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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-Eight—In the Heart of the Fire

            After Draco had sat and watched Pedlar for some time, he began to wonder how she ever planned to get away with this.

            She had herded him into a small supply cupboard, or what the revolution had used as a supply cupboard; Draco thought the original owners of the manor must have built it as a pantry or perhaps a place for their house-elves to stand when they’d done something wrong. It was only five strides long, a little wider than that, and the ceiling overhead came down uncomfortably close. The walls were brick, and there was no food or weapons. Pedlar cast an Incarcerous on him and left him on bound on the floor in the middle of it, while she checked out the door for signs of approaching supporters.

            That might be the way she planned on doing it, Draco supposed. Enough people moving together could conceal his floating body—or corpse—in the middle of them. And no one would be surprised that Pedlar and her followers were sticking together, after what had happened to them when they tried to act independently. They could get him out and away, and murder him, or wait for him to die when his father did something crazy and they could feel “justified” in killing him in return, or send word to Harry and lay down whatever terms they wanted. Draco had no illusions. Potter would burn the world and the future for him.

            Is he Potter or Harry?

            Draco shook away the thoughts. There were more important things he had to find out, such as why the brand that Pedlar carried on her cheek hadn’t come to life and burned her down to bones the way that Potter had said it should.

            “You really think that killing me is going to reconcile you with the Ministry?” he asked. “Or get you revenge on him?”

            Pedlar turned and glared at him. This close, Draco could catch the smell of scorched skin from the brand. He blinked, wondering if Pedlar had never properly taken care of it, or if it was a magical effect rather than a physical one. The last thought was probably the closest to the truth.

            “You have no idea,” she said.

            Draco paused as though she had caught him off-guard, and then nodded slowly. “Well, I might not,” he said. “I thought Harry had stopped you from doing anything like this with the brand, but he didn’t.”

            Pedlar touched her burned cheek with one hand, but the crazed smile never wavered. “It would burn me if I betrayed the revolution, he said. I don’t plan to betray them or go to the Ministry. I only want him punished.”

            Draco grimaced. Damn literal spells. In this case, though, it probably wasn’t Harry’s fault. It would also rely on Pedlar’s perceptions—couldn’t help but rely on them, since the spell was meant to begin hurting her if she even thought about betraying the revolution. If she sincerely thought she was helping her comrades, then she could do anything she wanted to him or Potter. In her little world, they weren’t part of the effort they’d helped to found.

            “I see,” he said. “But will torturing me get you the satisfaction that you want? I can scream, but that won’t hurt Potter.”

            “You’re wrong,” Pedlar said, her smile flickering for a moment as though someone had raked away the embers it relied on to exist. Draco wondered why playing into her hand like this would make her look sulky. Perhaps she didn’t want to consider herself a torturer and a murderer even though she had to know that it would end that way. “Killing you would hurt him worse than anything else I could do.”

            Well. Draco had to admit that. He slumped back in his ropes and sighed. “Fine. And I have nothing to trade to you.”

            “You’re wrong.”

            Draco shook his head, confused. Some of the time, Pedlar seemed to want to negotiate with him, and some of the time she wanted to hurt him, and sometimes she was only focused on hurting Harry through him. He never knew what she might come up with next. “I am?”

            “Yes.” Pedlar took a step forwards. “I know that you came here intending to betray us all. I can never be fooled. There were too many questions, too many efforts to get closer to Potter when it was obvious that the main current of the revolution was bending away from him. The Ministry sent you to betray Potter, and you think that because you changed your mind and slept with him, you’re innocent.”

            She’s going to blackmail me. Draco licked his lips. He wondered if that information would cut the heart out of the love that Harry bore for him.

            But then he shook his head again. No, he didn’t think so. If he had intended that, he had changed his mind, and he could tell Harry that truthfully. No matter what Pedlar wanted, she was never going to get Harry to change his focus on Draco and keeping his people from simply surrendering to the Ministry.

            “What do you want me to do?” he asked, and tried to cringe and whine a little. If she thought that he was cowardly enough to betray Harry for a chance at life, so much the better. It would give him time and a bit of breathing room to decide what to do.

            “Go to him,” Pedlar said. “Tell him that you need to talk to him alone, that it’s important. Use whatever stratagems you have to. And when you bring him into the room, it’ll be this one.” Her eyes shone like mad stars.

            Draco stared. “You’re going to duel him?”

            “Kill him,” Pedlar said. “My failing was thinking that he understood the rules of honor in the first place. I will make sure that he dies, and I will also make sure that he does it so suddenly no one can prevent it.” Her hand went down and rubbed at her wand. Then she reached up and touched the brand on her cheek again.

            Draco swallowed against his pounding heart. Really, perhaps the best thing he could do was go to Harry and hope that this worked. Then Harry would walk in, and Pedlar would try to kill him, and he could annihilate her instead. “How do I know that you’ll let me live when you’ve murdered him?” he asked. “You hate me. You hate my parents. It would be best if you eliminated us all at the same time.”

            Pedlar smiled at me. “You’d almost like that, I think. Anything to be free from a lifetime of licking his boots.”

            Draco kept still this time. Sometimes Pedlar seemed sane, sometimes she seemed as if she had already gone insane, but he didn’t want to give her too many ideas.

            “If you leave,” Pedlar said, “then I have no quarrel with you. You didn’t succeed in betraying the revolution, and you thought that Potter was the one you should spend time with, so you didn’t damage the rest of us. Your parents will have to die, since they’re Death Eaters, but I can offer them a quick and painless death.”

            Draco looked at her, silently waiting. If Pedlar had any subtlety left, she ought to know that Draco bore the Dark Mark on his arm, too, and had no reason to trust her offer of mercy.

            Pedlar sighed. “You’re not the important one,” she said. “You were a child during the war. But your parents were not, and Potter was more than a child. He still is. I will kill him, and them. But I can spare you. There’s no reason to kill someone I can let live with little effort.”

            Draco shivered. He couldn’t help it. Pedlar’s rules were incomprehensible to him, which meant any effort to betray her might be futile.

            Pedlar took a step towards him. “Do you do it? Or do I start my vengeance on Potter by depriving him of his lover?”

            Draco opened his mouth to say he would do it. He still thought it unlikely that she could take Harry. And it meant that he had the chance to warn Harry, in some subtle way, before he came to the storage room.

            The door behind Pedlar dissolved.

            It was a strange thing to watch, so strange that Draco found himself waking up that night from a dream of it. The splinters of wood caught fire and spread out like stars, a spangled constellation glowing in the dark. The fire between them formed into a series of white fists and knives and stabbed, seeking, into the room. But they didn’t come fast enough to make the air unlivable with the heat, which was what Draco would have anticipated.

            He knew only one person who had that much control over his fire and that much desire not to hurt Draco, and that meant he’d rolled away as much as the ropes would let him and was gone from the direct line of sight on Pedlar before the door had stopped dissolving.

            Pedlar turned. Her mouth was open, her eyes blazing. She had one hand on her wand, and rocked back and forth as though she was dancing.

            Draco winced. He suspected that it wouldn’t take much effort for Potter to kill her, but that very effortlessness was likely to make Harry feel more guilty afterwards.

            The flames started to billow into the storage room—and then stopped. They formed a tunnel instead, bending up and down like long sheaves of grass disturbed by the motion of a body through them. Potter strode into the doorway and stood there, considering them as if he had been interrupted at dinner and didn’t know how annoyed he should be.

            “Come on, then.” Pedlar was shuffling back and forth now, and her voice was harsh with delight, like a crow’s. “Attack me. You wish to. I wish to defend. You will have all the time in the world now. You can do whatever you wish. No one else will blame you. I kidnapped your lover. You have no reason to hold back.”

            Draco saw the smile that crossed Harry’s face at that. It was a smile that seemed to contain all the coldness that the fire had left behind, and Draco shuddered and pressed his back against that back wall.

            Harry’s gaze crossed him and seemed to soften. But the next moment it was back on Pedlar, and Draco had to wonder if he had imagined that softness.

            “I won’t kill you here,” Potter said. “We’re the only ones here, and your followers could always accuse me of murdering you far away from everyone else because I was ashamed of your accusations and wanted to silence ‘such a strong protesting voice.’ Of course they would say something like that, and I don’t intend to give them the chance.” He smiled again, and Draco licked his lips and ducked his head down to hide from the frost. “So it’ll be a public duel. Right after you free Draco.”

            “You’ll take back the promise of the duel,” Pedlar said, although it was hard to tell, because her voice had thickened so much. “I took him in the first place so that you would have to come to me. I let him go, and you’ll murder me and not think about it.”

            “I’ll murder you?” Potter gave her another glance, up and down, that Draco thought actually measured her magical prowess as well as her height and strength. “You think that, and yet you’re offering battle to me anyway?” He shook his head. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve told you why I’m doing this.” Then his smile vanished and his voice lowered. “But if you try to kill Draco before the duel, then I will make sure you suffer. They say burning is the most painful death. Did you know that I can make you burn for hours, and not perish? That’s what I will do if you don’t give him back to me, unharmed.”

            Pedlar didn’t seem to take account of the threat, which Draco would have; hell, he didn’t know that he would ever be able to forget it, or react calmly again if Potter wanted to wrap them in flames. She strained forwards, standing now in place, and reminded Draco of a dog pulling against the leash. Dogs, crows, everything but a human being, he thought, as his mind charged back and forth, half-crazed.

            “How do I know the brand you put on me won’t kill me before then?” Pedlar asked, and her mouth ran with foam.

            “Because it hasn’t so far,” Potter said, and his eyes shone with annoyance. Above Draco’s head, a small portion of the wall began to smolder. Potter glanced at it and it stopped. Then he caught Draco’s gaze in what could have been an apology. Draco nodded. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. “I will be more careful about the way I word my binding spells next time,” Potter said.

            Then he paused and laughed. “No, I won’t,” he said, and laughed again.

            Maybe he is going mad. Draco kept his face straight and his eyes empty of any suspicion about that, though. Mad or not, Potter was rescuing him, and the rest of the so-called revolution would have left Draco to Pedlar’s tender mercies, if they did anything at all for him. Potter was the one in love with him.

            A crazy lover might not be something Draco had dreamed of, but on the other hand, someone who could protect him was not to be sniffed at.

            “I accept,” Pedlar whispered, and then went on repeating it, in louder and louder tones, until Potter gestured. The ropes holding Draco fell to ash. Draco stood up, rubbing his wrists and using the gesture to keep away the moment when he would have to face Potter head-on and directly.

            Potter stepped towards him and took Draco’s wrists in his hands, lifting them to his mouth so that he could kiss them. There was a tingle of warmth, sweet and savage, and the pain in Draco’s wrists vanished, along with the rope burns. He stared at the unmarked skin, and then up at Potter.

            Harry winked. “I can occasionally manage little tricks,” he said, and gestured towards the door of the storage room. Pedlar was already waiting there, her head bowed and her fingers scraping restlessly up and down her wand.

            Draco expected Potter to use the flame-trumpets to call everyone together again, the way that he had the first time when he wanted them to see him branding Pedlar, but instead, he simply raised his hands and separated his fingers as if he were clawing at an invisible wall. Fire breathed in the empty space between them, and Draco heard a voice in his mind, speaking deep there, a neutral voice with a hiss behind it like the crackling of flames. It sounded weirdly to Draco like the times that he had heard Potter and the Dark Lord speak Parseltongue

            There will be a duel in the clearing outside the mansion between Pedlar and Potter, within five minutes.

            “That will do,” Harry said, as though someone had asked him, and then reached out and took Draco’s hand, tugging gently at it. Draco followed along as Harry towed him down the corridor and towards the nearest door that led out on the lawn. There was the stir and rustle and murmur of people all around them, and stares from those they passed, and now and again the terrified sobs of someone who had probably never experienced Legilimency or Occlumency or any invasion of their minds.

            Pedlar wasn’t one of those people who sobbed, Draco noticed. She didn’t seem to notice anything at all except that she thought her chance to kill Harry Potter had finally arrived. She followed along in a happy dream, shaking her head now and then and whistling beneath her breath.

            Draco would have felt sorry for her, except he had the impression that he would need all his pity for himself.

            And perhaps for Potter, who he had no doubt would win the duel…and perhaps kill off some of the trust that people had in him, and some part of himself.

            It was a new experience, to feel pity for people who weren’t his parents. Draco didn’t know if he liked it.

*

            Harry knew his solution wasn’t perfect. No matter what, someone could always object to that. If he had killed Pedlar in the storage room for stealing Draco—as he wanted to do—the accusations would have been murder accusations. If he slew her in public, there would be those who claimed it wasn’t a fair contest and he should have done something else. If he let her live, then it made him look weak.

            So. He couldn’t quell all the rumors and the ways they would whisper and chatter about him. All he could try to do was choose what was the least damaging.

            And if Pedlar insisted that she wanted the duel and entered the meadow willingly to compete against him, then Harry would at least ensure that some people saw the madness in her eyes and could say that the duel followed the old traditions.

            Everyone, or what looked to be everyone, was assembled in the meadow when they arrived. Pedlar’s followers stood in a clump apart from the others. Dover led another clump, mostly the people Harry thought wanted a reconciliation with the Ministry. Ron stood in front of those who hovered between the two groups, his arms folded and his eyes stern, although they went a little wide when he saw Harry.

            Harry nodded to him, and ignored the way that Ron tried to mouth a question about what was going on. He turned to Pedlar. He didn’t think she’d looked at the audience, other than perhaps a quick glance to make sure that the size of the dueling ring matched her delusions of grandeur. Her eyes were fixed on him, bright and yearning, and her hand had never left her wand since he caught her.

            The anger rose again as Harry thought about what she had done to Draco. He grimaced at that thought, and at the next one: that this was a pretense. The magic burned in him to make Pedlar cease to exist in the next moment, if he wanted to.

            But this was a pretense that Pedlar wanted, her followers would have been calling for it if she also was, and that meant things had to be done properly. Harry stepped back, gave her a mocking bow, and then faced the crowd and raised his voice.

            “This is a duel between me and former Auror Pedlar, as she has requested more than once. She stole my lover Draco Malfoy to make me comply.” There was a wind of murmurs at that, but the fire sprang up around Harry, and the murmurs faded. “So. I have granted her what she wants. The duel is to the death.”

            Ron made a lunging motion like a dog coming up against a chain that was too short, but when Harry glanced at him, he shook his head and said nothing. Harry nodded slightly back, and fuck the conspiracy theories that would probably spring up from that one gesture. Ron had decided not to interfere, the way he could have now that he was leader of the revolution. That deserved some acknowledgment.

            “I am going to kill you.”

            Pedlar’s voice, dreamy and soft as snowclouds could look from a distance. Harry didn’t answer. He faced her, though, and saw Draco take his place with Ron’s group. His muscles loosened up. In the incredible event that Pedlar fought her way through his fire and killed him, he knew Ron would take care of Draco.

            “To the death,” Pedlar continued, before Harry could respond. “You agree on that?”

            “I already said I did.” Harry drew the holly wand, held it up, and then tossed it to the side. Ron, startled, fumbled the catch, but Draco snatched the wand from the air with a Seeker’s reflexes and gave him an inscrutable look.

            “I do this without my wand, yes,” Harry said, in response to the people staring at him. “Because I want Pedlar to have every advantage that she can.” He turned and smiled slightly at her. “Merlin knows she’ll need it.”

            She rushed at him.

            Harry stepped back and drew the fire out of himself, trailing, glittering curtains that hung in the air and coiled around him when he told them to. He could feel the heat, but his skin passed through them unharmed. It always would. He was perfectly in control of his “wild” magic now. He didn’t think that there had ever been anyone who blended so well with it.

            Another sign, said the lightning stag’s voice deep in his mind, that you are not meant to stay in the world with mortals.

            Harry ignored that. For now, he had to concentrate on defeating Pedlar. She might have tricks that he couldn’t easily counter.

            And then she used one of them, her voice soaring into a high, thrilling scream that had something of the sound of a hawk’s cry. “Avada Kedavra!”

            There was no shield to that, no counter. It soared through Harry’s fire curtains and oriented on him. He had to throw himself to the ground and sideways to escape it. It was possible that he might be immune to that spell after his meetings with it in the past, but Harry was determined not to take the chance that would have proved it.

            Pedlar let out another ringing cry and rushed at him through the curtains, probably to see if he was dead.

            Then she screamed.

            Her hair was on fire when she came out the other side, her nails, her eyelashes. Harry had deliberately conjured flames that would restrict themselves to the dead parts of the body, and then hurt them anyway. Pedlar beat at the flames and rolled and tried to stand, only for another of the curtains to travel through her like flicking northern lights.

            This time, her hands caught on fire, and only her hands. The flames made a ringing noise, as though they danced to their own music. Harry watched her for a few moments, until he realized she wasn’t going to stand again, and then rose and approached her.

            “Do you give up?” he asked, close enough that she was the only one who could hear. “I’ll make it less painful if you do.”

            Her eyes opened and focused on him, dark with hatred. She whispered a spell that he couldn’t hear above the crackling, the ringing.

            A rope shot out from her wand and looped about his ankle. Harry jumped and dodged up, but the magic was too quick. He crashed back to the ground with the rope already firmly in place, and reached down to burn it through.

            Pedlar used the rope to drag him into the fire.

            As before when he had been within it, Harry experienced nothing but a gentle shimmer along his skin, a whisper of heat, as the fire showed him what it could do if he needed it to without harming him. He looked up at Pedlar and saw that she was gaping at him, even through the flames that now were rolling towards her eyes.

            “What are you?” she whispered, and then seemed to answer her own question. “Not human.” She dropped her wand and started to roll away from him.

            Harry waited until she was out of the flame-curtains and in view of the people gathered around the meadow, because that was the whole point of this, really, showing them that there was a reason Pedlar was dying. Then he sent one of the other flame-curtains boiling forwards, the one that was meant to burn…differently.

            It caught Pedlar, passed through her, and continued on. It left her skeleton, nothing but blackened bones, caught in mid-roll, and it stayed there for just the right amount of time before the bones puffed into dust.

            Harry caught eye after eye that immediately, and hastily, turned away from his. He sighed and hitched his shoulder up. “Don’t do that again,” he said, to anyone who might be inclined to listen to him. “This—this stupid thing where you try to antagonize me by hurting Draco or his parents. I took his oath that he would prevent them from doing similar things. Of course I’ll make sure that no one uses that to bully him.”

            Then he turned and walked towards the manor. Fire rolled up from his feet, sang through his hands. When Harry turned his head fast enough, he thought he caught the actinic gleam of a stag dancing beside him.

            He smiled grimly. The lightning would be surprised by the choice he had made, doubtless. It thought that Harry was the power and the madness that burned through him.

            It had forgotten. He also had a will of his own.

*

            purple-er: The problem is that I do have a masterlist, linked from my LJ profile, but the person who made it isn’t really in fandom anymore and it hasn’t been updated for more than a year now, so I don’t know how much use it would be to you. I keep meaning to put up a different masterlist: Here’s the link, though: http://lomonaaeren.livejournal.com/profile (if you go down to the Bio part, you’ll see the three links).
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Intoxicate the Sun