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Burning Day	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10061 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Nine—An Interesting Experiment
            Harry flipped the pouch on his belt that held the golden crystalline object. He had found that containing it in a pouch of soft moleskin like the one that had supposedly been found on the first wizard intruding into the centaur part of the Forbidden Forest would stop its beams from reaching for his magic.
            He stood outside next to the lake, ignoring the way that the waters lapped softly on the shore at his feet. He had set up several wards around him, working with the will of Hogwarts to protect the grounds. He wanted no one, human or otherwise, to stumble into him as he worked on the crystal.
            He picked up the pouch and held it in front of him for a second. He needed to have it out to work with, but he was reluctant to expose the magic of Hogwarts to a possible draining effect.
            Well, he’d done impossible things before, hadn’t he, like conjured Persephone out of nothing and then broken her magic down and driven it back into Hogwarts? Harry bared his teeth and raised his left hand.
            The magic he called to this time came from deep down in the earth, deeper than the bond he had with Hogwarts, deeper than anything he had called on before. He reached down to it, and it stirred and rose for him, yawning with an enormous sound on the way. Harry closed his eyes.
            His hope was that magic that came from the heart of the earth itself was going to be more resistant to the golden crystal than wizarding magic—which all the magic of Hogwarts was, even if it came from the Founders and not Harry.
            The ground in front of him stirred. Harry moved his hand to the side so that the rising power wouldn’t disrupt the lake too much. That would be a good beginning to his alliance with the merfolk.
            The dirt heaved and mounded up. Harry blinked into the face of what looked like a swaying worm, or a dragon. Even as he looked at it, it formed itself, maybe in response to the images in his mind, so that it had long, curling horns and a blunt brown snout like a muzzle, with impressions along the sides of the muzzle like teeth. It had dark hollows in the sides of the face for eyes.
            Harry swallowed and opened the pouch.
            The golden crystal vibrated in his hand as he held it out. Harry stared down at it, and saw the same thing he had seen once before, the reaching rays from the sides of the strange shape. They aimed at his magic, and the wards he had set up, and the edges of the Hogwarts grounds where his power secured the protection of his Court, and the lake where the magic of the merfolk lingered.
            But they didn’t reach towards the rearing earth-worm in front of Harry.
            Harry grinned savagely, and closed his hands around the crystal. It was an uncomfortable sensation, as the spikes cut into him and sucked at his skin, drawing off the power from his core. But that also brought him into intimate contact with it, and made it a lot easier to realize what it was doing.
            It’s a fucking ritual.
            It was. Harry could see the streaks of lightning darting across the surface of the crystal, something he would never have noticed if he were simply trying to watch it from a distance, or in the moments before slamming his desk drawer shut. The lightning formed runes, and surrounded the body and “limbs” of the crystal at a distance from the center. Harry couldn’t see the whole crystal at once, but he knew that the runes would probably form a circle.
            Every time a wizard used the crystal, they basically enacted a ritual that took place entirely inside the thing. Or maybe the open air gave the ritual circle embedded in the crystal its power. Either way, it was no wonder that these things were so powerful. Ritual magic, as Harry had reason to know, could do things that most ordinary spells never could.
            Harry started as he felt his hands grow cold, and realized that he could no longer feel the crystal he was touching. It was slick with his blood, and the color was changing from gold to pink and flushed.
            Harry threw the golden crystal straight at the earth-worm, which had continued to watch him with those hollow black eyes, unmoving.
            The worm’s maw gaped, and it swallowed the crystal without a blink and without a pause. Then, slowly, it writhed back into the earth, and was gone. It had helped him as much as it was going to. It would take the crystal back into the heart of the rock and stone, and probably crush it there.
            Harry gasped and sank to his knees. His heart was laboring. Draining one’s magic wasn’t pleasant.
            He knelt there until he knew that he could stand up and walk to the edge of the lake without falling over. Then he bathed his hands in the water, scrubbing until even the feeling of the crystal’s slick coolness was gone.
            “Lord Potter.”
            That was a merwoman, her head poking out from the surface. Harry managed to stop himself from jerking and splashing her, but it was a near thing. He hadn’t felt her swimming near at all, despite his connection to Hogwarts and the lake. The crystal had depleted his magical core more than he’d thought it had.
            “Yes,” he said, nodding to her and waiting for the weakness in his knees to pass.
            “Why did you call up such a potent force so near the lake?” He hadn’t met this particular merwoman before, and he wondered why, when she was obviously proficient with English in a way not many of them were. She folded her arms and stared at him. “That is not the act of an ally.”
            “I’m sorry,” Harry said, and at least his voice was calm and confident. Either from the lake or from the lack of constant pulling on his core, he felt a little stronger. “I was dealing with a weapon that some of my enemies had invented to sneak through my wards. They had done it at least twice without me knowing. I needed the earth-magic to contain it, and my own magic to see how the object worked. I forgot that you would be able to feel the earth shifting around below the water.”
            The merwoman studied him some more. Harry endured the scrutiny, wondering what he would do if she didn’t believe him and summoned some other merfolk to combat him. He didn’t think he could resist too many in this state, and he didn’t want to hurt them, anyway.
            The merwoman finally snorted and flipped her tail at him. “You should be more careful,” she said in that resonant voice, drifting away from shore and more towards the middle of the lake. “Next time, we might not accept that apology.”
            “I know,” Harry tried his best to look repentant. He must have looked enough like that for her to believe him, because she dived.
            Harry waited, shivering, beside the lake, but she didn’t surface again. And he had enough strength now to step back and ask Hogwarts to take him to the castle. It made the castle hesitate a few seconds, to decide what to do in the absence of further instructions, but then it formed a long roll of earth beneath his feet that looked sort of like a train, and bore him off through the night towards the entrance.
            Harry sighed and let his body relax into the dirt. He knew the train would take him through the walls of Hogwarts, too, and up to his office, and he would spend as much time as he needed to relaxing and recovering in its safety.
            He knew how to combat the crystals now, and keep all the people—magical creatures included—safe within his Court. That was worth the risk he had taken confronting the ritual hidden inside the golden crystal.
*
            “Thank you for coming.”
            Lucy Lenneal had taken charge of Draco the moment he arrived at the Ministry, and she was gliding ahead of him now, taking him through corridors he had never seen before. Draco wasn’t entirely surprised to discover that there were departments within departments here, parts of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that the Aurors didn’t know about, others secret from the Hit Wizards, and ones that the Minister didn’t know existed. He was just glad that he had taken the precaution of making friends with some of the people who did know those secrets, so he wouldn’t be taken by surprise when he became Minister.
            That didn’t mean Lenneal would show him all the secrets she held, any more than the others would. But at least he would know that this underlayer of conspiracy existed, and that might teach him more about where to look. Someone who did know that secret passages existed in Hogwarts would have more advantages than someone who didn’t, even if they didn’t know them all individually.
            Lenneal halted in front of a door made of a wood that Draco identified, after a moment of struggle, as white oak. There was a symbol in the middle of it that looked like an upside-down silver M. Lenneal knocked three times, each time on a different part of the M.
            There was a pause that felt lengthy and embarrassed to Draco, and then the door dissolved like mist. Draco raised his eyebrows. He knew that particular ward, but it was complex and difficult.
            “I trust that I’ll be impressed with the caliber of your companions, if one of them made that ward,” he murmured, and followed Lenneal inside.
            Lenneal’s sudden silence made Draco sure that the companion was in this room. He drew his cloak off and nodded to everyone in sight, faintly smiling.
            There were numerous men and women in this room, more than he had expected. It seemed that the Ministry’s move to consolidate power in a council had alienated some people who had been willing to put up with Minister Tillipop. And there was a tall, strong man standing at the head of the circular table in the room who made Draco pause in the middle of the remark he was about to make.
            “Really,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Diggory.”
            “Call me Amos.” Diggory looked Draco directly in the eye, the way that his son Cedric once had. “And I know. But there are things we have to talk about, and I want someone sensible to discuss them with.”
            After considering that for a second, Draco nodded and handed his cloak over to the diaphanous, ghost-like presence that had obviously replaced a house-elf. It was true that it wouldn’t be wise to have house-elves present in this meeting. They might blurt out something that someone didn’t want, and most house-elves in the Ministry had multiple owners and thus multiple loyalties.
            “So.” Diggory looked around the room and collected the others with his eyes. Some of those present drifted slowly in the direction of the table, though, Draco noted. The alliance was uneasy, like most coalitions made between pure-bloods and others in the Ministry. “You will become the Minister we want?”
            “That depends on your desires,” said Draco, and took the wide oaken chair that Lenneal had indicated for him.
            “A political answer.” Diggory—or Amos, as Draco supposed he should call him even in his head so that he didn’t get tripped up—stared at him intensely. “But what we want at the moment is a strong Minister. That’s what everyone wants. That’s what everyone needs.”
            Draco allowed one eyebrow to lift. “I thought some people enjoyed not having a strong Minister. It certainly allowed you to get away with things during Tillipop’s reign more easily.”
            “When you speak of getting away,” Amos began.
            Draco forced himself to dip his head in response. “Forgive me, that was badly-phrased. What I meant was that you had achieved your goals more easily with a Minister like Tillipop, I thought.” There. He didn’t think even Rosenthal could have asked him to be more diplomatic. “Why would you want one who would pry into your affairs?”
            Glances flew around the table. Draco waited, and Amos finally seemed to realize that everyone had been silently electing him spokesperson. He sighed and faced Draco again. “The Ministry is faltering for lack of a strong Minister. No one ordinary trusts us anymore. The goblins send us requests to see the Minister on a daily basis, and when we tell them that we have a council now, they say that they’ve always dealt with the Minister and consider it essential that we have one. Foreign wizards don’t really want to deal with the council, either. Basically, Mr. Malfoy, the wizarding world is resistant to change, and we didn’t know how resistant when we thought we could change things.”
            “Well, that can’t be completely true,” Draco said, frowning a little, and inwardly enjoying himself hugely. “I’m a change from Minister Tillipop, even a change in that no Malfoy has ever been Minister, and yet you assume people will vote for me.”
            Amos leaned forwards. “You’ll allow us the illusion of continuity while we make the changes that we need to in the background.”
            Draco smiled slowly. “Now, I think, we have a bargain that we can understand. As long as you realize that I want the power I can claim to be more than illusory.”
            “All we require is that you put up a good front, and deal with people like the goblins and the ambassadors who care dearly about our having a Minister, and you can do whatever you want other than that.”
            Some of the people at the table frowned, and Draco set his fingers together. “Whether or not they wanted you to speak for them, Amos, it’s clear that not everyone here agrees it’s that simple.”
            “Then we need to hammer out something more complicated,” said Amos, and gestured insistently. “I’m ready to do that right now.”
            “If you are,” Draco said, and sat up more firmly, “then of course I am.”
*
            It was nearly eleven the next morning before Harry’s fireplace flared and Draco tumbled through it. He looked as though he was sleepwalking, an impression that his rapidly blinking eyes and deep circles under them didn’t help.
“What’s wrong?” Harry was across the room to catch him before he could fall, wrapping his arms firmly around Draco’s waist and assisting him into the chair behind the desk. He considered a second, then snapped his fingers. Hogwarts began to bring a more cushioned chair up from a lower classroom that no one used anymore. Harry would normally have tried to conjure or Transfigure one, but his magic was still a little shaky.
“I was negotiating most of the night, that’s all.” Draco’s mouth opened in a gigantic yawn, and he peered at Harry over his own lips. “You think you’re the only one who can assemble a circle of diverse allies? Well, you aren’t.”
            Harry snorted in both amusement and relief, and settled on the desk next to Draco. “These are allies in the Ministry?”
            Draco nodded and tried to respond, but another yawn interrupted him. By that time, the chair had arrived. Harry helped him into it, and Draco leaned his head back against the cushions with a luxurious sigh. “Most of the senior Aurors, and some other people who work in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Other Departments, too, and the important undersecretaries in them, and some people who fulfill the role that my father used to and donate large political sums.” He paused delicately. “I even got someone I think was an Unspeakable, though I can’t promise the whole Department of Mysteries will follow her decrees.”
            “That’s wonderful, Draco.” Harry moved behind him so that he could massage his shoulders. “You didn’t have to come over here right away, though. You know that? You could have slept in, enough not to stumble as you came through the fireplace.”
            Draco snorted like he was going to snore, but no such luck. “I did not stumble.”
            “You didn’t see yourself from the outside. I’m happy for what you accomplished, but you look like shit.”
            Draco lifted his head and turned it to glare. Harry expected him to talk some more about how he didn’t look like shit and he was utterly fine and Harry was the one who liked to worry without it meaning anything.
            But what he said was, “Speaking of. I just noticed that your aura is less strong than it usually is. What have you been doing to yourself?”
            Shit.
*
SP777: Yes, the best thing Harry can hope for is that things become normalized and he doesn’t need that extreme combination of fear anymore in the end.
Jester: Thanks! Harry does know how now, although the details will wait until the next chapter.
And I’m not a professional writer, but I appreciate the compliment.
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Burning Day