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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-Three--Waking

            Hermione closed her eyes and tilted her head back, her fingers working through her hair as she plunged it under the water. The shampoo washed out at once on the top, but got tangled and slippery under the curls. Hermione sighed and turned her head completely upside-down. Sometimes that was the only way to get the bloody shampoo out of her hair.

            She was thinking about what she should do that evening. Minister Clearwater had given her the day off, saying she was doing a wonderful job with the propaganda against Potter and the other tasks that the Minister had asked her to handle. Hermione half-wanted to go to Diagon Alley and see if she could get someone to notice her.

            But she was still married, and everyone knew it, since her husband was the biggest of Potter's supporters. She would only attract the sort of man who thought it was cool to fuck someone else over, and Hermione didn't want that.

            She wanted...sometimes she didn't know what she wanted, her mind felt so full of thick and stifling smoke. She wanted to be free of the Minister. She wanted to breathe. She wanted to send more information to Ron and Harry than she was permitted.

            Hermione sighed as she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her waist, then reached for another to dry her hair. She thought the treasonous comments from one corner of her mind were becoming fainter, but every time she thought they were gone for good, they would come back. She didn't know how to get rid of them.

            Perhaps what I need is a Mind-Healer, she decided, squinting thoughtfully into a mirror. That would let me know exactly why I have so much trouble thinking in the right way as well as why I stayed married to Weasley for so long. And I know there are a few that have offices near the Ministry, or in it. I can pick up the final papers that I'll need to file for a divorce, too.

            The treasonous corner of her mind was silent, as though the plan to visit a Mind-Healer suited it just fine. Hermione showed her teeth to the face in the mirror and spun away, reaching for yet another towel. She was going to make sure that she looked her best when she went out. She might not be divorced yet and not yet ready for another relationship, but there was no harm in encouraging people to look.

            Or looking herself, for that matter.

*

            "A simple slap across the face would be so much more effective." George stepped back and considered Fred's elaborate plan for the machine to make stupid people shut up. He had argued in favor of the simple, a potion or a prank like the ones they used to sell, but Fred had sneered at him in the back of their shared mind and insisted that George was wrong and it would never work. George had consented to draw down what Fred had in mind, but looking at it now, he couldn't see the real usefulness of it, the way Fred had promised him he would be able to.

            No, it wouldn't, Fred told him. A slap gets them angry, and it doesn't stop them from opening their mouths and retorting in the next moment. A slap doesn't turn their heads around, or seal their mouths shut, or make them regret that they were born because of the sensation of needles in their tongues, the way this will.

            George thought about that wistfully for a moment before he shook his head. "We can't really do that. Harry wouldn't like it. He spends hours and hours every day speaking with these idiots; he wouldn't like it if they all suffered the same kind of pain because they mouthed off to him."

            Then we can make it different kinds of pain. This design is adaptable.

            George sighed. "No, I mean that he wouldn't like it at all. Harry is concerned with leading this revolution better than the way he did in the past. That means allowing people to disagree and even be idiots, as long as they don't manage to urge him into doing something stupid that would actually hurt the revolution's chances."

            That makes no sense. Fred was still for a moment, though George could sense him shifting around in the back of his head like a tongue probing a loose tooth. Maybe what we need is a machine to shock Harry back to sanity? We were on the track of one before.

            "This is sanity." George crumpled up the parchment with the machine's picture on it and threw it away, ignoring Fred's incoherent protests. "Just not the kind of sanity that we'd like to see him have. But preferable to what he had before."

            Fred shuddered this time, and George had no trouble recognizing that shiver of cold. You can say that again.

            "This is sanity--"

            It's a good thing I stayed with you, little brother, Fred murmured in disgust. No telling what kind of trouble you would have got yourself into by now if I hadn't.

*

            "Good morning." The Mind-Healer who rose to hold her hand out to Hermione was a neat, professional woman, dressed in conservative green robes with her red hair held up in a bun. It wasn't her fault that her red hair reminded Hermione of Ron, and she had to restrain a grimace of distaste as she bowed over the woman's hand. "How can I help you?"

            "This is only my first appointment," Hermione said. "But I'm having plenty of trouble, and I'll probably need a good many more." She looked around Healer Noble's office. Calm and neat and professional as the owner, she was glad to see, without the kind of wildness that had ruined Ron's chances in the Ministry, and would have ruined Hermione's if she had been fool enough to follow Potter. The couches and the chairs were comfortable, the fireplace pristine, and the walls contained only honors Noble had won and photographs of natural scenes.

            "Very good," said Noble, and why wouldn't she, when Hermione was offering her business? She sat down in the chair across from her and crossed her legs. "What seems to be the trouble?"

            "I have certain impulses that tell me to go against the best interests of my job and the Ministry," Hermione said. She paused in easing her satchel to the floor. She knew the secretary had taken her name, but she didn't know if he had given it to the Healer. "You know who I am?"

            "Your photograph was in the paper recently, Madam Granger-Weasley," Noble said, and a small smile came and went on her face.

            Hermione nodded, grateful she'd found someone who recognized reality when it stared her in the face. "These impulses return again and again, telling me that I should turn against the Minister and join the revolution led by my traitor best friend and traitor husband. I want to figure out how to subdue them."

            Noble frowned at her. "I see," she said, slowly. "Have you considered that it is only natural to experience a conflict about a decision of principle? The only courses open to you were turning against your friends or turning against the Ministry, and it is not surprising that, even with the decision made, you are still struggling to find a third course that would have allowed you everything you wanted."

            Hermione lifted her head, a little stunned that Noble had taken that tack. Perhaps she wasn't so professional after all, and Hermione should leave her office. "There is little conflict here that should still remain," she said. "I understand that what Potter and Weasley are doing is wrong. And there is constant anger against Minister Clearwater that I do not understand, when she has done less to them than Minister Duplais did."

            Noble waited a few moments, as if expecting more, and then nodded. "Persistent hostility can indeed be a problem, and a sign of unacknowledged desires," she said, and although she sounded as if she was reciting from a book, that calmed Hermione rather than otherwise. "Do you grant me permission to use Legilimency on you?"

            Hermione nodded at once. She knew that Ministry-approved Mind-Healers could only use their skills to view patients' memories, not use them against them. Anything more than that would result in prosecution of the Mind-Healer in question. She'd spent time reading up on the regulations last night. "Of course."

            "Good." Noble murmured a few words under her breath, then nodded. "Look directly at me, please. Legilimency is easier with direct eye contact."

            Hermione would have responded that, as far as she knew, it was only possible with direct eye contact, but she forgave Noble for phrasing her response oddly. She met her gaze, and waited.

            The sensation that slammed through her was odder than she was prepared for. It felt as though someone had inserted a cool breeze through her eyes into the brain, the way that a violent killer like Potter might insert a knife. Hermione shuddered and held her hands still in her lap.

            She could feel a sensation of Noble moving through her mind like a careful guest, touching some things--those would be the embodied forms of memories, Hermione thought, pleased to discover that she remembered that much from her reading--and laying them down again. Hermione thought of her mind as like a house, and Noble was in the drawing room. She paused, then reached out and touched something else.

            Hermione gasped and jerked. There was a locked door there, in the side of her mind. She didn't know why. She hid nothing from herself. She had no guilty secrets to hide, other than whatever was making her feel hostile towards Minister Clearwater, and that in and of itself wasn't a problem. It was--

            It was a disease, that was all, a boil that could be lanced. Whatever Noble had touched didn't feel like that.

            "Here we are," Noble said, her voice sounding as if she spoke inside and outside Hermione's mind at once. "This is the source of your trouble." She paused, and Hermione, not sure what she was waiting for, stirred. "May I open it?" Noble prompted gently.

            "Of course!" Hermione's voice sounded tighter and more strained than she would have liked, higher. She cleared her throat. "What am I paying you for?"

            "Pithy," Noble said, "if less than accurate." And she reached out, broke a lock on the door that Hermione hadn't realized was there and which made her scream as a blinding headache pounded through her, and opened the door.

            Everything came together like the joining of two streams, a clashing of violent waters that rocked Hermione where she sat. Loyalty to the Ministry, pity for the rebels, conviction that she had to be grateful to Clearwater for her new job and that she wouldn't merit such trust otherwise, as one of Potter's close friends--

            And the moments when she passed information, the resentment against the Minister for using the Imperius Curse on her, the longing for Ron to come back again, the love and worry for Harry, the burning that was the sensation of writing that last letter to Ron and knowing he might not figure it out--

            Hermione tried to cry out, but her voice was weak, and she knew that she had slumped back against the chair. When she opened her eyes, tears crowded her cheeks, and Noble stood in front of her with a glass of water, her face suffused with a kind of quiet anger that Hermione trusted instinctively. She reached out, took the glass of water, and began to sip.

            "Yes," Noble said, though as far as Hermione knew, she hadn't asked a question. "I thought so. Someone used the Imperius Curse to order you into a conflict with your own principles, and a rule-bound personality, like yours, is going to experience that as pain and residual hostility."

            "I'm not that rule-bound," Hermione muttered, thinking of the way she had behaved at Hogwarts and the role she had accepted in the Ministry as the revolution's spy. It was still incredible to her to think that she had forgotten that, that Clearwater had managed to turn her against her husband and best friend. Such a large chunk of herself had gone missing. How had she stood it?

            Exactly the way Noble had told her she had, of course. By changing the hostility into something she could hide and resenting herself for the "free-floating" emotions she couldn't connect to a source.

            From the sympathetic smile Noble gave her, she understood both what Hermione had meant when she spoke and the way she was feeling right now. She nodded. "But the Imperius Curse helped by locking away the part of your mind that was inclined to empathize with your friends and shoving the part that most liked rules forwards." She paused. "Both the deployment of the curse and the spell that must have enabled you to keep part of your mind separate were...quite skillful."

            "You know who did this to me," Hermione said, meeting Noble's eyes and then looking away. "You felt the realization when you opened the door as well as I did."

            "Yes," Noble said. "What remains undecided is what we should do about it. The Minister is quite powerful, and challenging her right now could mean that we both see the inside of prison cells and nothing else for the rest of our lives. On the other hand, using the Imperius Curse on someone is illegal."

            Hermione licked her lips and sipped more water. She found herself uncertain that Noble's professional demeanor was such a good thing, with her mind restored to her. She couldn't tell what the bloody woman felt, or where her support would fall. "Would you be willing to testify?" she asked bluntly, after several attempts to phrase it in a more subtle way. She was tired of dodging around real facts with careful words, and if Noble had seen that Clearwater had enthralled her, she must also have seen the reason Hermione had hidden part of her mind from the enslavement.

            "The Ministry pays me."

            Hermione knew a dismissal when she heard me. She nodded and started to stand, wondering if she could make it to her wand and Obliviate Noble before she noticed Hermione was reaching for it. Hermione would be sorry to do it, but her secret needed protecting, and Noble didn't seem willing to do it.

            Noble shook her head, a wintry smile on her lips. "You don't understand. The Ministry pays me, but they are only one of the employers I could have if I so chose. My main job here is looking into the minds of criminals who permit it, often those who claim they have been abused by Aurors or Hit Wizards." She paused. "I uphold the law, not its upsetting."

            Hermione swallowed. "Despite the Minister being the powerful one at this particular moment? Despite the fact that it would associate you with people who do break the law?"

            Noble considered her a moment, then nodded. "I think the sacrifice of smaller principles to a higher one is familiar to you," she murmured. "That makes me more confident that you would not ask more of me than I could give. On the other hand, walking into the Minister's office and making the accusation is not the best way to go about things. There are other methods we might use."

            Hermione smiled, while her mind spun into being, one integrated unity once again, her thoughts fresh and hot. "I'd like to hear them."

*

            This is the first morning of the rest of your life.

            A stupid and sentimental way to feel, probably, when you were opening your eyes after your second night with a lover who might regret what he'd done and backtrack as soon as he thought about it. But Harry felt it anyway. He had given up on telling himself that everything he felt and did was stupid.

            The members of the council are more than happy to do that for me, he thought wryly, and rolled his head to the side to look at Draco.

            Draco's eyes were open and regarding him. There was a sharp look in them that Harry thought could be for him--spending the night on the floor of a meeting room wrapped in flames wouldn't make anyone's list of the top most romantic ways to sleep together--or for the future. Harry nodded to him. "Good morning," he said, and wondered if Draco's small flinch was from the greeting or the wash of breath in his face or what.

            Then he shook his head. Reality will disappoint me soon enough. I'm not going to make constant guesses about which way it'll happen and what I'm doing wrong.

            "Good morning," Draco said back, and then turned to look at the door of the meeting room. "Someone will have missed us. I should get back to my rooms before that person decides my absence means I've abandoned my parents, and they can kill them."

            Harry nodded and let Draco roll out of his arms, watching with leisurely appreciation as he dressed. Draco flushed, and his nakedness meant Harry could watch the flush roll down his neck, his chest, and his arms. God, he was beautiful in all senses of the word. Harry's eyes lingered on the Dark Mark and the silver scars across his chest and a small, healing burn he must have got in the raid on Azkaban, and could find nothing that wasn't lovely or appealing to him.

            "People will have missed you, as well," Draco said, turning around to frown at Harry and flick hair out of his eyes. "I think you should get up."

            "I'll wait until after you've left," Harry said. "If you don't want them to associate us, then it wouldn't be a good idea to be seen leaving together."

            Draco flushed again, for some reason, just as the blood was starting to fade from his face. Harry didn't know why. He clenched one hand down as though he was holding a chain in his fist, then nodded. "All right." His walk to the door was stiff with bristly pride; if he'd been a cat, Harry thought, his tail would have been fluffed up.

            "If you don't mind them associating us together," Harry called lazily after him, "then I'll dress and come out immediately after you, of course. It's your choice."

            Draco paused and looked back at him. His face was normal now, but Harry's magic told him tales of a fast heartbeat and emotions dancing back and forth like a quivering flame, as though Draco wanted to settle on one side but was afraid of what would happen, no matter what choice he made. Harry stood and reached for his discarded pants. He never took his eyes off Draco; his magic sent out small, invisible tendrils of fire and located his clothes by the feel of the cloth well enough.

            "I want you to," Draco said.

            "Come out immediately after you?" Harry repeated, just to make sure that he had it clear, and smiled when Draco nodded. Harry had the feeling that his smile was frighteningly large, but he couldn't contain it. "Of course. I'd be proud and honored."

            Draco handed him a small, tense, nervous smile in return, and shoved the meeting room door open. Harry heard the beat of his footsteps traveling up the corridor, and listened to them until they vanished. Only then did he start dressing, shaking his head when the thought came that someone could look in through the meeting room door and see him there like that, undressed.

            Draco had chosen him, despite all the reasons not to. For that, Harry could endure all the stares and all the gossip the members of the revolution wanted to hand him.

            When he walked out at last, the patrolling guards looked at him and then away. Harry saw more than one frown among them. Someone must have looked in and seen them wrapped in flames, he thought.

            Well. There were some things he was willing to change about the way he led the revolution, and some things he would have been willing to change if they weren't contradicted a moment later by a suggestion from someone else. Sleeping with Draco wasn't one of those.

            He went to the eating hall to grab a bowl of cornflakes, and then went to his first meeting of the day, with Veronica Dover, the one who had proposed that they open negotiations with the Ministry. He did stop on his way to go to his room and pick up a sheaf of notes he'd made on the subject. If Dover could reassure him of certain things and if they could find enough people committed to making the journey and diplomatic enough to be trusted, then it might be a good idea.

            The Ministry had still issued no open response to the burning of Azkaban. They spun out propaganda about him at an alarming rate, and they gave occasional interviews with hand-picked people, and every two or three days there was a generic press conference about the threat "Potter and his revolution" presented. But they'd sacked the one Auror who had given a lengthy story to the press. Harry had no idea what they were going to do next, but potentially they were as tired of the war as he was.

            Maybe a revolution wasn't the best way. If the Ministry could guarantee certain changes to the legal process that would mean Muggleborn prisoners weren't treated differently from pure-blood ones...

            Then Harry sighed. He had probably closed that course of action off forever himself, with his burning of Minister Duplais and his subsequent run from arrest. Well, he would deal with that when matters came to that pass.

            He stepped into the meeting room, and paused. Dover wasn't there, but several of the people who had been at the meeting yesterday, including Pedlar, were. She rose to her feet at the sight of him, eyes shining with hate and triumph. The rest of the people around the table gave him hard stares or turned away.

            Harry sighed. "Is this the part where you tell me that you can't tolerate me sleeping with a Death Eater, so you're abandoning the revolution?"

            "This is the part," Pedlar said, voice so thick that it was hard to understand her, "that we tell you you've failed. You've slept with the enemy, you've kept his parents safe only because you favor him, and you've burned the prison that was a source of support and safety for the wizarding world, a cornerstone of our justice system."

            "Despite more than thirty prisoners being there for crimes they hadn't committed?" Harry demanded. That had been how many people said, under Veritaserum, that they hadn't done where they were accused of or had committed a lesser crime, but they'd gone to Azkaban only because of their blood. Or, in a few cases, because they'd made another pure-blood family angry.

            Pedlar brushed that off. "Thirty out of hundreds."

            "There were ninety."

            Pedlar leaned forwards intently. "You're making special exceptions. You're dispensing favors that you don't have the right to dispense. We're not leaving the revolution and its goals. You are."

*

            Kendra1117: Thank you so much! I usually like to see H and D being equals as well, unless I'm writing a story that specifically explores a kink like D/s. I don't know if Harry would never be submissive to someone else, but in this case I think he would have a lot less hesitation about exploring and desiring what he wants than Draco seems to.

            I am afraid that you will only find Pedlar more annoying after this chapter.

            Mehla_Seraphim: Thanks for reviewing. I think you'll like a few of the new fics I have in mind, then.

            SP777: Harry's methods of disciplining Pedlar haven't worked well so far. Part of the problem is that she is tenacious, and not frightened of him so much as of his magic--a minor but important distinction.

            warya: Thank you! Glad you're still enjoying it.

            KcRae: I don't think most people in the revolution would think George is sane. On the other hand, he's acting more like it than Harry is.
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Intoxicate the Sun