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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-Nine—Picking Up the Pieces

            Harry opened his eyes to silence.

            It took him long moments to figure out what about the silence was so strange. He rolled his head from side to side on the pillows and frowned, and still no answer came to him. He raised a hand and tried to call fire—

            And then he knew.

            He settled back with a little grunt, closing his eyes. His muscles ached. His chest hurt as though someone had scooped out his heart along with his magic. His eyes burned along the edges with lack of sleep, despite the rest he’d just woken up from, and he had more ordinary burns here and there on his skin.

            But nothing of that compared to the silence in his head where the crackling of the flames had been.

            “Awake at last, then.”

            Harry blinked. Perhaps he had drifted away into a doze as he lay there pondering the lack of his magic, or perhaps he had simply overlooked him while his eyes were open, but he could have sworn that Draco hadn’t been there a moment ago. He reached out a hand, half-wondering if Draco would push it away. He must have had the chance by now to see that Harry wasn’t the man he had been.

            Draco clenched his wrist, though, and shook his head. “You idiot,” he murmured. “What exactly did you do?”

            Harry licked his lips. “Used my magic to create a personification of justice and a personification of mercy,” he said. “A woman like Lady Justice and a phoenix. They’ll make it clear to everyone when someone decides to condemn a Muggleborn—or a pure-blood—because they’re bribed or because they hate them as a person. I started the revolution saying that I would find a way to overcome condemnations and unlawful acquittals that happened simply because of blood prejudice. I did.”

            Draco blinked. His face looked young and fresh and startled, Harry thought, but with a warmth behind and beneath the skin that Harry no longer shared. He caressed Harry’s hand for a moment, fingers working back and forth on the bones as his mouth pinched in thought. Then he said, “And—and it took all your magic?”

            “Yes,” Harry said. He hadn’t expected them to come to it so soon, but now that it was here, he might as well accept that Draco’s rejection might be, too. He pressed himself to sit up, and did it, though he had to keep leaning against pillows as he did. He never took his eyes from Draco’s face. “Does that disgust you?”

*

            Draco touched Harry’s hand again, and didn’t answer.

            He wasn’t sure he knew how to answer. He had certainly never thought he would be in the position of answering such a question from his ridiculously magically powerful partner who had sacrificed all his magic so Muggleborns and pure-bloods could stop forcing each other into prison.

            He had never thought he would have a ridiculously magically powerful partner in the first place, or that it would be Potter. Or that he would be part of a revolution where something like the cause of Muggleborns mattered to him.

            So he touched Harry’s fingers, and smoothed his own fingers up and down Harry’s skin over the pulse, and didn’t answer.

            Harry exhaled shakily and reached out as though he was thinking of touching Draco more than he already was, then hesitated and pulled back. “If it disgusts you,” he said, with a shake in the back of his voice Draco had never heard from him, “then I can accept that. But I think I want to know now, so I can have—time to accept it. And time to plan where I’m going to go when I leave here.”

            Draco met his eyes again. Yes, the assurance was gone, the almost mad belief in himself that Harry had demonstrated so often. The belief had come from the magic, Draco knew now. Not because Harry thought he was the chosen of destiny, not because he had ever valued or believed in himself as much as other people had, but because he knew he had had the power to accomplish what he wanted to do. Now it was gone, and he—

            “Did you create this safehouse for us?” Draco asked abruptly, gesturing around at the stone walls that arched above their heads. He had been out the door of the tapestry room, as he thought of it because of the enormous amount of tapestries he’d first seen piled on the bed, to look around, and found more stone corridors, including one shimmering, locked door of power behind which he could see his parents. They had luxurious beds, wardrobes full of clothes, and what looked like a practice room complete with practice wands. But Draco knew, from watching his father claw at the door, that it wouldn’t open to their touch.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “And put in a twist of magic that would pull me along to it when the rest of the enchantment was done, because I knew I wouldn’t have enough power left to accomplish that.”

            Draco shook his head. “So losing your magic wasn’t a side-effect. You went into this knowing it might happen.”

            “I did.” Harry half-lowered his head. He looked like a stubborn unicorn, Draco thought with exasperated affection, ready to charge if only he received something solid to stab at.

            “That’s…odd to me, but I accept that it might happen,” Draco said. “That you would know and still think the sacrifice worth it.” He took a deep breath, and then found he was smiling. He spread Harry’s fingers and stroked his own between them, up and down in long motions. “How can I be upset about it when you went into this anticipating it, and it mattered so much to you to save my parents and myself, too?”

            Harry blinked. Then he said, “I’m still upset about it. I didn’t want to lose my magic. I hoped I might have a little left after sacrificing that much.” He clenched his fingers and made a frustrated noise. “I don’t think I have any left.”

            “But you would still make the same choice, if you were in the same situation,” Draco clarified.

            Harry nodded. “No one made me be a hero. I controlled the interpretation of the prophecy, even the future’s interpretation of itself. The words could mean different things, and all I did was twist them into what I wanted them to mean.”

            Draco stretched out beside him and rested his head on the pillow. “Will you tell me how?” he whispered. “I had no idea what you were doing, and I still don’t really know what you did. I couldn’t really see it in progress, after all. I’d like you to tell me what you were doing from the beginning, why you had to come up with that plan to combat the prophecy in the first place.”

*

            Harry rather suspiciously checked the color and dilation of Draco’s pupils. But no, they looked normal. Draco went on gazing expectantly at him, but without the pity in his eyes Harry had expected.

            Harry nodded slowly. “The prophecy promised that the one marked by fire would return to the fire,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of my enemies were counting on that line meaning that I’d vanish from the world, and ceased to trouble them.”

            Draco laughed aloud and touched Harry’s shoulder this time, stroking down to his chest. Harry relaxed. At least his lack of magic didn’t seem to have inhibited Draco’s desire to touch him, the way Harry had thought it would. “They should have taken a lesson from the Dark Lord,” Draco whispered into his hair. “You never do what you’re expected to. So that’s why you created that illusion of you vanishing into midair, becoming part of the fire.” He paused, and then added, not exactly in an accusing tone, “That part nearly killed me, you know. Watching you go like that and thinking you might have.”

            “I’m sorry,” Harry said simply. “But that was the part I most had to conceal, believe it or not. If the prophecy had got any wind of that being an illusion, it would have crushed me. I had to make sure it was no longer paying attention to me, that it thought I had taken that power to other worlds the way it wanted.”

            “Is there any chance it can learn the truth?” Draco was stroking his hair now.

            Harry leaned into it and closed his eyes. “I doubt it,” he murmured. “Eventually, that magic would have to fade. I would have to die. And the fates that it showed me were—queer.” That was the best word he could come up with for them, so it was the one he would use. “So. Sooner or later, I would have faded if I went that route anyway. I would have faded, yes, and I would have died. This way, the illusion should last long enough that the prophecy will have no desire to come back to our world and see if I’m still here. It’s like the illusions of Lady Justice and the phoenix I created, and should endure until it’s no longer needed.”

            More silence, more stroking. Then Draco said, “But you’re not sure.”

            Harry opened one eye at him and snorted a little. “No. Considering that I’ve never done anything like this before, and no one else has that I could find references to in the books, either, I’m very much not sure. Am I allowed to be that way?”

            Draco blinked and then flushed a bit. “Of course,” he said. “I’m just not used to you not being sure.”

            Harry reached up and squeezed his fingers, silently grateful for the fact that Draco was still with him despite everything. “Yeah, I can see that. But anyway, I think I’m as sure as I can be. Even if the stag comes back, my magic is gone. There’s no reason for it to think I kept it, which was apparently what it worried about.”

            “And the rest of the prophecy?”

            Harry grinned a little. “The one he trusted is the one who turns,” he quoted from memory. “That was the bit that gave me the most trouble, next to wondering how I was going to get the stag off my back. I lay awake at night and wondered who the traitor would be. Ron, for what he considered good reasons, such as maintaining the revolution? Someone like Pedlar? That seemed the safest option, the likeliest one too, but I couldn’t be sure. Hermione, even? She was under the Imperius Curse for a while, you know.”

            Draco blinked. Then he said, “So who was it?”

            “I realized,” Harry said, and tried to put all the experience of discovering it in his voice, “that I was being ridiculous. If I could choose to manipulate the prophecy’s words as I wished and make them mean what I wanted, I could do the same thing with the line about the traitor. Those were only the words in the prophecy, after all. And something happened that fulfilled them. Hermione came back to us.”

            It didn’t take Draco long to work them out, and Harry watched him as his eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. “It never said that you would suffer the betrayal, did it?”

            Harry smugly shook his head. “Nope. Not a bloody thing. Clearwater trusted Hermione, and so did I, and Hermione was the one who turned her back on Clearwater and escaped, after breaking free of the Imperius. So I took the risk, because something had happened that fulfilled the prophecy, and it wasn’t a widely-known one, either. Hermione and I may have been the first ones who knew the full contents for more than a generation. I made it dance to my tune.”

            “The Dark Lord,” Draco said. “Fate. Me.”

            Harry rolled up on one elbow to look at him. “What?” he asked.

            “Things you conquered,” Draco said, and put his hands on either side of Harry’s face and kissed him.

            Harry kissed back, letting his eyes fall shut in sheer appreciation of the fact that Draco was still here, with him, and able to kiss him, and willing to do so. He put his hand into Draco’s hair, and tugged, and then tugged, more harshly, when Draco acted as if he would shift away from him.

            “No,” he breathed into his mouth. “Stay here, with me, a little longer. If I really have conquered you, then let me see what I won.”

            Draco laughed into his mouth, triumphant and soft and low, and then crushed Harry into the pillow. Harry went willingly, still nipping at Draco’s lips and feeling his joy sweep through him the way his magic once had.

            His life could still be beautiful without it, he thought. There were still compensations.

            And when Draco undressed him with hot hands and eyes, and performed the spells that summoned the lube and helped to prepare himself for Harry, Harry was in the mood to think of it as far more than a compensation.

*

            “How can we trust you? You were with the revolution.”

            That was Clearwater’s second-in-command, or at least the only one who had stepped forwards when Hermione had stepped up to the lines and called out that they’d arrested the Minister and she would appreciate someone who knew what she was doing. Judith Summers, who had taken Clearwater’s place as Head Auror for at least a little while, Hermione knew, pushed her hair out of her eyes and then rubbed both eyes fiercely with the heels of her hands.

            “Can you negotiate with us?” Hermione asked calmly. She glanced once over her shoulder, and found Ron behind her, Clearwater floating behind him in a shiny, almost-opaque cage of magical energy. She had taken one look at the eager eyes straining towards her and turned her back. Hermione didn’t care. Frankly, it was preferable to another struggle to escape and cause trouble.

            “I reckon so,” Summers said. “But I can’t trust you. You have the Minister there.”

            Her voice quivered, though, and when Hermione turned around quickly, she saw the hope in Summers’s eyes before she could hide it. She was hoping, really hoping, that this was the end of the endless war, Hermione thought. And that meant she would be willing to speak with people she would have disdained speaking to before.

            “But there are people here you can trust,” Hermione murmured, and inclined her head towards Smithson and Raggleworth, who were standing where Clearwater had stood before she had attacked Ron, on the far side of the hill from the revolutionaries. They came forwards on cue, though they were both a bit white around the eyes. Hermione knew this was far from what they had originally planned when Harry was still alive—

            No. When he was here. Right here, with us. I’m going to believe he’s still alive until I see the body. And I’m sure he’ll find a way to contact us, no matter what happens.

            She blew the distracting thoughts away and bowed to her allies as if she knew them only vaguely. “Madam…Raggleworth, of the Wizengamot?” she asked.

            “Yes,” Raggleworth said, in her haughtiest and most piercing tone, like a raven’s voice heard through the clanging of steel. From the way her eyes shone, Hermione was sure she was enjoying herself immensely. She glanced about as though daring anyone to disapprove of what she was doing and bundle her out of the way.

            “And Smithson, of the Hit Wizards,” Smithson rumbled. He had a faint smile on his mouth, the only sign of his enjoyment. Hermione nodded gravely to them, and caught a glimpse of Greta smirking in the background. She didn’t have a high enough status in the Ministry to join the negotiation, to just “happen” to be there and willing to trust, but she would enjoy the hell out of it anyway, Hermione was sure.

            “Good.” Hermione nodded to them both. “If you’re willing to hear me, then I’m willing to listen to you, as well.”

            “This is impossible,” Summers breathed. Hermione would have said she was on the verge of tears, except she had heard this kind of crackling hysteria before, and knew it could truly go either way. “You were surrendering. The Minister was here, beside me. And now you claim to arrest her? On what authority?”

            “The authority that I hope Hit Wizard Smithson and Madam Raggleworth will take up, of course,” Hermione said, and bowed again. She didn’t mind bowing like that. Especially not when she thought Ron would probably scold her about it later, and she could argue the necessity, and it would give them another reason to yell at and then praise each other. “She used the Imperius Curse on me. I believe the Unforgivable Curses are still considered a crime in the new and brave Ministry? Although, of course,” she had to add, “you no longer have Azkaban to place the offenders in.”

            “No, we don’t,” Summers said, and folded her arms. “That was another convenience your precious Potter deprived us of.”

            “Not my Potter,” Hermione said mildly. “My friend, yes, and I fought for him. But he’s not here right now, and it’s useless to hide behind him or pretend that he’s here and you have to consider his magic. You saw him rise. And you saw what he did with his power.” She didn’t intend to mention the strange shower of sparks that had enveloped both her and Ron, or the flare of white she had seen after that, which seemed to involve Malfoy vanishing off the hill. Summers might not even know they’d happened, since she’d been on the wrong side of the hill to see anything. “He left us behind. We have to cope with the world as it is. So. Are you willing to accept that Minister Clearwater did something wrong?”

            Summers glanced at Clearwater, then away. Sometimes her eyes strayed to the Aurors behind her, Hermione saw, as if hoping that one of them would step forwards and take her place. No one did, however, so in the end she gritted her teeth and responded. “I—yes. If you have the Pensieve memories to prove it,” she added, with what was probably one more try at clearing her own side of wrongdoing.

            “I will be delighted to contribute them,” Hermione said. “That sensation of finding part of your mind enslaved isn’t one you ever forget.”

            Summers whipped her head around. “Then you weren’t completely enslaved,” she said. “And the Minister must have suspected that something was wrong with you, that you were disloyal, and had some reason for casting the curse.”

            Raggleworth interrupted, which Hermione was grateful for, and not just because she had the voice to command the attention their cause needed at the moment. “There’s no excuse for casting it, whatever she suspected,” she creaked out. “Why not bring her suspicions in front of the Wizengamot? Why not order a legal arrest of Madam Granger-Weasley, as was her right? But she had none to enslave her.”

            Hermione smiled at Raggleworth. “Indeed. An arrest order would have been more to the point than casting the Imperius Curse.” She turned back to Summers. “She then came after me and tried to kill me. My husband, Auror Ron Weasley, stopped her.” Summers twitched a little but didn’t try to refute the title, which Hermione considered progress. “Now—”

            “Reducto!”

            The Blasting Curse came from the side, from a small group of Aurors that Hermione hadn’t paid attention to because they’d put down their wands and made no threatening moves. Now Desang dived out of the middle of them, wand aimed at her, and the Blasting Curse slammed into Hermione, tumbling her head over heels and fetching her up sharply against Raggleworth, who she knocked to the ground.

            Dimly, she heard Ron roar, and raised her voice in a shout. “Ron, no!” If he killed or wounded Desang, it would damage their cause. The last thing she needed was her husband in a holding cell in the Ministry, when they still had only fragile authority over the rebels or Clearwater. This could be the signal that they all needed to overcome the awe Harry had left them in and decide that it didn’t matter what public crimes Hermione accused Clearwater of.

            Not that she thought Desang had planned that, or cared about the emotional tenor of the moment. She only wanted revenge, and had taken it at what looked to her like the first likely chance.

            But, Hermione saw from the flushed state of her face as she charged, and the way she brandished her wand, and the way her mouth moved, she wasn’t thinking clearly. At all. That meant Hermione could do as she liked with her. The more rational opponent in a contest like this was often the one who would win.

            Hermione smiled.

            Desang paused, but Hermione didn’t intend to give her the chance to recover herself. She was bruised, not hurt, thanks to Raggleworth interrupting her tumble. She knew not to use violent spells, or sympathy would swing to Desang. But she could use a variant of the capture spells that had taken down Clearwater.

            “Incarcerous,” she said. “Stupefy.” Spells Harry had taught the DA long ago, spells that even non-Aurors knew how to do, but which Aurors often seemed to forget.

            Desang’s stare as her arms got wrapped behind her back was comical, but faded into the usual open-mouthed imbecility that a Stunner caused as she crashed to the ground. Hermione snorted, Summoned her wand, and then turned and stared at the Aurors, including Summers, who were staring at her.

            “I trust no one else is going to argue that some people in the Ministry didn’t have it in for me, and wouldn’t use illegal curses to take me down?” she asked quietly. “I came here to negotiate in a spirit of good faith. I don’t appreciate attempts being made to assassinate me.” Spin it that way from the beginning, and by the time Desang got to tell her side of the story, there would be fewer to believe her.

            Raggleworth picked up the thread Hermione had started weaving immediately. “Of course not!” she said, voice deep and shocked. “One of our Aurors, one who is trained to recognize Dark wizards and capture them, assaulting a hero who fought back against the Imperius Curse on her mind! The idea! We will…”

            And she talked on, and Smithson helped her, and now and then Greta interjected a comment, and together they wove the words that were needed at the moment. Hermione could step back and lean against Ron, who wrapped an arm around her waist and nuzzled her hair with his nose.

            “Thank God that’s over,” he said.

            Hermione nodded in silence. She could rely on Raggleworth and Smithson to make it seem the most natural thing in the world to accept the revolutionaries’ surrender and get good terms out of it. The revolutionaries, still shocked and dazed from Harry’s departure, and wanting back into normal society anyway, were unlikely to be a problem.

            She and Ron could rest a bit.

            And then we can start searching for Harry.

*

            SP777: Thank you! I’m glad you’ve been enjoying it.

            Anna: Thank you. Ron has been one of my most favorite parts of this story (especially when the plot has been exasperating).

            I don’t know about the originals, but I’ll let you know.

            Addiena saffir; Thanks! Harry doesn’t know about the magic. No one has ever done something like this before, so it’s possible the magic might return, and then again, it might not.

            Anon: Thank you. I’m really glad you think so.

            AlterEquis: Hopefully this gave you the answer for the traitor question. Harry realized that the most important question was not who the traitor really was, but who he could convince himself it was.
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Intoxicate the Sun