Intoxicate the Sun | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18051 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
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Chapter Twenty-One—Moving Forwards
Draco coiled the long rope in his hands and closed his eyes briefly in prayer. He didn’t really have anyone to pray to, but if someone out there heard him and wanted to take up his cause, then he would welcome the assistance.
He, Weasley, Catchers, and the rest of those who had ridden with Potter were going to take the plunge from a dragon’s back on ropes. Dangling over the ground of an island that was still mostly hidden by the remnants of the steam the dragons had stirred up, and haunted by the echoes of fire. Hundreds of feet below.
Draco hoped that his face wasn’t as pale as Weasley’s, but he was afraid that it was. He wound his hands more firmly in the rope.
“You can do this.”
He blinked and then looked up at Potter. Potter had seemed to sense his discomfort, the way he would do at the damnedest times. His eyes were gentle as he gazed into Draco’s, and he reached out as though he would touch Draco’s cheek and tilt his head back before he seemed to sense Weasley’s curious gaze—and perhaps Draco’s own mixed feelings—and let his hand drop.
“I promise you, you can,” Potter said, and this time his nod was more impersonal, that of a commander reassuring a soldier, rather than a friend who had been about to lend another friend strength through his touch. “The dragons will swoop and catch you if you fall.” He touched his wheel, as though that was what Draco had questioned his faith in.
Draco gave a sickly smile in return. This time, he was sure it was stronger than Weasley’s, which cheered him up a bit.
Potter turned his head and seemed to listen to something the dragons said, perhaps something that had come to him through the wheel. Draco stared at the artifact from the corner of his eye and wondered if even the Weasley who had invented it knew how the bloody thing worked. It seemed to draw Potter further away from all of them, into a world where he could make an image of fire into his soul and do the same thing with theirs.
“Now,” Potter said, and lifted his hand. The wheel clicked and spun, and Draco heard soft sounds from all around them as the dragons hovered in place. He could also feel the wind of their doing so pushing against his body, and hoped that it wouldn’t twist him or make him lose his grip on the way down.
“Here goes nothing,” Weasley muttered, and pushed himself off the dragon’s back, climbing down hand-over-hand as the ropes, obeying the enchantments buried in their weaving, began to uncoil obediently.
Draco took several deep breaths, thought of his parents and then, inexplicably, of the way Potter’s face had looked after he saved him from the shadow hounds, and pushed himself off to follow.
He felt the dragon’s scales sliding rapidly past him and fought the temptation to brace himself against their warmth. He hadn’t realized until now how hot the scales had been, how protected they had kept the dragon’s riders as they soared through the cold air at the heights. And then he was past and dropping, the straps of the cushions hanging above him, the air everywhere else.
He started to spin. Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his focus, not letting the dizziness overwhelm him. Weasley was cursing steadily from somewhere below him.
He would have to make this drop again, only as an ascent. And he would have to discover some way to get his parents safely up. There was no way that he could come this far and then abandon them out of fear.
No way.
Draco reached out with his legs and kicked himself off from one of the dangling straps. Someone cursed above him, this time, but he didn’t care. That had been the last push he needed, the leaving of the illusion of safety, and now the rope unwound faster and faster, dropping him through ragged scraps of cloud and leftover steam that brushed against his skin with its damp heat.
Down, down, down.
The rope did spin, but Draco found that he could counter the dizziness with images of his mother’s face. Was she still sane? Would she know him when he saw her? Would his father come to him when the door opened, or attack, or had they both forgotten him in favor of staring at stone walls?
Draco shivered when those thoughts struck him, but what had tormented him for the past seven years was having no answers to those questions. Now he would have them, whether or not they were favorable.
The busyness of his mind kept him content until they reached the ground and their boots struck rock. Draco at once let go of the rope and flexed his hands. His fingers were bleeding from the tear of the hemp. He was vaguely surprised that he hadn’t felt the pain on the way down, but then, he supposed that it might not have been as noticeable.
Weasley was beside him, drawing his wand and looking around as though he thought Potter hadn’t neutralized all the guards after all. Draco spared only one glance for them, lying helpless in their bonds of fire and staring at the intruders with hatred. If Potter said they would stay secure, then they would have. Draco knew Potter would have come himself, needed to control the dragons or not, if he hadn’t thought it was safe for his people to venture here.
“Stay close to me,” Weasley whispered to the men and women forming up behind him, in a square training maneuver that Draco didn’t know. Draco ignored them and followed Weasley’s advice in his own manner, stepping up beside him. Weasley spared him an intense glance, then ignored him as though by common agreement and focused on the terrain ahead. “We don’t know what might be out there.”
That reminded Draco that, disarmed guards or not, they could still run into wards. He gathered his wand close to himself and listened for the telltale hum of spells that would react to the advent of intruders.
He didn’t hear any until Weasley started forwards, his face set in a frown of concentration. Then the ground beneath his feet hummed.
Draco moved without thinking about it, the only thought in his head what people would say to him if Weasley died when Draco was standing right beside him. He slammed his shoulder into Weasley’s and twisted, throwing him off-balance and to the side while he raised a protective shield around them. Weasley, startled, grappled with him, but that actually wasn’t a problem, since it made them fall further.
The air where they’d been standing burst into white flame. Draco felt it singe his eyelashes from where he lay. He flinched and scrubbed his hand over his face. Damn. The Ministry really didn’t want people poking around here.
“Malfoy.” Weasley’s voice was quiet.
Draco rolled over to look at him. They’d landed hard on the stone, but it seemed to have affected Weasley less than Draco. He was already back on his feet, and staring at the singed patch of stone and weak grass as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. The other trainees were still in the process of flinching.
“What?” Draco asked, expecting to be blamed for the bruises that Weasley must have taken in the fall.
Weasley’s mouth worked for a minute; then he turned away with a snort. “You have my permission to push me to save my life,” he said. “If that’s the reason you’re doing it, and not for anything else.”
Draco reckoned that was as close to gratitude as Weasley could come, at least where there were other people around to listen. He scrambled up to his feet and smiled sweetly at Weasley. “You’re welcome.”
Weasley flushed, nodded, turned, and led them towards the prison. This time, Draco was content enough to follow, though he still kept a bit of distance between him and Weasley’s other people.
The walls of Azkaban loomed next to them, grey and blank and chilly. Draco had to grit his teeth to keep himself from casting Warming Charms at them. Those wouldn’t change the impression on his mind, he knew, which was the impression the prison was meant to give. The people they rendered captive here were supposed to become more and more inert, hopeless and helpless, their heads drooping with grief when they tried to move.
The thought made him clench his hands, and he strode ahead hardly looking around for more wards. There didn’t seem to be any as destructive as the one that had almost done for Weasley, anyway, although several times the revolutionaries flinched around him and clutched at their ears as though something had buzzed painfully in them. Draco wondered for a moment why those wards didn’t bother him.
Then he smiled grimly. Of course. Those wards would find it hard to bother someone who had used Dark Arts to protect himself, and Draco had cast the usual protective spells without thought the moment his feet touched down on the island.
Finally, they came to a door, grey like everything else here and barred with thick steel and more wards. Weasley put a finger to his lip as he leaned against the door, listening. Draco snorted—he thought Weasley was being unnecessarily dramatic—but he waited, and finally Weasley nodded, stepped back, opened the door with a few complicated taps of his wand against the wards, and waved them through.
Draco found himself in a grey stone corridor that sloped steeply down. Here and there was a cell, like a cave fronted with steel, but they were all empty. Probably didn’t want to keep prisoners so close to the sunlight, Draco thought.
A great anger was burning inside him, he realize when he took a moment to consider his own feelings. Like a sun. He clapped a hand over his heart to try and soothe its wild beating so that no one else would sense it and learn what he was feeling, and led the way on, even when Weasley called to him to wait.
The wards inside the prison were weak, and tuned to ignore people who had wands, which none of the prisoners did. They leaped up, fizzed at them, and then burned out again. Draco ignored them easily, too, and lifted his lit wand above his head. The tunnel became darker and darker, and at last he was convinced that his first impression was right, that the prisoners were left here entirely without light. What happened if they dropped some of the food from their trays or stumbled into the latrine?
They would be left like that, Draco thought, trying desperately to recover squashed food or clean up the stinking mess, without magic. His anger grew.
The sloping corridor came to an abrupt stop, and a flight of stairs started. They were irregular heights. Draco called the warning back over his shoulder and then lifted his wand higher than ever. He didn’t want to slip and fall on his way down. He wasn’t entirely sure that Potter’s revolutionaries would take it upon themselves to rescue him.
The cells appeared on either side of them, on ledges that projected out from the walls. Even if the prisoners had escaped, they would step out onto a tiny space of stone and then nothingness. Draco shuddered and reached up to touch a small chain around his neck that he wore so close to the skin he forgot it was there most of the time and no one else had ever commented on it.
The chain shivered when he touched it. It consisted of a number of small, hollow links. In the middle of each link was embedded a drop of Malfoy blood. Draco licked his lips and whispered beneath his breath so that no one could hear. He would have preferred to do the incantation nonverbally, but he didn’t think he could put enough power behind it if he did, his voice was shaking so badly. “Cruore.”
The chain swung in his grasp and pointed towards one section of the cells. Draco arched his neck, but he couldn’t see which group it indicated. And he didn’t know how they were supposed to reach the cells to let the prisoners go, anyway, if the stairs were the only way down. Would they have to climb to the floor and then climb up the walls?
“There must be a simpler method,” Weasley muttered, as if he was echoing Draco’s thoughts. Draco found that more likely than Weasley spontaneously coming up with a good idea on his own. “How did they feed them, if they couldn’t reach them? I don’t think this lot were dedicated enough to reach all the cells one at a time.”
“Much less climb up the walls,” added someone who was trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about, and only succeeded in sounding snotty. Catchers, Draco thought with a snort.
“Look, here it is!”
Weasley had touched something, and the floor beneath them grumbled and began to creak and clank. Draco flattened himself on the step he occupied. He wouldn’t put it past Weasley to cast him into darkness, either. Sure, they were getting along for the time being, both admitting that they were necessary to keep Potter safe, but that didn’t mean they liked each other.
But the stairs all shivered and then altered, and powerful magic whipped past Draco like the tail of a snake diving into a burrow. The stairs swung into line as if they were in Hogwarts, and then slender shelves extended out from them, bridges that connected to each cluster of cells.
“Bloody clever, Weasley,” Catchers said grudgingly.
Draco wanted to give his own acknowledgment, but Catchers had stolen the words he would have used, so he looked over his shoulder and simply nodded, once and regally. Weasley flushed, showing that he knew as well as Draco whose commendation was worth more, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“My dad’s clever with Muggle things,” he muttered. “I saw the lever, and I knew it had to move something. I just didn’t know what.”
Draco bit his tongue, but mentally took back a lot of the points he’d given Weasley—what if the lever had dropped them all into a pit?—and then checked the chain again. This time, it definitely pointed in front of him, along one of the bridges that spanned the air like a delicate sword blade. Draco grimaced, but he had done what he had to before, and this was far from the worst obstacle that he had crossed when attempting to free his parents. He stood up, arms spread out around him to balance his weight as he stepped forwards.
“Malfoy! Bloody hell, you idiot!”
But the bridge didn’t collapse beneath Draco and the chain continued to tug him, so he ignored Weasley and continued. It wasn’t as though the prat could know what tortures Draco had suffered, trying to get the Ministry to listen and trying to decide whether he should throw in with Potter or not and trying to accept that he would have to break his parents free, rather than wait for the Wizengamot to change their minds. It wasn’t as though he knew anything beyond Potter.
Draco would burn the world for his parents. He would betray Potter for them, if it turned out to be necessary. He would certainly cross a little piece of metal in the air for them.
The bridge beneath his feet trembled and sang and hummed. But other people were following him out onto it now, as if curious to see why this part of the prison drew him, and Draco didn’t look back. It had held so far. It would continue to hold. If it didn’t, he had no compunctions about driving anyone who followed him off the bridge so that he could safely bring his parents out this way.
He was close now.
Seven years of a quest, seven years of a hopeless longing. It made his heart leap to life in his breast; it brought his breath springing from his lips. He would give it all up, heartbeat and breath and the rest, for them.
The chain in his hands sang and jerked straight. Draco put his hand on his side, wondering if his heart would actually beat its way out through his ribs, and continued on. The cluster of the nearest cells was rimmed with light from the charm on his wand and the charms of the others following him, and he leaned until he was balancing on his toes, straining to see inside.
The nearest cell had a man with long grey hair and a beard that was so filthy Draco recoiled instinctively from him, turning to look into the darkness beyond. Then a woman moved in the top cell and stared down at him.
It had been seven years, but Draco still knew the blue of her eyes.
“Mother,” he tried to say, but he choked. He reached out a shaking hand, not realizing until it brushed against stone that he was far short of her cell. He swallowed and glanced back, wondering if there was another lever that could lift the bridge up to her cell.
“I’ll do it, Malfoy.”
Weasley’s voice, close to his ear, and Draco didn’t know what he was talking about until he felt hands on his leg. Weasley boosted him, and Draco found himself on the ledge outside Narcissa’s cell. The distance had been less than he thought it was, after all. The guards had probably used magic to float up the food from the bridge.
He reached out and stuck his hand through the bars.
His mother hesitated, so long that Draco was forced to wonder if she didn’t recognize him. Then she reached out. Her fingers entwined with his, so smooth and so long, the fingernails a twisting mass of yellow, that Draco had to close his eyes.
“Draco.”
Her voice was cracked, choked, dry. It sounded as though she had starved and had no water for at least two days.
It was still the sweetest sound Draco had ever heard. He leaned his head on the bars, his tears trickling down his cheeks, and parted his lips. His mother turned her head to the side, and Draco kissed her cheek. It was as dry as her voice beneath his mouth.
“Your father,” she whispered, dusty. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I haven’t heard anything from him for two days. You should find him. I don’t know if he’s still—” She turned her head away and fell silent.
Draco nodded, easing back on the ledge so he could look at her. His mother’s hair was white and withered, her hands covered with scabs and calluses and broken, suppurating wounds. He felt a surge of anger, but he knew that letting it out now would be counterproductive. The people who had hurt her weren’t in the prison at the moment, anyway. “Of course, Mother. Is he in the cell next to yours?”
Narcissa nodded to the right and down. Draco turned around and bent down so that he could see over the ledge.
His father’s face was as pale as the moon, and his eyes stared at nothing. Draco felt a surge of hatred before he realized that Lucius was still alive; it was merely the fixed quality of his eyes that had fooled Draco. Draco reached down, but he couldn’t hold onto both his parents at once. He had to let go of his mother’s hand so that his arm could reach full extension. Narcissa made a despairing little sound when he let her go, so Draco winced and shifted so that his boot was right next to the bars and she could hold onto it if she wanted.
Lucius whispered, “Son.”
The tears hurt Draco’s eyes.
*
Harry floated on the dragon, his eyes half-closed, watching the flares of fire from the corners of them and the center of the jade wheel. Now and then, the dragon under him stirred restlessly. He hissed to it, and it would settle back into drifting, but he thought the rebellions were coming more frequently. He hoped that Ron and Draco and the others returned before he had to do something drastic, such as let them burn down one wing of the prison, to appease the great beasts circling near.
A flash of gold caught his eye. Harry turned his head, wondering if the wheel had fetched another dragon that he would have to tame and soothe. He didn’t mind, exactly, but he would like the surprises to stop appearing.
But the gold flash wasn’t anything as simple as another dragon. Instead, Harry saw what looked like a flash of vivid lightning leaping from cloud to cloud. He blinked and leaned forwards, focusing on it. The lightning paused, crackling and shifting on the cloud ahead of him, and seemed to pose.
Harry shook his head. He had to be imagining things.
But the golden flash of lightning resolved into a figure that was immediately familiar: a stag, like his Patronus. Harry swallowed hard through a suddenly clogged throat and tried to remember the last time he had cast the Patronus. He couldn’t, off the top of his head. He wondered if that was important, significant.
Well, you have a Patronus made of lightning in front of you now and staring at you. Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty important.
The stag dissolved back into light and flicked away among the clouds. Harry looked down, letting his hand rest on the dragon’s neck, and thought about the temptation he had immediately experienced, to tell the Hebridean Black to follow. On a dragon, there was every possibility that he could catch up with the lightning.
As if that’s something you should be fooling with.
With relief, Harry wrapped his common sense around himself. Was it right, or sensible, to follow the lightning? Of course not. And it might be that some manifestation of wild magic had been pulled towards him by the presence of dragons and the fire he’d used to bind the guards earlier. Harry knew from his studies that there was some natural wild magic in the world, often contained in phenomena like storms and places soaked in human emotion. Azkaban would certainly qualify.
That all made sense, and certainly George and Draco and Ron and the others wouldn’t be happy to come up from the prison and find him gone. Without his restraining influence, the dragons would probably move in and burn the prison down, and they would never be able to get all the prisoners home or decide what to do with the guards.
Gold flickered teasingly from the corner of his eye. Harry turned his head forwards again, mentally vowing to look up Patronuses again the moment he got back to the manor.
Then he sighed. No, he would have to do that after he made sure the dragons had been carefully released and wouldn’t stay around him, and after the prisoners were settled, and after he got some rest…
Somewhere in the distance, lightning danced.
*
SP777: Yes, I think that you’re right about Harry’s plan. He knows that he didn’t usually have help during his Hogwarts days, partially because a lot of the adults wouldn’t have believed him, and that influences how he acts even now. But someone is going to be forced to make the decision pretty soon—or else will force him to make the decision.
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