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Chains of Fool's Gold	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Four—Wheeling
            “You think this is going to work?”
            Harry didn’t roll his eyes, but it was hard. Hermione had brought up some good flaws with their plans, including the one that Hagrid had had of simply attacking the Ministry immediately with the thestrals and Prince’s toys. He saw no need to wait when they were already so strong. He’d listened to Hermione argue against it, though.
            But usually Hermione brought up the flaws in a plan before they actually engaged in it.
            “Yes,” Harry said. “Or, at least, I think it’s possible that it will. Now be quiet, or they might hear us, Silencing Charms or not.”
            Hermione clamped her teeth shut. Harry thought he could hear them grinding over her tongue. He hoped she wouldn’t hurt herself, but on the other hand, if she did, he didn’t see what he could do about it. She should have brought up whether this was going to work or not, and all the flaws she could see in it, before they left Cuthbert’s Corner.
            So far, there was no movement across the street behind the wards that covered Grimmauld Place. Muggles wandered up and down the street, but not many, since it was the middle of the day and the vast majority of them were either in work or at school. Harry knew Aurors had taken his house over only because there had been a Prophet story yesterday about the Ministry seizing “important Dark artifacts that belonged to the former Chosen One,” and this was the only source of them that Harry could think of.
            Of course, the Prophet didn’t always tell the truth, but this article had contained names he recognized, and the Ministry had specified one or two artifacts that Harry definitely didn’t have in his house, and Draco said he didn’t have either. That meant Grimmauld.
            “I don’t understand what we’re doing here, though,” Hermione said. At least her voice was low this time, and she didn’t seem compelled to shout their presence under a Disillusionment Charm across from the house to the whole neighborhood. “You immediately said that we had to come here and do something, but how can we? What are we supposed to do?”
            Harry bared his teeth, and said nothing. Yes, he appreciated Hermione. He kept telling himself that no matter how many times his heart jumped or his teeth ground against each other, and he thought he was probably wearing a whole layer of enamel off. She was his best friend. She had saved his life more times than even Ron. It mattered. It was important. She was an asset to them specifically for this bluntness and her ability to speak about things that other people might not dare to.
            “Harry?”
            “I told you before we left the house,” Harry breathed. He kept his voice down to a gentle monotone, and didn’t take his eyes off Number Twelve. “I want to try and take some of the Aurors prisoner. We can either use Imperius on them to make them obey us, or we can use some other spell to get information out of them. Either way, they’re separated from the rest of the Ministry right now. This is our best chance to learn things that we otherwise can’t know.”
            “No one said anything about Unforgiveables!”
            Harry turned around and stared at Hermione. Something had to have happened to her that was important enough to make her ignore words he knew she had heard, and that meant it was important enough to make him take his eyes off the house.
            “Draco did,” he said. “And he also told you all about the Dark Arts that we used on the twisted while we were Socrates Aurors. And so did I. Hermione, what’s wrong? Why are you pretending that this is something we shouldn’t be doing? We have some allies in the Ministry, yes, but it’s dangerous for them to contact us. We should exploit that avenue only when we’re absolutely ready to start the assault on the Ministry.”
            Hermione closed her eyes and bowed her head. “It’s real,” she whispered.
            “What?”
            She made a little hushing motion at him with one hand, and Harry obediently fell silent. She had come this far to support him; he could wait and give her the time to sort out what was going on in her head. And if anyone could, it was Hermione.
            “It was just about helping you,” Hermione whispered at last, looking up. “When your letter came. Knowing that you had been unjustly accused and we were going to your aid. But—we didn’t know that we would end up in the middle of this mess. Dark Arts and thestrals and someone with jokes that are a lot more dangerous than George’s. And now Unforgivables.”
            “Does Ron feel the same way?” Harry asked, his heart slowly starting to pick up speed. He hadn’t thought a lot about what his friends would feel when he contacted them. He only wanted to know they would come to support him, and they had.
            Hermione bowed her head down. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him about it. I only just realized it myself. I want to help you, but I don’t want to hurt anyone at the Ministry. I don’t want to use Dark Arts on someone.”
            “Or stand by while someone else does it?” Harry asked, deciding that was the real source of her conflict. She had to know that neither Harry nor Draco would have asked her to curse someone.
            She hesitated, and Harry gave her a small smile. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
            “If I stood by and didn’t try to stop someone else from using Dark Arts, then I would be just as culpable,” Hermione said at last, raising her head. “Provided that I knew about it.”
            Harry nodded. “But we have. And we plan to go on using them. It’s partially because the Ministry gave us permission to use them and we got used to it, but it’s also because we want to protect ourselves and win this contest. Make no mistake, Hermione. We can blame the Ministry for a lot, but not for us using Dark Arts now. And we won’t stop using them.”
            For a moment, Hermione’s lip quivered. Then she said, “You would choose the Dark Arts over our friendship?”
            Harry reached out and clutched her hand, and let her feel in that moment how much he wanted her there, how much he would give to hold her to his side. “We’re choosing survival,” he whispered. “I want you fighting at my side, you and Ron both. But I can’t do anything if you won’t let me use the only weapons we have. Besides, the Ministry is using Dark Arts all the time. How can you step back and let them do what you think is wrong?”
            “Fighting fire with fire is wrong,” Hermione said stubbornly. “Fighting Dark Arts with Dark Arts is wrong.”
            Harry closed his eyes. He hated to do this, but he would bring up the past if he had to make a point with a stubborn Draco, and the same point applied with Hermione. “Then what about during the war? Were we wrong to use them then?”
            Hermione’s breath stuttered for a second. Harry could almost feel her leaning around the corner in front of them, studying Grimmauld Place and trying to figure out a distraction, maybe a Muggle coming close to the house.
            If she said that one of the Aurors was coming out, Harry thought, he would let it go. It would mean that she was committed to helping him at least as far as reporting on the movements of their enemies. He would like to let it go. He would like to put all the debates aside for later and try to just—be happy.
            Well, and alert and active in battle. But rejoicing in having his friends back beside him, not fearing them.
            Hermione finally whispered, “We did what we had to do then. We were so much younger, and we didn’t have any help.”
            Harry laughed, but managed to muffle it before the sound could explode past their Disillusionment Charm and warn any wards that the Aurors might have on the house, or any Muggles. “You think we have more now? We have George, and Prince, and Hagrid and the thestrals. Not counting the thestrals, that’s still only seven people. You think the situation is less desperate than it was during the war?”
            “Yes,” Hermione said, her voice unexpectedly strong. “Yes, I do. The whole of Britain won’t go down under the reign of a Dark Lord if we fail.” She turned to face him, and Harry opened his eyes to find her regarding him solemnly. “You know that, right? You’re not thinking that this conflict is the same as the war?”
            Harry thought about that, and then finally answered, “Not for most people. But for Draco and me. You know what the Ministry said in that last article. They’re going to execute us if they find us.”
            Hermione turned pale. “I thought that was exaggeration along with all the rest,” she whispered, but Harry could see her mind racing. She would be thinking about the other articles the Prophet had printed, and drawing comparisons, and realizing that they had been moving in this direction all along.
            “No,” Harry said, and clutched her hand harder. “The Ministry could survive if we lost, and most of the people in the British wizarding world. But Draco and I won’t, and our allies probably won’t, and the Ministry could go on hunting twisted, or creating them, for as long as it liked. Trying to get rid of its mistakes. Being protected from any consequences. Is that really what you want, Hermione?”
            Hermione’s eyes went back to the front of Number Twelve, and then they hardened as Harry watched them. It was the look that she had worn many times when they were on the run in the Horcrux hunt, and he held his breath, hoping it meant that she would agree to the spells that Draco and Harry wanted.
            “Let me try,” Hermione whispered. “Let me try to use Light spells. If I can’t, then you can use what you need to.”
            Harry hesitated, but ended up nodding. He trusted Hermione in the way that Draco couldn’t. He’d been with her in so many bad situations, and seen so many times what her brains could do. “What’s your plan?”
Hermione smiled at him. “To go over there and knock on the door.”
And she stood up and dropped the Disillusionment Charm.
*
            “I don’t understand why Hermione and I couldn’t be together, and you and Harry couldn’t be partners.”
            “Believe me, that’s the way I would have preferred it, too,” Draco muttered darkly as he slithered over the stones towards the cave they’d finally found. Warren and Jenkins had risked at least their careers and maybe their lives to get them the information, but even with precise Apparition coordinates, it still wasn’t easy to find the cave behind the tumbled rocks that blocked the path leading up to it. “But there had to be someone in each group who would agree to using Dark Arts.” He looked at Weasley and raised his eyebrow. “And somehow, I don’t think that would have been you.”
            Weasley scowled. “I’m more practical than Hermione. I’ll do what we have to.”
            “But you think that most of the time, it doesn’t need to involve Dark Arts, right?” Draco waved a dismissive hand as Weasley opened his mouth. “Never mind telling me what you think. I already know.”
            Weasley said something harsher than Draco deserved under his breath.
            “Be quiet now,” Draco said, and faced forwards again, smiling a little. It felt good to irritate Weasley, and on an issue that he couldn’t retort over. Harry would probably say that it was childish, but Draco had held his tongue, had bitten it, and done everything he could to hold his temper, too. It wasn’t his fault if Weasley tried it.
            Weasley gave one more grumble behind him, but pressed his lips together and shook his head when Draco whipped around to glare at him. Draco sneered and faced forwards again. Perhaps Weasley would stop being such a pain in the arse when he saw what they had come here to find.
            Draco leaped over one more piece of stone, and then stood listening. He’d thought he’d heard a shuffle from within the cave, and right now, that was enough to give him pause.
            Then he heard more than a shuffle, and a beam of red light came flying towards them.
            Draco leaped back—and into Weasley, who had placed himself in the most inconvenient position, right behind Draco’s left shoulder, as if he had never been a trained Auror at all. Draco hissed as they spilled to the ground, and shook his head. He had hit it on the side of the rough ravine that led towards the mouth of the cave, and at the worst possible moment, just like Weasley was the worst possible partner. He shook it sharply again, as his vision blurred.
            “What kind of Dark wizard only uses a Stunner to hit someone?” Weasley complained, directly into his ear. “I don’t believe that we were in that much danger after all.”
            “That wasn’t a Stunner,” Draco said sharply, as the shadow by the mouth of the cave moved and the wizard limped into sight. “That was the twisted’s flaw.” He bit his lip on the lecture on how Weasley should have been able to tell from the color of the bloody spell that that wasn’t a Stunner. Now wasn’t the time.
            Weasley scrambled up and stood with his eyes fastened on the form of the ragged wizard they had come to seek. “Bloody hell…” he whispered, frozen in the posture of extending one hand down to Draco to help him to his feet.
            Draco took the chance to stand up on his own, before Weasley could get any more bright ideas about helping him. He knew what they had come to find, what Warren and Jenkins had told them about the latest twisted they had been assigned to hunt as the only currently active members of the Socrates Corps, and he still felt as though a real Stunner had hit him.
            The wizard looked as though he had escaped from Azkaban. His beard was ragged and trailed almost to his feet, but for some reason only scraggly patches of hair clung near his ears. Maybe he had been scraping the hair higher up off. Given what Draco knew about the demented wizard, it wouldn’t be unusual. The hair on his head was equally filthy and matted, and clung to his neck like the mane of a lion, except it barely moved when he did. He was missing all but a few teeth, and they dangled awkwardly from spotted gums.
            As Draco watched, appalled, a sharp cackle exploded out of the wizard’s mouth. He dropped to all fours and began creeping towards them while making snapping sounds with his jaws.
            “How can he be so powerful and still act mental?” Weasley whispered, as the trailing beard caught in one of the wizard’s hands and he paused to pick fretfully at it.
            “Watch out,” Draco snapped in response, and it was his chance to shove Weasley out of the way on purpose as a shape leaped down from the side of the ravine above them.
            It landed in front of the crawling wizard and turned around to snarl at them. Hooked claws, which left deep, scored impressions in the rocks as it walked, Draco noted, trying to catalogue all the horrible features that didn’t give them much of a chance quickly. A spiky mane of its own, this one standing out from its neck. Its body was big and shambling, not moving with cat-like grace, but given those claws and the flames that rushed into being on its back and filled the air with heat, it didn’t need it.
            Draco flicked his eyes to the side to acknowledge the second beast that had leaped to stand on the other side. Blocked by the narrowness of the gully from coming close to them while the crawling wizard and the first beast were there, it paced back and forth instead, its mane flaring out from its neck, its claws leaving marks that made tiny flakes and scraps of stone tumble down to the floor.
            “What the fuck are those things?” Weasley said. He was backing up towards Draco now, panting like the Hogwarts Express and clutching at his wand as if he had no idea what to do with it.
            “His companions,” Draco said. “This man is a twisted. I told you that. Try to keep up.”
            The wizard opened his mouth and cackled, and the fire-lion in front of him crouched down and flexed its claws. Once again, stone broke, and the lion settled more heavily into place. It didn’t seem to matter to it. Draco thought a leap could carry it up to at least the ground between Draco and Weasley, and it would probably be more than able to tear them apart.
            And all the time, they had to dodge thrown spells from a man who could send them into comas they would never wake up from, at least if the information that Jenkins and Warren had passed along to them was accurate—and it seemed to be accurate so far about the man’s state of mind and his companions.
            “Shield Charm above us, Weasley,” Draco told the other man softly over his shoulder. “As strong as you can make it.”
            “You think I can block one of those things if it leaps?” Weasley muttered, but raised his wand. Draco circled over to the other side from the beast, one eye on the wizard, one eye on the companion that watched them hungrily from the edge of the ravine.
            “You’ll have to try,” Draco said, but his words were lost as the thing beside the twisted unfolded and leaped towards them, soaring from above with a long, hollow roar.
            Weasley’s Shield Charm snapped into place, then began to crack and sag under the beast’s weight. But it held, and the fire-lion slid towards the ground, paws still flailing and claws still shooting out as if it could tear the air the way it had the stone.
            Meanwhile, Draco had whirled to the side and shot the Killing Curse at the second lion as it leaped. The Unforgivable was powerful enough magic that he thought he could probably get through whatever supernatural defenses the creature might have, and his suspicion was proved true when the bloody thing spasmed, twitching all over and all through its body, and then slid down to a limp stop a few feet from the wizard’s head. The wizard turned around with a cry of dismay.
            So he’s sane enough to realize what it means when one of his companions dies, Draco thought. That was going to be important, if they were to use him for Draco’s plan.
            Draco darted forwards and grabbed the man’s arm, Stunning him with a quick spell. The man slumped over, and the fire-lion turned towards Draco, flickering.
            “Malfoy!” Weasley hollered.
            “It’s all right,” Draco said, standing there with a coolness he didn’t feel and clutching the wizard’s hair despite the way his skin crawled. “The witnesses Warren and Jenkins interviewed were very clear about this.”
            Still, it took more effort than he would have thought to stand there until the slinking fire-lion paused, flickered, and abruptly went out like a candle. Draco sighed and released the man’s arm. Weasley promptly scrambled over to scoop the wizard up and add his own Stunner and Incarcerous ropes to Draco’s. He cast that spell better than even Harry could, Draco noted with some surprise.
            “Let me guess,” Weasley said. “His companions disappear when he goes unconscious?”
            Draco nodded. “The witnesses were clear about that. One of them got lucky and hit him with a Stunner, and after the lions disappeared, they were able to get away.”
            Weasley grunted. “Well, he looks pretty bloody insane. I hope that this plan works out the way you want it to.”
            Draco flicked his eyebrows at him as he bent to scoop the man up on a conjured stretcher. “So do I, Weasley.”
*
            Harry didn’t have the chance to catch Hermione’s robe before she walked away from their hiding place and up to the front door, and he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t have done more harm than good, anyway. It would have revealed his hiding place, and he had to remain hidden because someone would have to rescue Hermione when her plan went horribly wrong.
            As it would have to. Harry was faint with thinking what might happen. He remained still, clutching his wand.
            Hermione knocked on the door. There was a long pause, perhaps Aurors arguing about whether it was a Muggle or someone from the Ministry, and then a man Harry didn’t recognize opened the door. He was tall enough to loom over Hermione, and frown down at her. Harry shifted his wand. At least he should have a clear shot if the man tried to hurt Hermione.
            “I’m sorry to bother you,” Hermione said, in a sweet voice Harry hadn’t heard since Hogwarts, when she wanted to charm a professor. “But I found a wand lying in the street, and I think it might be one of yours.” She pulled out her own wand and offered it on her palm.
            The Auror bent over to look. As he did, Hermione twisted, and suddenly she had him in a complicated headlock and her wand to the hollow of his throat. His groans and Hermione’s words were clearly audible to Harry, watching her from across the street.
            “Tell the others to come here. You’re going to Stun them for me, or I’ll use the Killing Curse. You’d better believe I can, too.”
            Harry stared, with his jaw dropping in admiration. Well, and horror. He didn’t think Hermione would get away with that, especially if one of the Aurors had recognized her. They would think she was too much of a respected citizen, basically, to make the threat and keep it, and they would call her bluff.
            But after a long pause, the Auror called the others in a croaking whisper, and Stunned them as they came up. Hermione stood there with the wand in place, and nodded grimly every time one fell to the floor. Finally, there were no more Aurors inside the house, or so it seemed, and the one Hermione held rolled his eyes at her in appeal.
            Hermione stepped back and managed a credible picture of someone considering whether it would be the done thing to use the Killing Curse after all, then snapped her hand out. The Auror was unconscious before he hit the ground.
            Harry waited until he was sure there were no Muggles around, and then trotted across the street, clapping loudly. Hermione turned around, flushed, and raised a Screening Charm, a temporary ward, across the front of the house so that no one could see them.
            “I wasn’t sure I would get away with that,” she whispered, as she bent down and began to collect the bodies.
            Harry glanced at her from the corner of his eye, seeing the way her face was a little damp with sweat and fear, and the pallor in her cheeks. “I didn’t think you would, either,” he murmured. “What made them fall for it? Couldn’t they hear and see what was going on at the front door?”
            Hermione smiled a bit grimly. “They were all gathered further back in the house, warding the windows and the other doors. I think they thought I was a distraction, and the Auror who came to meet me might have been the sacrifice. But when he told them I needed to show them all a wand, then they started coming. The last few did try to run once they saw the bodies lying on the floor, but he was a pretty good spellcaster.” She looked down at the Auror she’d held captive. “Do you know him?”
            “No, but I will soon,” Harry said, and began to bind them. “Good work, Hermione.”
            She flashed him a defiant look. “There’s always a way around using the Unforgivables, if you really look for it.”
            Harry decided it was in his best interests to say nothing right now, and they continued binding the wizards without incident.
*
            SP777: Well, Draco and Harry are basically in constant peril from here on in, so…
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Chains of Fool's Gold