepped around his shoulder and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, nodding coolly at Hermione. “Good morning, Granger. Are you training with us this morning?”
            “Training?” Hermione looked back and forth between them, and Harry realized that he’d forgotten to tell her.
            “Yes,” he said. “We’re practicing with some of the tricks George brought, and the thestrals, to set up a plan as to how exactly we’re going to break into the Ministry. And I think one of George’s allies is going to show up this morning, and teach us some more.” That was what George had said he’d heard from Nero Prince, at least. Harry was still a little tense about trusting the location of Cuthbert’s Corner to someone else, but, come to that, they had only told Prince they would meet him on the cliffs in one particular location; the house would still be hidden by its wards.
            “Yes,” Hermione said, and all but bolted her tea. She stood up, glaring at the Prophet as if she wanted to incinerate it. “I want to stop this. I want to make them yell. To be sorry that they ever blamed my best friend.” She looked at Harry, then hesitated, “And my best friend’s—partner.”
            Draco gave a little bow to Hermione. “Thank you for including me, Granger.” He sounded sincere, and Hermione gave him a small smile.
            “Then we should start,” Harry said, and swallowed the last of his own breakfast and stood up. The Prophet they left lying in the middle of the table like the rag it was. As far as Harry was concerned, Kreacher could use it to wipe his arse.
            They had training to accomplish.
*
            delia cerrano: Thanks!
            SP777: Well, I think there are some humorous moments here!
            At the moment, it’s going to be exposure. Neither Harry nor Draco could really imagine going back to being ordinary Aurors, and if they can expose the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, that doesn’t mean that they would want to replace the Minister.
            This is going to be the last chaptered story. Then possibly one more one-shot after it.
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Chains of Fool's Gold