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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-One--Coming Forth

            "What have you invented this time?" Harry let the door of the lab fall carefully shut behind him. The last time he had shut it hard, he had made a series of chiming silver instruments collapse. George had brushed it off as reparable, but Harry was worried about making it out of the room alive, sometimes.

            George looked up and grinned at him, then stepped back so that Harry could see the giant metal platform with smoke coming out of it in the middle of the lab. Harry blinked. "We've invented something that should help you control the lightning stag you've seen," George said, and held out something to him.

            Harry accepted it and turned it over in his hands. It was a jagged jade lightning bolt, the size and shape of the one on his forehead. He shot George a questioning look, and George nodded to his brow.

            "Symbolism is important here," George said quietly. The playfulness had gone out of him, and he was watching Harry with an intensity that was hard to bear. "We tried several unsuccessful experiments without paying attention to the symbolism. This time, we did. The curse scar is the first thing that predisposed you to being different from the norm. And the lightning is something else that does the same thing. We think you can control it best with an object in the same shape and size."

            Harry waved a hand to show that he got that, and then paused when he realized that George was backing away. "What should I expect to happen?" he asked, looking over at a cloud of steam that was in the shape of a stag. For a moment, superhumanly intelligent eyes seemed to shine at him out of its face, the way they had from the face of the stag in the sky.

            "The lightning to come," George said.

            Well, that's simple enough, Harry thought ruefully. If dangerous. He hesitated only a moment or so more, then took a deep breath and pressed the jade lightning against his scar.

            There was a moment of silent brilliance, when Harry felt as though he had opened a third eye in his forehead and was gazing at a future full of that light. Then the room around him seemed to turn and rumble. The smoke and steam coming out of George's invention puffed faster. And all the shapes--even the ones that had been something else at first--turned into stags. There was a cavalcade of them dancing above the machine, striking sparking hooves on air.

            Harry felt something immense and slow stir above him, and turn its attention in his direction.

            He swallowed. He could feel the mind behind that attention, or at least he thought he could. It had a flicker of flat amusement running through it, and less resonance and depth than he would have expected of a "real" mind. Of course, he also wasn't sure what he should expect a "real" mind to feel like. The only mind he'd ever been in contact with before was Voldemort's, and that wasn't comparable.

            The mind came down from the clouds towards him. Harry could feel that, the way it was extending, the sparks it carried with it. He almost wanted to choke on the intense feeling of fire, in fact. He wondered dazedly if his magic had taken the form of fire for this reason, so that he could survive an encounter with a mind so deadly.

            The air around him began to brew and glow. Harry started to take a step back, and then made himself stop. The piece of jade on his forehead felt hot against his skin, cool against his palm when he reached up and touched it. Harry shivered, and felt the mind from the clouds orient on him even more than it already had.

            "George. Fred." His voice was unnaturally high. He cleared his throat. That was strange. He had almost thought that he couldn't be afraid anymore. "Are you sure about what's going to happen?"

            "No, mate," George said gently, and in a voice that didn't sound exactly like the one that he usually used to address Harry. "Not at all. But we thought that we had to try, and now--"

            Now.

            Reality itself seemed to speak that word. The past changed, and the word was in Harry's skull with him, clanging around his brain, making giant silver pendulums swing to chime in tune with it, making him cry out and clutch at his temples. His head was too small for this. It would have to grow, and he didn't know what would happen to him when it did, whether his brain would spill out of his ears or the sound would go on, growing, devouring the world, making it impossible for him to--

            Neither.

            That word was everywhere, in all directions. Harry opened his eyes and wasn't entirely surprised to see that the interior of the lab, and presumably the manor beyond it, had vanished. He floated in a sea of stars, so brilliant that it was hard to make out the darkness beyond them, his lungs aching as he sought to draw a breath. Or was he breathing? It was hard to make out, with his head aching from the echoes of the great voice and the mind still brushing over his in gentle flutters, but pressing down more and more as it settled further into him.

            Here you are.

            Three words drove Harry to his knees, although he felt nothing beneath them. Of course he didn't, he thought snappishly at himself, floating in a void as he was. He would have tried to stand, but there didn't seem to be much point. He had to crouch there and wait for what came next. He certainly didn't control that immense mind, or the pace at which it chose to interact with him.

            You are more important than you think.

            Those words trampled the breath from his lungs, the defiance from his mind, the ability to stand upright from him. Harry reached out and braced his weight on his hands, even though there was nothing there to brace weight on. Perhaps the stars generated their own kind of gravity, he thought, more than half-crazily. Perhaps that was what made the surface he was kneeling on.

            The voice said nothing else. Instead, the mind seemed to hover above him. Like the mind of a dragon in the clouds, Harry thought. That was what it reminded him of more than anything else: a great neck extending down to him, and on the end of it a brain that hummed with power, with magic, with fire.

            Perhaps the defenses he had perfected against the dragons would avail him now, then. With his hands shaking, he spun clumsily, the fire vaulting between his fingers and hanging there in a weave of smeared colors. He held it up for the mind's delectation, though he did think it might have seen his soul already.

            No response. But the amusement skittered along his nerves, and Harry shivered, to realize how deeply the mind had already gone into him, to realize that it could do anything it wanted to him.

            What are you? he asked in silent despair.

            Your future.

            The air in front of him burned with both light and heat, and the stag appeared, pawing the ground or the air or the gravity, its nostrils flaring out as it looked at him. Sparks and small bolts danced between the tines of its antlers. The hooves shone with a blue-white, shadowless light that meant Harry had to look away, wincing. It trotted closer to him and lowered its head so that a literally shocking nose nudged his cheek.

            The prophecy. There is a second. Bringing you into the future. Bringing you away.

            "I don't know what that means," Harry gasped aloud, because somehow it seemed important to disassociate himself from the silent communication the stag, or the future, or the lightning, was using. "I have responsibilities here. The future of the revolution. Being a good leader." Draco, he thought but didn't say, the name aching through him as if it were a wound punched beneath his breastbone.

            You must leave them. You must come away.

            And a vision came to him, not words: a starry void opening in front of Harry, a road of lightning leading away through it. The road shed constant sparks, but new lightning was always springing up to replace what was lost, and he knew it would endure for far longer than his feet would need to walk it.

            "No." His voice croaked. He swallowed back some of the fear he was experiencing and tried again. "No, I don't believe you. There was never anything like that when I defeated Voldemort."

            The stag pranced in front of him, and tossed its antlers. The immense voice in his head was silent. Harry heard what it was saying without needing to hear it: this was different. He didn't have to die this time, though if he had stayed dead that would have constituted its own kind of leaving behind. He had to leave.

            And where did the lightning road lead?

            More amusement sparked along his nerves, and nothing else. The future wouldn't tell him, Harry reckoned. Maybe that was why it was the future. Though if that was the case, it seemed a little unfair of it to reveal itself to him, hint and taunt, and do nothing else.

            "Is this happening because I already had one prophecy made about me?" he asked.

            The stag shook its antlers fiercely and took a step towards him. Harry glared back at it, almost too angry to be afraid. He didn't know whether it was a stupid question to ask or not. Why should he? He didn't know anything about what he was supposed to do or be in this context. It wasn't as though he had started the revolution knowing that he would have to leave it behind.

            Then he paused.

            If I have to.

            The image of the lightning road hammered insistently into his mind. Yes, fine, the future and the stag at least were convinced that he would have to. That didn't mean that he had to tamely surrender to what they asked of him.

            He slammed one fist into the gravity in front of him and climbed to his feet. The stag danced back from him, as if it could feel the fury that clung around his body like his own snapping electric aura. Harry bared his teeth at it in a sneer. Yes, it should run. It should get away from him while it was still safe to do so.

            "I refuse to accept what you've told me," he told it quietly. "I refuse to give in and be nothing more than your tool."

            The stag pawed the ground in agitation again, and out of the silence came the feeling that this wasn't meant as a punishment or to make him into a tool. It was simply what was going to happen, and if he resisted it, then he would be pressed and crushed into shape the way anyone would be who stood in the way of a boulder rolling downhill.

            Harry didn't think they could do anything to him at the moment, though. He reached up, caught the dangling thread of reality that still remained to him, and yanked, hard.

            He went flying out of the vision, and found himself shaking in every bone as he knelt on the floor of the lab. If he'd been thrown into it from a great height, he might have felt the same way, he thought, lifting his head for a gasp.

            "Harry? You all right, mate?"

            Harry looked up and smiled weakly at George. He knelt over Harry, and his eyes were as wide as full moons. He seemed concerned he might honestly have hurt Harry. "Yeah," he said. "It was just--strange, what I experienced." He hesitated, then decided that he had to ask, no matter how mad it sounded. "Did I disappear, or go anywhere? Did you see anything?"

*

            Something is wrong, Fred hissed into the back of his mind, apparently forgetting all the problems that he'd had lately with talking to his smarter brother. Did you see how pale his face has turned?

            George nodded, both in answer to Fred and in reassurance to Harry. "We saw the lightning coiling around you, and once or twice you said something, but in a thin voice, very far away. I didn't think that you wanted us to overhear what you were saying." He paused, then gave in to his curiosity. "What happened? Did you go somewhere?"

            Harry stood up, forcing George to move backwards. George kept his eyes on him, though. Yes, something had happened. Harry's hands were shaking when he reached up to pry the jade off his forehead, and he held it and stared at it as though it had betrayed him.

            We can change the symbol, if we need to, Fred said anxiously. They had already decided that the jade lightning bolt was the better choice for Harry's first experiment with the machine than the eye-shaped lump. There were other changes that could be made. If he doesn't like it. I should have remembered. The lightning bolt probably reminds him of Voldemort and the war.

            Why should you have remembered, when I didn't? George asked.

            Because I'm the smarter one.

            George rolled his eyes, glad that Fred would feel it as well as see it from his position in George's head, and said gently, "Harry, you're scaring us here, mate. Are you sure that nothing happened?"

            Harry looked up at him, biting his lip. George waited. It wasn't like Harry to be silent for long. He usually didn't have any trouble talking about what he experienced with their inventions, because he knew that Fred and George needed the feedback to make the machines better. And he knew that lives would depend on them if they worked in the revolution.

            "I was hearing an immense voice," Harry said. "It claimed to be the future, reaching down to find me. It also said that I was destined to leave everyone, to walk away on a sort of road made of lightning. I didn't understand most of it." Already a healthy scowl was coming back onto his face, and he kicked at the floor, which reassured George. As long as Harry could defy what frightened him, the rest could follow him into that defiance. "I don't want to go, I know that."

            Told you, Fred whispered in what sounded like ecstasy, which only meant that he couldn't actually have been listening to the content of Harry's words. I told you that he was connected to some greater force, and that we'd see him walking away, waving good-bye to us, soon enough.

            George ignored his brother, because he wasn't helping, and focused on Harry. "Do you have any reason to believe the voice?"

            Harry shrugged. "I don't know. It sounded like it was speaking the truth, and it pressed on me." He glanced at his arms, as if expecting to see the marks of large clamps that had held him down. "I know that I've never experienced anything like that before. The first prophecy that wanted me at least had the courtesy not to scoop me up and haul me into bloody visions."

            George gave him a cautious smile. If Harry could joke about this, then he thought they stood a chance of recovering from it, of beating it. "Did you see the lightning stag?"

            "As well as the lightning road. Yes." Harry stared at the piece of jade that he'd handed back to George. "But none of it seemed to want to obey me. It only told me that I had to leave, because--I had to. And it gave me the feeling that it would crush me if I defied it." Harry grinned, and it was a low, vicious grin. Flickers of flame danced along the sides of his fingers. "Well, fuck that."

            George nodded approvingly to him. He disliked all the chains that people tried to place on him, too: trying to drag him away from the past, trying to drag him away from his brother, telling him that he had some kind of fucking duty to sit up and smile and join the "working world" again. George had to wonder how many inventions they'd created in the past few years, how much they knew about the labor he and Fred had done and how it had supported the revolution.

            "And it--it made me try to think about myself as a victim," Harry said, in the tones of wonder that someone would use when uncovering a stupid person's deception. "That was the worst part of it. When I knew the prophecy about Voldemort, one of the things I had to fight against was the temptation to just give in to fear. It said I had to die, or Voldemort did. Nothing about how to defeat him, no clues about what I would eventually have to do. This prophecy is doing the same thing, except it doesn't tell me where I'm going if I take that road, or why I've been 'chosen' for this particular stupid honor. It just wants me to give in and drag me along." Harry shook his head, and the look on his face had altered. George wasn't entirely sure he knew how to read it. "Fuck that," he repeated, and his words were softer and stronger.

            I don't think he can resist it, Fred whispered. I mean, if it's prophecy, it's fate. And it's different, fighting fate, than fighting a Dark Lord.

            "There are all sorts of prophecies that never came true," George said aloud, as part of his argument with Fred and to answer Harry. "Divination is an imprecise art. If it wasn't, then people would use it a lot more often."

            "There are all sorts of prophecies that people claim only came true because they could find something in the words that sounded right, so they twisted them as hard as possible." Harry's voice was softer than ever, and he stared over George's head at the far wall. "It's not going to twist me."

            I don't like this, Fred whined. Who knows what kind of havoc he could cause if he actually fights fate and wins?

            A moment ago, you were going on about that being impossible.

            If someone could manage to find a way to fight fate, it would be our Harry, Fred said, with a brief flutter of returning spirit that George hoped would last longer than it did. Instead, it blew out like a candle, and Fred added anxiously a moment later, But you don't think he will, do you?

            George rolled his eyes and turned back to look at Harry. "Good," he said simply. "But I don't know what that means for our machine. Do you think you can use it to get in contact with the lightning, or would that be too dangerous?"

            Harry bared teeth that looked like he was going to bite straight through the machine as he stared at it. George resisted the temptation to put himself defensively between Harry and their creation, but only just barely.

            "The lightning knows where I am now," Harry said. "And who I am, and what I want. I don't think it would be a good idea to go about attracting its attention again, not to mention that there's no reason for me to try and tame it when it doesn't want to be tamed." He eyed the machine for a moment more, then flung himself around to face the door so abruptly that George started. "Thank you for doing what you could. At least it told me that I had another enemy out there, and that's not a small thing."

            He reached out and squeezed George's arm with a hand so strong it seemed metallic, then disappeared out the door. George stood there, rubbing his arm, and listened to Harry striding up the corridor. He really didn't make that much noise, but behind each step now, George could hear the strength of the strides. God knew what Harry would actually do now that he had this information.

            Something bad.

            Even if that was true, it still didn't make George more patient with Fred's whinging. "Come on," he said, facing the lightning machine again and dipping his wand so that the fires would stop burning and sending up the clouds of steam. "We should get around to inventing that machine to shut stupid people up. I think Harry's going to need that one pretty soon."

            What about a machine to stop people who fight fate?

            George rolled his eyes and reached out to begin the long task of pouring the water out from the pouches beneath the holes. "Are you going to help? Or should I keep the credit of inventing this device all to myself?"

            You will anyway.

            "Right, go back to your part of the brain until you can behave."

            Fred sulked away, and George shook his head, hands moving quickly and skillfully as new ideas began to pop up in his mind. Fred really was incredibly childish sometimes, especially for someone who supposedly knew more than George thanks to a few more minutes of being in the world and a much longer time of traveling beyond life.

*

            Of course, the one person Draco would have to see when he finally ventured out of his rooms to fetch food for himself and his parents was Potter.

            A pigeon had landed on the windowsill in front of him and was strutting back and forth, cooing. Potter was holding a piece of parchment and reading it. His face had gone drawn, Draco thought, lingering behind a corner where Potter wouldn't look up and immediately see him. (Though he had to wonder how much of a defense that would be, when Potter's magic had so far told him exactly where Draco would be hiding numerous times). Draco could see the bones pressing tautly against the skin, and he thought that hadn't been the case just a short time before.

            Potter nodded at no one and crumpled the parchment in his hand. Then he looked out past the pigeon to the manor's gardens, which were stained with brilliant sunlight at the moment. He leaned his head against the window and reached out to absently scratch the pigeon. It nipped at his fingers, but didn't move.

            Draco started to edge down the corridor behind Potter. Whatever bad news he'd received, it would probably occupy him too much to look around.

            But Potter's head craned around as if he'd heard the thought, and his eyes fastened on Draco.

            Draco froze for a second. Then he jerked his head up and glared back at Potter. He had the right to walk through the manor if he wanted to. They hadn't yet taken that from him, no matter what else they'd done.

            Potter only gave him a faint smile and nodded, as though to say that he was glad to see someone going about their ordinary lives--as ordinary as Draco's life was at the moment. Then he turned around, scratched the pigeon on the head, and walked towards the part of the manor where his own rooms lay.

            Draco stood there, blinking after him. It was just as much acknowledgment as he could have wished, Potter neither ignoring Draco like a leper or insisting on greeting him effusively, presuming on the fact that they'd slept together.

            Which made the ache in his chest incomprehensible.

*

            SP777: Yes, I did. ;)

            Ron did figure it out from Hermione's last letter, hence the letter he wrote at the end of that chapter.
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Intoxicate the Sun