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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-Five--Ripping Apart

            "You know what Catchers is saying about you."

            Harry nodded, and tried not to yawn into his bowl of cereal. He'd spent most of the day arranging the interrogations that were going to take place over the next week or so, and the questions that would be asked at them. They had Veritaserum, and it seemed stupid to waste the chance. Harry, Ron, and someone else who the rest of the revolution trusted would ask the prisoners what they had been accused of, what they had really done, and whether they felt any hostile impulses or would attempt to escape now. Harry had decided that, in the end, that was simpler than attempting to figure out the vast network of stories, rumors, and lies that would have spread among the prisoners and the members of the revolution who had been former Aurors or closely interested in the trials.

            "That I'm not a good leader," he mumbled, when he realized that Ron was still looking closely at him. "That I'm deciding too much, and not listening to the people who follow me. Maybe that you would be a better one."

            Ron dropped his fork. It rang loudly in the hall, and the other people eating there turned around and stared at them, then turned hastily away when Harry looked back at them in some interest. Ron picked it up again and shook his head at him.

            "How did you know that?" he asked.

            "Because Catchers came and talked to me yesterday." Harry yawned again. "Was it yesterday? It must be, because I slept most of the afternoon and into the night," he mumbled. When Ron glared at him, he sighed and described the conversation.

            "If he's doing that, then he's threatening you," Ron said sharply, looking as if he wanted to bristle. "I'll make sure that he understands he won't have a place among us if he does that."

            "Not so much threats as attempts to make me back down," Harry said.

            "Which are threats--"

            "What do you think the rest are going to say," Harry asked, lowering his voice, "if you go in there and tell them that you find it unacceptable that someone says harsh things to me?"

            Ron opened his mouth, then shut it again and shook his head. "They'll see me as coming from you," he muttered unhappily. "Someone they can't trust anymore, because I'm on the exact same side."

            Harry nodded and reached across the table, squeezing his hand. "Whatever happens, they have to be able to trust you. If a lot of people want to stay but won't accept me as leader, then they'll still have you. If some people split off from us but are still yearning back, they might talk to you where they won't talk to me. And you're our war leader and strategist. We still need you."

            "I don't know about strategist anymore, considering what you did with the dragons."

            Harry shrugged. "That was something we can't do again, because now the Ministry is alert and waiting for us to use dragons. A one-time, special stroke of genius doesn't mean that I can make more."

            "I think you can." Ron's eyes were intense. "If you start paying more attention to what they're doing instead of just your own thoughts, or what Malfoy's doing."

            Harry blinked. "What does Draco have to do with it?" He hadn't told Ron about his talk with Draco, although he had mentioned that Draco had overheard Harry's conversation with Catchers and could provide an independent witness if Catchers grew too belligerent.

            Ron snorted. "Draco. You don't even call Catchers, who you'd worked with and who you were so confident would join us, by his first name, but Draco only has to save your life once and it's the first name with him."

            "You know why," Harry said, and met Ron's eyes, confident that Ron would know what he meant but be too embarrassed to name it outright.

            Sure enough, Ron glanced away a minute longer. "Fine," he mumbled. "But the attention you pay to him is going to be one of our biggest sources of controversy, and I don't want you to exaggerate it."

            "Exaggerate it?" Harry felt a flicker of fire along the side of his arm, and suppressed it. That hadn't happened since he gained better control of his wild magic, which meant since he burned Duplais. "What do you mean?" His voice had risen, too, and once again he could feel people staring at him. Well, they were already staring, but now they looked as if they were at the point where they might intervene. Harry shook his head and cooled himself down with a sharp breath.

            "I mean," Ron said, "that you listen to his opinion, and ask him questions, and laugh when he makes jokes, and stare at him with these adoring eyes. And you let him do what he wanted, trying to Apparate his parents away from Azkaban, even though you would have rejected the suggestion if anyone else made it."

            "Not if you did."

            "I wouldn't have made it," Ron said sharply. "I could sense how strong the wards were. But you--let down your guard for him, and act like you're in love with him. Yes, you do," he added, probably because he could see the protest coming in Harry's eyes. "I don't like it."

            "If I want him," Harry said, "would that be so bad? It would stop me from being so alone, and it might help some of the people who are afraid of me see me as human after all."

            Ron made a noise like a frustrated camel. "You don't understand it, Harry. Sure, if you started sleeping with someone else, that might work. But not him. He's too different. He doesn't want the same things they want. He's already getting away with too much. Give him more, and they'll just have more reasons to resent him."

            Harry lowered his eyes to the table. He wanted to explain that it wasn't like that at all, that Draco was nobler than Ron gave him credit for...

            But that was only his impression. And getting his impressions across hadn't been something he was good at so far.

            "Fine," he muttered. "Then I won't mention that he'll get any special privileges, and I'll try to be more cool and guarded around him in public. That doesn't mean it'll make any difference, the same way that I don't think the attempt to reconcile these warring factions will really make any difference. There are too many people determined to hate me for not fulfilling their dreams."

            "You don't know that." Ron had leaned back in his chair and regarded him with more approval. "You can at least do what's necessary and give them a chance to voice their objections."

            "Or walk away," Harry said, thinking of the buried light in Catchers's eyes, the way his hands had tightened at his sides as though he would punch someone. "I think that'll be the choice for the larger number of them."

            "You're underestimating your own appeal," Ron said confidently, and drank the last of his tea, rising to his feet to deliver a heavy slap to Harry's shoulder. "You'll see. I work with plenty of people who feel that the revolution is the most important thing, not their personal desires."

            Then that means it's more important than me, too, Harry thought, and settled back in his seat to consider how he would approach this. He might have made too many mistakes. It might be too late to retrieve them.

            But he would try.

*

            "Explain this, Father." Draco heard the distant dryness of his own voice, and wondered where he had learned that. It didn't resemble the way that Lucius had sometimes spoken to him, and it wasn't a voice he had used in the last seven years when he thought of nothing but bringing his parents home. How could he know it? All of what he knew, other people had taught him.

            I might need to change my mind on that, then.

            Draco shook his head and focused on the bathroom in front of him again. Water swam across the tiles. The walls were splattered with stains of soap and foam. The bath looked as though something with enormous claws had run through it, carving sections of it out. The towels Draco had intended to last his parents for at least a week now dangled in shreds.

            "I need not explain it," Lucius said, with an expression that reminded Draco of nothing so much as a spoiled child's. "Once, you would have understood me without words."

            "Once, yes, but we've established that I've changed and you haven't," Draco said dryly. Lucius didn't take that for the irony it was, instead looking at him with pity. "Tell me why."

            "This was not worthy of a Malfoy," Lucius said, with a grand wave of his hand. "Towels of rough cloth. Water that ran too cold. Walls in a bland pattern. You will need to move us to a better prison now."

            Draco turned and glanced at his mother. She shut her eyes and turned her head away. Draco couldn't tell what she was feeling from her expression, the way he thought he might once have been able to. Sometimes she seemed ashamed, sometimes upset, sometimes determined to stay on Lucius's side no matter what.

            And sometimes he thought that she was still too tired from her time in Azkaban to show much emotion at all.

            Draco raised and flicked his wand. A simple Cleaning Charm banished the stains and the ragged strips of towels. Then he Vanished the water and cast a Reparo on the bath, making the missing sections rise from the dustbin where Lucius had flung them and reattach themselves. Draco Summoned a few more towels and hung them in the place of the originals, then faced his father.

            "It must have taken you hours to do this much, with the crude tools available to you," he said quietly. "I repaired it with my wand in under a minute. Who do you think has the real power here? Who do you think can give you what you want? You can't get it by demanding it."

            His father stood very still. Then he shook his head, and a smile appeared on his face that Draco didn't understand at all.

            "I taught you to take what you want, and use power against other people where you found it," Lucius whispered. "Other people was never meant to include me."

            Draco held himself back from responding. Part of the problem was that he didn't know if this was prison defining Lucius or if he really had been that blind, so certain that Draco would never feel anything different from him. Perhaps prison had stripped the subtlety away from Lucius, but not the sanity, leaving him as a thinner, more pared-down version of himself.

            He glanced at his mother and made his voice gentle. "Do you need anything else, Mother?"

            Narcissa shook her head, keeping her eyes on the floor.

            Draco turned back, and that was when his father leaped on him and tried to take his wand.

            Draco rolled to the side without thinking, drawing on the fight training that he had spied on and practiced by himself, since there was no way he could ask Weasley to teach him. The roll drove him into the wall and made his breath whuff out of his lungs, but it broke Lucius's grip on his hand, and he took a step back, shaking his head as he tried to recover his balance.

            Draco used the respite to perform a Body-Bind. Lucius's eyes widened in fury as he toppled over. Draco made no attempt to catch him, although his father's head bounced dangerously near the tiled floor of the bathroom. Draco took a step forwards and knelt down so that he could stare at him.

            Lucius snarled a curse and thrashed one foot back and forth. The Body-Bind was fading already, then. Draco wasn't surprised. It took him a lot to use magic against his parents, which meant his will didn't have much strength behind it.

            "Father," he said, and was surprised by how calm and reasonable his voice sounded. Is that really me? "You know that no one else here will let you have a wand or let you out of your prison. And you can't manage to fight your way free when only you, and not Mother, would have a wand." He paused, considered what Lucius had said and implied so far, and then added slowly, "Did you intend to leave her behind?"

            "He wouldn't," Narcissa said, and then clenched her lips down over her teeth. Draco glanced at her invitingly, but she stared at the far wall rather than responding. Draco sighed and returned his attention to his father, casting a Body-Bind strong enough this time that Lucius's foot stopped moving.

            "Did you, Father?" he asked. Then he realized Lucius couldn't nod or speak, and released the spell's hold on his head. "A simple answer is all I require."

            "You are not the son I raised," Lucius said, the glitter in his eyes as sharp as agates.

            "Of course I'm not," Draco said. "The son you raised was in constant subjection to you, and I had seven years of being without it." Strange to consider them as years of freedom instead of loneliness.

            He intensified the spell on his father and shepherded his parents back across the corridor into their rooms, where he strengthened the locking spells on the door. Lucius watched with so much impotent rage worked into his face that Draco had to wonder if it was hereditary, if he had looked like that when the Ministry officials who controlled the Manor came to the house. If so, he hoped that none of them remembered.

            "You'll stay here," Draco said. "I'll have to tell Potter about this and explain the situation. Someone will notice my magic in the bathroom, and probably some of the damage." He didn't think he had done enough to repair it; he had never been that good at household cleaning charms. There simply wasn't enough reason or energy to repair and dust most of the Manor with his parents and his elves gone.

            "Why would your Potter assume that the best thing for us after seven years of confinement is more confinement?" his mother whispered, voice thin and thready.

            Draco shook his head. "All the prisoners are suffering this, Mother. Some of you are innocent, some of you are dangerous, and some aren't. But we have to sort through all the people we rescued before we can make that determination. And some people would think that you should stay caged up no matter what we found under the Veritaserum," he had to add. "My testimony might not do you much good, either. I'll have to ask Potter about that."

            Potter will vouch for them if I ask him to.

            But Draco was not sure he should depend on that help, particularly when he and his parents might end up having to leave the revolution suddenly.

            "Typical, of course," his father said, drawing a cloak of dignity close about him the way he probably would have tried to do if he was standing on his feet. He succeeded better than Draco thought he could have, lying on the floor like that. "You rescue us, but have no coherent plan and no position of strength from which to bargain."

            "I have one that the Ministry never allowed me," Draco said, and turned away.

            "What is that?" Lucius sneered at his back. Of course he sneered, Draco thought. He seemed to know no other expression, and not to realize, as Draco was only now beginning to, how much it limited him.

            "I have the ability to change my mind and revise my priorities," Draco said quietly, and shut the door behind him.

*

            The confrontation happened as Harry was walking down the wide corridor that led to the interrogation rooms. It seemed natural, but Harry was sure it had been carefully staged, especially because so many of the people gathered around Catchers looked steadfast and determined, not uncertain.

            Catchers halted in front of him and looked him up and down as though he found something offensive in the manner of Harry's dress. He probably did, Harry thought, holding his own impatience at bay as he looked back. Catchers was wearing his old Auror robes, and they had obviously been dusted and cleaned until the threads began to fray. He held his wand in one hand as though he would use it to emphasize his points. Harry hoped he didn't. There were too many people who would take it as a threat to him and leap into the fray.

            "These are the charges I bring against you, Mr. Potter," he said, as though to remind Harry that the Ministry had sacked him and so he didn't merit the Auror title anymore. "First, you are too concerned about your own private research and not enough about the revolution."

            Harry nodded. "I think I probably deserve that one."

            Catchers's mouth tightened, and he shook his head at Harry. "Did I say that you could talk?"

            Harry smiled a bit. "Did I say that I cared about your accusations?"

            Catchers wisely went on to the next one, probably understanding that he couldn't pull too much out of Harry with that one. "Second, you care too much about Draco Malfoy. You let him defy your orders without consequence, while you would order anyone else who did so to stand down."

            "How do you know that?" Harry asked, beginning to enjoy this in a twisted sort of way. Catchers had obviously planned for the sort of victim who stood back and bowed his head meekly as the accusations flowed over him, rather than one who answered back and questioned some of his terms. He looked great, he didn't sound so good.

            "What?" Catchers stared at him. "Good Merlin, man, it's obvious. Everyone heard Malfoy's question on the island, and everyone heard the permission you gave him--"

            Harry shook his head. "No, I meant, did you have any examples of me ordering someone else who questioned my authority to stand down? If not, then your first accusation contradicts the second one. That would mean that I'm openly listening to debate and questioning from the people who follow me, and that would mean that I'm engaging more with the revolution than you think I am."

            Catchers frowned. "You haven't been as open with us as you should be, and you haven't listened to our opinions when you were speaking of crazy plans like raiding Azkaban. The moment you decided to do it, it was decided, without listening to the pleas and plans of others."

            "No one objected until the end," Harry said, "except the ones who didn't want to come along. And I notice that some of them have already left." It had taken only a few glances around the manor that morning to confirm it, as it had taken those glances to confirm that far fewer had gone than he thought. "You decided to come along despite thinking that it was an ill-advised plan. Why?"

            "Someone had to speak up for those you were neglecting and ignoring." Catchers folded his arms and looked ridiculously puffed-up and regal. "I cannot say that I find what you did much different from what I envisioned. The miracle was that we made it out of the conflict without losing anyone."

            "All right," Harry said. "How would you have conducted the raid?"

            "I wouldn't have," Catchers said. "We had no need to free most of those in Azkaban. We should have taken only the Muggleborn prisoners and no more." The people behind him nodded and murmured.

            "Then what would you have done instead?" Harry asked. "This revolution started because I hated the Ministry's justice system. So we attack the end product of that justice system, and make sure that they can't use the most notorious prison ever built anymore. What would you do in my place?"

            "Something else," Catchers said, and his voice ground now. Harry didn't think he had planned sufficiently for this aspect of the conversation, either.

            "Tell me what." Harry folded his arms in return and gave him a pleasant, patient smile.

            "I would need time to plan, time to consult with my advisors and decide on the best course--"

            "Then what you have," Harry said, "is dissatisfaction with the way I run things, but no coherent goals to suggest in its place. I should have realized. Why do the hard work of coming up with ideas?"

            Catchers looked at him for a brief moment with his heart in his eyes. Harry shrugged back. Yes, he wished this could have gone differently as much as Catchers did, but since Catchers only thought it would have gone better if Harry had listened to him and dated him, he couldn't much regret losing the man's loyalty.

            "You don't listen to us," said someone near the back of the crowd. "We didn't want to free Death Eaters, but you made us--"

            "Yes!" someone else called out. "I don't want to stay in the same house as convicted Death Eaters--"

            "I know that I don't want murderers near me, either!"

            A rising murmur of agreement started out, and Catchers smiled tightly at Harry. He obviously thought he had won.

            "Then you can leave," Harry said.

            Catchers's smile vanished. The voices of the others died, although Harry had only spoken the truth, and not in a loud tone. Harry turned so that he could see all of them, his eyes steady. He had never felt so certain of something, never wanted to express truth more than he did now, or felt more able to express it.

            "I won't keep you here," he said. "I'll send you away. You can go back to your homes, or fight the Ministry on your own, doing whatever you think needs to be done to render us free and save the wizarding world. And it means that you can even escape from a house where there are convicted murderers, as well as other people who've committed worse crimes. Why would I want to keep you here?"

            "You'll lose the war without us," said an uncertain voice, sounding like the first one who had complained.

            "Probably," Harry said. "But holding you captive would be even worse, and I don't think that you can contribute much to the war effort while you're this way. You say that I don't engage with the revolution, but you aren't engaging with me, either. And you don't have productive ideas that can take the place of the ones I have. The best solution is to have two rebellions."

            Catchers took a single step forwards, then stopped. He caught Harry's eye and mouthed silently, I'm never going to have you?

            Harry shook his head slightly, and said nothing.

            Catchers turned away with a gesture that might have been a nod, except that it was too faint, and started speaking to his followers. The words were full of fire and thunder and doom, and Harry didn't bother listening. He went on his way to the interrogations, his body no more a weight than his breath.

            He had done the only thing he could. And he didn't know how many people would leave, but he didn't think it would be as many as Catchers had counted on following him.

            They were going. It would make things harder. But he would resist the temptation to simply close down the revolution because someone else wanted him to. And that included Catchers as well as the Ministry.

            He would keep going. No matter what it cost.

*

            kit: That is why Draco does not intend to tell Lucius!

            And no, while Catchers now doesn't plan to betray Harry to the Ministry, you can see here that he still has some guts.

            SP777: Harry does do that here, but he doesn't do it as well as he could have.
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Intoxicate the Sun