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

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine—First Battle
            “That’s all of them.” Hagrid shoved the Pensieve towards Harry. His forehead dripped with sweat. Harry knew why. It hadn’t been easy for Hagrid to use the broken halves of his wand to pull his memories of Ernhardt from his head and drop them into the Pensieve. He’d had to rest several times and do it across a couple of days, instead of all at once.
            Harry raised a hand and squeezed Hagrid’s arm. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate you doing this, Hagrid, really.” He didn’t know if Draco, or even Ron or Hermione, would say that to him, so he’d taken it on himself to do it.
            Hagrid beamed at him and patted his shoulder, nearly sending Harry a couple of inches into the floor. “Yes, well,” Hagrid murmured bashfully. “I owe yer a lot. And yeh’ve been doing a lot of good with the thestrals.”
            Harry gnawed his lips to keep himself from snorting. That mattered most to Hagrid, he thought, caring for the thestrals and treating them as true partners. Maybe it was a good thing that Voldemort had never tried to corrupt Hagrid with promises of fair treatment for magical creatures. Hagrid would have been on his side if he had made it convincing enough.
            “Thanks,” he repeated, and took the Pensieve upstairs, while Hagrid headed out to calm the thestrals. He said they were getting more and more restless, the longer they spent in one place. In the Forbidden Forest, they had room to roam and didn’t have to obey a summons to a feeding place if they preferred to hunt their own meals.
            But if Harry was right and Hagrid’s memories were as precious as he expected them to be, then the thestrals would have the chance to leave this place and roam about soon.
            He patted the side of the Pensieve, and then adjusted it to make sure that he wouldn’t spilled any of the precious silvery liquid. The last thing he wanted was for Hagrid to have to do this all over again.
*
            “You think that his memories could tell us anything that we don’t already know?” Draco looked doubtfully at the Pensieve standing in the middle of the room. He had to admit, he wasn’t eager to look into the half-giant’s memories. They were sure to be repetitions of what they already knew.
            And he had a collection of toys from Weasley—the other one—and Prince that he wanted to look at. They had given them to Draco and explained that they hadn’t been able to think of a use for them in battle. The challenge was for Draco to figure out a way they would be useful, at least as distractions. The chance to play with powerful magic and to show how smart he was was irresistible.
            “I think we should at least look at them, and see.”
            The taut way that Harry held his jaw made Draco decide he wasn’t going to get out of this by pleading a previous commitment, or boredom. He sighed and put aside the latest of Prince’s toys, another hummingbird, this time with wings of pearl and a shrill buzz when used that would make the chains underneath it entwine. It was a toy to entertain children, but Prince—and so far, Draco—was at a loss how to make it more than that. “Fine. I don’t want you to go by yourself.”
            Harry grinned at him and extended his hand. Draco walked across the workroom to clasp it. “Afraid that you’ll be left behind and won’t understand our enemies as well as I do when we face them?”
            “I want more taunting material to use against the Ministry,” Draco said instead, smiling at Harry as they bent over the Pensieve together. “What I know already is starting to stale from lack of newness.”
            Harry would have retorted to that, but by that time, the memories had engulfed them, and they were standing a second later on the floor of the Forbidden Forest. Draco stared around, his brow furrowed. He knew the near reaches of the Forest well from his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts, and the gathering of Potions ingredients he had done then.
            There was no trace of familiarity in the trees around them. Draco wondered exactly how far the half-giant would wander in search of his pets.
            A pity that he probably wouldn’t share the knowledge even if we asked for it, because he would be too worried about us disturbing the nesting place of some rare bird.
            “Hellbound!”
            The noise nearly startled Draco into leaping away from Harry, until he realized it was the half-giant’s voice, and the light swinging past them at a near distance was the half-giant’s lantern. Sniffing, and ignoring the way Harry peered at him mockingly from the corner of his eye, Draco studied the path of light left by the lantern’s arc. It sparkled in a small pool and off a thestral’s footprint filled with water on a game trail, but still he didn’t know where they were.
            The half-giant himself came into sight a moment later, bending over to examine the footprint, and then straightening up and nodding excitedly. “I’m coming!” he bellowed into the distance, before pushing forwards.
            Draco snorted again. Hellbound had to be the name of a thestral, then. At least the half-giant had more imagination than Draco had thought.
            Together, they followed Hagrid at a distance until he came to a stop and stared, swinging the lantern around. “What…?” Draco heard him pant.
            Harry began to hurry, seemingly forgetting that this was just a memory and he couldn’t help the half-giant no matter what was going to happen next. Draco restrained him with a hand on his wrist, and got a glare for his troubles.
            “I’m doing the best I can!” Harry whispered, and Draco sighed and gave in, creeping forwards along with him.
            He just didn’t see how it would do any good. They would see the source of this memory, the evil that Hagrid had encountered of Ernhardt’s spinning, sooner or later. Why hurry to meet it?
            The “evil” was a thick fence that stretched through this section of the woods. It looked like it was made of thorns woven together, along with scraps of dark spiderweb that Draco identified without hesitation as Acromantula work. Inside the pen milled a number of thestrals, snorting and kicking each other.
            Draco frowned. Thestrals could fly, and the pen didn’t seem to extend up into the sky. What was holding them here?
            Then he saw that the same dark spiderwebs coiled across the wings of the captive thestrals, binding them to their sides, and that one of the larger prisoners was Carvenhoof.
            Draco let go of Harry’s wrist to reach for his own wand, only stopping when Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t like it, either,” he said, and turned to pay attention to Hagrid again.
            The half-giant stomped along the perimeter of the pen, looking more and more upset. The thestrals followed him with their sickly white eyes, stamping their hooves in response and whinnying shrilly when Hagrid called to them. At last Hagrid roared, cast down his lantern, and did something that it was hard for Draco to see in the suddenly wildly swinging light and shadows.
            Then Hagrid’s shoulders heaved, and the pen shifted a bit. Draco opened his mouth, then swallowed. Yes, it was useless exclaiming like this over something that had already happened.
            He resolutely ignored the way that Harry was standing beside him with his arms folded and a grin on his face.
            Hagrid was lifting the pen. He tore at it, and the thorns that had rooted it ripped from the earth. The spiderwebs lashed out, reacting as part of a defensive spell that Draco had never seen before but would dearly like to learn, but they couldn’t do anything. They landed on Hagrid, and he shrugged and tore through them, his muscles moving smoothly under his skin.
            The half-giant roared once, and the webs that had tried to gain some sort of purchase on him snapped. Then he heaved the pen to the side and threw it so that the thorns cracked and split. The thestrals promptly stampeded out, and Hagrid bent down and began to pick the webs out of their wings with more delicacy than Draco had thought those huge hands could muster.
            A second later, a shadow stirred at the other side of the clearing.
            Draco wanted to gag as he saw the flare of intense blue eyes. He reached out, and Harry’s hand was already there, moving towards his. He was glad that they understood each other so well, and could cooperate without even a word.
            Ernhardt had been the hardest foe they ever fought, and to see him alive again in this memory, even if it was in his own body and not one he had stolen, made Draco want to shudder. It was hard to stand still as Ernhardt stepped out of the shadows and studied Hagrid in a leisurely way. It even made him want to defend the half-giant.
            He leaned on Harry instead, and shivered.
            “Why did you destroy my research project?” Ernhardt’s voice was soft, and might sound sane, if you didn’t know what you were listening for.
            “It wasn’t yer bloody research project.” There was still a touch of thickness about Hagrid’s voice that would have made Draco reluctant to be alone with him. Ernhardt didn’t look nervous about it, but then, Draco had already noted Ernhardt’s insanity, both inside and outside this memory. “It was my thestrals! You caged ‘em!” He made a stabbing motion with one finger towards Ernhardt, and Draco had to wonder why this memory didn’t end with him storming over and ripping Ernhardt to pieces.
            Then Carvenhoof came up behind Hagrid and nudged him in the back, and Draco thought he knew. Hagrid immediately turned around and melted over the thestral. “What did he do to yeh?” he crooned, scratching behind the thestral’s eyes in a way that Draco knew would probably get him mauled if he tried it. “Did he bind yer wings?” He gave Ernhardt another dark look and started to pick at the webs on Carvenhoof’s wings again.
            Ernhardt closed his eyes and swayed a little. A second later, his body slumped to the ground, and Hagrid staggered to the side as if someone had hit him on the temple.
            Draco felt his skin ripple. He hadn’t had the chance often to see Ernhardt actually possessing someone, since they had usually been at a distance when that happened. Now the question was why Hagrid had managed to survive the memory.
            He hadn’t even opened his eyes to let Draco see the blue in them yet, though, when Carvenhoof gave a terrible neigh and moved in front of the half-giant. He was practically prancing, his wings unfolding as much as they could when they still had some webs on them, and his hooves scraping and stamping on the ground. He locked his feet in place and tilted his head back, pointing his nose at the sky.
            His second neigh seemed to stagger Hagrid as much as the entry of Ernhardt into his head had. Hagrid gasped and opened his eyes. Draco could see a blue spark guttering in them, but it seemed to be losing out against the normal brown.
            “Car-Carvenhoof…” breathed Hagrid, reaching out a hand.
            The thestral came forwards at once, ducking his head and rubbing his muzzle against Hagrid’s hand. Draco sniffed. He was glad that he had only seen this memory after he had ridden with Carvenhoof once and been assured that the thestral liked him. Anyone seeing this would think that Carvenhoof had never had a friend in the world except Hagrid.
            Then the thestral’s eyes began to burn. Draco stared uneasily, aware that Harry was doing the same thing beside him. Could Ernhardt possess an animal? Draco wasn’t sure that he had ever seen him try. He had animated some, sure, but those had either been skeletons that he’d used Macgeorge’s necromantic gift on after he took over her body, or companions of the twisted he had possessed.
            But the spark that appeared was dark instead of blue, and other thestrals were crowding forwards as if they meant to assist Carvenhoof. In a few seconds, a solid wall of thestrals stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Hagrid, and then bent in around him like a crescent moon. It was its own cage of glistening dark hides and white eyes and flapping bat-like wings that the thestrals extended to join the edges.
            Hagrid shut his eyes. The blue spark in them had been growing bigger, but when he reached out and put his hands desperately on the necks of two thestrals, Carvenhoof and a mare next to him, Draco doubted it would go on growing.
            He was right.
            The thestrals all reared at the same time, and cried out together. Their voices echoed through the Forest, although the only effect on the trees seemed to be some leaves swirling down, faster and harder than Draco thought they would have otherwise. The Forest shivered and strained against invisible bonds, and was silent.
            The cries hammered into Hagrid, though. He went to his knees, and began to heave. As the thestrals continued their seemingly effortless stance on their hind legs and cried out again, the vomit flowed forth more copiously from Hagrid’s lips, and Draco had to turn his head away. Not even for the sake of watching a defeat inflicted on Ernhardt could he keep watching that.
            He turned back only when he heard the hooves of the thestrals hit the ground again. They were crowding around Hagrid, nudging at his hair and ears. He reached up and smoothed his hands along their necks, sobbing his thanks.
            Across the clearing, Ernhardt’s body revived. He stared in silence at the scene for some moments. Draco strained, but they were standing too far away to see if he showed fear, and they would have to move around Hagrid and the thestrals to get closer.
            Then Ernhardt turned and vanished into the darkness.
            Draco exhaled in frustration. If Hagrid had been paying more attention, been more alert, the threat of Ernhardt could have been ended then and there. He didn’t seem vulnerable to Ernhardt’s possession, and the thestrals didn’t, either.
            On the other hand, there was no reason Ernhardt couldn’t have Apparated. Draco had reason to know that the school’s anti-Apparition wards didn’t extend into the Forest.
            “Draco?”
            Harry was pulling on his hand. Draco blinked, and slowly lifted his head from the dark and dripping basin. The Pensieve memory had ended, and he’d been so involved in thoughts of different futures that he hadn’t noticed.
            Harry cast a charm that caused any clinging droplets of the memories to rain back into the Pensieve, and nodded slowly. His eyes were aglow in a way that made Draco nearly recoil, until he reminded himself, first, that Ernhardt was dead, and, second, that he had made people’s eyes glow with anything but happiness and excitement.
            “We’ve got the evidence we needed,” Harry whispered. “The Ministry might be able to explain away the Head Auror’s keeping and binding thestrals in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. ‘Secret Ministry reasons’ or ‘Unspeakables’ explains so much. But here we’ve got evidence that he also possessed people.”
            Draco had somehow lost sight of their original purpose in hoping to find that, and he grinned at Harry now and swept him into his arms, dancing him around the room. Harry lifted and twisted away just enough that they wouldn’t upset the Pensieve.
            “They’ll have to listen to us about Ernhardt,” Harry whispered. “They have to.”
            Draco hesitated a little over the passion in his voice, holding Harry out at a distance. “The Ministry probably never will,” he said. “You know it’s the public we’re hoping to convince, so they’ll demand some kind of accounting from the Ministry.”
            “It’s the public I was thinking of,” Harry said, and tightened his hands on Draco’s arms, staring into his eyes. “But the Ministry beyond them, and the way that we can make them pay attention to us. The way the Ministry people who said that we were lying will have to pay attention to them.”
            Draco could have opened his mouth and done what he could to ruin the triumph shining in Harry’s eyes. He could have pointed out that many of the Ministry people who had claimed Ernhardt was innocent had been doing it for policy reasons, to get rid of Draco and Harry as embarrassments. Whether they believed it or not was irrelevant. They had been willing to say it, which made them enemies.
            But in the meantime, there was that shine, and the fact that they didn’t need to take anything away from each other. They had already lost enough, in the conspiracy of their real enemies.
            Draco clasped a hand behind Harry’s neck and leaned in enough to kiss him. “Yes,” he said quietly, when he drew back from the dazed expression on Harry’s face. “We’ve done it.”
*
            “Ready?” Hermione gave him a nervous smile across the mane of her thestral.
            “More ready than you look,” Harry said, and ducked the package she tried to hurl at him. She immediately Summoned the package back, of course, because it was important, looking contrite, and tucked it into the saddlebag again.
            “I’ve come this far,” she said, and faced the front again. “And I swore that I would help you. I think I can take a little flying. Flying to the Ministry when we went to the Department of Mysteries was more dangerous than this.”
            “That’s right!” Hagrid said, passing her thestral and poking her, gently for Hagrid, in the ribs. Hermione still grunted and reached up to rub the new bruise. Hagrid didn’t notice, turning with sparkling eyes to Harry. “And we’re going to avenge the thestrals?”
            Harry nodded. “We are.” He managed to keep his balance as the thestral he rode shifted beneath him. It still felt like riding several brooms, all determined to poke him in the arse, but those hours of practice had paid off. At least he knew there was no way that he would fall off now.
            Hagrid chuckled excitedly and went to mount the lead stallion. Harry looked around. Draco was behind him on Carvenhoof, and Ron on the other side of Hermione. Harry thought it was a good place for him, and not only because their thestrals were a mated pair who flew together by preference. Ron would be there to catch Hermione if her head spun and she started falling.
            Behind them sat Prince and George, both as comfortable on thestrals as if they had trained there. Harry shook his head a little. He supposed that they might have practiced with harder tricks, in the past.
            Hagrid coughed. Harry turned to the front in time to see him lift a bulging saddlebag, slung on a sturdy rope over the lead stallion’s withers rather than tied to a saddle, and shake it.
            “Remember!” he called out. “Yeh have to get the bag open and shake ‘em as hard as you can! And not until yeh see the whites of their eyes!”
            “You would think he thought this plan up,” Draco muttered.
            Harry gave him a look, and Draco subsided, his hands stroking Carvenhoof’s neck. Carvenhoof turned his head and let his nose rest against Draco’s forearm for a moment, the one with the Dark Mark. Even though the Mark was hidden under clothes right now, Harry saw Draco’s face soften and clear. Harry smiled. Affection was still so rare in Draco’s life that even a thestral showing it to him wasn’t to be despised.
            I have to make some effort to be alone with him when we get back. We’ve had to spend too much time with the others lately.
            “Right,” said Hagrid. “Then up!” He flipped his hand out, and the lead stallion spread his wings and charged the edge of the cliff.
            The thestrals were lifting beneath them even as they ran. Harry snorted a little. He actually wasn’t sure why they needed to lift off the cliff instead of just flapping off from where they stood.
            But he had to admit that it was exciting and dramatic, feeling the wind in his hair, feeling the flick and hum of hooves beneath him, and then the sudden sheer drop beneath the hooves, the reeling sea below, and the spiky mane of the stallion he rode rustling against his hands.
            He threw his head back and drew in deep breaths of rich, salt-impregnated sea air, and the thestral beneath him gave a small buck and headed higher.
            In seconds, Carvenhoof and Draco were flying beside them. Harry reached across the slight distance between, while he still could, to clasp Draco’s left arm, in the same place that Carvenhoof had touched with his nose. Draco looked back at him with the same gentle expression in his eyes.
            “Steady on,” Draco whispered.
            Harry nodded, and winds parted them. They whirled higher and higher, heading north and east at a speed that was almost frightening. Harry wasn’t a boy anymore, and he had spent hours training with thestrals now. He knew exactly how quickly they could fly, and he had to fight not to shiver, as much with the exhilarating speed as with the coldness of the wind as it blew past him.
            The landscape beneath them changed, flowing from mountains to forests to farms to roads to houses, although most of the time they were so high that Harry could only make out general shapes. He wondered for a second what would happen if they rode the thestrals all the way to Hogwarts, and swirled around the castle’s towers. That would give the Ministry and the papers a story, for sure.
            But they had a closer target, and in an hour they were among its towers instead. London, thick clouds and charms protecting them from the Muggles’ view as they soared.
            The thestrals slowed and dropped at Hagrid’s bellowed command, and Harry scanned the buildings. It hadn’t been so long that he had seen the Ministry from outside that he’d forgotten what it looked like, but it still took him a minute to locate it, and see the wizards hurrying towards it, although the ones visible on the streets were dressed in Muggle clothes.
            “Target,” Hagrid said, in a whisper that still blew Harry’s hair back like the wind.
            Harry cast a Diffindo on the saddlebag, his thestral hovering with impossible grace as he did. They didn’t have to do fighting maneuvers yet; this wasn’t the time. But the thestrals began to swirl back and forth, passing each other, almost touching wings. The flight that had come with them but didn’t have riders withdrew, hovering in turn, ready to attack if someone interfered.
            And the leaflets that they had put together with Hermione’s skill at Copying Charms and George’s illustrations sifted out of the bags and began to fall into the alleys.
            So that they wouldn’t end up confusing innocent Muggles and perhaps getting the Obliviators called out—Obliviators who probably wouldn’t confine themselves to Muggles—the leaflets had a simple charm on them that would draw them to the nearest magic. Most blew into and stuck to wizards, who pulled them off their clothes with confused looks on their faces.
            Only, of course, until they started reading about the experiments that the Unspeakables had performed on Jeremiah and other innocent people, with Harry’s disfigured face prominent on the front page. Then confusion usually turned to horror.
            Laughing maniacally, Harry tossed his empty saddlebag into the air and shredded it, only making his thestral flick its ears a little. Draco imitated him a second later, grinning at him in perfect kinship and understanding.
            This is the real beginning of our war.
*
SP777: I think that, during that period of rest they’re going to take, they could have plenty of time to make up their minds about what they want to do.
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Chains of Fool's Gold