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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-Eight--Setting the Trap

            "I want you to investigate everything in the Ministry records about prophecy, Hermione."

            A corner of Hermione's mind squirmed in hate when the Minister addressed her by her first name. But she nodded smoothly, without otherwise moving, since so much of her mind was exploding in fireworks and bursts of light that someone like Clearwater had deigned to notice her. "Yes, Minister. What should I do with the records that I find?"

            Clearwater hesitated, and then rose from her chair and turned her back to Hermione, staring out the enchanted window of her office. Her hands were clasped together behind her back. Hermione noted in the rebellious corner of her mind that that didn't happen often, and usually meant Clearwater was concerned about something.

            The rest of her mind barked and rioted and resisted and rejected the suggestions that her brain was trying to propose. There was no such thing as Clearwater standing like that. She was the Minister. Her gestures were beyond such analysis. Hermione couldn't say what they meant because the Minister was so much beyond her, so much a creature of a different order.

            "Bring them to me," Clearwater said at last, and carried on murmuring some words to herself. "I don't know if I'll know it when I see it. How clear are the references? How well does the person who stole the book know it?"

            "Madam?"

            Clearwater started and turned around again. "Nothing," she said. "It is nothing. You are not to worry about it, Hermione. I forbid you from doing anything but finding the records and bringing them to me. Do you understand?"

            Hermione's head bobbed back and forth on her neck like a withering flower, while the rest of her mind shrieked in hate and flexed its claws.

            But why should it? That was what she didn't understand. The small corner of her mind came and troubled her at night, filled her head with impossible dark fantasies when she looked at the Minister, and squeezed her heart with its poisoned talons. Hermione pondered on the mystery of her divided mind as she left the office.

            It was getting harder to form full thoughts.

            No, only the thoughts that she shouldn't form. If she gave in and thought the way she knew the Minister wanted her to, there was no cloying fog to push against, no reason to think that she would wake at night covered in cold sweat. This was the natural way to think. She knew that. What she lacked was a reason to summon the fog in the first place. It was unpleasant. Why form the thoughts that would cause it to appear?

            Because it was important.

            But it was so hard, sometimes, to remember why it was important. Those were the times that she would prefer to give up and just do as the Minister wanted her to do. It would be safe. Calm. For the best.

            But she had never preferred the safe and the calm, and she knew that sometimes the best was more or less directly opposed to them. When she had sat on the stool beneath the Sorting Hat, demanding that it put her in Gryffindor instead of the Ravenclaw House that had been its first choice, the Hat had said something about how much safer she would be away from that House, and Hermione hadn't laughed but she had wanted to. She had heard that Gryffindor was the best House, and that was the one she wanted.

            That thought grew another small space in her mind, one she could use to breathe. Hermione was glad that it existed.

            Another moment later, she wasn't sure that she was glad it existed, or why she was, but she walked down the corridor to the office where the Ministry stored such semi-useless records as the ones of prophecy with a spring in her step.

*

            This isn't going to work.

            Fred's voice was insistent in his head. George rolled his eyes and reached over to tug on one of the chains attached to the cage, the chains that were meant to channel the lightning and give it a safe space to bleed out if the cage failed to contain it. "Just yesterday, you were enthusiastic about this plan. What changed?"

            That was yesterday.

            George snorted, not bothering to say anything in response. His fingers tapped lightly along the chain, once, twice, and then he turned away and picked up the lump of jade that he and Fred had both agreed to make the key to the cage. Jade wasn't inherently more magical for lightning than a whole host of other gems, but here, the symbolism was important. The lightning they had seen wouldn't take the form of a stag if symbolism wasn't important, since the stag was Harry's Patronus.

            And the jade would represent Harry's green eyes to Fred and George, while it would probably represent his mum's eyes to Harry. It was important.

            "Do you have anything else to say before we begin the test, Mr. Doubter?" George muttered. It was a name that Mum used to call Fred whenever he made a face in front of some unfamiliar food. The point was that he wouldn't trust her cooking skill to make whatever it was good, and that doubt had carried into their adult lives.

            Fred didn't laugh this time. You better know what you're doing. If you get yourself killed, then there goes my place to live as well as your body.

            George snorted. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, and then stepped back and yanked on the chain one more time before lifting the lump of jade and running his fingers downwards over the surface.

            The cage flashed. George had a moment to see the lightning coiling around it, the prongs and thorns of it gleaming, the swift movement making him catch his breath. He smiled.

            Fred screamed in his mind. George thought he could feel his brother's hands clutching at his shoulders and pressing him flat to the floor, but that was the kind of delusion, he decided later, that everyone thought he should have just because his brother was dead.

            The cage blew up with silent, magnificent fury. That was the thing George mostly remembered about it later, how silent it was. Of course, lightning made no appreciable noise, something one tended to forget when it was paired with thunder and wind. The cage bars parted and tumbled to the far sides of the room. The chains that were attached to it rasped against the metal bars and against the far walls they connected with, whipping and soaring and singing. George felt the immense crackle of electricity over his head, and felt his hair standing up.

            Then there was silence, and they were lying in the middle of a lab filled with the scent of a storm and several fringed, twisted remains of other experimental designs.

            Told you, Fred whispered smugly in the back of his head.

            "You shut up," George grumbled back, winced as he realized that he was gripping a charred and smoking lump of jade and that it was cutting into his palm, and flung it away so that he could stand up and study what had happened to disrupt their lightning trap.

*

            "You could write to Ginny, you know."

            The almost random suggestion from Ron came as Harry was revising the list of suggestions that the members of the rebellion had handed him. Harry looked up, raising one eyebrow. He thought that perhaps the temptation to say it had come from the fact that Harry was already looking at one set of advice, so Ron might as well add his own.

            "What about?" Harry asked. "I haven't heard from her a lot since we started fighting, you know. I assumed that she wanted to distance herself from it." Not that he could blame her. Sometimes, when he thought about the seething discontent around him now, he wondered if he would ever be able to fulfill the revolution's goals in any reasonable fashion.

            And then he thought about Draco, and the wild magic, and knew that strength could come from strange places.

            "I mean." Ron's face was red, and he fumbled with his words in a way that was more familiar from the Hogwarts schoolboy Harry had known than the confident man he had become, the man who had promised to kill Minister Clearwater for interfering with Hermione. Harry leaned forwards, elbows resting on the table that separated them, to look him in the eye. "If you want someone to date. You could."

            Harry rolled his eyes. "We aren't interested in each other that way, Ron. And I doubt she would appreciate you offering her up as--what? A bedwarmer?"

            Ron's face flushed more deeply than it had, deeply enough to make his freckles disappear, and he glared as though Harry had insulted the honor of the Weasley family. Harry looked back, unrepentant. If he'd done that, then Ron had already done it first, and in a way that was much worse than anything Harry could have said.

            "She still has a bit of a crush on you," Ron said between gritted teeth. "And better her than bloody Malfoy."

            Harry laughed. "As far as Draco is concerned, the same thing might as well be true. I don't think you have to worry about him turning to me, Ron. He wants to protect his parents, and that's all he wants to do. I wish I had his dedication to a single goal."

            Ron peered at him under a fringe of carroty hair, blinking uncertainly. "He spends enough time around you that I thought..."

            Harry shrugged. "I'm a lot more attracted to him than he is to me. I represent everything he has to question. I was a Ministry Auror for seven years, the same length of time his parents spent in prison. I started a rebellion, but it was for ideals that he doesn't share. He only came to me on a chance of fulfilling his most pressing dream, and now that it's fulfilled, why should he care to stay? I actually expected him to leave soon after Catchers did."

            The thought made his chest ache, but as far as Harry knew, it was true. Yes, Draco had responded to the kiss, but that could have been the shock of the moment, or just reluctance to refuse Harry. He had what he wanted. Harry was coming to learn, the hard way, how many people had joined the rebellion in the hopes of getting something other than what Harry was interested in.

            "But he swore that oath," Ron said hesitantly.

            Harry nodded. "It didn't make sense to me either, but when I thought about it, I realized why. This is the safest place for his parents right now, despite all the people who hate them. The Ministry's taken the Manor, and if they had relatives to flee to, I think Draco would have done it the first night he had them free, or as soon as they were strong enough. Instead, it's been weeks since Azkaban, weeks since the trials we gave them, and they're still here."

            Ron chewed his lip, his eyebrows bent so inwards that they looked as if they would meet over his nose. "I don't believe that, mate," he said at last. "And I don't think Malfoy does, either. I think he probably...wants more than you think he does." He sounded as if he was choking.

            Harry shook his head. "Sometimes I think that's true, but then I remember that he doesn't pay that much attention to me since he's sworn the oath." He shrugged, and tried to let the sting roll off him much as he let the contempt of some of his people in the revolution do. "I don't know, Ron. I wish that you wouldn't worry so much about it. The chances are extremely small that it'll ever come to anything."

            Ron watched him with wise eyes. "And if that's not what you want?"

            Harry matched him glance for glance. "I'm really good at putting off desires that only I want."

            "And if he wants something else?"

            Harry shrugged and turned back to the list of suggestions. "I'll deal with that when it comes to it."

*

            "If you would...if you could..."

            Long after Draco had left the set of rooms where his parents were forced to dwell, he heard his mother's low, miserable voice echoing in his head, and felt the earnest clutch of her fingers at his arm.

            He sat in front of the fire in his own room, his head lowered in his hands. The fire flickered close and hot enough to singe the hairs in his arm. Draco welcomed the sensation. That was fine with him, if something could replace his mother's pleading in his memory.

            She wanted Draco to get them free. She had promised that they wouldn't try to hurt anyone or take the Manor back, that they wouldn't do anything that would expose them to the Ministry. They only wished to leave Britain, she said. She had relatives in France they could go to, and so did his father. They could find a way to travel without Flooing, or using Portkeys, or Apparating, all of which either required wands or the cooperation of the Ministry. They would go, she said over and over again, and if Draco would only help them past the guards Potter had put on them and the locking spells that Potter had supervised himself, they would be gone.

            Meanwhile, Lucius said nothing like that but watched them both with dark, hot eyes. Draco couldn't be sure how much of Narcissa's pleading he understood, since he still didn't know if his father was sane after his stay in Azkaban or not. Sometimes it didn't seem so.

            Draco had taken his mother's hands in his own, rubbing the delicate bones, and said they would go together. He didn't mind helping them get past the guards; as a more-or-less trusted member of the revolution, he knew their schedules and the strengths and weaknesses of the people who had volunteered to check on the prisoners. He had a wand. They could Apparate. They could go--

            He had fallen silent when his mother's silence registered with him. She had sat there, and lowered her eyes when Draco met her gaze for too long, with only a single, miserable glance at his father to explain.

            Meanwhile, Lucius had bared his teeth as if they were in competition.

            Draco understood, then. His mother had chosen to go to prison with his father although she could have stayed free. And now she was choosing again, turning her back on the son she no longer understood, wanting to go into exile with the man who hated Potter more than she did and understood this new world even less than she did.

            Draco loved his parents. They might love him back, but not as much as he had always thought, always hoped for.

            He stood up and paced his bedroom. His skin felt hot, tight, confined, on fire, and not from his proximity to the hearth. His childhood was passing before his eyes, the final battle when his mother had lied to the Dark Lord so that Potter would tell her whether Draco was alive. His father had pleaded for the same thing, Draco's safety and news of him. Those had been torches to keep alive in his heart, to shelter from the harsh wind the world directed at them, to assert silently whenever someone said that his parents were evil. Someone else might think that, but Draco knew the truth. He would be able to rely on his parents' love and support for him no matter what.

            But seven years in Azkaban had changed that truth.

            He had thought...

            He had wanted...

            He deserved to have someone who would love him for himself. Who would admire him, not despise him, the way that Lucius did, for surviving and making himself into someone new, someone who didn't mindlessly repeat the traditions of his family. Who would speak low words of comfort when Draco told the truth, and not reveal it to everyone else to be laughed at, or choose someone else over Draco.

            Had his parents ever loved him? Had they been proud of him as more than an appendage to the family? Had Azkaban begun the change, or just deepened and exposed a rift that was already there?

            Draco shook himself sharply from the thoughts. No. He wasn't going to think that way, not right now. What mattered was that he deserved to have someone treat him like he was special, to have someone love him more than anything, and he knew a person in the manor who would do that.

            He dressed with feverish haste, tugging off the old, worn robe that he'd put on because he'd thought he was going to bed soon and trying to smooth wrinkles out of his daytime clothes in front of the mirror. Then he caught his gaze in the mirror and had to turn his head aside. Desperate. He looked desperate.

            No. He couldn't be that way. He closed his eyes, turned away from the mirror, and made his way to the door of his rooms.

            He had to be careful and go slowly down the corridors where the guards patrolled, guarding the prisoners taken from Azkaban, the ones who had confessed under Veritaserum that they weren't guilty but were still so affected by their time in Azkaban the rebels had to keep them under control. Most of the time, these revolutionaries wouldn't notice a sound that shouldn't be there from someone shuffling under a Disillusionment Charm, but here, they would. Draco spent five minutes at one point flattened against a wall less than a foot from Pedlar, who kept turning her head and wrinkling her nose as though she smelled a stink she couldn't trace the source of.

            He had thought that might reduce his desperation and send him crawling back to his rooms in embarrassment, but it only increased his determination to have something for himself, just once, to have someone who loved him in that way. Perhaps he wouldn't be here if not for that emotion. But he was feeling it, and he was as equally tired of being told what to feel as everything else.

            He halted in front of Potter's door and listened hard. No matter how long he stood there, though, he heard no voices, and the cacophonic beating of his heart didn't lessen.

            At last, he knocked.

            Potter opened the door and looked straight at him, the way he had the other time Draco had lingered outside his rooms under a Disillusionment Charm. He blinked in surprise. "Draco," he murmured. "What's the matter? Is someone harassing your parents?" He stepped aside, inviting Draco into the sanctuary he'd come seeking. He watched the fire flickering warmly against the walls for a minute before he came in. His own hands were fever-hot, and he didn't feel the need to cuddle up against the hearth.

            "No," Draco said. "But I had--" He swallowed. What would happen if he told Potter the real reason he was here? Would Potter hate him? Would he refuse the comfort, because Draco didn't come to him professing Gryffindor affection and all that shit?

            "Yes?" Potter was waiting for him, eyes bright and attentive.

            Draco looked at him, and imagined fire racing around him, curling about him. He saw Potter, again, spinning his soul and Weasley's into fire. He saw him laughing as he destroyed the Inferi, standing fearless in front of a summoned dragon, listening to the doubters and complainers about him with patience that Draco would have been unable to muster if it was him, at least not without straining a muscle.

            And there was want in him. Enough lust for this. Enough desire to convince Potter that he had come seeking nothing else.

            "I want someone who wants me," Draco said. "Who doesn't pay their sole attention to another person. Who's had a dark past, but isn't consumed by it." He took a step nearer.

            Potter's lips parted in surprise, but when he shook his head, Draco knew that it didn't come from a refusal. "Draco. Are you sure you want this? I'm not the best lover you could have, you know. I'm not a pure-blood, not of the right set of beliefs--"

            Draco laughed harshly. "All the pure-bloods I know are in prison or refused to help me. You're the one who's made my dearest desire come true. And I want you to do it again." He leaned forwards and kissed Potter, and again there was fever heat in him, at his lips, reaching out to curl around Potter and drag him closer.

            Potter made one startled sound, just one. Then his hands came up and curled around the back of Draco's neck.

            And all about them was fire.

*

            Harry kissed gently, carefully. He thought that Draco would snap to his senses in an instant. This was a reaction to something that had happened with his parents, not an action in and of itself. When he realized that Harry was serious about this, that he did want to do more than kiss Draco, he would back away. Harry set himself not to be worried about that or hurt if it happened.

            But it didn't happen. Draco pressed closer instead, snarling impatiently, as if he thought that Harry was trying to hold out on him because he didn't immediately grind into Draco and act as if he wanted to be inside him. He even slid one clever hand down and caught Harry around the hip, bringing him so close that Harry sighed. He was hard now, and his erection scraped and teased Draco's groin.

            Draco moaned. He had to pull his mouth away from Harry's to do it, and his lips were wide and dripping, his eyes impatient and wild. He yanked at Harry's shirt, but didn't succeed in getting the buttons loose, maybe because he hadn't tried to undress someone at that speed before. He whined under his breath, loud, lustful.

            Harry hushed him with a murmured breath and pushed Draco back, aiming for the wall next to the hearth. He didn't think they would make it to the bed just now, and he could see the fire flickering madly around him out of the corner of his eye. At least he couldn't burn stone.

            Draco lurched forwards and locked their mouths again the moment Harry stopped pushing him. Harry stroked a hand up and down his back and murmured in delight, in helplessness, in wonder, in love. Yes, he was in love, a hard thing to realize just at that moment, with salt in his mouth and skin sliding against skin and their erections butting and rubbing blindly, but here they were, and here he was.

            Draco bit him when Harry tried to slow down, and Harry reached out and got a solid grip against Draco's cock. He couldn't quite hold it, because they were pressed together too tightly for that. But he held his hand out vertically, the palm facing Draco, and Draco rolled his hips and slid his cock against the flat table of Harry's hand, back and forth, faster and faster, and his eyes were brilliant with gratitude and he was gasping and moaning and laughing.

            "Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh Merlin," he said, and with that wail he came.

            The wetness of it against Harry's fingers, the way Draco's back arched and his eyes opened, shades of grey within grey, and the flare of his hair like a demented halo...

            Harry came, with a single surge forwards and sharp twist of his hips.

            The fire around him reared and roared and spread wide, creating a corona above Harry's head, forming and glittering in shapeless fountains of light, rising, falling, glittering so hard that Draco cried out and covered his eyes. Harry shielded him from the sparks that fell with his own impervious skin. The fire danced madly, triumphantly, and went out at last. Draco peered cautiously about from beneath his hand.

            "That was," he said, and Harry started kissing him before he could say anything.

            It was. That was enough. No adjectives needed.

*

            SP777: Because they thought Harry was going to lead a revolution in a different way, by being heroic and fighting lots of battles directly.

            And, well, I think they would recognize what you're talking about as delusions. But not without a lot of whining.

            Harry might have lost his temper. Besides, he can make all the points he needs with that one gesture.
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Intoxicate the Sun