Chapter Ten of 'Intoxicate the Sun'- Only the Flame

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Nine.

Title: Intoxicate the Sun (10/50)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters; I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Violence (lots of it), heavy angst, sex, references to torture and rape. Ignores the epilogue.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, possibly other minor pairings that might crop up along the way.
Rating: R
Summary: Harry starts a revolution. A revolution with spies, disaffected Aurors, dragons, Azkaban escapees, joke shop owners turned war strategists, and magical theories. And Draco Malfoy is one of the spies--deciding whether he should betray Potter for the sake of his parents, or the other way around.
Author's Notes: This will be a long story, and at this point I don't know how many chapters it's likely to cover. A lot of the chapters include politics and philosophy as well as action, so be warned.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten-Only the Flame

“Mate, I wish you would tell me what you’re doing.”

Ron had been making the same complaint since they left the announcement room, but Harry hadn’t answered him so far, because he didn’t want to chance being out in the corridors where someone might overhear them. In reality, he thought as he shut the door of Ron’s rooms behind them and turned around again, it probably wouldn’t matter. If he began explaining what was in his head right now, no one would understand it.

He didn’t understand it. He only knew that it had to be done.

“I know, Ron,” he said, and clapped him on the back. He began to pace-maybe prowl would be the better word-back and forth across the center of Ron’s main room. There was a table in the corner that was set up almost like a shrine, covered with photographs of Hermione, and Ron and Hermione’s wedding pictures. Harry stared absently at it. He wished he could have an equivalent in his room, but Ron was with him and there was too much chance someone would find a picture of Hermione and might learn that she was a spy. Harry knew there were people who suspected that, but he would prefer to keep it as much of a secret as possible.

“Then tell me what you’re doing.” Ron’s voice was the same crisp one that he used to command members of the quatrains who were getting above themselves. He leaned forwards and fixed Harry with a seriously impressive glance, hard enough to make Harry wince.

“All right,” Harry said. “We have to fight across a bigger battlefield than I’d assumed we would. Those pictures of necromancy-they change everything, Ron. And I know Hermione will have sent them to Luna, so soon more people than just our group will know about it.”

Ron nodded, his hair more shaggy than usual and swishing around him with a loud, rustling noise. “Yes, I know.”

“We need to get Hermione to tell us where they’re keeping the Inferi,” Harry said softly. He could feel a steady, gentle tingling spreading up his arms and down to the backs of his hands. He scratched one of the tingling places and hoped that it would subside soon. “And then we need to go in and destroy them.”

Ron’s eyes widened. “How are we going to do that?” he asked. “The quatrains are hunting well together, but most of them don’t know spells that would destroy Inferi. It would take at least another week to train them, and by then the Ministry will have moved their necromancers.”

“We have to do it now,” Harry said. “Tonight.”

“You aren’t listening to me,” Ron said, and Harry knew it was a real effort for him to keep the snap out of his words. “How are we going to do it?”

Harry held out one hand. With the way he felt, it took no effort to call the fire. It was with him, a flame that struck between his fingers like a fishing hook and blazed there, shimmering in midair, making Ron back away a step before he thought about it.

Usually, Harry didn’t know when the fire began to blaze; it was just something that happened when his temper flared hot enough, and he couldn’t command it. But this was something else he had worked on when he was alone in his rooms, when he was bored of reading or the words swam on the page in front of him, so blurry that he couldn’t force himself to keep going. He let the flames spread and keep on spreading until Ron’s face gleamed with sweat and Ron’s eyes blinked; then he snapped them back into himself and held them there, looking at Ron expectantly.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Ron whispered. “You-can’t control wild magic that way.”

Harry gave him the only answer he’d been able to come up with, since none of his reading had told him for certain what was happening to him, or why he blazed with fire in the first place, since he hadn’t done it in the war. “I don’t think it’s wild magic anymore.”

In the silence, Ron looked at Harry and nodded once.

Harry didn’t have to look further to know that it was a nod of support.

*

“What makes you think that we’d let you go along?”

Weasley didn’t even bother to look at him. Draco dubbed that the most infuriating thing.

He’d found Weasley five minutes ago, searching through a room that seemed stuffed full of practice wands, books, spare robes, boots, and anything else that the revolution didn’t need at the moment. Draco had wondered what he was searching for, but he didn’t expect Weasley to answer that question. He did expect an answer to his query about whether he could go along on their mission to destroy the Inferi, however. A better one.

“Because,” he said, “there are so few people who are part of your group and know how to fight Inferi. I have Dark spells that can combat them, or, even better, seize control of them from their creators. How many others around here are going to know those spells, or have the time to learn? You’d be mad not to take me.”

Weasley whirled around and snapped his wand out, a beam of red light cutting through the air. Draco thought it was a Stunner at first and started to move, but the beam sliced across his skin and burned, harshly. He forced himself to stand still, instead, while the red light crackled through the air around him and set up a glimmering line like a ward that Draco knew better than to try and cross.

“I don’t care what you think you are, or who.” Weasley spoke with quiet force, leaning forwards on the balls of his feet so far that Draco thought he would fall over. “But you aren’t getting away with the sort of shit that you got away with at Hogwarts because of who your Daddy was. No one cares who your Daddy is now. He’s where he belongs and you’re here until you commit some error that will convince Harry to let us kick you out, and that’s it. Understand?”

“He can come, Ron,” said Potter’s voice, the only voice that Draco thought could have penetrated the red haze of anger that had filled his ears and vision at the mention of his father.

Draco turned and stared at Potter. Potter looked back with a faint smile, but didn’t seem concerned with what Draco would say or not say; instead, he was focused on Weasley, who was looking at Potter with the stillness of shock.

After a moment, Weasley shook his head and whispered, “What? Why?”

“Because what he says is true,” Potter said calmly. “We’ll need someone who can get rid of the Inferi. Get rid of them,” he said, snapping his head around suddenly and staring at Draco. “We don’t want them ourselves.”

Draco opened his mouth to argue, and then closed it and told himself not to be a fool. Potter’s intervention meant he would get to accompany him, something Draco had hardly hoped for even though he had insisted on it. He would be stupid if he made so much fuss that Potter left him behind as the preferable course to avoid trouble.

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Weasley protested. “We don’t know what he came here for. If he’s a spy for the Ministry, then he might think that he can get in the way and give the Inferi back to them.”

Potter laughed, and the whole corridor seemed filled with it for a moment, making Draco have to swallow back some nameless emotion that had welled up from the center of him. “If he tries that,” Potter said, “I’ll do to him what I’m intending to do to the Inferi. But we need someone to fight the necromancers who are going to be there, Ron. And Dark spells ought to be particularly good at that.”

Weasley seemed to be fighting a silent struggle with himself. Draco suspected he knew what it was: morals against logic. And he knew the morals would win. With a Gryffindor, they did, every time, which must be why Potter had decided to destroy the Inferi instead of seek control of them.

But for the second time in three minutes, a Gryffindor surprised him. Weasley made a sound like steam escaping a kettle, a hissing, sour sound, and shook his head. “Fine. If this goes wrong, then I’ll remind you of it the next time that you have what you think is a good idea, mate.”

“And you’ll be right to reprimand me, and I’ll accept it.” Potter gave Weasley a smile that made Draco ache obscurely in his chest, and turned that full, glittering gaze on Draco. “I hope for your sake that you aren’t bluffing about knowing those spells, Malfoy.”

As it happened, Draco wasn’t, but he could have come up with curses that would serve the purpose even if he didn’t specifically know ones that worked against Inferi. He inclined his head stiffly. “I also have the potion you asked me to make, one that should keep us out of sight as we approach the wards.”

“Excellent.” Potter practically laughed the word out. He was practically bouncing on his toes. The air around him practically shimmered. “Then come on.” He darted down the corridor, with only Weasley and Draco behind him.

Is he on some sort of drug? Draco wondered uneasily as he ran. That might explain it, but I don’t know that anything else would.

*

Harry could feel the current of heat that he couldn’t name to anyone else yet, that he didn’t think he could explain to Ron or Malfoy, running beneath his skin. If Hermione was there, he might have explained it to her, because she had been with him when he killed Duplais.

Or burned him. Harry had to admit that the Minister’s death was so convenient that he didn’t know if he had actually died of his burns, when the Healers seemed to think he was recovering, or if someone else had murdered him.

But that didn’t matter, not right now, not when they had sent Hector back to Hermione and he had brought Apparition coordinates, scrawled in a shaky hand, as if Hermione knew what they were about to do and didn’t know if it was a good idea. Hector had been so tired when he came flying back that he went to sleep right there, on Harry’s table, sitting with his head beneath his wing even before they took the letters from his feet.

It didn’t matter. Not right now. Harry scanned the coordinates, fixed them in his mind, and then handed the letter to Ron. Ron nodded to show that he’d memorized the coordinates and then hesitated. “You’re not going to show this to Malfoy, are you, mate?”

Harry laughed. The current of warmth beneath his skin leaped up and down, and the flames that he knew he could call any moment were peering up from beneath his fingers. He calmed them with an effort, the sort of effort it used to take him to subdue his wild magic when he was angry. “Are you mad?”

“Well, thank Merlin for that, at least,” Ron murmured, and tossed the letter in the air, incinerating it as it fell. “I don’t understand why you trust him so much.”

“Because I think that he could be a powerful ally if we could only convert him fully to our side,” Harry said simply. “And because he passed the Veritaserum test. And because he knows things about Azkaban that we’ll have to know eventually, when we raid it.”

Ron cast him a quick glance. “Harry…most of the prisoners there deserve what they got.”

“Can we be sure?” Harry asked simply. “With the Wizengamot’s judgment suspect in the past seven years? Do you really think that with all the cases we didn’t work on, the ones that just happened to see Muggleborns condemned to Azkaban or pure-bloods let go, there aren’t at least some innocents there?”

“It’s not that,” Ron said. “But I don’t know how we’ll be able to identify them.”

“I have an idea,” Harry said, and left it at that, because the idea was still small and unformed yet, and probably would make less sense to Ron than even his idea to destroy the Inferi. “Let’s go.”

He rose smoothly to his feet. At the moment, he didn’t think he could make a wrong movement, even if twenty loyalist Aurors had come after him. His world pulsed and drummed around him, and his blood and magic sang in answer.

“You’re all right?” asked Ron, who was staring at him.

“Yes,” Harry said. “And I know how you would feel about Side-Alonging Malfoy, so I’ll do it.”

That didn’t distract Ron as much as he’d hoped. Ron blinked and bit his lip and said, “Right, mate. But don’t let him close enough to get in a good strike at you. The last thing the revolution can afford right now is to lose you.”

No, I think the last thing the revolution can afford to lose right now is you, Harry wanted to say. You’re the one who trains the quatrains, the one who comes up with strategies for the plans that I dream up, the one who has their respect and their loyalty. I’m someone who half of them think is crazy for my plan with Fortuna’s Wheel, and if they knew about this one, it would be worse.

But he didn’t say any of that, just smiled at Ron, shook his head, and went outside to where Malfoy awaited them. It was just the three of them, just a party that could move fast and strike quickly and didn’t have anyone along who would ask too many questions…as long as Malfoy could keep from asking a question that would make Ron punch his teeth out.

Harry extended his arm to Malfoy for the Side-Along, feeling as if he walked on air. Malfoy took it, but gave him the same kind of long, slow glance that Ron had been using back in Harry’s rooms, as if he stood more of a chance than Ron did at figuring out what was “wrong” with Harry.

“Hold tight,” Harry whispered, and then they vanished from the manor; the place’s anti-Apparition wards had been lowered temporarily around this one patch of corridor. Harry saw Malfoy’s eyes get big just before they departed, and knew that he was probably trying to memorize that patch of corridor, as well as wondering whether the wards were down all the time around it.

Sorry, no, Harry thought, and then gave himself away to the burning happiness.

*

They landed with a bump-Potter wasn’t a skillful Apparater-on the slopes of a mountain. Draco glanced around, hoping to see something, but everything was dim and grey in the light of the stars and moon, and of course he knew without asking that they shouldn’t use their magic to call light.

Which made him all the more startled when Potter held out a hand and flame sprang up from it, glowing brighter in the darkness by contrast than anything Draco had ever seen, even the candles that his parents used to light to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

“Potter, what are you-” he hissed, before the sounds of wards yapping streamed down to them from up the hill. He clutched his wand, which Potter had given back to him with a warning that spells were on it to prevent him from attacking anyone loyal to the revolution, and wondered if he should Apparate out.

“You and I are taking out the wards and the guards, Malfoy,” Weasley said grimly, and began to run, so Draco had to keep up to even hear his next words. “Harry is coming in behind.”

Draco didn’t really know what that meant, and so he paused, as Weasley began to cast curses, to glance over his shoulder and watch Potter. Exactly what did he think he would do with flame that would give away their position to anyone who looked at it, that probably had already given away their position to anyone who wanted to look?

The flame.

Potter was blazing with it, glowing with it, leaping with it. As Draco watched, he leaped into the air, higher than Draco knew someone could go without magical assistance, and came down like a butterfly. He had barely touched the grass when he was off again, floating in towards them, coming in long swimming strides as though he had skates strapped to his feet and moved over ice.

Draco whirled around and ran behind Weasley. At the moment, he couldn’t have said whether he was running towards the enemy or away from Potter.

The first guards who came to meet them were dressed in robes like Aurors’, but Draco knew they weren’t because of the way they moved; that was a good thing. He Stunned the first one, who was still fumbling with his wand. The rest had had more time to prepare, and Shield Charms rose around them, and rarer defenses, formed out of what looked like bubbles and water and green ceramic.

Draco sliced in among them, casting spells so fast that his lips stung. He made out Weasley beside him, moving with the same kind of calm assurance, although Draco didn’t think any of the spells he used were Dark. He rolled his eyes and sneered into the distance. Weasley didn’t know how to commit to battle or hold a revolution, even if he knew how to fight. It was lucky for both him and Potter that Draco had come along.

Two of the guards abruptly moved together, and Draco stepped back so that his spell would take both of them at once. Then a blazing figure shot past him, and he realized that the guards were trying to prevent Potter from getting into the cave.

It didn’t work.

The fire that clad Potter now was the most beautiful thing Draco had ever seen, a living and constantly shifting cloak of pure light, the white and blue gleams that darted off to the side slicing the air like thorns, like knives. Potter’s hands were blunt weapons, the brilliance of the fire blurring their shapes. He reached out and curled those hands like flames, and the guards fell apart, slammed to the ground by the hot wind that passed between them. Draco didn’t fall, but that was because he had seen what was going to happen and hastily fixed his feet to the ground with a Sticking Charm.

Potter leaped over the guards’ bodies the same way that he’d leaped before and glowed into the caves. Draco followed, heard Weasley panting at his heels, and then lost track of him altogether.

There was only Potter, dancing in the middle of the caves with the flames circling him, splitting off from him, and forming an orange figure that bowed gravely to Potter before it flowed at the Inferi.

Some of the leftover guards were commanding the Inferi to attack. Draco began cursing them systematically, crippling curses that took less time than full killing spells would: ones that put out eyeballs, snapped wands, broke fingers. He didn’t know how many of them actually hit, because he couldn’t look.

His gaze would not leave Potter.

The fire surrounded him. The fire cradled him. Before that day Draco would have said that was a ridiculous word to use of flames, but it was true. The fire swayed with Potter, danced and ducked and dived and sang with Potter, and traced the quick motions of his feet with scarlet lines. Potter’s laughter was faint through the noise, like the high-pitched braying of a donkey, but Draco heard it anyway, and knew he would never miss a nuance in it.

Then Potter stopped dancing, stopped moving altogether. He stood with his hands spread wide and bowed his head. Draco thought he looked as if he was praying, although what he would be praying to, Draco didn’t know.

The fire coalesced into an ember-like ball in the middle of his chest. Draco watched Potter’s chest rise and fall, and found that he was breathing in time with Potter. It was nothing he had planned. It was something that happened, and his hands trembled and his eyes crossed and his head sagged.

Then the ball blew up, and Draco found himself snapped free of the spell, staggering forwards a step as though it were a wall against which he had braced his weight.

Potter laughed and held out his hand again. This time, pure fire struck out from it like lightning and surrounded the Inferi, lighting them as if they were pillars of straw. Draco looked around and saw that the orange figure-whom he had almost thought he had dreamed-was moving through the further reaches of the cavern, touching ropes and cauldrons and summoning circles and stones and everything that was not Inferi with greedy, gentle fingers.

Draco opened his mouth. He was going to say that no fire could eat an Inferius like that, that it was simply impossible and they would attack in the next few moments no matter what.

But the merrily burning columns began to wink out, and Draco realized that he was wrong. The flames had been hot enough-or magical enough-to eat the Inferi Potter had cast them at. Nothing remained, not even the greasy ash that Draco would have expected to see if a fire like that had consumed a human being.

Of course, Inferi aren’t human anymore, he thought, his mind detached and inane. Then he shook his head and forced himself to focus on what was in front of him. He doubted that he would get out alive if he didn’t.

Weasley was standing back near the cave entrance, his eyes as big as Pansy’s when she saw a rat. Potter moved further into the middle of the cave. Draco could see hurrying shapes coming closer, probably human, because Inferi didn’t move that fast or gracefully even when commanded.

Potter extended his hands towards them.

They burned.

Draco found himself transfixed, frozen, the air in his lungs so cold that he wondered if the fire would be able to feed upon it. The flames were coiling near him, since they stood not far from Potter’s side. The sensible thing would be to move, or at least shut his eyes, but instead Draco stood there and watched.

The fire parted for him. Draco found himself seeing the entire scene through veils of white and blue and red, inscribed on the air in twisting runes that broke apart the next moment and fell back into the main body of the flames with a roar of joy. Draco’s heart beat furiously, and his hands shook, and the fire echoed him with a quick patter of beats for the heart, with shaking and nodding flames like tassels of flowers for the hands.

Draco reached out and spread his fingers the way Potter was doing. No fire rose from him to join the magic, of course, but Potter’s fire descended and stroked along his skin, thumb and wrist and knuckles and the webbing between the fingers, almost burning him but not quite, a fugitive shine of heat, a racing pulse of life and joy.

Draco held Potter’s power between the palms of his hands and felt his body thrill to it so strongly that he found it hard to look up and at Potter.

Potter watched him with the same kind smile that McGonagall had twice given Draco when he performed well in her classes. Then he whirled away and brought his arms down, and the fire blew away towards him, a cloak on his shoulders, a bracer around his waist, a crown on his head.

When it vanished, Draco had found another reason to choose his side.

He licked his lips. He could still taste the heat, the wildness, the power.

Chapter Eleven.

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