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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 Twenty—Fire and Storm

            They were over the sea now. Harry could feel the dragons’ shivers of revulsion through the wheel. They could fly over the ocean, but they still hated it, with the instinctive opposition normally felt between fire and water.

            Harry smiled. What he wanted to suggest next should go over well, then. “Direct your fire down,” he hissed in Parseltongue, making sure he concentrated on the snaky shape of the dragon’s head floating in front of him so that he wouldn’t accidentally say the words in English.

            The dragon beneath him jerked and bellowed as though stung at the command, and it reverberated out over the line. Harry held up the pattern of fire again. They quieted, and he realized that they hadn’t been seriously considering rebellion; it was simply something that had to happen, so that they could reassure themselves they were still free, still wild.

            He wondered how well he would understand dragons before this was done, and if that would be a good thing.

            As one, the dragons bowed their heads and parted their jaws. Harry shouted a warning back to his people, but kept his own eyes open and focused forwards. He would never forgive himself if he missed this.

            Lances of fire made the darkness flicker as they reached out and down. Harry could feel Ron’s tension without turning around. He would be thinking that they’d just revealed to the guards at Azkaban exactly where they were. And that might be true, assuming they were close enough to the prison yet that the guards would see the fire as anything more important than the distant shine of stars.

            And it might have been true if not for what happened next.

            Fire met water. Enormous clouds of steam billowed up and around them, hiding them. Harry laughed and cast some rapid protective charms so that no one who rode with him would be burned. He couldn’t say what might happen to someone who might fly to oppose them, of course, especially if that person was on a broom. Brooms didn’t have much in the way of charms that would preserve them from magic like this.

            And it was magic. Just because it hadn’t come out of a wand didn’t make it less powerful. Harry took a deep breath and pulled the heat and the wetness into his lungs, feeling his body throb as he reached out for it. There was something else, too, a tease of the same power that he felt pulling at him from the dragons. He turned his head, seeking after it, and thought he saw a gleam of gold through the fog.

            “Harry!”

            Ron’s warning shout put his attention back where it should be, on the steam. The dragons bore through it without changing direction; Harry knew they had more senses than their eyes to guide them. But some of his people were crying out in fear and fury, and raising their wands to cast charms that would make the steam billow away from around them.

            “No.”

            His voice was a flat command, and if it could lay calm on the dragons, then Harry thought he could manage with a group of wizards, none of whom had that same wildness in their souls, most of whom trusted him. He saw wands lower and some people exchange sheepish glances, but others gave him the full brunt of glares and harsh words.

            “What do you think you’re doing, Potter?” That was the voice of Catchers, who had come along on the raid after all. Harry didn’t know why, since he had protested and complained all the way. Harry had heard his voice not directly, but as a buzzing distraction on the edge of hearing. He looked at Catchers now and raised his eyebrows.

            “What do you think I’m doing?” he asked. “I’m leading a raid on Azkaban, the way that I told our people I would.”

            Catchers shook his head, or at least Harry thought he did. He was seated the farthest back of anyone on the same dragon Harry rode, and his face was little more than a pale blur surrounded by two kinds of darkness, his black hood and the night. It was worse now that the steam was up around them and shedding a silvery mist of confusion around the edges of their protective charms. “Not that. I understand that part well enough.” His voice could have blistered paint. “But you didn’t warn us. You didn’t explain your plans.”

            “So you could expose them to the Ministry, you mean?” Draco said, not low enough for Harry’s peace of mind. “Yes, I can see how that would be inconvenient.”

            Harry cast Draco a warning glance. Perhaps it was true that Catchers was a spy for the Ministry, though in that particular case, Harry thought the signs that he was would have shown up before now; Catchers was just too volatile. But they didn’t need other people to start believing that and spread the rumor around. That would be the surest way to lose Catchers’s allegiance.

            Draco raised his eyebrows back, and Harry blinked. He had thought Draco would back down at once; he’d had a sort of cringing silence about him ever since Harry had explained what he’d done with the shadow hounds. That was understandable. He’d been living alone for seven years and failing in the one goal most important to him.

            Now he was doing decidedly better. Harry was glad of that. But of course it would happen now, when Harry had to worry about keeping the delicate balance between those loyal to him, like Draco, and those whose loyalty could be tipping.

            “I didn’t want to explain them because of spies,” Harry called back to Catchers. “You’re right, I could have done certain things differently. I would have, if I had come to my senses earlier. But it took my friends to get me there.”

            “So tell us what you plan to do, now.” There was a shifting motion that might have been Catchers settling back on the dragon and folding his arms. The silent expectation all around him said This had better be good.

            Harry clenched his teeth so that he didn’t snarl in irritation. It was difficult, but then, he’d had a lot of practice when he still worked for the Ministry. “I did. We’re going to get the prisoners out first, and then burn the place down. We’ll bring the prisoners back to the Manor and hide them while we decide who can be helped and who can’t.”

            “But the tactics?” Catchers might have been drumming one hand against his knee, always a nervous signal with him, but again, it was hard to see in the dark. “The strategy? What side are we going to go in from?”

            “I don’t know yet,” Harry said. “I don’t know enough about the layout of the prison. You know that that sort of information isn’t generally available, and that none of our people came from Azkaban.”

            Catchers might have been snarling; he might have been smiling. Harry cursed the darkness and the distance again. “You should have tried to get your hands on a map before we attacked. There are maps. But once again, you thought you could do anything, didn’t you?”

            Harry sat down and turned his back on Catchers. Perhaps it was the stupid thing to do. It might make him look weak in the eyes of his followers. But in a short while they would be fighting for their lives, and he didn’t have time to indulge Catchers.

            “Potter.” Catchers sounded as if he thought Harry was ignoring him.

            “Fight when we get there,” Harry said. “I’ll expect you to look out for your life and the lives of those who follow you, not concentrate on arguing with me.” He lifted his hand and drove it forwards, timing it with the flap of the dragons’ wings.

            “That you could think—”

            Then they were hurtling forwards at breathless speed, and Catchers’s voice was lost in the wind around them. Harry shook his head and let his thoughts go. He wondered if this was what a boulder felt like when it began to fall.

            The world around them clanged and danced past, and the dragon beneath Harry began to rumble. Harry smiled and laid his hand flat on the scales, feeling the heat the surged under them. The dragon wasn’t breathing fire; it wasn’t breathing in an ordinary way, either. He knew this was a sort of special breathing it used in flight, when it prepared for trouble and organized the air it took in, diverting some to the wings and most to the lungs.

            How do I know that?

            The wheel’s communication wasn’t one-way, he thought. It told the dragons what he wanted, but also told him something about what they thought and felt. He wouldn’t want to risk his life on it—

            Even though you are.

            But it was something, there, a fragile bond connecting them. He wondered if anyone could have done this if George had invented the right instrument, or if it needed a Parseltongue-speaker.

            Or someone willing to stop into the heart of the fire.

            It wasn’t long before a flickering blue light pierced the cloud of steam around them. Harry knew it was the light of a searching spell, and he started to touch the dragon’s back so that they could angle away from it.

            The Hebridean Black lowered his head and breathed instead, and the steam grew thicker around them, more water meeting fire and churning up in silvery clouds. The blue light reflected off grey and white and nothing else, and then died, lost. Harry nodded. The dragons knew the stakes as well as they did, though doubtless not for the same reasons. The Azkaban guards wouldn’t find them.

            Until the moment when the air overheard loomed with bellies and wings, at least.

            Harry closed his eyes as he felt the concentrated magic of the prison come nearer, focusing on an image of the web-like pattern that the dragons’ wings had woven earlier. He thought of it as made of ice and the moon, high and glinting light, and he imagined that it coiled around the jaws and feet of the animals they rode and the ones who flew guard behind. Nothing could truly contain a dragon but its own will, of course.

            That was the point. He needed some way to hold them back for a time so that his people could get into Azkaban and free the prisoners, and this was the only way, to weave the image in his mind’s eye and make them think it was their own idea.

            The dragon he rode hissed, and the female Hebridean hissed back a moment later. They came to a halt, hovering, hanging above the water the way they’d hung above Harry when he first summoned them. He didn’t feel anger booming around him and burning the scales under his hand, but a vast, slow puzzlement.

            Harry reached out to them at the same moment as he reached out to the other dragons accompanying them. He showed the fire, and he showed the pattern of light, and then he showed the fire sketching in the same pattern. It was his own will. The dragons couldn’t feel it as a curb or a net, he knew that. They would break such things on principle. He had to show them what he wanted, and hope they agreed.

            The Opal-eye came glittering out of the cloud beside him, so close that Harry could see the fangs through the steam. It stared at him, and Harry faced up to the light in its eyes and stubbornly repeated the pattern.

            The Opal-eye snarled and dived, tail writhing across the sky as if it was a crocodile. It opposed him because it wanted to. Harry knew it was nothing personal, but he also knew it was immensely dangerous, and he would be stupid if he let the other dragons pick up on that desire and express it in the same way.

            He understood something about dragons that he never would have without the wheel and the experience of communicating with them like this, though. He understood that they could be attracted by beauty, that they often held off on smashing their own eggs and hatchlings because they admired the way they shone, and that gave him a weapon. He reached down and back, blindly stretching out a hand.

            Ron caught it. Draco caught his arm in the same instant.

            Harry didn’t have time to choose between them. He reached out to them with his magic, and he reached back into the wheel with his voice, speaking descriptions of the light that flowered behind his eyes. The wheel clicked and clacked, and spun his voice into Parseltongue and then into the dragons’ tongue, sending it across the sky to them.

            And spinning Draco’s and Ron’s souls into fire.

*

            Draco didn’t know what would happen when Potter reached out. He only knew that Potter was asking for help with that gesture, and Draco hadn’t given him help since the shadow hounds. If Potter did too much for him, then he would be in his debt again.

            And Draco might not feel the need for power over Potter that he knew would consume his father if Lucius was in this situation, but he did feel the need for some pride.

            He let his fingers close on Potter and press against both cloth and skin in answer, and Potter took hold of something in him. Draco gasped and closed his eyes. It was exquisitely painful, as though someone was pulling his organs out of his chest, one by one.

            Weasley made a sick sound beside him, as if he could feel the same sensation but wasn’t as calm about it as Draco was. Well, of course not, Draco thought, and tried to concentrate on regulating his breathing when it wanted to rage out of control. No one was as calm about it as Draco was. He was a machine, a perfect sculpted statue that never needed sympathy from anyone, a—

            A man in pain. He ended up pulling away from Potter even though he didn’t want to go, because the muscles and the organs in his chest were turning to jelly, and there were some things he couldn’t give to Potter no matter how much he might want to.

            He opened his eyes to see Potter smiling at him. His fingers shone with spots of fire, and he inclined his head to Draco and then to Weasley. Draco would remember that afterwards. Potter had nodded to him first.

            “Thank you,” Potter whispered, and turned and held out his hand to the sky, fingers splayed. From around them came sharp hisses and bellows that abruptly trailed off when they saw what Potter held.

            Or perhaps it had something to do with the mad spinning of the wheel in Potter’s other hand. Draco didn’t know. He could understand the magical theory behind the wheel if someone explained it to him, he was sure, but he could never have invented such a thing himself, or guessed that Parseltongue would allow one to communicate with dragons. He wondered for an idle moment why the Dark Lord had never tried to recruit dragons to his cause.

            Then he shuddered and banished the speculation. It had never happened. That was reason enough to be grateful for whatever weakness or weariness had held the monster back.

            Potter once again rose to his feet on the dragon’s back, and this time both Weasley and Draco hung onto his legs. Weasley gave Draco a wary look, as if he didn’t know what Draco was doing there but was afraid to ask. But Draco only glared back and held onto Potter’s leg a little harder. Weasley had needed him to rescue Potter, to make speeches to Potter, and to give Potter his soul so far. Weasley had done much the same, but he couldn’t have done it alone. Draco tried to say all that with his silent stare, and after a moment, Weasley looked away and nodded sharply.

            Neither of their hands relaxed.

            Potter might not have noticed them. He held out three twining, glittering patterns of fire to the dragons instead, all three changing so rapidly that Draco didn’t know where the colors of one ended and another began. He did think that one was mostly red, one mostly green, and one mostly gold. Potter spoke in a manner that swarmed with challenge, and the wheel spun wildly enough that Draco thought the jade eye would fly out of the center of it and fall to earth.

            The nearest Hebridean Black without riders appeared suddenly next to him. The faceted eyes watched the patterns of fire, and then the dragon raised its wings and sheered down and away.

            From the breath Potter took in—and the fire that it didn’t breathe at them—Draco surmised his plan had been worked, whatever it was.

            The next to appear was the Chinese Fireball, its scales bleeding with scarlet light, its eyes clouded with the transparent malice of a snake as it stared at their souls. One glance and it was gone, too, rolling through the darkness and the steam like a fish through water.

            More eyes came and peered, and each time the dragon left. Draco shook his head. If someone had told him yesterday that he’d be on the back of a dragon tonight, showing his soul to other dragons and persuading them that way not to attack or at least not to flail against the fragile skein of Potter’s control before they could land…

            He would have said that they were mad.

            And he would have closed his eyes and tried to think of his parents, whom he was here for, who weren’t far away.

            That realization and remembrance chilled the grip of his fingers on Potter’s ankle, but the git had sat down again anyway. He nodded to them. “The dragons will stay back while you rescue the prisoners,” he said. “But we need to get close enough to the island that you can land safely. And take care of the guards before that,” he added thoughtfully.

            Weasley grunted. “Good plan, mate, but how in the world are you going to set us down in the middle of all this steam and let us find the guards without alerting them that we’re coming?”

            “Surprise isn’t really a problem,” Potter said slowly, closing his eyes. “They know we’re coming.”

            Draco rolled his eyes, because he couldn’t believe Weasley hadn’t picked that up already from all the flash and fire around Harry and the rest of them, but remained silent. It wasn’t as though he had a solution for the problem, either, and his father would have said that speaking up when he didn’t have either that or a complication that everyone else was overlooking made him part of the problem.

            His father.

            Draco swallowed, and opened his eyes to watch the man all his hopes, impossibly, had come to hang on.

*



            Harry looked down into the smoke and mist and steam swirling around the feet of the dragon and had to admit that finding the guards in this and making sure that they hit but didn’t kill them would be rather hard.

            That meant it was up to him to find the solution again. He was an expert at unusual problems and tricks, wasn’t he?

            He flexed the fingers of his left hand—he had to keep his right free in case he needed to show the patterns of soul-fire to the dragons again—and spoke to his wild magic. It leaped up around his fist in a flare of light, eagerly. He hadn’t used it much lately, occupied as he’d been with preparing the raid and then using the wheel.

            “Mate?” Ron’s voice, wary.

            “What are you doing, Potter?” Malfoy had an undertone of eagerness, rather like a hunting hound.

            “Finding them,” Harry said, and closed his eyes. Communing with his wild magic was a weird process. The books he’d read had told him that wild magic had its name because it was vicious, violent, chaotic, and not prone to control.

            Rather like the dragons, then, and the way that everyone had said they couldn’t be tamed.

            Harry reached down into the depths of his being, into the depths of his magical core. This had been the first thing he’d had to learn, how to connect his conscious mind with a part of him that normally remained so silent and embedded in him that it didn’t feel like anything at all. Then he had to join it all up to his will, and turn himself like a huge wheel, spinning it all together, and not letting the magic erupt from the tight bonds he kept it in at any point.

            There was a pause, probably more unnerving for the people on the dragon with him than anything else, and then Harry opened his eyes and extended his hands in front of him. He wasn’t entirely sure what would happen next. He moved with his magic like a partner in a dance, reaching out for its hand on the next step but not always sure of exactly what movements it would make.

            The magic formed a flat circle of golden light in front of him. Harry peered at it, and then smiled. It pierced downwards through the fog around him, opening a way to the island of Azkaban itself. He nodded.

            “I can see them,” he said, and he could indeed make out the small figures of robed men and women moving back and forth, some of them milling around but others taking up position in line as though they expected an attack shortly. Harry knew they couldn’t have much idea of what was coming, though, or they would have raised stronger defenses than the ones he saw. “And they’re going to get a nasty surprise in a minute.”

            “You won’t kill them?” Ron didn’t sound as though he knew whether he wanted that to happen or not.

            “No,” Harry said. “I don’t need to.” He wasn’t looking back over his shoulder, but his magic told him that Ron ducked his head and swallowed a little, as though considering whether he found that answer any more reassuring.

            Harry couldn’t do much about it if he didn’t. He spread his fingers wide, drew in his breath, and sent the fire flying from him and down through the lens.

            The lens shimmered, and the magic bucked in him, making him forget about the dragon for a moment and feel as if he was riding lightning. Harry laughed. His body ached with light, his muscles cooled with heat. He flung the fire down, and watched through the lens as it forked and forked again, forming whips that sprouted more tendrils. The dragon, the source of those climbing vines, stirred uneasily, but Harry hissed soothingly to it through the wheel, and he thought it was calming down even before the message reached it. The weapon he used was based on fire, after all.

            The guards on Azkaban found themselves bound by burning ropes that shifted closer and singed their skin or hair whenever they tried to move. Harry counted them as they fell over, and nodded when the number of guards he had seen on his first peering through the lens and the number of resting and bound ones matched.

            “It’s done,” he said. “I’ll ask the dragons to stop breathing steam, and then they can carry you over the island and you can descend. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them get too close to the walls yet.”

            “It’s done,” Draco whispered behind him.

            Harry grinned over his shoulder at him. He saw Ron blanch, but Draco just stared at him with wide eyes, eager to believe. “Yes. It is. You’ll have your parents back shortly.”

            Draco shut his eyes and said nothing as Harry turned, speaking into the wheel, and took the Hebridean Blacks ashore.

*

            SP777: Glad you liked the dragons. As you can see, they’re going to be around in the story for several more chapters.

            Your statue sounds incredibly cool. And cute.
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Intoxicate the Sun