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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 Thirty--Captured Lightning

            "Are you all right, mate?"

            Harry put down his fork and smiled wryly at Ron, who was leaning forwards over the table so that he could stare at him. "It's that obvious, huh?"

            "Do I want to know what's obvious?" Ron abruptly sat down in his seat and made a big production of looking at his plate and fork. "Did you have a fight with--with Malfoy?" He bravely spoke the name, though he looked as if he would rather be sick than ask the question.

            Harry shrugged. "Something like that. I promise that I won't give you any details."

            Ron looked as if he was bracing himself for a crash into a brick wall. "I might need to know details, to keep the revolution functioning the way it should," he said. "Especially since so many of them don't trust you now."

            Harry shook his head. "Sexual details, then. You'll be the first one to know if I think Draco is a danger to anything that we're trying to achieve with the rebellion."

            Ron sighed, sounding as if he had fetched the noise from the bottom of his stomach, and set his plate aside altogether. "Mate, with all due respect, I don't think you're objective enough to be sure what he wants to achieve and what he doesn't."

            "That's why I would tell you," Harry said. "And you can ask for me non-sexual details any time you want, and I'll tell you, too. That way, you should be able to judge for yourself, beforehand, whether he's doing something dangerous."

            Ron bit his lip, looked as if he wanted to argue for a second, and then nodded. "That's an acceptable compromise, mate." He lowered his voice and cast Muffliato around the table. "Not that I'm in a position to criticize you, not when I love a woman who's been hit with the Imperius Curse or something worse and is probably on the verge of betraying us as we speak."

            Harry reached out and gripped his wrist tight enough that Ron flinched, but Harry didn't much care. He thought that Ron needed the reassurance right now. "You're still doing the right thing," he said. "Never doubt it, Ron. She's still doing the right thing. She could have betrayed a lot more than she has. We don't even know how much the Ministry knows about us, but they're not making any of the right moves."

            "Unless they've decided to wait until we betray ourselves," Ron muttered, but he looked better than he had. He looked away from Harry and nodded gruffly before he squeezed his hand back and abruptly rose from the table. "There's--anything I can do for you as far as it concerns Malfoy, let me know."

            "Keep people from killing him," Harry advised, standing up and meeting a few of the wary, concerned, or hopeful glances that came his way from the other revolutionaries. "Or his parents. I know that he would die without them."

            "I reckon," Ron said, but he sounded bewildered. "If Mum and Dad had done things that awful, I'd give them up."

            "Yes, but we won the war," Harry said gently. "If they had won, then you know that they would have called your parents blood traitors, and killers, and murderers, and those who defied the rightful rule of the Dark Lord. Could you really sit back and watch them be taken to prison for things that you didn't think were crimes?"

            Ron made a hard gesture with one hand. "But they really didn't do anything wrong," he said. "Malfoy's parents did."

            "Not his mother."

            Ron screwed up his eyes and waved a hand in front of his face this time. "I hate living in this confusing borderland with all its shades of grey," he said. "Give me something to hit, and I'm happy."

            Harry rolled his eyes. "Now you're undervaluing your own grasp of nuances, otherwise known as 'fishing for compliments.' It didn't work with Hermione, and it won't work with me."

            Ron opened one eye and scowled at him. "Sometimes I think you're the best mate a bloke can have," he said. "And then there are these times." He heaved himself away from the table with a complaining little grunt. "Fine. If you think that I can go on, then I can believe and trust that you'll go on. Malfoy or no Malfoy."

            Harry nodded, squeezed Ron's shoulder in thanks, and went away to his first conversation of the morning. Draco had suggested reaching out to other groups of allies who might help them in their struggle. Harry had asked for everyone to write down names of groups or families they knew who might be interested, and to drop the unsigned notes in a box he'd placed outside his room. He hadn't heard of half the groups mentioned, and now he was going to discuss them with former Aurors who had.

            The group, when he walked into the room, included Pedlar. She saw him looking and saluted with her wand, her eyes sparking. That probably meant she was going to argue, and that she was looking forward to having a chance to pin him to the wall with her words.

            Harry made sure that his grin back didn't have too many teeth, and sat down to begin the real work of the day. As long as Pedlar didn't try to hurt him or someone else, he had to tolerate her presence here. He hoped that he'd impressed her enough that she wouldn't challenge him to a duel again, and that if she used words, she was hot-headed enough that the words wouldn't be reasonable.

            This was the real work of leading a revolution, he reckoned. Less glamorous, but more necessary, than calling dragons. And more boring.

            It didn't help his boredom that there was a persistent ache under his ribs, as though he was missing something, as though he was supposed to be somewhere else. Harry dismissed that as the longing he had to storm the Ministry and bring everyone there to justice, and listened to Pedlar complain that more than half the groups on the list were evil. Then someone else challenged her to define "evil," and they were off.

            Oh, well. I signed up for this.

*

            "I am very pleased with the work you have done so far, Hermione. Very pleased." The Minister glanced at her, smiling, and then went back to studying the prophecies that Hermione had laid in front of her.

            She doesn't have the right to call you that, whispered the corner of her mind where she could breathe untrammeled.

            But there was no reason for the corner, as she kept telling herself and which she supposed that she might one day believe. Hermione managed a small smile and bowed her head. "Thank you, Minister." Paper in her pocket bent when she reached down to touch it, but she managed to keep from pulling it out and showing it to Clearwater. The prophecies that the Minister had sent her to retrieve were obvious and silly enough. There was no point in wasting her time with something that was stupid to the point of--well, stupidity. Or making her distrust Hermione.

            Clearwater spent a few minutes more sorting the prophecies, then realized she was still standing there and dismissed her with an absent wave. Hermione marched down the corridor to her new office, meeting eyes on the way and noting who bowed to her, who avoided her gaze, who stared at her with open scorn, and who nodded in quiet respect. She wondered if that was the same set of signals that Potter had to watch out for, in his revolution.

            She wondered how she could find out.

            When she got into her office, a large pigeon was waiting on the windowsill. Hermione sniffed in disdain, but permitted it to stay there. She reckoned that it wouldn't last long; the owls always swooping about the Ministry on their delivery of important messages would eat it. But there was no reason for cruelty to dumb animals, so it might as well stay there.

            She even tossed it an owl treat when it hopped down into her office and strutted back and forth on the desk, looking meaningfully at her piles of papers and reports. The pigeon snatched the treat and fluttered back to the windowsill that looked out on nothing real, but soon enough started stretching its neck and ruffling its feathers there. Hermione leaned back in her chair and looked at it.

            "I don't know what you want," she said. "And I don't know why you came here, of all places."

            Her fingers were moving as she spoke, pulling out a small piece of paper and folding it up. The pigeon perked up when it saw the paper, bobbing its head and cooing. Hermione rolled her eyes. It was obvious now that someone had trained the poor stupid thing to carry messages, and that it was going mad without something to deliver. Of course, if they had taken care of the pigeon in the first place, then this wouldn't have happened. Hermione's mother had told her that over and over when she asked for a kitten or a puppy as a child. She couldn't have one unless she promised to take care of it, not forget it in a week and make her parents take care of it.

            "All the people who work here are adults, though," she told the pigeon. "You'd think they would know better."

            She tossed the little scrap of parchment at the pigeon. It snatched it out of the air, and for a second Hermione was afraid that the bird would eat it. But instead, it waggled its wings and took off.

            Hermione watched it go, and chuckled grimly. She could at least hope that it would return to the home of the person who had trained it, and hammer at their windows until they let it in. Hopefully it would then zoom around the room like Pig, and they would have to calm it down before they could take the message.

            Not that the message was important, of course. It was something Hermione had only done to entertain the bird. But maybe it would teach the pigeon's owner the benefits of keeping a pet at home instead of letting it wander away.

            She went back to work, steadily filing reports and putting papers away with sober attention to detail. She was proud of herself. The Minister could trust her, and that was the reason she had chosen Hermione for this job. When Hermione began, once again, to study the rumors that were circulating about Potter with a view to writing a new pamphlet, she hoped the Minister would remember her efforts and promote her to a grander position soon.

            She knew she could do more damage against Potter and his "revolution." She just had to prove that she could, and for that, she needed a chance.

*

            There's no guarantee that this one will work, and you know it.

            George took a long, careful breath, and did his best to ignore Fred's jeer. "This is different," he whispered, watching the platform in the middle of the lab from which clouds jetted into the air. "You know it is. You just don't want to acknowledge how creative I am."

            Fred snorted, and said nothing more about it. That left it up to George to observe their new machine and try, half-desperately, to convince himself that it was going to work to capture the lightning.

            The platform was studded with holes, beneath which hung pouches of water and small, ever-burning braziers. The water billowed up through the holes, turned to steam, and the steam formed various images, shaped and sculpted by the shape of the holes, which looked like animals, like trees, like musical instruments, like the lightning itself. The air was heavy with the song and feel of magic.

            George finally stepped back and picked up another lump of jade, running his fingers over it and trying not to remember what had happened to the other one. Yes, it had become smoking and charred, but that had been because the fundamental concept of the first machine they had invented was wrong. Now they understood more about symbolism and the logic of symbolism, and they wouldn't use something so profoundly wrong again.

            You still think that Harry will be able to control this? Fred's voice had a mocking tone that George had usually only heard when his twin was daring him to do something stupid on a broom. I don't know whether to laugh at you or hide in the back of your head and hope that it doesn't blow off your shoulders.

            George paused, and laid down the lump of jade. He heard Fred give something that might have been a sigh of relief.

            "You're right," George said softly. "You're absolutely right. We shouldn't be the ones trying to use the machine, not if the whole purpose is for it to be a weapon for Harry. We should be the ones to introduce him to the machine, and nothing else. He needs to wield the jade for himself." He turned and took off running in the direction of the lab door.

            Fred yelped as though he was a physical being to be jostled when George wrenched open the door. People are staring at us, he hissed in George's ear as George bolted past them and towards the meeting rooms where he knew Harry was likely to be at this time of the day.

            "What do I care?" George asked, though he did speak under his breath. That was an advantage his brother had over him, at least as far as his current form went. No one could hear him when he made a mistake, or find his body to taunt him with it.

            You know where his body is. It's buried in the Battle Memorial with the rest--

            George shook his head, hard, and the voice that wasn't his brother's and wasn't his own vanished from his mind. He was glad. It wasn't the done thing to listen to voices.

            He reached Harry's door, by which time he had acquired a small crowd of curious revolutionaries. George knocked, and waited. No matter how much the idea mattered, no matter how exciting it was, he wasn't about to burst in there when Harry might be having a tense confrontation with someone else. From what Fred and George could remember, Pedlar was probably part of this meeting, and she wasn't someone who would take her previous reprimand well. If she could find an excuse to get Harry in trouble, such as that his friends weren't serious enough and didn't really want the revolution to succeed, then she would take it.

            Harry opened the door, and stared at George in disconcerting silence for a moment. George nodded and stepped into the meeting room, ignoring the combination of hostile and wondering stares from the table. "Harry, do you have a minute?" he asked. "I found something that I think will make your life a lot easier."

            "Of course he did," Pedlar drawled, before Harry could say anything. "And of course that discovery must come right in the middle of an important meeting, before we can address the substance of our complaints."

            Harry didn't do much. He just turned and glanced over his shoulder at her. But Pedlar shut her eyes and turned her head away. George told himself to find out, later, exactly what Harry had done. It could be useful when he invented a machine to shut up stupid people, which had been on their agenda for years.

            "I am interested, George," Harry said quietly. His eyes seemed to focus in the middle of George's forehead for a second, and he smiled. "And Fred. But I can't leave the meeting right now. When I can? We'll meet, and you'll discuss this?"

            George restrained the tendency to snap that they needed Harry's attention right away, and that it was so important that Harry should put off dealing with people like Pedlar, who would never be satisfied anyway. He nodded tersely and backed off a step. Harry smiled and reached out to squeeze his arm, then quietly shut the door. George stood there, ignoring the muffled snickers of his audience.

            Then he smiled. He had Harry's attention, and Harry wasn't dismissing him as mad because he could still hear and talk to Fred, the way so many people did. That was about the best he could ask for at the moment. He turned and walked calmly back to their lab, head held high. The crowd trailed him part of the way there, and then fell away as though they had suddenly remembered that they had pressing business elsewhere.

            When George closed the door and stood alone in front of their machine, his brother murmured from the back of his mind, We can use the time to make modifications to the machine.

            George nodded. "We can." And he set about prowling around the edges again, making sure that there were no blurred or indistinct edges to the shapes, making sure that the smoke and steam came up in the right ways.

            They could use this time to make the machine better than ever, so that it would capture the lightning when it was time to use it. They could always do that.

*

            Draco spent most of the morning hiding in his rooms, and not ashamed to admit that that was what he was doing.

            Well, when he thought about it, who in the world would miss him? He wasn't an important part of the factions forming in the revolution, because no one--except Potter, and maybe Weasley--trusted him. He had to guard his parents, so he couldn't really take on duties that would remove him from this part of the manor even if he wanted to and someone would offer them to him. He could stay there all day, and no one would notice or care.

            Or so he thought, until someone knocked on his door at mid-morning. Draco grimaced and shuffled over, casting charms that would smooth down his hair and freshen his breath and clean his skin. He had gone back to sleep for a short time after returning from Potter's chambers, because he had nothing better to do, and was still wearing yesterday's clothes.

            They weren't up to the standards of a Malfoy. But then, Draco was starting to think that nothing in the world was, at least if his parents had kept the true Malfoy standards and he had only clung to a crumpled dream of them.

            He opened the door, and blinked when he found Weasley there. Weasley nodded and shifted from foot to foot as if he couldn't believe that he was here, either, and wanted to be gone before someone noticed him standing in front of Draco's door. "Can I come in, Malfoy?" he asked.

            Partially because he was speechless with surprise anyway, and partially because he was wondering how much Potter had told his best mate, Draco nodded and stepped aside. Weasley gave a brief glance at the furnishings as he moved in. An Auror's glance, Draco thought, adapted to figuring out hiding places and the best weapons to use in case of ambush. He stared at Draco again soon enough, though, and there was intensity in his face that made Draco wince and raise his head. He was used to these kinds of attacks from Ministry officials, the attacks that reminded him that, as far as they were concerned, he shouldn't even be walking around free, never mind all the other things they would probably accuse him of.

            "You probably wonder what I'm doing here." Weasley held his hands low, in front of him, but in a position that would make it hard for him to reach his wand. Done to reassure me, Draco thought, and had to work his jaws to answer around a horrible mix of bile and gratitude.

            "No," he said. "I know that you would never visit me just because you wanted to know how I was, or how my father was. This visit has something to do with Potter. Doesn't it," he added, because Weasley was standing still and staring at him in speechlessness of his own.

            Weasley wavered one hand back and forth, then shook his head and sighed. "Yeah, it does."

            "Of course," Draco said, and folded his arms, doing his best to lounge back against a corner of his bedroom wall. "You can't fool me into thinking that you care about me for my own sake."

            Weasley rolled his eyes, which wasn't supposed to happen. "You would be bloody hard to care for even if I did," he said. "Listen. I don't really care if you two sleep together, or--" He flushed, which rather belied his words. "All I'd ask is that you not make the political situation harder on him," he finished in a rush. "Don't break your oath, don't do something stupid because you think it would improve your parents' situation, and don't try to use your power over him to win your own advantages. I really think most of the revolution would kill you and your parents before he could stop them."

            Draco stared at him. Weasley stared back, restless and miserable, but apparently asking for that.

            And nothing more than that.

            Draco had to shut his eyes and turn away. He didn't think that he could face the faith shining in Weasley's expression. Faith in him. He hadn't asked Draco not to murder Potter, not to hurt him. He hadn't come to threaten him if Potter did get hurt. He was only asking Draco not to do things that it was in his best interest not to do anyway, since they would weaken the only powerful ally he had.

            And at the same time Weasley understood why he might have the temptation to do them, understood why his parents were so important to him.

            "I won't," Draco said, and then stopped, because he hated how unsteady his voice sounded. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I won't hurt him that way. I'll do my very best to stop back if I think that I'm on the verge of it. But if you see me tending in some direction that might hurt me and him without knowing it because I don't know the rest of the players in the rebellion, then tell me. Cough. Give me a warning glance. Something."

            Weasley said nothing. Draco looked back at him, thinking he was finally strong enough for that, and found that he was blinking, in turn, his face softened from whatever mask he'd hardened it to.

            "You'd--do that," Weasley said. "Keep yourself in check for him."

            "I'd try," Draco said, a bit nervous. The bad part of having a Gryffindor on your side was that they started thinking you could provide the same miracles they were capable of. "That doesn't mean that I'd really be able to do it, you know."

            Weasley was still looking at Draco as if he were a wonder, and it seemed to cost him a bit to nod and look down and away. "But trying means a lot," he said quietly.

            Then he did something Draco hadn't known was coming, and would have avoided if he had. An embrace, he could have dodged. It was the sort of over-the-top gesture that he suspected Weasley of wanting to make, and, well, they weren't friends like that. They were really only united by their concern for Potter and that he not falter, if you thought about it, and those similar concerns came from distinctly different roots.

            But instead, Weasley reached out and clenched Draco's wrist, once, hard, the sort of gesture no one had done for Draco in years.

            He was out of the room before Draco could react. He shut the door slowly, with a shaking hand, and leaned against it.

            Yes, there was life beyond the end of his quest to free his parents.

            He just hadn't realized what sort of life it was.

*

            SP777: It gives Draco a thrill, too, although he's not really ready to admit it.

            I don't think that much about Harry's clothes unless it's important to the plot of the story, but I think that he would otherwise look a lot like your image. Hair perhaps a bit shorter.

            I saw what you did with that pun about Hermione.
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Intoxicate the Sun