Chapter Thirty-Nine of 'Intoxicate the Sun'- Deciding on a Meaning
Chapter Thirty-Eight.
Title: Intoxicate the Sun (39/50)
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 Thirty-Nine-Deciding on a Meaning
“This may mean everything,” Raggleworth said, using her glasses to peer at the parchment Hermione had put in front of her. “But it may also mean nothing.” She leaned back in her chair and stared pensively at Hermione. “You have allowed that consideration into your planning, madam?”
“I have,” Hermione said steadily. She wanted to add that Raggleworth wasn’t the only one at the table whose opinion mattered, but she didn’t. She had learned rapidly that being in the Wizengamot had accustomed Raggleworth to respect, and Merlin forbid that Hermione not give it to her. She turned and looked at Noble, Smithson, and Greta instead.
Greta was frowning and turning the last prophecy that Hermione had sent Harry over and over. She caught Hermione’s eye and gave one of her faint smiles and careless shrugs. Hermione was not fooled. Greta had a playful demeanor. Behind that was a fine mind. She wouldn’t volunteer her opinion first, since she was the youngest one here, but she would wait until everyone had spoken and then bring up things that she knew they had missed.
“It seems more straightforward than most of the prophecies I have seen,” rumbled Smithson. He touched the parchment as if he thought it might explode in the flames that it talked about and burn him, although this was only a copy of a copy and nowhere near the real thing. “We might use it to coordinate our attack on the Minister with the revolution’s attack. If we only knew when either was happening.” He turned a heavy stare on Hermione.
Hermione nodded slightly to him. “I have the courage to contact my husband, sir. The main reason I have hesitated so far is that I did not know what the group wanted. Should we reveal our existence to him yet?” She knew Ron could be trusted, knew it with her blood and breath, but she wouldn’t convince the others that easily.
“We must use the leverage we have,” Smithson said. “And we cannot put pressure on the Minister until we have put pressure on the revolution.”
“Why not?” Raggleworth had a thin screech at the edge of her voice. “This young woman is still close to the Minister. Clearwater believes she has her enslaved. Why should we not use that connection and contact the revolution when we have Clearwater moving in the right direction?”
“Because Clearwater is as stubborn as a cow,” Noble said, unexpectedly. Most of the time, she tended to sit by silently in these discussions and listen to the rest. “I saw that when Hermione invited me into her mind. The lock on that door behind which her memories and knowledge hid was strong, woven of fear and hatred. But no guilt. Clearwater refused to consider, even in the most private part of her that could have influenced her magic without-as she hoped-anyone else even noticing, that she was doing something wrong. We will not easily persuade and tug on her, and if she even suspects what Hermione is doing, she will order her to desist. Hermione will have to, unless we are ready to reveal that the dominion the Imperius Curse provided is gone.”
“I would still feel better trying to influence her than trying to influence Potter.” Raggleworth sniffed. Even that had a strident edge to it, Hermione thought, as though she was one of those big, hoarse-voiced vultures that Hermione had studied a few years ago when she wanted charms to drive away scavengers. “The man is mad. And through him, he controls many slavish followers. How much do you think that we can actually influence them? One woman is easier than many minds. Everyone knows that.”
Raggleworth and Smithson lapsed into an argument. Hermione sat back and looked between Noble and Greta.
Noble had her fingertips placed together and studied the arguing Raggleworth and Smithson with a patient expression. She seemed to have no doubt that matters would fall out the way they should. Hermione wished that she could have her patience.
Greta was tossing a wrapped sweet in the air and catching it again. As Hermione watched, she unwrapped it and stuck it in her mouth. She caught Hermione’s eyes and grinned, showing her another one and mouthing, Do you want it?
Hermione shook her head fiercely. Greta sighed, as though she didn’t know how people could get through their day without sweets, and stuck that one in the corner of her cheek, sucking on it. Hermione thought it would distort her voice when she spoke, but it didn’t seem as if it did. “There’s one thing that you’re not considering,” she said.
Everyone stopped talking and looked at her, probably because it was so unexpected for her to speak up before the very end. “You have news that we do not, Greta?” Raggleworth asked, words as precise and chill as frost.
“I do.” Greta nodded, still sucking. “Harry Potter is no longer the leader of the revolution. That’s Ron Weasley.”
More silence. More stares. Then Raggleworth and Smithson both drew breaths to start speaking at once.
Hermione intervened before they could. “How do you know that?” she demanded. “The Minister’s spies haven’t commented on it at all, and you can’t possibly have more information than she does.”
Greta grinned at her. “Auntie’s horribleness means that we other Umbridges tend to stick close together,” she murmured. “Stick up for each other, because no one else will. Another of my cousins is with the revolution, and when she found out that I was interested in what she had to say, she began to write me letters.”
Hermione swallowed down the sense of betrayal she felt. Other than the prophecy, she hadn’t sent anything to Ron and Harry yet, and it made sense that they might not know how far they could trust her, if she was still under the Imperius Curse or not. “All right. Why is Ron leading the revolution? Is Harry dead?” The question seemed to lodge like an arrow in her heart as she spoke.
“No,” Greta said, and there was pity in her gaze when it crossed Hermione’s, like a scraping sword. Hermione gritted her teeth and held still, knowing that the best thing she could do right now, when Greta had information that she didn’t, was not show how much it irritated her to be left in the dark. “But he is mad. There’s no doubt of that now. His fire magic is consuming more and more of his life. There was a woman who tried to stand up to him, who demanded-if I can believe my cousin, who does not know everything-peace with the Ministry. Potter refused to allow that, and then she tried to betray him, to kidnap his lover-”
“Ginny?” Hermione interrupted in disbelief. As far as she knew, the rest of the Weasleys had tried to stay as far away from the revolution as possible. Molly and Arthur were torn both ways when they heard about Harry’s attack on Minister Duplais, Bill had children of his own to protect, Charlie was out of the country, Percy still worked for the Ministry, and Ginny was trying to avoid letting Harry overrun her life.
“No,” Greta said. “Ginny Weasley is your sister-in-law?” Hermione nodded, throat thick although it didn’t sound like Ginny had changed her mind and run away to pine hopelessly after Harry. “No. This one is named Draco Malfoy.”
Hermione sat there and stared. Then she shook her head. “Your cousin’s information must be mistaken,” she said, so much more calmly than what she really felt that she was startled and impressed with herself. “I-Harry hated Malfoy in school, and Malfoy hated him. They would never have started dating.” That was the most neutral word she could come up with for it, though she also wondered how one would date in the middle of a revolution.
“Emotions change,” Greta said. “Especially in the midst of a war. Perhaps this is no more than a fling that will fall apart when they are back to their normal places in life. Be that as it may, this woman, Pedlar, tried to force Potter to do certain things, and he left a brand on her face that would burn her to death if she tried to betray the revolution.”
Hermione tried to imagine Harry doing that, and for a moment she couldn’t. Her default image of Harry was still the man who had sat in her house for dinner so many nights, complaining bitterly about things in the Ministry and the wizarding world as a whole that he couldn’t change.
Then she thought of him as he had been the day he burned Duplais, and swallowed.
Yes. He could have changed. He has changed.
“But I would guess that he worded the binding spell too literally, and so the spell did not take effect,” Greta said. “She took Malfoy, and Potter promised her a duel. Without a wand, with only control of magical fire, he burned her to death in seconds. It was never a fair fight.”
Hermione licked her lips. She didn’t want to believe that, either. The problem was that she could, and without breaking into a sweat. She closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself against the silent memories of Harry and Ron and the letters she had received from them and sent to them. The situation had to be more complicated than Greta’s cousin had reported. Hermione believed Ron would have killed Harry before he let him get as bad as that.
You believe. Who knows how much war has changed them? Ron could obey Harry now, in a way that he never did when they were partners.
But Hermione shook her head. They had extended her the benefit of the doubt by trusting her and sending her no letters when she sent them that horrible one written under the lock of the Imperius Curse. Surely they deserved some faith from her.
“It sounds like you need to contact them,” Noble said, her eyes never wavering from Hermione. “To find out how much is true.”
Hermione nodded. Her ears were ringing, but she made herself stand upright and frown a little, as if this was only a temporary inconvenience to her, not something that made her ache to think about. “Yes. Of course I should. It will let us know whether an attack planned in concert with them would even work, for one thing.”
*
Do you think we should have kept a closer eye on Harry?
Fred sounded uncertain, which was a fairly rare thing, in George’s experience. He leaned back, shaking his head, and rested his hand on the machine that was starting to take shape beneath their fingers. If they were right, then the machine would be the most potent weapon they could ever wield against the Ministry.
If they weren’t right…well, that would be a bit embarrassing. They were going to test this one outdoors, though, away from fragile people and instruments. And walls. And foundations. George just hoped there weren’t any vulnerable fault lines around.
“He’s become what the lightning and the future and the prophecy seemed to say he would become,” George reminded his twin, tilting the modified glasses down over his face again. They would shield his eyes from the worst effects of flying magic and flying metal, should they get out of hand. “There’s nothing alarming in that. And if you think anything other than death would stop Pedlar, then I’ll have to decide my older brother was never a good judge of character after all.”
We might have been able to prevent him from going through the ordeal of killing her, Fred insisted.
“How? You know we’ve never been on the right track when we tried to invent a machine that predicted the future.”
The machine that could have saved his sanity… Fred started, and then stopped. Even he didn’t know that would have worked, which made George feel justified in ignoring instead of responding to it.
“Yes, fine,” he said, and began to cast the Drilling Charm on the machine in front of him again. He wasn’t yet sure that it would work out according to the image in his mind, but that was all right. It would work out. He had a good feeling about this one, about the magic that sparked in the fringes of his thoughts when he looked at it.
What are we going to do if he’s mad?
George wouldn’t have heard the voice from someone else, it was so small. Then again, no one but Fred had the right to haunt the inside of his skull, anyway. He sighed and stepped back from the Drilling Charm so that he could speak more clearly and Fred stood a greater chance of hearing him. “He’s managed well so far. And you know that we came away from the shop to find a purpose in lives that had lost it. I think we can manage that much, even if Harry turns out to leave the revolution.”
Right on cue, someone knocked on the door. George turned to answer it. Most of the time, his twin’s company was the only sort he needed, but he was grateful to have another distraction this time.
Harry stepped in and nodded to them. He was carrying a slender, rolled scroll of parchment under his arm. “George, Fred,” he said. “I need you to make something for me, and I need you to make it as soon as possible. Can you do that?”
George stood upright, listening hard, but Fred had decided to go silent about his opinion for now, which left George alone with his sparking, brilliant thoughts. He licked his lips and nodded. “‘Course, Harry. What do you need?”
*
Harry leaned against the door of the lab after he’d handed the plan to George and explained as much of it as he could, and sighed. Well. He had given it over, had outlined what he wanted done, and George seemed to think that he could do it. That was all Harry could ask for, really.
A low scraping sound came from the floor next to him. Harry looked down, and discovered a faint image of the lightning stag standing there, scraping one hoof over and over across the stone floor, staring at him.
You cannot escape.
Harry gave it the finger and turned towards his own rooms. He had made a profession out of beating the odds and escaping when he shouldn’t have been able to: from the Imperius Curse, from the Killing Curse, from Voldemort, from insanity, from the Ministry after he killed Duplais. This time, he was going to escape from fate. More complicated, but not inherently harder.
The stag followed him, dancing and jumping and scratching with one hoof at the stones. Harry regarded it thoughtfully, and was grateful that he met no one on the way. If they thought he was mad for using his magic to kill someone who had threatened him, how mad would they think he was for seeing and talking to the lightning stag?
Of course, George had seen it as well, but Harry knew that George was not what most people would call a reliable witness.
“All right,” he told the stag finally, when he stood with his hand on the door of his rooms and it still hadn’t gone away. Most of the time, it showed itself briefly and vanished. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
The stag reared, and grew. Its antlers had come to his knee; suddenly it was more solid, and the hooves of what felt like bone rested on his shoulders, bearing down with pressure that probably could have broken his collarbone. An intense, blue-white gaze crossed his, and Harry stared back, wondering what it meant to communicate this way.
The stag bowed its head. Harry thought the antlers were going to scrape his face, and prepared to dodge. But instead, the stag simply closed its eyes, and then opened them again. This time, Harry could see a pair of roads in them, one road in each eye, stretching out through the stars to an unimaginable distance.
One road was made of lightning bolts bound closely together, as he had seen before in the vision. One was made of what looked like black stone, but when Harry peered at it more closely, he saw that it was darkness. He knew why.
“I know,” he told the stag. “Do you really think that I don’t see what my choices are? Even if no mystical forces were involved, I know that things can’t go on as they are. I know that no one will ever trust me to be a leader and continue along the same track. Except George and Draco, maybe, but they’re special.” He felt his face soften as he spoke of Draco.
The stag pulled violently back from him and fell to all fours, still staring. Harry shook his head. “The road is dark,” he told it. “I know why. That doesn’t mean that I intend to yield myself, to either lose Draco or leave anyone else behind. You didn’t want to offer me the choice of more than that. So I made my own road. There’s always a third way.”
The stag huffed and vanished. Harry opened the door of his room and made sure that it was shut carefully behind him before he turned around.
Then he stopped.
Draco sat on his bed, staring at him.
Harry stepped back, then realized the door was behind him and that he was armored in more flame and magic than anyone else in the revolution could call up, and shook his head. Besides, the real Draco could have crossed into his rooms easily-Harry had changed the wards so that he could-but no one else. The magic Harry had used required a flame that responded to Draco’s heartbeat, and when it had started flickering madly yesterday, that had been the sign that Draco was in danger. No one else could imitate it, even if they could find the books he had used and master the magical theory. “What is it?” he asked, since he knew Draco wouldn’t have come to him unless there was a problem, probably with the way that his parents were kept.
Draco swallowed a few times, then stood up and approached him. Harry waited until Draco had his hands on his shoulders and was raising his face for a kiss. Then he allowed the kiss, but also cradled Draco’s face in his hands, sending soothing warmth through the scrape of his fingers.
“What is it?” he repeated. He wanted to know all about the thoughts in Draco’s head as well as what his magic could tell him about Draco’s body.
“You killed her.”
Harry felt his muscles tense up. If Draco was going to fear him because of the way he had slaughtered Pedlar, then that might be the one act of magic he could never forgive himself for. But he shook his head and went calmer a moment later. If Draco was that afraid, he wouldn’t have come here, where he could be alone with Harry.
“I did,” he acknowledged. “What of it?”
“You killed her for me,” Draco said, and then he was all over Harry, his lips and teeth and heartbeat as hot as fire, and Harry realized he might have mistaken the nature of the emotions that made Draco seek him out.
Harry stumbled towards the bed and fell on it. Draco rode him down, hands and mouth roving everywhere. For the first time Harry could remember, he didn’t seem to be shy. He was initiating the kiss, he was seizing Harry’s cock, he was thrusting his tongue into Harry’s mouth with a dozen hungry motions.
Harry knew what other people would say about this. That Draco was reacting to strong emotions, not the best ones, and that Harry should probably back off and leave him alone. That it wasn’t healthy, wasn’t normal.
Then again, Harry also knew that he wasn’t healthy and normal, and so he might as well have a relationship that shared his same qualities. The heartbeat magic and the instinctive knowledge he had of Draco’s body through the fire would tell him if he was coming too close to hurting Draco.
It didn’t really take long after that. A single, controlled burst of flame, and Draco’s clothes fell away around them, burned scraps of cloth that Harry no longer had to pay any attention to. He could smooth one hand up and down Draco’s leg, and see the way that the muscles flexed under his touch, and the scars on Draco’s chest and one on his shoulder that he couldn’t account for, and kiss them in apology.
Draco shook his head when he did that, though perhaps only because he didn’t want Harry thinking too much about the past, and then leaned back on his heels and breathed a bit. “You have lube?” he asked, his voice cracking on the last word.
Harry nodded and groped for a moment in the desk next to his bed. What came out was a thick kind of oil that someone had brought to the revolution when the next great idea was that they would all have massages so that they could learn to relax and trust each other. That idea hadn’t lasted long around Ron, of course, but at least one tube of the oil had wound up with Harry, and he held it out to Draco now.
Draco tossed it back to him, and that was when Harry noticed that his hands were shaking too much to open it. He gave Draco a questioning frown as he began to smooth the oil up and down his cock. If Draco was terrified by the thought of having sex with him, then Harry didn’t want to have it.
“It’s not that,” Draco said, seeming to catch and understand his glance. “I just can’t wait.” He closed his eyes and turned his head away a moment later, his blush bright enough to consume him alive, like kindling.
Harry thought of the last seven years, time that Draco had spent alone trying to get his parents out of prison. That kind of life allowed no time or room for lovers. It wasn’t surprising that this was as new to him as it was to Harry.
He was gentle as he slicked his cock, and as he slicked Draco’s entrance, and when his fingers went into Draco’s body, there was a moment when he thought he would have to take them back out again. Draco’s breath caught in sharp pain. He bent forwards and stared at nothing with a blank gaze, his body heaving so much that Harry’s flame shouted a warning in his head. He was starting to get stressed-
The next moment, Draco opened his eyes and stared down, and his face was fiery with triumph and determination.
“If you think that you can scare me away by touching me,” he muttered, voice low and thick, “then you have another reason to think again.”
And he drove himself down onto Harry’s cock before Harry could wait or object anymore. His mouth opened in what looked like pain and ecstasy, and the flame coiled and danced around his body as Harry began to succumb.
But the flame wouldn’t burn his own skin, and Draco was now close enough to Harry that it didn’t burn him, either. Harry reached up and rested shaking hands on Draco’s hips, staring at him.
Draco snarled at him, making a sound of enough joy and pain that Harry wasn’t sure which one was meant to be predominant. “You think that I didn’t choose this?” he murmured. “That you could somehow convince me to continue with it if it weren’t my choice, if it was hurting me?”
“No,” Harry whispered. At the moment, he felt vaguely foolish when he thought how much he had worried about Draco, and had to hold himself back from saying some of the stupider thoughts that bubbled up from his stomach.
“Good,” Draco breathed, and then he closed his eyes and began to ride Harry.
The pleasure was astonishing, although Harry couldn’t keep track of it from one moment to another; the moments blurred and stretched, instead, and he simply stared and tried to let his mind absorb as much as possible. Draco, swaying and grunting above him, his neck arching back when he felt the same kind of pleasure, or at least something that affected him as much as the thrusting itself affected Harry. Draco snapping his eyes open as though to make sure that Harry was still beneath him, and smiling lazily when he saw that he was. Draco adjusting his position and sinking back down with a sigh when he was satisfied.
Draco, Draco, Draco, and Harry felt almost tricked out of his orgasm, so that it was pulled from him whether he was enjoying it or not.
Draco collapsed on his chest at the same time, and Harry would have worried, except that the flame told him Draco had come, and enjoyed himself while doing so. He reached up and stroked Draco’s sweat-soaked back, wondering what he should say.
Nothing, as it turned out. They lay there in silence.
Chapter Forty.
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