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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-Eight—Nothing Gold Can Stay

            The fire leaped in front of him, and Harry could see his options stretching before him as a pair of paths, rather like the ones he had seen in the stag’s eyes. Of course, that sight had probably influenced him to set things up that way now; he knew there was no rule that said the fire had to look like a pair of paths.

            It could have looked like anything. Perhaps anything it wanted, rather than what he wanted. Harry wasn’t sure how independent his magic was from him.

            He watched the nearest path shimmer and twist away into the distance. It seemed to climb a hill, like the one he hovered above in the real world. The flagstones were made of red and gold and orange flame, hammered flat and almost drained of warmth. At the end waited a light rather like the one the stag had shown him.

            That was the path he would take if he decided not to do what he had come to do after all, but draw his magic back into his body. He faced the second path instead.

            It sparked between trees of white flame, which arched small, lacy branches over the path. The sparks spiraled up and came down, lazily, so bright that Harry’s heart ached watching them. For the first three or four steps, until he passed between the first pair of trees, that path was wilder than even the white light at the end of the other road.

            For the first three or four steps.

            And then it became a path of ashes and cinders, and there was no end in sight. Harry didn’t know what he would become, where he would go, if he took that path. The only sure thing was that it wasn’t a glorious destiny, not like the other, and that he wouldn’t have as much fierce and wild joy if he walked it.

            Harry smiled. Joy wasn’t what he was here for. If he had gone with the stag, he wouldn’t have had that much of it; he would have suffered with the recollection of those he was leaving behind. He reached out and took a determined step onto the path that faded into ashes, the path lined with trees.

            The trees reached towards him. The fire reached towards him. Harry reached out and drew a line between that wildfire, still free, and the trapped and waiting magic in the third loop of the machine.

            He was here, now, and it was time to do what he had come to do.

*



            Draco had to stop well before he reached the top of the hill. The air was hot and windy, and it pressed against his face and lungs every time he tried to draw in a breath. He leaned with his hands on his knees, wheezing, and stared desperately at the place where Harry had vanished behind the wall of flames. He bit his lips until the blood ran, wondering whether that kind of pain could soothe his growing conviction that he should have been with Harry before the walls rose.

            “It’ll be all right.”

            Draco turned on Weasley before he could help himself. Weasley was doing a shit job if he intended to reassure Draco. He had been muttering to himself as he climbed the hill, and now he looked at the fire as if he had personally created the barrier that kept Draco away from Harry. Perhaps he had, at that, if the “machine” he had talked about had been the thing Harry was pumping his magic into.

            “What do you mean, it’ll be all right?” He’d always been good at mimicking voices—essential tool in the arsenal of a schoolyard bully, after all—and now he pitched his into a falsetto parody of Weasley’s. “I don’t give a shit about everyone else. I want Harry, and I think he could burn himself to death in this!”

            Weasley looked at him, blinking a little, as if it had never occurred to him that Draco might want to be reassured by more than just his bare word. The frown puckered the lines between his brows, and then he shook his head and said, “But the machine we invented for him works the way it’s supposed to. That means Harry has to be all right, because the machine would hold and contain his magic.”

            “You said you didn’t know the purpose of the machine when you built it,” Draco said. Actually, he couldn’t remember if Weasley had really said that or just implied it, but from the way he hesitated and then nodded, Draco reckoned his words were accurate. “How do you know it does that, then? It could break apart. Harry practically is magic at this point.” He glared at the white shimmer ahead of them, so much like a heat shimmer in the air that he had to wonder how much of it was there at all and how much of it was only a marker of Harry’s position in some distant magical or mental word, and back at Weasley. “Do you feel what it’s doing to the weather? You think you could invent a machine that would contain something like that?”

            Weasley licked his lips. “Well, yeah,” he said at last. “Harry was the one who designed it. If he wanted something stronger, then he would have asked us for it.”

            “Stop talking about us!” Draco snapped, outraged now that he thought about it. Harry had depended on someone who was mad—who thought his dead twin still lived and talked to him, or something—to create the machine that would save his life. It was enough to make Draco want to hit something. Harry. You should have come to me. I have a lot of flaws, but at least you know I’m sane, and I could have used my magic to assemble the materials you wanted, if only you had told me the spells to cast it.

            And that stopped him again, because he knew Harry had had Weasley build the machine in part to spare himself the work. He didn’t have time to teach someone else to cast those spells, or spend hours arguing with people who thought him mad and would want to interfere in his plans. He just wanted someone who would do as he asked with a minimum of fuss, and Weasley was that person. Perhaps Harry had even felt kindred to him, being more than half-mad himself.

            Draco shook his head and turned back to the white shimmer in front of him, ignoring the way Weasley tried to respond. He really wasn’t in the mood to talk to him right now, and especially not to hear his own poisonous words echoed back to him. He watched the shimmer instead, and thought he saw it bend inwards, turning silver and blue along the edges. Most other people were watching, too, but Draco didn’t know how well they could see it. Perhaps it wasn’t something you could even see unless you had the special protection of that fire spell Harry had cast a few minutes ago.

            He’s still here. He isn’t dead. I have to believe that.

*

            Harry danced with the fire.

            Once again, there was music, but this beat was loud and present and fierce, not the half-sensed one he had heard before he called the fire. It wove Harry’s body in a circle, and then spread his arms and legs. For a moment he twirled, blazing, against a background that shone like the death of a star. And he called and he called, his voice echoing across distances, into beliefs, picking them up as he had picked up the beliefs of what people would like to see him do when he sent the illusion of himself rising into space.

            His partner appeared—a tall woman in a long gown, with a pair of scales in her hand. Lady Justice, the image of justice that a great many people carried half-recognized in their heads, stretching out a hand to Harry and dancing around him.

            Harry smiled at her and wove the fire into her, making her stronger. Not a sense of true justice, not a goddess; he was not powerful enough to create something like that. But he could pour life and flame into an image, and he could make that image solid enough for other people to see and interact with.

            An image that would appear in courtrooms when someone made a decision based on greed or blood prejudice rather than the evidence. An image that would only grow stronger with time as more people came to dread her appearing, and poured their belief into her. She would follow the offenders around; she would stand at the foot of their beds, pointing an accusing finger at them; she would be visible in the streets to others, and they would know they were looking at someone dishonest.

            Harry could practically hear Draco scoffing in the back of his head. And you think that being thought dishonest is going to be that bad for some of us, that we would willingly give up our ability to put Muggleborns in prison for that?

            Harry smiled again, and watched the robes of Lady Justice glow white, and the scales in her hand gleam like a sharpened sword. Even with a compliant Minister in power, the pure-bloods who walked away from crimes had been discreet about it. None of them had wanted the reputation of crime to follow them; that was one reason they had bothered to go through the farce of a trial at all, rather than simply and openly bribing the Wizengamot members. The apparition would make it impossible for them to spread those lies, or escape the silent accusation looming over their shoulders.

            That wasn’t the same as proving guilt, of course. The Wizengamot members might still make decisions that let pure-bloods go. But Lady Justice would appear, and they would at least earn a reputation as being less clever than they had been.

            To prevent Muggleborns from being condemned, however, Harry knew he would probably need something else.

            He turned around and reached out into the fire. This time, the memories that came to him were different, and relied less on the beliefs of the people around him. He closed his eyes and remembered, again, darkness and blood and the plunge of a long fang through his arm. He should have died them. In other lifetimes, in other worlds like the ones the stag had shown him to try and get him to leave this one, he probably had died.

            But not in this one.

            The song poured through his ears. Once heard, never forgotten, or perhaps his magic had sharpened his memory. Harry wasn’t sure which one was true, and he didn’t see that he needed to be sure. He simply stood there, weaving the fire, until he felt a slight weight jolt his shoulder. He opened his eyes and turned his head.

            The image of the phoenix on his shoulder looked so like Fawkes that Harry swallowed for a moment and blinked back tears. It reached out and laid one talon lightly along his hand, staring at him with bright eyes. Then it took off and flew around the head of Lady Justice, singing.

            Harry reached out again, and flung all his magic into them.

            Both of them. One was the ghost of justice that had not been given, and would haunt like a ghost. She could not force someone to change their minds. Yes, Harry was powerful enough to have laid down a change that would make a false acquittal literally impossible to give, but he wasn’t interested in contravening people’s minds and hearts like that. It was one thing to weave a protection around his friends and loved ones that meant they were safe from outside interference; it was another to reach out and touch people whom he knew wouldn’t welcome that kind of intervention no matter how gently he did it.

            And he had dealt long enough already with people being afraid of him.

            The phoenix, the circling image of Fawkes, of fire, of brightness, of the future, of hope, was different. Harry poured his power into its voice, not its fire, and set it to perch above the courtrooms and sing.

            He had started the revolution to try and make sure no more innocent Muggleborns were sent to Azkaban. But pure-bloods had followed him, too, and it was as likely—at least, it might be as likely in a generation or two—that they would be declared guilty if panic against Death Eaters or a pure-blood Dark Lord arose. It was not impossible. Harry wanted to make sure anyone would be protected.

            He wasn’t an Auror any longer. It wasn’t his job to arrest people.

            Phoenixes were innocent, and would never bond with anyone who had darkness in his heart. Harry made this one the voice of innocence, which would sing at the moments when evidence was overlooked, when witnesses lied, when Wizengamot members or others trying the accused ignored legal rules, such as changing the times of trials. Harry thought the song would get on some people’s nerves; a few of the trials he attended had such blatant rule-breaking that there would be enough phoenix song to interrupt the lawyers’ speeches.

            But, again, that was not the same as forcing people to consider the evidence before them. It was possible that a trial would proceed and force an innocent person, Muggleborn or pure-blood, into prison.

            He breathed, and fire spiraled between him and the phoenix, linking them together, surrounding the phoenix with what looked like lacy flowers of flame. The phoenix opened its beak and drank them in, singing all the while, wings flapping in lazy slow motion.

            So the phoenix would also follow the condemned innocent to the prison cells and sit there, singing, until either a new trial began or the prisoner was released. Inconvenient for the guards and perhaps even the prisoners, Harry thought, but he had promised to change things.

            He had said he would.

            He shivered a little as the fire left him and both Lady Justice and the phoenix shone back at him. He had known it would be like this, when he saw the ash and the cinders on the second road, and that was no reason to draw back. He pulled on more of his magic and poured it out. Eventually, as more and more people saw them and fed them with belief, these illusions would rely less on his power, but for now, they needed it so that they didn’t cease to exist once he stopped.

            Stopped.

            Harry yawned, and then shivered again. All the places in him filled with gleaming flame were empty. He reached down into the depths of his being and coaxed out the last tiny wisps, pointing them at the great fire and whispering where their company had gone. They fled from him eagerly, humming as they flew.

            He was tired.

            He had done a lot. He didn’t know if it was enough, but at least he had done what he began the revolution to do. It had grown beyond that, he knew, and he had made some promises he hadn’t kept.

            But this was the great one, the implicit one, the task he had begun with the burning of Azkaban and which he hadn’t completed. He watched the woman with the scales of Justice and the phoenix shining before him, and smiled. It was a good feeling.

            This was what it felt like to surrender completely. His magic. His power. He held the shining link for one moment more, the red and the gold, until he felt his hands begin to burn. He was vulnerable to the flames, now that he had ceased to be the powerhouse the prophecy had demanded and was just an ordinary mortal.

            Not even a wizard, really, he thought, and, for the last time, let the fire go. He closed his eyes and fell forwards, his sight and vision consumed by phoenix song.

*

            Ron dueled Clearwater the way Hermione would have wanted someone to fight for her, if she had ever wanted someone to fight for her.

            The movements of his wand were swift and smooth and sharp. He whipped around when she tossed Stunners at him, and although he never managed to Disarm her—the first thing Hermione would have tried—he kept her too busy most of the time to try offensive strikes. Clearwater got through with one spell that razed a line of blood down Ron’s cheek, but he only smiled and shook his head as though replying to Hermione’s silent cry of despair, and kept dueling. His head was bowed slightly, his eyes wide and intelligent and utterly clear.

            He made Clearwater trip on invisible obstacles. He tossed her robes up around her head, and she groped at them as much, Hermione thought, in offended dignity as panic that she couldn’t see. When her face emerged from that trap, it was red. Ron smiled at her and made her fall flat on her arse over what looked, to Hermione’s quick eye, like a log that shimmered briefly before it turned invisible.

            Clearwater was breathing hard by then, but she cast a spell that could have shattered Ron’s kneecap, since she was lying on the ground anyway. Hermione tensed to intervene, but Ron caught it with a Shield Charm that he used so contemptuously Hermione laughed.

            Clearwater’s gaze flickered to her, and then she raised her wand and pulled it back towards her body with a strong rush that made Hermione stumble. She knew she was being Summoned, and she hated that. She cast a Finite and sneered at Clearwater’s blinking eyes and open mouth.

            Ron hit her with a spell from the side while she was distracted, one Hermione knew should have staved her head in. But either she was luckier than she seemed, or she was better than either of them had realized, because she whirled and caught it in time, although she drew in her breath hard and struggled dizzily to her feet. Clipped, dazed maybe, but not down.

            More’s the pity, Hermione thought, and circled, and waited for her chance.

            She found it when Clearwater was utterly focused on dodging the small bolts of energy and light Ron hurled at her, all of which hummed. Hermione made the ground roll up in a small hump, and then drop down into a pit. Then she nodded at Ron, trusting to the silent communication they sometimes had since they married to confirm her plan to him.

            It worked. Ron’s smile flashed, and he abruptly redoubled his attacks, something Clearwater must not have thought he had the energy to do. Hell, Hermione didn’t know where he was getting it, either. He drove her backwards, and she went without time to check behind her. Hermione waited, counting heartbeats under her breath to have something to do as she waited for the moment when their trap would work or fail.

            It worked. Clearwater reeled up the small mound of grass and then fell towards the pit behind it. Ron cast “Expelliarmus!” in a voice that made him sound a great deal larger—a surprising feat—and snatched her wand out of the air as it flew towards him. Hermione then cast a shield over the pit, one that would hold Clearwater in there until such time as they decided they wanted to break her free.

            Clearwater snarled something. Hermione couldn’t hear her, since she had happened to make the shield soundproof. She didn’t know if anyone would believe it was an accident if this ever came before the Wizengamot, but she doubted that it ever would.

            “Hermione. Come here.”

            She turned around, and Ron jerked her into his arms and kissed her. And Hermione couldn’t even worry about the flame in the sky, or where Harry had gone, or what might happen after this. She was too busy kissing him back.

*

            He was tired.

            It was the first thing Harry thought of when he came back to himself. Slowly, slowly, so slowly. It was as if the drifting ash that he had seen pictured on that trail was slowly mounding into a human being.

            He opened his eyes.

            He hovered in the midst of fire, and he was surprised for a bare instant—he no longer had power over it, the magic was gone, he was a Muggle—before he remembered the last weave he had put into the fire of the protection spell. Right. Since he didn’t have magic anymore, he would have had a hard time guarding himself from potential enemies otherwise. There was a thin white streak of flame in front of him, just waiting for him to tug on it.

            His arm felt as if his bones had turned to lead, but Harry reached up and pulled the streak.

            It wrapped around him, shining, singing, pulling. Harry yielded to it gladly and closed his eyes. He wondered for a moment what would happen when he woke up, since this was taking him to the shelter he had created for Draco and his parents. Perhaps Draco wouldn’t want him anymore, now that Harry was without his magic.

            Whatever. He would worry about that when he woke up. Right now, nothing much mattered, not next to the tiredness.

*

            Draco whirled around, blinking. One moment he was on the hill, pressing against the transparent barrier of flame that he knew kept Harry from him, and the next he was in a room with marble walls, a comfortable carpet beneath his feet. He glanced around. The room had a wide bed, piled with tapestries presumably meant to go on the walls. The colors of the tapestries were green and silver, he noted with growing confusion. Had he somehow been transported to a hidden room in the dungeons of Hogwarts?

            Then he took a closer look at the bed, and realized that there was a smear of black among the tapestries. He rushed over, pushing them away.

            Harry lay on the bed, asleep, his head sagging to the side. Draco shook him. Then he pinched his ear. Then he yelled into it.

            Nothing happened. Draco would have thought Harry was dead, his skin was so cool, except that his chest rose and fell with regular breaths, the way it had the night that Harry put himself to sleep so Draco could have pleasure in looking at him. Draco closed his eyes and leaned back, shaking his head.

            He assumed his parents were here somewhere. Harry had promised. But at the moment, the tension had left him so suddenly that he didn’t have the energy left to search for them. He wanted to—

            To curl up here beside Harry.

            So he did, and tugged one of the immense tapestries (which seemed to show a forest under a silver sun, instead of a moon) over them.

*

            George lifted a hand in salute as the barrier vanished, and Malfoy did the same thing from beside them, gone so suddenly that air rushed in to fill his place.

            “You did it,” he whispered. “It worked. It worked, Harry, you bloody bastard.” He touched his hand to his forehead in a longer salute. “Good hunting, wherever you are.”

*

            addiena saffir: Thank you. I hope you liked this chapter.

            AlterEquis: Well, it’s over now. But the traitor will be revealed in the next chapter. Harry knew who it was, or rather, who it could be. He was manipulating this prophecy all the way through, making it happen in the way he envisioned rather than the way that the words seemed to destine it to happen.
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Intoxicate the Sun