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Chains of Fool's Gold	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Three—Training
            “When I give yeh the signal,” Hagrid said, giving Harry such a stern look that Harry had to duck his head and nod a little. Hagrid had the right to be stern about that, he thought. After all, the only time Harry had ridden thestrals before this was when they had gone on that strictly illegal jaunt to the Ministry to rescue Sirius.
            Even thinking about that didn’t give Harry as much pain as it could. Sirius hadn’t survived, but Harry had, and he thought Sirius would be proud of what he was doing now: resisting the same Ministry who had cast Sirius into prison without a trial.
            Draco sat calm and proud at his side, on the thestral, Carvenhoof, who seemed to have taken a liking to him. Harry was glad to see that. Draco needed someone besides Harry who wanted to be with him.
            Carvenhoof was that. The minute Draco had come out to walk towards the thestral herd gathered on top of the cliffs, Carvenhoof had called to him, with a sound that was a weird cross between a lamb’s bleat and a horse’s neigh. And maybe with a little of bat in it, too, Harry thought. It was the only vocal noise that he remembered hearing a thestral make.
            Draco had stood with his hand on Carvenhoof’s neck for a second, patting him, before he swung onto his back. Now he looked more relaxed even as he sat like he had been training for this his entire life. Well, he probably had, Harry thought. He was sure that the Malfoys had given Draco lessons in riding winged horses just like rich Muggle families gave their children riding lessons on ordinary horses.
            “Harry?”
            Harry started and turned guiltily back to Hagrid, who wagged a finger at him. “That’s jest the reason so many people fall off the first time,” Hagrid said. “Not paying attention.”
            “Sorry,” Harry murmured, and took a grip on the stiff, bristly mane of the thestral he rode. It rolled one blank white eye at him, but didn’t seem inclined to protest other than that, which Harry was glad of. He had no idea what he would have done if it had protested.
            “Now,” Hagrid said, and climbed on the leader of the herd, the biggest stallion Harry had ever seen, whose hipbones stuck out further than Hagrid was wide—barely. “The ones that don’t have riders are going to circle around us and dive at the people who’re going to be firing curses at yeh. You ride in the middle and cast the spells. Only to hold them back, not to hurt.” He looked at Harry again as if to make sure that he was paying attention to the words he had told Hagrid about earlier.
            Harry nodded and opened his mouth, but Draco interrupted. “What good will the other thestrals diving do?” he asked. “Most of the people they’re attacking won’t be able to see them.”
            Hagrid grinned wickedly. “All the better. Imagine somethin’ invisible diving at yeh from above and scraping its hoofs through yer hair.”
            Draco blinked and fell silent, looking as though he was sorry he’d asked. Harry held back his snicker. Draco was riding a thestral, and still was disturbed by their battle tactics.
            “Anyone have any questions?” Hagrid looked around, but Ron and Hermione both shook their heads and tightened their holds on the necks of their thestrals. Harry noticed how white around the mouth Hermione looked, but both of them had wanted to ride. “Then we’re goin’ to lift.”
            Hagrid whistled to the lead thestral, and it spread its wings. Harry felt the tension in the bony back of the one beneath him change.
            Then the lead stallion sprang and lofted into the air, seeming to lift with rather than struggle against Hagrid’s weight, and Harry’s came right behind.
            Harry rocked a little before he caught his breath and his weight; it was nothing like riding a broom. The strength of it, the power beneath him, the flapping wings to either side of him, all made it seem as though the air had grown a mind of its own.
            This is what it might be like to ride the wind, he thought, a few seconds before his thestral turned in grim pursuit of Hagrid’s, and he realized that the earth and the sky were both wheeling beneath him and he had no idea how to put them back into proper perspective.
            A laugh made him turn his head. Draco was sliding through the air beside him on the back of his own chosen mount. Carvenhoof looked as though he was trotting daintily through a meadow. His head was up and his hooves moved against the air, although Harry couldn’t see the point when they weren’t touching anything.
            Carvenhoof seemed to catch the thought, because he tossed Harry a severe look.
            Harry swallowed and turned his attention back to controlling his own thestral, which was the important thing at the moment. The creature flew and surged and straightened and now and then ducked down, and Harry figured out, slowly, that it was due to signals the lead thestral gave. When he flicked his tail to the right or left, the flight would turn in that direction. Going higher or lower would make them do it, too, and various twitches of his wings were code for them to switch positions or fly faster or slower.
            Harry was sure that Hagrid had taught the leader those signals for the ease of anyone else riding with him. The regular thestrals wouldn’t need them, of course, for when they needed to find their way in the flight.
            Then Hagrid held up his hand and gave a single wordless bellow that actually wasn’t much different from the cry that Carvenhoof had uttered earlier.
            The effect, though, was completely different. The herd of thestrals parted, skimming out to the sides as though someone had carved the air down the middle of them with a knife. Their flight paths seemed to slope higher and steeper than ever, and their wings rustled in unison now. Harry gasped as the back beneath him seemed to get narrower, and then realized his thestral was tilting. He still flew beside Draco, but now there was a steadily widening gap of air between them.
            Draco gave him an eloquent look. Harry snorted and tried to sit up straight. He reminded himself, again, that the thestral wouldn’t put him in danger. It might not care for him the way Carvenhoof obviously did for Draco, but it wouldn’t want to disobey Hagrid by dropping him, either.
            That doesn’t mean it might not happen by accident.
            Harry did his best to relax the grip of both his legs and his hands, to sit up straight, and to breathe normally. He hadn’t realized how much of his flying on a broom was graceful because he was in control. He could ride all the crazy loops and the dodges at the ground and the insane rules of Quidditch because he had confidence in his muscles and his magical core and whatever else you needed to ride a broom.
            To ride a thestral, it was becoming obvious, you needed grace, and patience. Harry didn’t think he’d had much of either during their wild flight to the Ministry years ago. Desperation could make up for a lot of things, though.
            Hagrid bellowed again, and moved his right hand in a wide circle.
            At least Harry was better-prepared this time; Hagrid had warned them about this particular maneuver. The flight parted further, forming the twin halves of a twisting circle instead of a cleft straight line. They peeled away from each other, but each of them still had a partner in the other line.
            Harry caught Draco’s wild eye and wilder grin, and grinned back when he realized they were still across from each other.
            Then they dived.
            The neatness of the line was lost in whirling chaos, or at least it seemed so to Harry. He saw manes blowing past him, heard screams and shrieks as the thestrals who didn’t have riders let their pleasure or their excitement or their anger out, and leaned back against the pull of gravity. He shivered as sweat and tears and wind tore out of his eyes. His hands were growing numb with the sheer force he was fighting to put on them, not to clutch at his mount’s withers.
            The thestrals wheeled around a few meters above the ground, about where human heads would be on most of their targets, Harry thought. He could hear the wings and the whicker of hooves striking, drawing back and coiling and coming down again. He shivered, hoping Hagrid would tell them to be a little less lethal when they actually got to the Ministry. The thestrals would kill a whole bunch of people who couldn’t even see them to defend against them, otherwise.
            Hagrid stuck out his left hand, and the flight joined up again, in a V formation for a little while before they fell back into a straight line. Harry turned his head to look for Ron and Hermione.
            Hermione’s whole face was white, at this point, but she still clung gamely to the mane of her mount, for all that she shivered. Ron was grinning like Draco was, and wriggling back and forth on the thestral’s spine, all but whooping.
            Harry snorted. I wonder if he found a thestral that likes him, too.
            Hagrid swirled his arm again, and all the thestrals headed back to the ground. Harry found himself sighing in relief. He was glad that Draco had found something he liked and was good at, and he still trusted Hagrid, but his skin prickled all over and his hands were cold when he touched one to his face.
            We’ll have to hope the Ministry doesn’t kill us before the excitement does.
            He landed, and immediately found himself sagging against his thestral, gripping the lanky neck for balance and swearing softly. Hagrid laughed at him and strode over to clap him on the shoulder. Behind him, the lead stallion was already aloft again and chasing small birds.
            “It takes yeh like that the first couple times, ridin’ one does!” Hagrid all but chirped, and shook Harry a little. “Yeh look like yer about to fall over, Harry! I thought yeh were a better flyer than that!”
            Harry could only smile weakly back at him, and at Draco, who stood at a distance with the same sort of self-satisfied smile on his face. “When I’m on a broom,” was all he said.
            Hagrid just nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer, and turned to check on Ron and Hermione. He didn’t say anything to Draco, and Harry didn’t think it was because he didn’t like Draco. Hagrid had to know from the way Draco stood, one casual hand still on Carvenhoof’s neck, that Draco didn’t need any help.
            “That wasn’t a broom,” Harry said, when Draco didn’t say anything, seeming engaged in admiring the shine of his thestral’s flank instead.
            “No shit,” Draco said, and laughed, and Harry’s heart soared. As much as he might be bothered by his own inability to be a good flyer on a thestral, it was wonderful to hear Draco that way, bright and happy.
            “You did well, though,” Harry said.
            Draco nodded, still smiling. Harry thought he could probably tell from the tone of Harry’s voice that Harry didn’t resent him for being better on a thestral. One more stupid argument they could avoid.
            “That was amazing.”
            The voice was one Harry didn’t know, and that, more than anything, had him whipping around and reaching for his wand. Draco stepped up to him at once and put his hand on Harry’s arm before he could ruin everything by striking, though.
            “I think this is someone we’ve been waiting for,” Draco said, and smiled at the tall man, his hooked nose and dark brown hair and dirty teeth and all. “Nero Prince?”
            “Delighted to meet someone who recognizes me,” Prince said, and stuck out a hand. “Even if that mostly comes from my young relative and not me.”
*
            Draco shook Prince’s hand, carefully, evaluating him. He was obviously not Professor Snape. He was older than Professor Snape had ever lived to be, and Draco would be willing to bet that it was a charm, not nature, keeping his hair brown. He talked too loudly and smiled too much.
            But Draco could see some similarities there, too, if he looked for them, and not just in the nose. There was the intelligence in his eyes, and the way he appeared to watch everything around them.
            Although he smiled when the prankster Weasley came up, which Draco thought still meant he smiled too much. Draco could put up with that, though, as long as this man could do half of what Weasley had promised them.
            “Did you know Professor Snape?” Draco had to ask. He hadn’t learned much of Snape’s background until after he was dead, but it was hard to misunderstand the bitterness in the tug of his mouth whenever he talked about family.
            Prince looked at him and shrugged. “I didn’t have the honor when he was alive,” he said. “I learned that he was a hero when he was dead, and I think he deserved it.” He waited a moment, then added, “I mean that he deserved to be a hero, not that he deserved death.”
            Draco relaxed his shoulders a little and nodded back. He would have to watch his reactions to Prince, he thought. The man wasn’t Professor Snape, and Draco would have to be wary about his own attempts to make him into a replacement.
            “Welcome, anyway,” Harry said. Prince turned and half-watched him, but seemed to keep most of his attention on Draco. Draco wondered why. Did he have some prejudices in favor of pure-bloods after all, despite hiding in the Muggle world? “George said that you have some good pranks. What are they?”
            Draco hid a smile when Prince blinked. So we have things that he’ll have to get used to, too.
            “I wouldn’t call them pranks so much as tricks,” Prince said, when he’d recovered his breath. “I can show you, though.” He turned and walked back to a basket sitting on the ground that Draco hadn’t consciously noticed until that point. He touched the lid with his wand and murmured something, making a green flash surround him for a second.
            Draco blinked and shook his head hard. No, the green flash hadn’t been Avada Kedavra. Weasley was watching him gleefully, but Draco was sure he would have mentioned it if his colleague could survive the Killing Curse.
            At least a glance at Harry showed he was startled by the color, too. Draco moved a little closer to him and waited.
            Prince stood up and turned around cradling what looked like a set of juggling balls in his hands. Draco arched his eyebrows. They were made of metal, and the sides, or at least a few of the sides, looked as though they were hinged, too. Draco wondered what they did.
            Useless to wonder, though, when Prince tossed them into the air and demonstrated for them.
            The balls flew up, and hovered there. Two of them halved, the sides of the spheres rotating neatly apart from each other, and reminding Draco of the way the thestrals had parted at the half-giant’s command. Then the halves flew away, humming like Snitches. One of them soared into the distance. The others circled towards the sky, the thestral herd, and Prince’s shoulder. Prince petted the one that had landed on his shoulder as though it was made of feathers and not metal.
            “These are my spy-globes,” he explained. “The ones that fly away look at something for me, and they’re very fast and can’t be caught.”
            Except by an experienced Seeker, maybe, Draco thought, but the chance that they would be facing opponents on brooms was remote.
            “For example,” Prince said, his eyes closed as he let his hand rest on the half of a ball on his shoulder, “I can tell that there’s a large wave coming in to the cliffs right now. That your lead thestral has just caught his bird. That there’s a parasite crawling on the shoulder of the tall pregnant thestral mare.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “Not very useful at the moment, but you can see how it would be in battle.”
            “Can I try them?” Draco asked. He didn’t know how the globes worked, although he thought he could take a guess at some of the magical theory. But he wanted to experience the reality for himself.
            Prince wordlessly handed over the half of a sphere. Draco arranged it on his shoulder, laid his hand flat on it the way Prince had, and closed his eyes.
            The impressions that immediately crowded into his mind almost overwhelmed him. A second later, though, the sphere seemed to realize that, and the images dimmed and retreated until Draco was seeing them hovering in a rough triangle in front of him.
            One was of the sea rippling out from the cliffs, flat and grey for the most part, with the silver curl of a wave coming in, just as Prince had said. The other was of feathers spiraling down, and the lead stallion returning in a leisurely fashion to earth, his mouth covered with blood. And the third one now showed the pregnant mare standing with her face uplifted to the sun, wings quivering. Draco thought he could make out the shadow of a hoof against the side of her belly.
            Draco let the sphere go, and blinked. He could see why Prince closed his eyes when he was communing with the images. It would be overwhelming otherwise.
            “That is amazing,” he said, and Prince, who had been watching him as intently as though he expected Draco to disapprove, relaxed and smiled at him.
            “Yes, it is rather,” he said casually, and reached out to pluck the half-sphere from Draco’s shoulder. “It’s not the only one of my tricks, but it’s the best one.”
            “Show them the hummingbird.” George nudged Prince in the ribs with an elbow.
            “I don’t know if I should.” Prince made a show out of looking around. “Even such unrepentant rebels as they are might feel a duty to report me to the Ministry!”
            Weasley—the other one, not the one who stood beside Prince—laughed. Draco rolled his eyes. Of course he would think a joke like that was funny.
            Then he realized Harry was laughing, too, and that probably meant Draco couldn’t feel as smugly superior as he wanted to.
            “Take it out and show them,” George said, and patted Prince on the shoulder that the sphere-half had sat on. Prince reached up and whistled, and the sphere-halves that still hovered in the air came back to him.
            “All right,” he said, bending down to tuck the spheres back into his basket.
            Draco caught Harry’s eye and raised his eyebrows for a second. Harry had looked wistful, as though he wanted and didn’t want, at the same time, to say something about the spheres. But he shook his head when he saw Draco watching, and Draco reached out and caught his hand, squeezing it.
            “Since Mr. Malfoy got to demonstrate my last toy, I think it’s only fair that you get to demonstrate this one,” Prince said, and held out what looked like a golden hummingbird on a chain to Harry. Draco squinted. The hummingbird was made of metal, but probably not pure gold, which would be more expensive than Prince could afford. The wings were lifted up, the tail spread as though wind was passing through the feathers. It was a lovely little thing, but Draco didn’t see how it could possibly be an offensive weapon.
            Which was probably the point, he had to admit.
            “What do I do? Is there a command word?” Harry took the chain and held the bird up in front of him as if he thought it would fly off on its own.
            Prince shook his head. “But it does require some of your blood. Do you mind that?”
            Granger did, if the appalled grimace that crossed her face was any indication. But Draco didn’t think that she had a vote here. Hell, if she thought about it, she would realize that Harry had done worse things than this, including using Darker magic, in pursuit of those twisted that they had both hunted.
            “No,” Harry said, sure enough, and turned the bird on Prince’s instructions and sliced the edge of the wing across the tip of his finger.
            Harry grimaced only a moment after his blood coated the wing, and Draco nodded. It probably hadn’t even hurt at first. The hummingbird’s wing looked that sharp.
            The red color flooded down the hummingbird, staining it, enlivening it. After a few seconds it looked even more like a living bird, with a ruby-colored throat and glinting eyes. It lifted his head, glanced around, and zoomed off the chain, leaving that to dangle in Harry’s fingers. It looped back and forth, flying around Harry’s head.
            “Now command it to attack something,” Prince said comfortably.
            Harry grinned, and Draco knew what he would say before he said it. He didn’t stop Harry, though. Everyone should be allowed to have some fun, and Prince had had too much of it already.
            “Why don’t you show me what you can do against a certain Nero Prince?” he called to the hummingbird.
            Draco wondered for a moment if the thing would recognize such an unorthodox command, but it seemed it did. The wings fluttered, the head turned, and the hummingbird swooped at Prince. Its beak was thrust out ahead of it, a deadly sting, and its wings weren’t much weaker.
            Prince swore and ducked, and the hummingbird missed on its first swing. But it turned and came back even faster than the spheres had done. Draco was smiling in spite of himself, although not quite to the point of the Weasleys’ guffaws or Harry’s delighted laughter. Prince had made his little weapon in the shape of a hummingbird for a reason, but that made it all the harder to beat when it was turned against him.
            The hummingbird did catch him in the side this time, with a quick stab that parted Prince’s robes and made some blood run down his ribs. A nick, though, no more than that, and Prince was still smiling as he fell back a step and held up his hands.
            “I surrender!” he called.
            The hummingbird came to a dead stop in midair, watched Prince as if considering whether he meant it, and then flew back and rejoined the chain in Harry’s hand so fast that Draco never saw the moment when the delicate little links connected up with its back again. Harry shook it back and forth, and both he and Draco watched as the red flush faded.
            “Does your opponent have to say they surrender?” Harry asked, looking up. “Or will any method of giving up do?”
            “Losing their wand is the usual signal,” Prince said. “I just responded with the words to show you they work, too.” He folded his arms and beamed smugly around at them all. “Well. Am I competent enough to be included?”
            From the gleam in Harry’s eyes, Draco knew the answer before he said it, but he nodded along with everyone else.
            “Well.” Prince’s face had softened some, and he looked unabashedly triumphant. “Well, now. That might discomfit the Ministry.”
            It will, Draco thought, turning to look at the thestrals, along with everything else. And they’ll deserve every last bit of it.
*
            SP777: I don’t think I’ve named the Minister yet.
            Foreshadowing what?
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Chains of Fool's Gold