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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 Forty-Two—A Meeting to Burn the World

            “They want to meet with us.”

            Harry blinked and turned his gaze from the corner of the room where he had last seen the lightning stag, or at least a burning flash of yellow and white radiance that was probably the stag. He raised an eyebrow at Ron. “The Minister? Or someone else?”

            “Hermione and her allies.” Ron swallowed and folded his arms in front of him as though he thought Harry would strike at him and he was holding it off. Harry felt an enormous weariness as he watched that, but, well. There was only so much he could blame his friends for when he had done things like kill Pedlar with fire that burned even her bones. “I don’t think they trust you. They want to know what your plans are to kill Minister Clearwater and make sure that the revolution doesn’t end.”

            “Who said that I was going to kill her?” Harry asked quietly. “I’ve already killed one Minister. I would prefer not to be known as the man who murdered two.”

            Ron stared at Harry with his mouth open. “But you have to,” he said at last, when color had flooded back into his face and breath back into his lungs. “There’s no choice. Otherwise, she’s just going to kill all of us the moment we surrender. Dover and the rest might not believe that, but Hermione does, and I do.”

            Harry smiled a little. “She’s not going to do that if she has other things to worry about.”

            “Well, what, then?” Ron leaned forwards as if he’d rise from his chair and dash at Harry. Understandable, really, Harry thought, with that lack of trust he had mentioned. “What’s your plan that you keep hiding from people?”

            “Not from people,” Harry corrected him. “From the lightning stag, and the prophecy. I’d be happy enough to tell you, but then I’d have to deal with the consequences of it realizing what I mean to do. It might manage to prevent it from happening.” He shuddered a little as he thought of the power that had passed him down on the floor of Fred and George’s lab. “It’s much stronger than I am, and I think—I think that the magic was given to me for a reason, the same way everyone likes to pretend that Voldemort chose me for some deeper reason than because I was a half-blood like him. I’m supposed to do something with the magic, give it back or go up in some grand explosion. I have something else in mind.”

            Ron said nothing. Harry flickered back to himself and blinked at his friend, who had his hands clenched down on the edges of his seat and a fixed smile on his face. Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “It’s all right, Ron,” he said. “Really. I promise that I’m not going to fly into a rage and roast you the way I did Pedlar. But I can’t explain it more clearly than that for the reasons I just told you.”

            “Has anyone else ever seen this stag?” Ron asked, which wasn’t the question Harry had expected. “Has anyone ever managed to see it, or do you think you might be imagining it and the future and the prophecy?”

            “Hermione sent me the prophecy,” Harry reminded him. “She believes in it as much as I do. And George has seen it.” He didn’t think mentioning Fred at the moment would be productive.

            “Just because Hermione sent you the prophecy doesn’t mean that she believes in it,” Ron said quietly. “Can I—can you make me see the stag?” He looked as if he hoped the answer would be positive and negative, at the same time.

            “I don’t know if it’ll come when I call, but I can try,” Harry said, and then gestured sharply with his arm. He felt the air flowing around him, and tried to ignore that. He kept his gaze fixed on the corner where he thought he had seen the flash of light, and bent his force of will into making the stag appear rather than creating fire.

            It was harder than he had expected. His magic was strong, yes, but by now, the fire almost maintained itself. Doing something else with his will was strange. Different. Pressing enough to make him wince and wish that he hadn’t agreed, that Ron would just accept his word for it that the stag existed and—

            Then the lightning stag was between them, dancing the way it had in the clouds when they rode the dragons to Azkaban, its eyes fastened on Harry and his hooves going so fast that Harry thought they would tear up the stone. He didn’t look over at first to see whether Ron could see it. He kept them fastened on the stag, and slowly the dancing stopped and the beast let its head droop as if defeated. It kept its eyes on Harry, though, and he saw the two roads in them, stretching away into the distance, so he doubted that it had been conquered.

            “Bloody hell.”

            That was Ron, and by the tone of his voice, he could see the stag now. Harry gave a faint smile and glanced over at him. Ron had one fist up to his mouth, his fascinated gaze locked on the lightning beast.

            “It looks like your Patronus.”

            Harry nodded. “I think it adopted that form to make it more tempting for me to follow it.” It certainly hadn’t done so for any other reason that he could think of. What was there about the future that made it have to appear in the shape of a stag?

            Ron reached out with a tentative hand. Harry opened his mouth to warn him off, since he thought touching the lightning would be like trying to grasp a bolt from the heavens, but the stag simply turned away and vanished before Ron could come into contact with it. Ron stared at where it had been, wrinkled his nose at the sharp tang of storms that filled the room, and shook his head.

            “I could feel the power, mate,” he said quietly, as if Harry hadn’t thought he could. “How are you going to fight something like that?”

            Harry waited for a moment, wondering if he should do what he had it in mind to do. On the one hand, there was no reason for him to show off. But on the other, Ron was staring at him with such concern that Harry sensed he’d gone from being scared of him to being scared for him. And it was nice to know that there was someone around other than Draco and George and Fred who felt that way.

            Harry leaned back and lifted his hands. This time, he didn’t have to push like he had to bring the lightning stag into view. His will washed out and up and down, creating a sea of warmth so effortlessly that Harry had to hold himself back somewhat. He only intended to show Ron why he wasn’t worried about the stag, not burn the whole building down.

            Flame built up in front of him, and then divided into two, and two again, and two again. Harry spun his hands—inexpertly, but he knew what he wanted to happen even if he didn’t know how to do it—and the spinning flames froze in place and then wove themselves together. Harry gathered up the coat that had draped itself across his arms, thick and warm and red and made of gleaming, solidified flame. He held it out to Ron.

            Ron took it, staring at it in a daze. Harry smiled. “Do you want to wear it?” he asked. “It’s perfectly tame, and it’ll protect you from any burns you take short of dragonfire.” It might stand up to dragons, come to that, but Harry didn’t think that he’d risk it.

            “I didn’t know you could do things like that,” Ron said, and slid the coat around his shoulders. “You created the ropes when we went to Azkaban, but they were temporary. And they felt weird.” He fingered the sleeves of the coat and the back of the neck and then shook his head. “This just feels like cloth.”

            Harry nodded.

            Ron stared at him again, but this time, his eyes were calculating, and Harry was relieved. Yes, he preferred his friend when he was thinking about how to win the war and wasn’t staring mad with fear. “How many things can you create?” he asked.

            Harry bowed his head and spread his hands by way of answer. The flames came back, and he could feel them dancing on the edges of his fingers and spreading and spinning through his veins. His wrists ached with the pressure of holding them in his bones, but he decided that didn’t matter. He bent the flames, forced them to adopt the shape he wanted, and expended the effort in a rush of breath that he knew probably made fire dance near the walls. But nothing burned, because Harry didn’t want it to.

            If you wanted it to…

            Yes. Harry knew that he could burn the world if he wanted to. But it was more difficult to create things, or a myriad of things all at once, like this. And it would be even harder to make multiple huge things happen at the same time. That was why he needed the machine that the twins were building.

            The effort left him then, and the flames stopped dancing in him, and there was no sound in the silence but Ron’s soft panting.

            Harry lifted his head.

            The room had changed into the Gryffindor common room from Hogwarts. The fireplace was in the exact spot it should have been, and the flames were real, of course. The furnishings were the same, and the red and gold on the walls that was dim and welcoming in the light of the fire, and the carpet. Harry turned and looked, and saw the portrait hole in the wall. He hadn’t bothered to put the Fat Lady on the other side of it, deciding that there were limits to his realism, but he could if Ron really wanted him to.

            “Fuck.”

            Ron didn’t say that often. Harry laughed, and watched him run a hand over the couch that had been his favorite during their last year at the school, and then flop down on it. He grunted as his head bounced off the arm, because he was a little taller than he’d been then, but he still looked happier than Harry had seen him be since the start of the war, when he’d had to leave Hermione behind. He let his eyes fall closed, and sighed.

            Then they popped open, and he stared at Harry. “This is an illusion, right?” he asked. “You could make it vanish, and everything would be right back to the way it was?”

            “I could make it vanish,” Harry acknowledged, “but there’s no illusion. The fire—it changes things.”

            “How?”

            Harry shrugged helplessly. He didn’t know how to explain the sensation of fire dancing in his bones, much less explain this. But once again, the lack of fear in Ron’s eyes, the return of his curiosity, was wonderful, so Harry tried.

            “It purifies them. It turns them into things, but not just ash, the way that ordinary fire does.” And the fire that you used to kill Pedlar, he was sure Ron was thinking for a second, by the look in his eyes. But he just nodded for Harry to go on, so he continued. “I could change the room back by pulling the fire away and telling it to transform things into their original state again. But it’s not just illusion.”

            “No,” Ron said, and ran an admiring hand down the couch back again. Then he sat up. “Do you think you could make a safe place for us to meet with Hermione and her allies? That ought to tell them that you aren’t really mad.”

            Harry thought his smile was going to crack his face.

*

            Harry, Ron, and Malfoy met them in the middle of the Forest of Dean, after Hermione had vetoed one of his wilder suggestions about meeting in a hall constructed of fire. Hermione had chosen the Forest on purpose because it was a place that would mean something to her and to Harry and Ron, but most of the spies in the Ministry wouldn’t be able to make a guess about it. And she knew for a fact that it was nowhere near the house where Harry and Ron were keeping their headquarters.

            Ron was there first, and he met her eyes and then crossed the distance between them. Hermione realized that her heartbeat was coming fast enough to make her body shake. She swallowed. Of course she knew it hadn’t been her fault that Clearwater used the Imperius Curse on her, and she knew that Ron had probably come to terms with it by now, or he wouldn’t have looked at her like that. But still, they hadn’t seen each other in months, and now…

            Then he was there, and he leaned in and put his hands on her shoulders and his mouth on hers, and for a little while she could stop worrying.

            When they broke apart, Hermione was glad to see that Ron’s face was just as rosy as hers, just as likely to lose the freckles in a wash of red. She smiled at him and leaned her head on his shoulder. Ron stroked her hair and didn’t say anything. Hermione thought he probably wanted to, but words choked both their throats and would make no sense if uttered aloud. And this wasn’t the time or place, in front of her allies, who were still jumpy about Harry’s madness, and with Malfoy watching them.

            “You okay?” Ron whispered.

            “Yeah,” Hermione said, and that much she could manage and sound normal. “I am. You?”

            “I am now.”

            That was all they had time for, since Raggleworth was clearing her throat behind them, and Hermione knew that she could be even more piercing when ignored. She took Ron’s hand, squeezed it once, and then reluctantly moved away. Ron was close behind her as they came up to Harry and Malfoy. A healthy space of grass still separated them from her allies, Hermione noticed. The one standing closest was Noble, who looked as unconcerned about everything as ever.

            “Harry Potter,” Greta said, and then nodded to him and grinned. “I see you see the family resemblance. Don’t worry. I’m not going to assign you detentions or keep around china plates with moving cats on them. Those things were horrid.”

            Harry shook his head as though he couldn’t believe that he actually had someone in front of him who would refer that casually to Umbridge. “You’re related to her,” he said. “And you haven’t kicked her off the family tree yet?”

            Greta shrugged. “None of us can stand her, but no. She clings on too hard to that one branch that can carry her.”

            Harry smiled, and Hermione studied him. She reckoned that he didn’t look too differently from the last time she’d seen him, except for the way he canted his body to shield Malfoy almost from sight. Then again, the Harry that she’d known would never have taken Malfoy for a lover, and that much change, she could accept.

            Harry turned his smile on her, and Hermione saw the real change, then. In the depths of his eyes, there was a light and a glory it was hard to face. So much light. So much flame. So much magic, she realized, as she caught sight of a faint red shimmer around his shoulders and head. The fire wasn’t only showing when he was angry, as it had when he burned Duplais. It was there all the time, and Harry seemed comfortable with it, rather than drawing it forth simply as a threat or weapon.

            Could someone hold onto that much magic and be sane?

            Hermione didn’t think so, but ultimately, she wasn’t the one Harry had to convince. Her allies had plenty of things to say to him, and Raggleworth, in particular, wouldn’t be put off much longer. So she smiled at him, stepped back, and let Raggleworth and Smithson look critically at Harry. From the intensity of their eyes, she almost thought they intended to find an answer as to whether he could save them from Minister Clearwater written somewhere on his body.

            “Do you know what we are asking you to do?” Smithson asked, his voice gruff and deep, probably to hide some emotion. Hermione wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

            “Keep Minister Clearwater from falling on your heads like a ton of boulders?” Harry nodded. “I think it’s clear enough.”

            “We could handle her,” Raggleworth said, “if she was only another Auror or politician.” Hermione saw Harry wince a little at the shrillness of the woman’s voice, and grinned behind her hand. There were ways that Harry hadn’t changed, then. That was good to see. “But she has the might of the Ministry behind her. We need you to keep that occupied while we prove to others that she has committed crimes that justify removing her from office.”

            From the way Harry blinked, he had never considered that plan. Then he frowned. “If you don’t trust me not to roast you alive, how can you trust me enough to make plans with me?” he asked.

            Noble stepped in as if she’d been waiting for this moment. “Auror Potter, perhaps you would permit me to examine you? I am a Mind-Healer. While I cannot, of course, make sure pronouncements in all cases of dubious sanity, my allies trust me, and they might accept my word for what is in your head better than yours.”

            Harry turned to stare at Noble, and Hermione held her breath. Don’t fuck this up, Harry, please don’t fuck this up, it’s the best chance we’re going to get…

            Then Harry smiled and inclined his head. “You can look,” he said. “But you’re probably not going to understand most of what you’re seeing.”

            “That need not matter.” Noble moved forwards and reached out as if she would cup Harry’s cheeks in her hands. Hermione saw Malfoy shift uneasily at that, though he prevented himself from interfering. Harry was the one who raised his eyebrows, and Noble paused, drawing her wand.

            “You can remain still when someone reads your mind?” she asked. “Most people find it painful.”

            “I’ve borne a lot worse pain,” Harry said, in that voice he used sometimes that made Hermione’s eyes want to fill with tears, because he had no idea how much he was admitting. He stood still after that, and Noble’s wand lifted, flicked, and came down again, casting a faint glow of white along Harry’s cheeks. He bowed his head, which must not have counted as a movement, because it was only then that Noble whispered the spell.

            The clearing was silent. Hermione glanced back at her allies and found that both Raggleworth and Smithson were holding their breaths. Greta ate a sweet, saw Hermione looking, and winked. Hermione turned back around, because she wasn’t in the mood to deal with Greta right now.

            Noble broke from the contact with a stagger and turned away, her shoulders shaking. For a moment, Hermione thought she was going to vomit, but she must have conquered it, since she shook her head and swallowed. Then she turned back to Harry as if no else existed and said, “You should have received healing for some of those wounds long since.”

            “I don’t like people poking about in my head,” Harry said simply, meeting and holding her gaze. “You’ve seen why.”

            After a moment, Noble nodded, as if she didn’t like it but had been made to agree, and then sighed and turned to face the others. “His mind is scarred from You-Know-Who’s possession, and from channeling immense magic,” she said. “But I could find none of the common traces of madness, even the kind that begins to creep up when an unwilling person is subjected to the Imperius Curse.” For a moment, her eyes flickered to Hermione.

            “How can we trust this?” Raggleworth demanded. “So much of what he has done so far has been mad.”

            Harry coughed. To Hermione, it sounded like the warning sound a lion would make right before he charged. “If you won’t take the Mind-Healer’s word, and you won’t take mine,” he said, voice soft, “then we might have an impasse, and we might be incapable of allying with you after all.”

            “No,” Hermione intervened quickly. She’d tried and tried to make sure that this alliance would work, and she wasn’t going to be balked because Harry and her allies wanted to be prickly at each other. “No, it doesn’t have to be like that, really. Madam Raggleworth, Mr.Smithson, is there anything you would accept as assurance that he isn’t mad?”

            “I need to hear the answers to some questions from Potter’s lips,” Smithson said, and gave Hermione a harsh look. “I understand that you want to protect your friend, but I need to hear them from him.”

            Hermione winced, but nodded. Her heartbeat sped up when she saw the way Harry stood, his arms patiently folded, and stared at Smithson. He could change things here so that they went badly, but Harry didn’t seem to understand the power he had in this situation. He barely seemed to care, in fact; the emotion that Hermione thought she saw thrumming under his blank, bored surface was amusement.

            “Why did you burn Auror Pedlar to death?” Smithson asked.

            “Because she threatened to kill the man I love,” Harry said. Malfoy surged behind him for a moment, and then fell back a pace. Hermione was glad. The last thing they needed right now was Malfoy saying something and getting in the way. “I couldn’t let that pass.”

            Smithson waited, but when it became obvious that Harry wouldn’t say anything else, he frowned and leaned forwards slightly. “And did you realize that by burning Auror Pedlar to death, you would make others think you were mad?”

            Harry snorted. “Most people already did. They think I’m mad because of the way I can call dragons, or because of my magic, or because they don’t like the direction I took the revolution in. I didn’t particularly care for the new rumors that were going to spring up. If you want to see real madness, then you should look to Pedlar. She kept challenging me when I’d demonstrated my willingness to smack her down but let her live, and she thought her magic was stronger than mine. Insane.”

            Smithson frowned and exchanged a glance with Raggleworth, who stepped forwards. “Why did you burn Minister Duplais to death?” she asked.

            “That was an accident,” Harry said, and his voice had gone deep and quiet, reflective in a way that Hermione didn’t think she’d heard since their last year at Hogwarts. “I lost control of my temper and my wild magic. I have it under much better control now. See?” He curled his hand into a loose fist, and flames stuck out of it, then coiled back around and formed the image of a phoenix hovering over the back of Harry’s wrist.

            The phoenix flapped its wings and blinked at them, then soared over their heads and looped about like a firework. Harry opened his hands, and it flew back to him and faded into the flames that still curled about his fingers.

            Hermione relaxed with a little huff of breath. That might have been one of the smartest things Harry could do. By showing that he had that level of control over wandless fire—the same weapon that had killed Duplais—he was reassuring his allies and telling them that they would have a powerful force on their side if they accepted him both at once.

            “I think we’ve seen enough,” Greta declared for them, and pointed her sweet-bearing hand at Harry. “So, what’s the plan?”

*

            SP777: Yes, and I don’t know that anyone can answer that question.

            semaphore: Thank you. I’m glad you are.
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Intoxicate the Sun