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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 Six—Across an Abyss

            “Mr. Harry, sir!”

            Resisting the temptation to tell Patricia Jackson that she sounded like a house-elf, Harry looked up from the book he’d been reading for several hours. To tell the truth, he’d be just as glad to have a distraction. The book had startled babbling about Fortuna’s Wheel and the “directions” of magic, and Harry would have to read it a second time to make sure he understood. His eyes blurred just thinking about it. “Yes, Jackson?”

            Jackson jerked to a stop in front of his table, her eyes wide. She looked as though she had run all the way from the borders of the manor’s gardens, Harry thought, and his curiosity increased. Perhaps they had an enemy who had found them already, or a great number of Aurors had come in all at once.

            “Malfoy is here, sir,” Jackson said, when she could swallow enough air to do something with it besides breathe.

            Harry surged to his feet, before he realized that Jackson must mean the younger Malfoy and not Narcissa. He shut his eyes and touched the side of his head. Yes, he needed some sleep if he had thought that Narcissa Malfoy would break out of Azkaban when she’d made such an effort to get there.

            I would have helped her if I could have.

            The plea shattered and fell down, useless, the way it always had been. Harry opened his eyes and looked at Jackson. “Did he say what he wanted?”

            Jackson shook her head. “I mean, he said that he wanted to see you and that he was tired of the Ministry imprisoning his parents. That was it.”

            Harry doubted that was the whole story. It was much more likely that Malfoy thought their revolution was ridiculous and had come to laugh at them. Joining it would resemblework. Of course, if he had only come to laugh, it meant he had tricked the Apparition coordinates out of Luna, and Harry would have to talk with her.

            “I’ll come,” he said, and stepped out of the room to follow Jackson through the corridors, listening to the shouts of training on the way, and muttering from George’s design room, and wondering how long it would take to send Malfoy off.

*

            Potter came out of nothingness behind the Auror who had recognized him. Draco watched the way the one left to guard him slumped when he appeared, her wand falling to a straight point at the ground, and thought how easy it would have been to kill her, then step forwards and curse Potter.

            Of course, by then Potter would be moving. Draco controlled himself and settled for observing Potter as the Ministry Menace stalked towards him.

            Potter looked taller and heavier than he had during the trials of Draco’s parents, but given the years that had passed since then, Draco was not surprised. He didn’t expect intelligence in the green eyes that scanned him, however, and quietly added a few more weapons besides the truth to his arsenal.

            “Why did you come here?” Potter asked.

            “Didn’t she tell you?” Draco glanced at the former Auror who’d gone into the Manor, wondering if she had been too excited or frightened to try.

            “She did,” Potter said. “But I don’t believe you. If this is a lark for you, have your laugh and go. If you intend to lead the Ministry to us, then you ought to know that none of the Aurors who are still loyal to them have wands right now, and their backup might be a bit scant.” He had his wand handily half-concealed in his left sleeve, but now he shook it into his hand and aimed it at Draco’s heart.

            Hope flicked through Draco’s mind again—Potter hadn’t cursed him yet—but another emotion joined it, an emotion as bright and swift as a tropical fish. Draco didn’t recognize it, and decided to live with it as he answered.

            “The Wizengamot won’t ever release my parents from Azkaban,” he said, speaking the truth again. Even Summers had done no more than hint that Minister Clearwater would speak to them. “They won’t let me visit. I have no idea whether my parents are alive or dead, mad or sane. I want to see them again, and I want their freedom. Failing that, I want a decent death for them. I think my chances for both are better with you.”

            “I wouldn’t kill your parents,” Potter said, as if that were the important part. Of course, to someone committed to thinking of himself as a hero, it probably was. “I don’t kill prisoners. And I don’t know what I’ll do about Azkaban yet.”

            “You’re telling me a lot for someone who you think came to laugh at you,” Draco said.

            Potter made a sharp gesture with one hand. “What makes you think that you’ll be allowed to leave?”

            Draco felt the bright emotion again. He didn’t touch his wand, because he didn’t think it the right tool for this situation. Any fool could cast a curse. His weapons were his words, and he smiled at Potter and shook his head. “You would kill me?”

            “If necessary,” Potter said. “Then again, there are other ways. There’s no reason that another Malfoy couldn’t become a prisoner, since it seems to be their common fate.”

            Draco lunged forwards before he could stop himself. The two former Aurors were in his way at once, and he surged back, tamping down his emotions again. He had been stupid to react like that.

            Strangely, Potter watched him with less criticism now. “Sensitive about your parents,” he said. “That’s something I’ll remember.”

            Spin this into a way of confirming your story. “I don’t need you mocking them,” Draco said softly. “If you intend to do that, then I have no hope left, I confess, and I might as well raid Azkaban myself.” He turned on his heel.

            Potter said nothing aloud, but a soft barrier of energy wavered into being in front of Draco. He put out a hand, passing it through the barely-there blue shimmer, and shrieked as the sensation of boiling water traveled violently across his fingers and down his arm.

            He reeled back, holding his hand, his breath coming so fast that he couldn’t disguise it, although he had intended to remain in control of all his emotions around Potter. What had that spell been? Draco had never heard of one that imitated it, and certainly none that looked so harmless. He examined his fingers gingerly, but there was no scarring and no sign of burning or redness or other marks. The spell had touched his nerves alone.

            His senses stirred. To be around someone like that, to learn from him, to grasp his power and understand it and someday wield it against him…

            But Draco snapped the fantasies short like a dry stick. He had given them up on the day that he realized his parents being in Azkaban was the great tragedy of his life, to work towards a resolution for or mourn, but never to ignore. It didn’t matter what kind of magic Potter could use, except that Draco would need to learn how to counter it. Potter could give him nothing except in his fall.

            “I told you, we don’t intend to let you leave,” Potter said. He sounded calm, not angry, a thing for Draco to remember. “Turn around, and let’s discuss this.”

            Draco did, cradling his hand against his stomach. By now, Weasley had come out behind Potter, along with other people that Draco didn’t know. He kept his eyes on Potter, though, because they all remained in the background and unless they started suddenly cursing him, Potter was still the most important figure here.

            “What will you do with me?” Draco asked.

            “I don’t know yet,” Potter said. “Will you willingly take Veritaserum, or do we have to hold you down and feed it to you?”

            Draco felt his skin chill. He hadn’t counted on Potter having access to that potion, but of course he should have, since Aurors used it and someone leaving the Ministry might well have brought along a store of it. There was a way to get past even that test, of course, but it would cost him in magical strength and Draco would prefer not to use it.

            “I don’t want to take it at all,” he said, and strove for a tone of injured dignity. “Obliviate me and send me on my way if you must. And you’ll lose all the gifts I could have brought you.” He sharpened his eyes to watch any twitches or traces that crossed Potter’s face in response to that.

            Potter didn’t oblige him by looking greedy, or alarmed, or anything but thoughtful. “That would be useful,” he said. “But this is the test that every new recruit has to take, Malfoy, and the ones that we’ve found out as spies for the Ministry, we’ve simply dismissed. What can you offer us that would make it worthwhile to put up with your obnoxious presence here?”

            “Dark Arts,” Draco said. “Books. Potions knowledge. I doubt you have an expert Potions brewer among you.” Nor was he one, in truth, but he knew enough to pick it back up quickly, and he could come and go from the Manor’s Potions lab as he pleased.

            Weasley said something hot and breathless, but Potter raised a hand to hold back his words. He kept studying Draco, so deeply that Draco wanted to shift his weight. But that could look as though he was guilty, so Draco stood in place and met Potter’s eyes back.

            A Legilimens could gain all sorts of information that way.

            But despite the reports in the papers—all of which he had read before he sought out Lovegood, so he could look as though he cared about something besides his parents—Draco didn’t believe Potter had that skill. The ones who did, including himself, carried a certain deepness in their faces, and tended to keep eye contact to a minimum. Potter stared at people as if he was a hero, or an honest man.

            Draco would be glad if that was the case. Honest men made easier prey.

            “I won’t know if the trade’s enough until I see these books and see you brew a potion,” Potter said abruptly. “But come along, and you can take the Veritaserum.” He turned his back and walked towards the barrier of silence and shadow behind which the Unplottable territory was hidden, as though he never doubted Draco would follow.

            Draco felt an intense longing to give him a source of doubt. If he could only confound Potter the Arrogant, surprise him, make him beg to accept Draco—

            He destroyed the longing. It was a dangerous and dangerously powerful emotion, and surprised him. He hadn’t thought he would feel that anymore now that he wasn’t a schoolboy. He had to keep his focus on his parents, rotting away together in a cell, waiting for Draco to save them because there wasn’t anyone else.

            He just nodded, for the benefit of the people around Potter more than Potter himself, since he didn’t turn, and followed. Weasley hastened to close ranks in behind him, hissing as he went. Draco didn’t turn a hair.

            Inside his head, he began to recite the long, complicated incantation that would change his blood chemistry and allow him to resist the Veritaserum.

*

            The testing of new refugees took place in a room of the manor that its old owners might have used as an intimate dining room. Hermione would know the correct term, Harry thought, and had to close his eyes for a moment.

            I wish she could be here.

            Shaking his head, he turned around with the vial of Veritaserum that Wheelwright had brought in his hand and examined Malfoy closely. He sat in a chair on the other side of the large table that was the room’s primary furnishing, two wands trained on him. He didn’t seem to notice them. His eyes never blinked, his focus never wavered, and his hands never moved. Harry was impressed with his stillness.

            He couldn’t afford to be, though. He tipped three drops of the Veritaserum into a cup that they always used for it, but spelled clean between times. Hermione had warned them about that, saying too much Veritaserum could damage at least some wizards. Harry didn’t want to damage anyone who had come seeking him.

            Even though I still don’t understand why in the world Malfoy would be here.

            He handed the cup to Ron, who had insisted on being part of the interrogation. Harry had hesitated, because Ron took Malfoy seriously in a way that he didn’t take anything else, but Ron just stared at him. Harry couldn’t refuse to let him hand the Veritaserum to Malfoy without showing that he distrusted him.

            Ron took the cup with a nod and marched over to Malfoy. Malfoy opened his mouth. He continued to look calm, the calmest person in the room, even as Ron tipped the three drops onto his tongue, counting aloud as they fell.

            Malfoy pulled his tongue back into his mouth and shut his eyes. For a long moment, he stayed that way. When he turned to Harry again, he looked exactly like someone affected by Veritaserum—glassy-eyed, half-dreaming, half-dozing.

            “All right,” he said, and Harry wondered if he had ever heard Malfoy say anything half so casual.

            “Why did you come seeking us?” Ron demanded, before Harry could ask the question. He flashed Ron a cold look, and Ron flushed a little, but shrugged. Harry nodded. It was a reasonable question to ask first, and it didn’t really matter which one of them asked it.

            “Because I want my parents freed.” Malfoy’s voice sounded flat. Harry knew that people’s voices were supposed to sound that way under the influence of the potion, but it never ceased to unnerve him. Harry waited, but nothing else happened, which he thought meant it was the truth.

            He shot Ron a sideways glance. Ron was frowning, but he asked in a relatively neutral voice, “Why do you think Harry can do that?”

            “I don’t know,” Malfoy said. “I hope that he might attack Azkaban someday. The Wizengamot will never free them.” Bitterness creeping into his voice there, and Ron jerked his head like a snake smelling a rabbit. Harry leaped in before Ron could get too upset or seize on the emotion as a proof that the potion wasn’t working. People did sometimes sound upset or fearful under Veritaserum if the emotion was strong enough.

            “How great did you think the chances were, of my attacking Azkaban?”

            “Great enough to seek you out.” Malfoy’s eyes stared back at him, glazed mirrors.

            Harry sighed. Well, yes, perhaps that had been a stupid question. It was implied by Malfoy’s answer to the previous question, at least. He thought a moment, then asked, “How did you find us?”

            “I sought out Lovegood.” Malfoy slumped slightly to the side, resting against the arm of the chair. For some reason, that made Harry more uneasy than the sight of his eyes. The Malfoy he knew would never sit like that. “She gave me the directions.”

            “Why did Luna betray us?” Ron demanded in a whisper to Harry, but Malfoy answered the question before Harry could.

            “She didn’t,” he muttered, head rolling to the side and eyes fluttering wildly, as though he wanted to hold them open but hadn’t the strength. “I found her with directional spells, and she judged that I was sincere and sent me to you.”

            “How did you know to find her in the first place?” Ron asked. “You’re not an Auror, you’re not a Hit Wizard, and I can’t believe that you’ve been friends with someone who’s friends with us.” Harry nodded along with him. Those were questions that he should have asked at first, but he had let his sympathy with the way that Malfoy looked under Veritaserum catch up with him. He couldn’t do that if he was going to be an effective questioner.

            Keeping my people already in the revolution safe comes before adopting any new ones.

            Malfoy managed a laugh, though it was two notes only and promptly trailed off into the words he spoke next. “Anyone who read the p-papers could see that she must be a contact. She supported you too much. I found her with my spells, she judged me, and that’s it.” Abruptly he forced his eyes open and stared at Ron. “D-disbelieve me if you like, but I don’t see how you can.”

            From the expression on Ron’s face, he didn’t think it was possible, either, Harry thought. He was half-glad of that. This interrogation had been spiky and uncomfortable for him in a way that it hadn’t been during the others, probably because he had believed that most of the people seeking them out were sincere. But Malfoy…

            Who could say why he was here? His parents were a reason, but Harry didn’t know if they were the whole of it.

            He let Ron handle the rest of the interrogation—his emotions made him unfit for it—and passed the time in thoughtful observation of Malfoy. Malfoy had changed only a little, he decided. It was more like he had been pared down by a blade until he reached the stage where he was the essence of the boy he’d been and the man his parents had probably wanted him to be. More pointy, more thin, more desperate.

            Desperate?

            Harry paused and frowned. Yes, the word had occurred to him for no good reason, but sometimes his instincts and his intuition spoke to him in such ways. He knew that he had to follow the line of the clue, at least, and he did so while Ron asked more and more personal questions, ones that Malfoy always answered with variations on the same truth: he wanted his parents out of prison and had come to seek help for them.

            Desperation made Malfoy’s case easier to understand. If he had no hope in the Wizengamot, as he kept insisting, then yes, he would seek out Harry, whose revolution he might hope would be a true revolution, from top to bottom, challenging the Ministry and also challenging those institutions the Ministry ran.

            Hope might matter to him more than hatred.

            Harry walked thoughtfully back to his own room when the interrogation was done. Ron would consult with those of the former Aurors and Hit Wizards who had known Malfoy, and then with George, whose ability to judge a lie was unsurpassed. Only if everything satisfied them would he bring the case to Harry.

            Regardless of what they found—unless it was some massive hole in the workings of Veritaserum that Harry had never known existed—he thought he knew what decision he would make.

*

            Hermione spent the rest of the day commiserating with Aurors and answering questions in Minister Clearwater’s office. She said over and over again that she hadn’t known what Harry was planning, that the existence of a device or spell that could snatch wands was a surprise to her, and that she thought Harry wouldn’t do anything else for a while.

            Then the news came of the raid on Hogwarts, and Hermione sat with her hands folded close in her lap, wondering if they would dismiss her as the Minister’s office filled with agitated jabber, hoping they would. She needed some time alone to marvel and to investigate the contents of the note that had fallen from Desang’s sleeve.

            Instead, Head Auror Summers sat down in front of her and stared at her commandingly. Hermione stared back, fighting not to blink. Meeting the Head Auror’s gaze always reminded her of staring into the sun. Hermione had been through several conversations with her already, mostly about why Ron had joined Harry, what he was planning next, and whether she had received any owls from him. (Thanks to Hector, Hermione could answer that last question with perfect truth).

            Now, Summers said quietly, “I saw the message from the thieves. Fred and George Weasley. My sources have told me that Fred Weasley died in the Battle of Hogwarts, and the funeral records confirm as much. Do you have any idea why his name would appear now, on the walls of the Ministry?”

            Hermione opened her mouth to answer—

            And paused.

            She hadn’t exercised as much observation so far as a spy really should, but she thought that she could read something strange and new in the set of Summers’s shoulders. Summers wasn’t asking simply because she found the occurrence of the name puzzling. There was some other reason here.

            Hermione touched the pocket where she had concealed the memo and went with her intuition, which her reason would have to catch up with later. “Well, madam,” she said slowly, “I have heard certain rumors about that. And you know that the Weasley twins’ cleverness was proverbial at Hogwarts.”

            “Yes,” Summers said, her nose twitching like a hound’s on the hunt. “I had heard that.”

            Hermione lowered her eyes and acted nervous and reluctant and scared, because that was what they would expect of her right now. “I never thought that one of them could be killed just by a falling wall,” she said. “That was what they told us Fred died of, you know. But it seemed strange to me that no one objected, and that none of his friends attended the funeral.” In reality, that was because everyone had their own funerals to go to and the Weasleys had wanted to bury Fred as soon as possible, for Molly’s and George’s sakes, but Hermione was wagering the conspiracy-obsessed Ministry wouldn’t think of that. “What were they hiding? Why did they want to keep people away? It’s worth thinking about.”

            “An empty coffin, perhaps,” Summers breathed, her eyes directed at the far wall instead of Hermione’s face. “Or a body that had been prepared hastily to look like his. Merlin knows there were plenty of bodies around after the battle at Hogwarts.”

            Hermione battled back her discomfort. She hated casting aspersions on Ron’s family this way even more than she hated the Ministry doing it, but she knew, from the letters he’d written her, that he’d expected something like it. He had known the rest of his family could be in trouble when he chose to join Harry, after all. “Yes, there were,” she said, and nothing else. She’d done enough. Let the Ministry come up with their own silly stories for the moment.

            Summers seemed to focus on her again, and gave her a rare smile. “I’m sorry, Madam Granger-Weasley,” she said. “I can understand how this must have shaken you. Most of us hoped that Auror Potter would do nothing but kick up a fuss for a few days and then surrender himself of his own free will. This trick shows us that he’s more serious than we thought.”

            You should have known that, Hermione thought. And calling him Auror in front of me when everyone knows he was sacked and you think him mad won’t soften me. But she lowered her head and nodded meekly.

            “I’d like to have you answer a few more questions,” Summers said casually. “If you’ll follow me to my office, please?” She stood and swept the room with a cool gaze. “I think the Minister’s office is becoming extraordinarily crowded.”

            Hermione did as asked, heart pumping anxiously. She had done well so far, but she hadn’t had a sustained interrogation from an Auror, either. They had gone more gently with Desang, and even with the ones who had interviewed her immediately after Harry’s escape.

            The memo crinkled gently in her pocket, stiffening her resolve even as it bent.

            If the Ministry has turned to necromancy, who knows what else they’ll do? I have to resist them.

*

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Intoxicate the Sun