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Black Phoenix	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21568 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twenty-Six—A Pound of Flesh
            “There has to be some other solution.”
            Harry yawned and opened his eyes slowly. He hadn’t felt Draco withdraw from his side, but Draco was lying next to him now, a frown on his face, one hand touching and teasing and tracing over Harry’s bare ribs. Harry thought sleepily that Draco must have enlarged the couch in the night. It would have been too small for both of them to lie like this otherwise.
            “To what?” Harry picked up Draco’s hand from his ribs and brought it to his mouth. Draco’s breathing sped up as he watched his fingers slide past Harry’s lips, and Harry let them go with a smacking kiss for good measure.
            “To the problem of Persephone.” Draco’s eyes had closed, though, and he sounded as though he was talking about something small and unimportant, far away.
            Harry didn’t want to talk about Persephone. He knew Draco would try to come up with another solution, but there wasn’t one, really. Draco would think it was probably okay to sacrifice some people to Persephone, as long as they weren’t people Harry had made promises to.
            Or useful political allies. He’d probably balk at sacrificing those, too.
            Harry knew that that wasn’t really a choice, though, no more than the “choice” of feeding Persephone people near him was. His reputation as a Dark Lord was already fearsome enough. This would do even worse things to it. He would have to study the spells and make sure that he would survive the flesh he intended to cut off.
            But even there, he had an advantage. His magic could let him live through things that would kill anyone else.
            “No,” Draco murmured.
            Harry rolled towards him and raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about now?” Draco looked as though he was still in some sort of sexual daze, and Harry was perfectly willing to have him there. He reached out with one hand and brushed it lightly over Draco’s knee. He was awake now, which meant that he could take more notice of Draco’s body and how much he wanted to devour it.
            Draco reached out and pushed his hand back, though, and his eyes were clear as he glared at Harry. “I said no to the notion that you would just tear off pieces of yourself and give them to Persephone. That’s not going to happen.”
            Harry blinked, once, twice. “Do you have a better solution?”
            “Yes,” Draco said. “You said it yourself. There are people in the Ministry who will never stop opposing you. Tillipop did, true,” he added, before Harry could say it, “but he’s a coward, and he was never physically in the forefront of the attacks on you. But what about Gorenson and the other Aurors? You have enemies who will never stop, who are relentless. The only way out is to destroy them.”
            Harry shook his head slowly. He had expected Draco to say something like this, but hearing it said was still a shock. “You can’t actually expect me to condone human sacrifice, Draco.”
            “I expect you to condone enemy sacrifice.” Draco didn’t move, except for his mouth. Even his eyes were steady, as if he had given up blinking. “I wouldn’t say this if you didn’t have enemies like Gorenson, if all your enemies were like Rosenthal used to be and could be talked around, or frightened into leaving you alone. But do you think the Ministry will ever leave you alone?”
            Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter whether they do or not. The only reason Gorenson captured me is that I stepped off the grounds of Hogwarts. When I’m on them, there’s nothing he can do to me. And in the meantime, I’m not going to do it.”
            “Why not?”
            “Because of who I am,” Harry said softly, “not who they are.” He reached up and traced a finger along the line of Draco’s mouth, marveling a little at how inflexible it was. “Draco, I love you, but there has to be a limit.”
            “A limit to your love, or a limit to what you’ll do because of that love?” Draco caught his wrist and looked down at him.
            Harry smiled with relief, glad that Draco understood the difference, and he wouldn’t have to explain it. Harry wasn’t good at speaking. He wasn’t sure that he could explain it. “The latter. I can’t—I don’t think you would want me to, in the end. Think about Voldemort feeding his enemies to Nagini. You wouldn’t want that.”
            Draco stayed still so long that Harry wondered if he was reconsidering his options. Then he sighed and folded himself around Harry like a snake seeking warmth, curling close to his side and draping his head across Harry’s shoulder. Harry stroked his hair, shutting his eyes at the softness. It felt so good; it soothed his fingers, as though he had been touching a hot pan for hours and needed the relief.
            “Maybe I wouldn’t want you to be,” Draco conceded, with something complex and difficult in the back of his voice. “That doesn’t mean that I want you to give in and take a piece of your flesh, either.”
            “Give in?” Harry smiled down into his hair, wondering if Draco could feel it. Maybe not, because he didn’t stiffen or turn away. “Who would I be giving in to? No one is making me do this.” He stroked the tension out of Draco’s shoulder when it showed up there, and Draco sighed and bowed and cuddled even closer.
            “Gorenson,” he muttered, but not softly enough that Harry couldn’t make out the shape of that familiar name. “Circumstances. All the people who want to make you over into someone who loses to them, someone who can’t come back from a defeat like this.”
            Harry shook his head, his chin stirring Draco’s hair this time. They were closer than Harry ever remembered being when they weren’t actually having sex. At Hogwarts, the school would have made the bed more comfortable for them, but Harry didn’t need that now, not when he held Draco’s breathing warmth. “I know that this might feel like Gorenson’s winning, but he couldn’t, not unless he managed to force me to abandon my commitment to my court and to Persephone. I’m free now, you know that, Draco. I’m free to do what I want, and I’m not afraid of Gorenson. I chose this because it’s the right thing to do.”
            “But he could have exhausted her when he captured her. Maybe her burning day wouldn’t be coming up so quickly if not for him.”
            Harry tightened his arms, and said nothing. He had explained as best as he could, and he knew that Draco would ultimately accept it, no matter how resistant he might be to the idea right now.
            Because there was nothing else to be done. That was the way it was.
*
            Draco lifted his head. He had bidden farewell to Harry a few hours earlier, and let him go back to Hogwarts, as reluctant as he was to do it. He knew that Harry would keep working on his hideous plan to feed Persephone some of his flesh, and that meant he would be settling himself in his plans, too, confirming to himself over and over again that this was necessary.
            The problem was, he thought it was. Draco wasn’t convinced. If nothing else, he thought Harry could let Persephone die. She had been useful to him, but not so useful that he should sacrifice his reputation as a rare peaceful Dark Lord for her sake.
            “Sir?”
            And that was Rosenthal, whose entrance into the room had been the thing that made Draco look up in the first place, although it wasn’t enough to make him stop thinking about Harry. He shook his head and indicated that Rosenthal could sit down in the chair across from his desk. “Sorry. Did you manage to find out anything?”
            “Not any concrete plans,” Rosenthal said, taking her place and crossing her legs. She rubbed her hands a second later, and leaned closer to the fire, as if she needed the warmth to chase away some hidden inner cold. “But more than I thought I would.”
            Her face was pale, strained. Draco snapped his fingers and called up a house-elf, then glanced at Rosenthal. But she said nothing in particular, so Draco turned back to the elf and said, “Beef broth and tea. As soon as you can.”
            “I’m not sick,” Rosenthal muttered as the elf disappeared.
            “You didn’t express your own preferences in time.” Draco smiled at her, delighted to see a bit of the spark back in her eyes. “Now. What did you find out?”
            Rosenthal sat up straight. “More people wanted to talk about this council than I thought would,” she said. “None of them see it as a hopeful sign. They don’t think that no Minister should be elected, which was one of the things I feared. If we could court people who were dissatisfied with the way that Tillipop ran things, then of course the other side could do the same, and I thought they might have made them enough promises to take our allies away.”
            Draco was glad that he hadn’t thought about that, or not in detail. He had enough to worry about. On the other hand, worrying about things like this was Rosenthal’s job, really. He nodded neutrally instead, and asked, “Why are they unhappy about it? Only because they weren’t included in it?”
            Rosenthal shook her head. “The council is tight-knit. There are a few Unspeakables and people from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on it, but the kind who got where they are by relying on each other for favors. Not being beholden to other people.”
            Draco almost smiled. The Ministry was full of people who valued loyalty, but only a certain kind; being loyal to your friends instead of a lot of people who you would help in return for further favors was frowned upon. They were very Slytherin that way. “And could you confirm for certain if Gorenson is on it?”
            “I can confirm that someone whom everyone knows but no one will admit to knowing is there,” Rosenthal said quietly. “Someone with an enormous amount of power. Someone named Tenebrus Eliot. I said that I hadn’t heard the name, and everyone shifted around again and looked so distressed that I would have thought they were playing games with me, except I know who’s behind the mask. Yes, that’s Gorenson.”
            Draco shut his eyes and nodded. Well, he hadn’t really thought that the matter would work out any differently. “So. You and I are going to have to lure Gorenson out into the open, make him react faster than he otherwise would.”
            The silence that followed was so thick that Draco knew it wasn’t just a reaction to his dramatic announcement, and he had to open his eyes again. Rosenthal was staring at him. “Just the two of us?” she whispered. “Why?”
            “Well, and the rest of my campaign, of course,” Draco relented. “But you have to admit that we are the leaders of it.”
            “Why?”
            Draco sighed. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone this, but Rosenthal was under certain oaths that prevented her from betraying Harry, and if anyone on his side could know with safety—and he needed someone to know—she was the one. “Harry found out that Persephone is sick. Dying. The only thing that will revive her is eating a living human sacrifice on her burning day.”
            Rosenthal said nothing for long moments. Then she asked, “And the source of this information?”
            Draco smiled. “This is why I like working with you. You ask the important questions.”
            Rosenthal remained silent, and Draco nodded. “He took her to the centaur healers in the Forest. He thought they were more likely to understand what ailed a magical creature than any of the Healers in his court.”
            “If he has any,” Rosenthal muttered. “Not many of them want to leave St. Mungo’s.” She looked up. “Is this why you want to focus on forcing Gorenson into the open? Do you think he somehow controls or caused this illness?”
            Draco shook his head. “I think that he was right about Persephone being connected to Harry’s soul, but this seems like a natural consequence of the way she was made. As much as anything can be natural when it comes to Persephone,” he had to add. “But Harry is distracted now, and won’t be much support to us. Eventually, that’s going to get back to Gorenson. I think it’s likely that he has some way to spy on Harry. And he might think that’s the perfect chance to attack. Unless we harass him and give him something else to think about.”
            “I don’t know what we can do,” Rosenthal said.
            “You’ll have to go back to the Ministry,” said Draco. “But you can take as much money as you like. What I want is for you to find some evidence of Gorenson’s other identities. His past ones,” he added, when Rosenthal’s face pinched as though he had asked her to be the next sacrifice for Persephone. “It may not be obvious who he is at all times, but now that we know what to look for, we can add up mysterious and powerful people from the past who slipped away without a trace and had all this magical expertise that the Ministry was willing to pay them for. Or even likely names. If you can’t find exact proof, but you think that you can get what we need in other ways, then feel free to make things up.”
            Rosenthal nodded, still guarded. “Then what?”
            Draco smiled again. “When we have enough names, we send them to Skeeter.”
            Rosenthal smiled back, and they set about planning exactly how she would go back to the Ministry and how she would keep their interests there a secret from this new council. She didn’t seem to notice that Draco was less than fully committed to the discussion, given that he was turning over a different variation of the plan in the back of his head.
            It would be a good thing to give Gorenson a distraction, at least until Persephone was safely past her burning day and Harry recovered from whatever damage he had to inflict on himself to take the flesh and then heal from the wound. (Draco really had to wonder if Harry had considered that, how vulnerable he might leave his court by weakening himself).
            But if they could hurry Gorenson along and force him into the open before the burning day, or close to it…
            Harry’s determination to save Persephone was ruthless. So was his determination not to sacrifice anyone who had sworn loyalty to him, which Draco could understand.
            But Draco was as committed to Harry. And he had not given up on the idea of using an enemy for a sacrifice.
*
            “Harry. What do you mean by this?”
            Harry popped his head up, gasping. He had fallen asleep over the books on his desk. He hadn’t known that sleep was creeping up on him like that.
            Hermione stood there with a hand on the fattest book, staring at him. Harry snuffled and wiped at his nose, then his mouth, hoping he hadn’t drooled. But he knew already that it was something worse than drool that made Hermione look at him like that.
            “What?” he asked, shrugging as casually as he could. “Some people like to have a nap in the middle of the day. And I’ve been working hard enough that I think I deserve it.”
            “You’re thinking about cutting someone up,” Hermione whispered.
            Harry glanced down. Hermione’s hand was on top of Surviving the Common Sacrificial Ritual. Well, he supposed that did rather give the game away.
            “Myself,” he said, because there was no real way of softening this blow. “Sorry,” he added when Hermione paled, and raised a chair from the floor behind her. “Persephone needs human flesh to survive. I can’t ask anyone else to contribute. I’ll give her some of mine. I’d just like to survive the experience, that’s all.”
            Hermione swayed, then sat down. Harry had to smile. She trusted him to have a seat ready for her, to catch her, without even asking. She trusted him more than she used to. She wouldn’t walk away from the court now.
            If only because she doesn’t trust Briseis and Ron to keep me from doing stupid shit, he thought.
            “You’re sure of your information?” Hermione fixed her eyes on the books.
            “Centaurs,” Harry said. “And really.” Maybe she didn’t trust him as much as he’d thought. “Would I be considering cutting myself up if I didn’t trust my sources?”
            Hermione swallowed through what sounded like an extremely dry throat and shook her head. “Tell me everything they said.”
            Harry was glad enough to do as she’d suggested. Blunt revelation out of the way, he had some practice in telling it, since he’d already revealed as much to Draco.
            And it did mean that he had someone who knew on his side now, someone who might be able to think up a way to get away with not feeding Persephone human flesh at all.
            Then he glanced at his phoenix where she drooped on her perch, her head wobbling back and forth as though she didn’t have the ability to hold her beak up, and his mouth hardened.
            No. Even if there was a way, I wouldn’t do it. I made her and I’m responsible for her, damn it.
*
SP777: The problem is that she will be stronger if she feeds on living flesh.
BAFan: Thank you!
And Harry might be able to make something like that, but I think he’s too myopically focused on why he needs to do this particular thing.
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Black Phoenix