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Intoxicate the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18051 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Thirty-Seven—Councils of War

            “These are the people I’ve brought to meet you.”

            Hermione would have said that she could see that for herself, but she had no reason to wish to irritate Noble or the others she had gathered here, so she inclined her head politely and murmured her name. Most of the people around the table would probably already know it. That didn’t matter much to Hermione. The ones who didn’t deserved to know who they were helping, the witch with the association with the infamous Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

            The witch at the end of the table picked up a pair of spectacles on a stick so that she could see Hermione through them. She had dark hair, dark eyes that Hermione thought might be violet (or at least her purple robes made them look that way), and a fussy expression. Hermione knew she served on the Wizengamot, though she couldn’t remember her name immediately.

            The man at the other end of table looked like the kind of brute that the Ministry would send to arrest people brawling in a pub at three in the morning. He had intelligent eyes, though his thick ginger eyebrows and beard almost concealed them. Hermione had seen him working in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, although again, she didn’t know his name or the office he held.

            The third person, seated on the side of the table halfway between the other two, smiled and held out her hand to Hermione. Hermione blinked and reached out to take it, although she couldn’t help staring at the woman’s blonde hair and the pink bows that clung to the ends of her thick braids.

            “Yes, Auntie Dolores did rather soil the image of anyone who wants to wear this sort of thing for years to come, didn’t she?” the woman agreed with a small bob of her head. “Not to mention the name of the family. I was married briefly, and I usually call myself Greta Rudolf, to shelter under the protection of my husband’s priggishness. Not Greta Umbridge.”

            “I, er, the resemblance is startling,” Hermione said, because the honesty tumbled out of her before she could stop herself. It was. Greta didn’t look like a toad, because in her the toad-features were smoothed down and came out as mostly large and broad. Not good-looking but not horrible, either. Still, to someone who had spent a whole year glaring at Umbridge where she sat at the High Table, Hermione doubted it would ever be hidden.

            “Exactly.” Greta settled back into her seat. “And everyone who knows me as her niece thinks that I share Auntie’s greed and her frankly horrendous dress sense.” She sniffed. “There are more options with pink than most people know about.”

            Noble took a step forwards and seized command of the meeting again. “You know Greta Umbridge, then, Undersecretary to the Minister,” she told Hermione. “And this is Juno Raggleworth, currently the head of Special Financial Investigations on the Wizengamot.”

            “How do you do, Madam Raggleworth,” Hermione said ceremoniously, and inclined her head. She knew Raggleworth by reputation, and she liked formality and traditions. If she had unbent enough to work with someone she knew was Muggleborn, though, Hermione was already one ahead.

            Raggleworth studied her intently through the glasses for another moment, then laughed and shook her head. “I will accept this one,” she told Noble, her voice high and piercing. Hermione kept from flinching, but only barely. Perhaps there was a reason that the Wizengamot had settled Raggleworth on the Special Financial Investigations committee. She wouldn’t have to speak aloud in public very often. “She has some sense of what is proper.”

            Noble only nodded as if to say that she had never doubted Hermione’s ability to do that, and then turned around and indicated the man at the end of the table. “Luke Smithson, the new Coordinator of the Hit Wizards.”

            Hermione made a little bow to him. Smithson took less time than Raggleworth to smile, and although he revealed several broken teeth when he did so, Hermione could relax. She found him less intimidating that way.

            “You’re the one the Minister used the Imperius Curse on?” he asked. Hermione blinked and glanced at Noble. She hadn’t realized that the Mind-Healer would have told them so much already.

            “I had to,” Noble said, in response to her glance. Her voice had gone gentle. “To impress on them how serious the matter was.”

            “Serious?” Raggleworth laughed again. “Of course it’s serious, but more serious crimes go unreported every day. You must know that we are here for our own purposes, child, as well as yours.”

            “Of course,” Hermione said back. “But this will give you some grounds to move against the Minister, won’t it?”

            “Yes,” said Greta at once. Hermione wasn’t surprised that she was the first one to speak. For one thing, she was younger than the others, probably less used to measuring her words, and for another, she seemed nicer than they were, as if she had decided that politics really was a game, not a calling. “Frankly, I don’t care that much about the revolution. They’ve been moving around, changing a few things that needed to be changed. I am sorry about Minister Duplais. I think he would have stopped doing stupid things and listening so much to pure-bloods, given enough time. But this new Minister is making a cock-up of things.”

            “She’s been careful enough to let others take the fall for her, though,” Smithson rumbled. “Me. The Head Auror. Those she sends out in public to speak for her, or write for her.” He looked hard at Hermione. “You’ll be willing to donate your Pensieve memories to the cause, so that we can prove she’s done it?”

            “Yes, I will,” Hermione said, and bit back the automatic question she wanted to ask, about the people they were dealing with who wouldn’t have wanted to do that. “How soon do you think we can bring this to trial? Or will it be a trial?” She saw Noble crooking her elbow at a chair on the opposite side of the table from Greta, and took it. Noble settled behind her, glancing from face to face like a hawk getting ready to hunt mice.

            “Not exactly,” Greta said. “We think it’ll be more effective to spread rumors first, and then let the news ripple out until the point comes where we can hang the Minister on a rope of her own making.” Her eyes glittered. “You know, the way she had you try and hang your friends.”

            Hermione grinned back. She could like at least one member of the Umbridge family, it seemed.

            “I had not precisely agreed with that,” Raggleworth said in her shrillest tones, or at least Hermione hoped they were her shrillest tones. She was going to start fearing for her eardrums if they weren’t. “I had hoped that we might convict the Minister in a storm of fire and guilt. Best to have this done quickly.”

            “And I think that we should wait until the Minister is concentrating on Potter’s revolution, and then strike.” Smithson drummed his hand on the table once, producing a hollow boom. “We will be most effective if we time ourselves in coordination with that.”

            Greta caught Hermione’s eye and shrugged a little, a small smile melting over her face. “When I said that we think it,” she murmured, “I might have overstated the case.”

            Hermione smiled. She had often grown weary of political negotiations while working in the house-elf legal department, but on the other hand, this time she was taking revenge and helping her friends all at once. She settled down to dicker.

*

            “Sit down, Ron.”

            Ron did, looking very solemn. Harry gave him a smile, hoping it would help him feel more at ease, but if anything, Ron just clamped his hands down on his knees as though he thought that meant Harry would strike. Harry shook his head.

            “It isn’t anything bad,” he reassured him. “I’m not about to regale you with stories of what I did to Draco the last time we met.” That won him a smile, at least. “I just want you to take over leadership of the revolution.”

            Ron’s freckles stood out on his face as he gaped at Harry. Then he snorted. “For future reference, mate, when you want to speak the same English as normal people,” he said. “That’s not what most people mean when they say it isn’t anything bad.”

            “But it isn’t,” Harry said, and when Ron looked at him as though he was about to have a heart attack, he sighed, reached out, and clasped his friend’s hands. Ron stared at them as though he’d never seen them before. Harry shook them back and forth. “You know that I can’t stay in charge of the revolution. Too many people distrust me. Some of them are like Pedlar, just going to hate me no matter what I do to make it up to them, but some of them are good people who just happen to be misled.”

            “If they follow her, then they aren’t good people,” Ron muttered, sounding resentful.

            Harry shrugged. “I can’t really help that. But some of them would only do the wrong thing out of fear or hatred. If I step down from the leadership and you take over, then they don’t have as many reasons to experience those emotions.”

            Ron stared at him with narrowed eyes. “And you really think that no one is going to say that you’re behind me, ready to use your magic when someone disagrees with me or turns against me? You know they’ll say that. You know that they’ll see me as someone who owes allegiance to you, and not an independent leader.”

            “Let them speak that way, then,” Harry said firmly. “To be honest, I think the only people who will definitely talk that way are the ones who’d follow Pedlar no matter what. The ones who let their paranoia and their disappointment take over from their faith in the revolution. They’re stupid, and the ones who trust you and want to trust you more will shut them down.”

            “You think.” Ron was chewing his lip.

            Harry laughed a little. “Well, yeah. But these are all things that could happen and haven’t yet. Are you telling me that you’re afraid?”

            Ron would have bristled at the accusation once and launched himself into the thing he was being dared to do, no matter what it was. It was a trait that had always exasperated Hermione, who was usually the one who had to treat the wounds or put up with the scrapes and bruises that Ron collected doing those things.

            Now, Ron met his eyes and nodded. “This is a group of people that you couldn’t keep hold of,” he said, “and you have the reputation and the power that I never will.”

            “I don’t think what they need is power, though,” Harry said. “It’s leadership, and that’s not something I managed to provide for them. You can. I know you can because of the way that you were training the quatrains before I got involved. Those people worked together. I shouldn’t have stood aside from the beginning and obsessed myself with books, but when I did, the revolution was hanging together except for a few people who complained. I want this to be able to work.”

            Ron frowned and shook his head. “But what’s the long-term plan? Are we going to keep fighting the Ministry, or do we surrender?”

            Harry clapped Ron on the shoulder. “I can’t wait to find out, General Weasley.”

            Ron’s mouth dropped open. Harry grinned at him. He didn’t understand why Hermione was always complaining about that part. It was a good look on him.

            “But—but you can’t just leave everything up to me!” Ron spluttered. “Are you crazy?”

            “What part of ‘you’re now the leader of the revolution’ didn’t you understand?” Harry stood up and cocked his head at Ron. “You’re the one who has to make the plans and deal with Pedlar’s complainers, now. Good luck.”

            “But you already made plans,” Ron protested feebly. “Plans to negotiate with the Ministry and pick out people who could do that. Didn’t you?”

            Harry nodded. “But I don’t think I can judge the people involved as well as you can, since you trained most of them. Look them over. Judge whether they have a chance in hell of getting Clearwater to listen to them, or whether they’re only doing this because they’re desperate and they want the revolution to end so they can go back to their normal lives. You’re a better judge of character than I am.”

            “Not always,” Ron muttered. “I thought that Pedlar was a good addition to our fighting forces when I was training her.”

            “She might be.” Harry rolled his eyes when Ron turned to stare at him. “Because that’s her place. Picking quarrels and fighting with the people who disagree with her. She wants everything to be settled with a duel. Well, not now, maybe,” he had to add, because Pedlar since he had put the brand on her face was a different creature, avoiding any place he might be walking and taking most of her followers with her. “You could use her as shock troops. But I agree that she’s not much use when it comes to planning strategy, and if you decided to negotiate with the Ministry, then she couldn’t have a place in that, either.”

            Ron exhaled hard. “What about Malfoy and his parents? Are you going to still personally guarantee harm on anyone who attacks them?”

            The mere thought of someone trying to harm Draco made flames curl around the base of Harry’s nails. He pulled his hand sheepishly away from Ron when Ron gestured, but nodded. “Yeah. Because there’s really nothing else that I can do, and I don’t want to prove the people who think that stepping down from leadership means that I’m just going to vanish right.”

            Ron nodded, then lowered his head into his hands. “I wish Hermione was here,” he said softly.

            Harry winced as guilt flashed through him. He had been so involved in thinking about the prophecy Hermione had sent him and how it applied to him and how he could counteract it, if the lightning stag and the prophecy were right, that he’d forgotten to tell Ron what he thought it implied about Hermione’s state of mind. “She might not be too far away,” he muttered.

            Ron sat up as though someone had literally lit a fire under him. “What?” he demanded. “What are you talking about?”

            Harry dug into his pocket and found the scrap of parchment that contained the prophecy. “She sent me this,” he said. “I don’t think she could have done that if part of her mind wasn’t free and struggling for the freedom to express itself. There’s been nothing since then, but it could be—it could be a good sign.” He fell silent and licked his lips. The shine in Ron’s eyes made him sure that he should have shared this earlier.

            Ron held the paper in trembling fingers and stared at the prophecy. From the look in his eyes, he wasn’t reading it so much as reading the proof that Hermione was fighting her way free and coming back to their side. Harry sat there watching him and wondered if he would ever love Draco that much.

            Not that much, maybe, he thought, recalling his words about Pedlar a few minutes ago. It’s not that kind of love. Compare it to Ron and Hermione’s, and it won’t look right, just the same way that Pedlar doesn’t look or act right out of the dueling ring. But in its own way, I think it burns just as bright.

            Even if Draco didn’t love him back. Even if Harry ended up with his reputation draining away because of the need to protect two former Death Eaters that most people still hated. That was the way it was. When he finally found someone he could commit to, as most of the people he dated hadn’t been, then he would commit with all his heart. He had always known it, and so he was more at peace now than he would otherwise have been with it.

            Ron sat back at last, shaking his head. “What does this mean?” he asked, holding out the prophecy so that Harry could see it. He didn’t know that the words were already seared on Harry’s mind in letters bright enough, he thought, to satisfy even the lightning.

            “I don’t know about every line.” Harry leaned forwards and tried to reclaim the piece of parchment, but Ron shook his head and held it close to him. Harry smiled. He could respect that need. “But I think it refers to me, and it sounds like I have to make some kind of choice and that someone will betray me and I’ll go away.”

            Ron’s face turned white. “And you think I might be the traitor?” he asked. “Is that why you kept the message away from me for so long?”

            Shit. That was another reason Harry was just no good at this leadership thing. He didn’t think about what his actions would look like to other people half the time. He shook his head ruefully. “I kept it to myself because I was trying so hard to deal with the prophecy and the way it might apply to me, and I had to think it through and come to terms with it before I showed it to anyone else. I didn’t mean to. I should have told you ages ago that Hermione might have her mind free again. Sorry.”

            Ron nodded at him, but he was still locked on the tangent that Harry thought was just a tangent, not something he was actually concerned about. “But you think that one of us might be the traitor?”

            “I don’t know,” Harry said simply. “I have no idea. There are so many people around me who would have better motives for it, I would be surprised if it’s you, actually. You don’t have any reason to betray me.” If it’s Draco, then I think I would let the lightning take me. “But I told you, I didn’t keep the prophecy from you for that reason. I had to decide what I was going to do.”

            “What are you going to do, then?” Ron settled back in his chair as though he was preparing for a long discussion.

            Harry stood up and clapped him on the shoulder again. “Something that I need to do more research on before I’m sure that it’ll work. Now, leader, get out there and lead, while I spend some more time with my books.”

            Ron looked as if he would have liked to ask more questions, but in the end he just nodded and stood up to leave the room. Harry watched him go, smiling slightly, but dropped the smile as soon as the door closed and he was sure that Ron wouldn’t turn around and suddenly come back inside for any reason.

            I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know what the prophecy means in its entirety, or that those last two lines offer the choice I think they do.

            But it’s the only way I can see to escape this bloody mess, and that means I choose it.

            He had another reason for not telling Ron the details, and it had nothing to do with fearing that his best friend was a traitor. It was, simply and deeply, that he was sure Ron would protest passionately, and it would probably take months of argument to convince him that Harry’s proposed solution was better than losing the war or losing Draco.

*

            Draco leaned against the door of the room that contained his parents and watched them eating the soup and fresh fruit that he’d managed to bring them. It seemed that the people in charge of the revolution’s food supplies for the prisoners had belonged to Pedlar. They were frightened to deny Draco a good quality of food now that they knew she was out of favor and out of power. Draco thought he might have managed to bring a meal that would please his parents for once.

            Not so. Although his mother bit into the peach with a look of dazed happiness, his father pushed the soup away after a few bites, sneering. “There is no real meat in this,” he said.

            “That’s because it’s vegetable soup,” Draco said, and didn’t try to disguise the mockery in his voice.

            His mother dropped the peach, suddenly fiddling with her fingers as if she thought that something would explode in front of her if she touched it. Draco’s father sneered and stood taller. “Of course. You wouldn’t want to give us something that we could eat with a knife or fork, would you? You’re starving us of the things that would mark us as proud and free.”

            “You have no idea what you’re saying,” Draco said, “or I think you would try to say something that makes sense. You wouldn’t eat soup that had meat in it with a knife or fork, either. And of course I’m not trying to make you less masculine, which seems to be what you’re implying, or less free. Nothing I can do to you would compare to the Azkaban that you carry in your head.”

            His mother’s eyes darted so anxiously back and forth between them that Draco had to look away from her; it would drive him mad to watch that. His father, meanwhile, had gone still and was watching Draco with the kind of narrow-eyed glance that Draco knew had always signaled trouble in the past, when Lucius felt himself threatened and on the edge of losing respect from someone. “Explain,” he said at last.

            “Isn’t it obvious?” Draco gestured between them, at everything from the way they sat to the way that his mother leaned unconsciously towards his father when a few inches separated them. “Prison touched you, changed you. It changed your sense of time; you still think it’s seven years ago. It changed your sense of your own limitations. You think you’re owed revenge, but the people you could take revenge on are all in powerful positions in the Ministry, out of your reach, so instead you make sure that you lash out at the ones who are actually trying to help you. You care more about pride than the practical realities of your survival, which wouldn’t have been the case at one point. And above all, you sneer at me and assault me verbally for not living up to the Malfoy tradition. The Azkaban that you carry in your minds has prevented you from realizing that you haven’t, either. How could you when you were in your cells, powerless?”

            Narcissa began to cry softly. Lucius ignored her, instead staring at Draco with eyes that looked like cracked ice. Draco began to wonder if he had got through at last, if Lucius actually had to think about what he was saying because he had no choice.

            Then Lucius turned his head away and murmured, “What you say isn’t true, can’t be true. There’s no reason to think it is…”

            “Yes, it is,” Draco said, and he was relentless. “You’re the one who’s thrown away the chances that I could get you, and forfeited the chance for other people to think that you’re sane and should be given your freedom. You’re the ones who are so devoted to each other that you would give up on me, on the meaning of family.”

            “Draco, Draco,” whispered his mother. “You could have come with us, once upon a time, before the prison.”

            “Then you realize that Azkaban changed you?” That was more than Draco had hoped for in the first conversation. He leaned forwards.

            “What your mother means,” Lucius said, overriding the answer that Narcissa tried to give, his voice as harsh as a bray, “is that you could have come with us back when you were devoted to the welfare of the family. Now you’re not, and we’re the only ones who are left to carry it on.”

            Draco turned and walked out of the room. He didn’t intend to give them a chance to argue, to discuss, to talk about anything. That was another thing he had learned from his conversation with the Weasleys. He had little enough power in the revolution as it was, and he wasn’t willing to spend time and energy talking with his parents when he could more profitably spend it elsewhere.

            But the look he had seen in his father’s eyes…

            He thought something might be shifting there. Something coming home. It was worth another try, anyway.

            He reached out to open the door of his own rooms, and someone stuck a wand in the middle of his back. Draco froze, still staring forwards, not shifting his weight. He had to know the extent and nature of the threat before he would feel comfortable attacking them.

            “Now,” a voice whispered right next to his ear. He knew it was Pedlar’s from the crazed undertone to it as much as anything else. “Now, we’ll see what kind of price Potter is willing to pay.”

*

            SP777: Thanks! I think the Weasleys have more respect for Draco just because he’s gone so long without betraying Harry, while other people have done it loudly and often. Of course, if Draco turned on Harry, they would change their minds.
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Intoxicate the Sun