Chapter Forty-Four of 'Intoxicate the Sun'- On the Run
Chapter Forty-Three.
Title: Intoxicate the Sun (44/50)
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 Forty-Four-On the Run
“There’s no permanent solution, is there?”
Draco had almost been expecting to hear something from Harry when he stepped out of his parents’ room, though rationally, there was no reason why he would. Now, though, at least that expectation kept him from starting. He just shook his head, grunted, and leaned against the door, closing his eyes.
“No,” he murmured. “Neither of them listens to reason. My father really thinks that he’s just going to walk out of this house, and the Manor will be the same as it was before, and so will the Ministry, and he can resume his old life as if nothing has happened. I don’t know if he’s insane or just had his time sense frozen.”
Harry rubbed his back and made sympathetic sounds under his breath. “And your mother?” he asked, when Draco had spent some time leaning on his shoulder in silence.
“She wants me to help them escape,” Draco said. “I’ve brought up all the objections I can, the lack of wands and how we’re watched and how hard it would be for them to get anywhere, but it doesn’t seem to matter. She wants what she wants, and trying to suggest otherwise makes her think-” He shook his head. “I don’t know what she thinks, and I don’t want to think through it, either. She chose my father, and while she knows the world is different than it used to be, she still thinks it’s escapable. I don’t know what to tell her to make her realize that it isn’t like that. Maybe nothing can.”
Harry hummed under his breath and smoothed his hand down towards Draco’s flank. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he whispered.
Draco pulled back and stared at him suspiciously. Harry blinked back at him. “What?” he asked.
“You already know something,” Draco said. “You already have a plan. You wouldn’t have-have whispered like that if there was really nothing. I know you. That was a savage and cunning whisper.”
Harry smiled at him in what looked like genuine delight. “Really? It was?”
Draco shoved him this time, ignoring the part of him that was still slightly in shock at treating the famous Harry Potter like this. Hell, he’d never thought that he would have the famous Harry Potter as a lover, either. If he could get used to the one, then he could get used to the other.
“Yes, I do have a plan,” Harry said. “I’m going to try and help you. I hope it’ll be a permanent solution, or the beginning of a permanent solution.” He reached out and took Draco’s hands in his, his eyes so wide and solemn that Draco had to swallow. His playful mood vanished. Harry would try to help them, he was sure, but if even he was uncertain about the result… “I can’t explain it yet, for the same reason that I can’t explain all the other parts of the plan. If it works, then you should have the chance to let your parents heal. Or you can decide what else to do with them. You’ll have nothing but safety, and freedom, and time.”
But perhaps not you, Draco thought. I notice that you didn’t include yourself in that list. He wasn’t in the right mood to hear Harry hide anything right now, though, so he asked a different question instead. “Will this take place when the revolution takes you to surrender to the Minister?”
Harry nodded, his eyes large now. He always looked like that when he was thinking about the other members of the revolution, Draco knew. Sometimes he thought it was guilt at not having done enough for them. Other times, he assumed Harry was simply looking into the future and doing his best to envision what it would be like.
“I don’t think you should go,” Draco said. “You have your plans, but the others could have ones that counter those, even without being aware of yours. What if it’s a trap?”
“Oh, I know it will be,” Harry said, snapping his attention back to that time and place, but looking more than vaguely surprised that Draco would ask that question. “The Minister probably plans to kill me and arrest anyone she can get her hands on, except perhaps the people who have helped her the most. I have to be ready for that.”
“What can you do to be ready for it, when you don’t know the details?” Draco was coming to realize how many of Lucius’s plans had depended on simply being aware of what his enemies were doing, most of the time because he had bribed or blackmailed someone close to them. Without that foreknowledge, he was as lost in the dark as everyone else.
Harry responded with flames that caused him to shimmer and almost look as if he were dancing in the middle of the corridor. Draco didn’t step back from him, but it took some effort.
“Because there’ll be too much magic around,” Harry said simply. “Too much power.” He smirked at Draco, and suddenly he looked more like the schoolboy of Hogwarts, plotting to get Draco in trouble. “Ever take a butterfly net to go hunting a dragon? That’s what it’ll be like.”
Draco snorted despite himself, and shook his head. “So confident that you’ll be able to do exactly as you like, and escape exactly as you like?”
“Yes, I am.”
Well. Behind that voice lay unshakable confidence, and Draco couldn’t blame him. He could caution and advise and warn, but he knew that it was up to Harry to handle what would happen when they went to Clearwater. And not only because of his magic.
Strangely, for someone who had come into the revolution determined to make things happen instead of waiting around for them, Draco was okay with that. Harry would do his best to protect him, and that was all Draco could hope for.
He leaned up and kissed Harry, and Harry kissed him back, hands shaping and cradling his head with a gentleness that made Draco shiver. Knowing Harry could hurt him if he wished, but didn’t want to right now, only made this all the more exciting for him.
I suspect that won’t hold true for anyone else. But then, they can go fuck themselves anyway.
*
Letter from an unknown source, sent to Minister Clearwater:
Minister, what are you doing? You ought to know that a simple surrender will not work. The revolutionaries are too cunning, too experienced, for that, and Potter is too mad. You cannot trust them. But yet you march open-eyed into the trap, and will only wail when it closes on you.
You cannot expect our help if you do nothing to prove yourself worthy of it.
*
“I don’t believe that you’re really like this.”
Hermione kept her head down, her eyes fastened on the parchment in front of her, and continued writing. Someone under the Imperius Curse wouldn’t have to respond to Desang’s mocking words, she knew. After all, what could someone under the Imperius Curse know about the context of Desang’s words? Nothing. She would do what she was told, but comments that were not direct orders existed somewhere outside her world, intended for other people.
“Are you listening to me? Hermione.”
Hermione looked up and fastened her idiot’s smile on. “I always am, Auror,” she chirped. She had adopted the title because it made sense that someone rendered subservient by the Imperius Curse would choose the highest title she could, instead of the Auror’s first or last name. “What did you want me to listen to?”
Desang didn’t respond at once. She had a desk on the other side of Hermione’s office, where she sat most of the time, her legs crossed over one another and her feet on the desktop, and watched Hermione work. Hermione resented her laziness more than anything else she had done so far, but of course had been careful not to show it.
She stared at Desang, and Desang stared back.
“You are not the one in this office who is essential to the Minister,” Desang breathed. “She thinks you are. She thinks that she needs to retain you to spin stories for the press and make it seem as though one of Potter’s best friends really supports her. But I figured it out.” She began to bounce her wand on her palm, and gave Hermione a lazy smile. “They do say that resistance to certain spells is something that can be learned. If Potter is immune to the Imperius Curse, or can throw it off, who’s to say that he didn’t teach his friends to do the same thing?”
Hermione didn’t let a muscle move on her face, or blink her bright, blank eyes. She was waiting for an order, and nothing in the lecture Desang had just given her contained an order. But beneath the desk, she put her hand on her wand.
“Of course, she would deny it,” Desang whispered, leaning forwards over the desk. Hermione barely kept herself from leaning forwards in return. That wasn’t something someone under the Curse would do; she would just keep her ears tuned for her master’s words, and be expected to hear them no matter how low her voice sank. “She would want to think that she could not be fooled, and that she had really chained and bridled you. But neither of us is the Minister, and neither of us has any concern for her pride.” She paused, and her smile seemed to slash across half her face. “Do we?” she whispered.
Hermione said nothing, still bright, still blank. There was a voice in the back of her mind screaming, Oh, shit! But it was something separate from her, defined, the way the pocket in the back of her mind had been separate and defined from the obedient rest of her when she was really under the curse. Her hand tightened on her wand.
“I wish you would answer me,” Desang said with a weary sigh, and rose to let her feet drop to the floor with a solid-sounding clop. “I know you can understand me, and it would be pleasant to have someone agree with me about what a fool Clearwater is, to think that she can rule the wizarding world.”
Before I kill that person. Hermione could hear the addition, and wondered why Desang expected that she wouldn’t be able to, or just whether Desang expected to kill her before she could make a move.
“Such a fool, to think that Potter would bow his neck and accept the yoke,” Desang whispered, moving closer. “And a fool to think that she can kill him. I know his destiny, from reading it in the book I stole. He is going to rise in a blaze of glory and leave this poor, lost little world behind, bereft of his presence. And I am going to make sure that I get revenge on the people who have treated me poorly. The Minister. The other Aurors, who believed the Minister over me when they should have.” Her smile warmed and deepened. “You.”
She’s acting stupid. If she really thought that Hermione was free of the Imperius Curse, she should have known that this rambling monologue would warn her. If she thought Hermione a slave, then she should know that she wouldn’t get anything she wanted out of making this speech, unless she ordered Hermione to fight her.
Meanwhile, she was still too far out of range for most of the spells that Hermione knew to disable her. She remained still, and Desang came closer and closer. She was shaking slightly, Hermione saw. Well, that made sense. And it made her speech make sense, too. She was too overwhelmed by the desire for revenge to consider consequences right now. She wanted Hermione to kneel at her feet and beg for mercy, and that wouldn’t work if Hermione was a slave or if Desang attacked without warning.
“You can speak to me, if you want,” Desang said, and spun up her wand, holding it calmly and openly in one hand. She seemed to assume she would be faster than anything Hermione tried. Well, why not? She had been an Auror, and she knew Hermione only as a Ministry functionary. She probably thought that Hermione was strong at lies and deception, for impersonating her and somehow throwing off the Imperius Curse, but not at ordinary battle.
And she might be right. Hermione made no motion to wipe her sweaty palms off on her skirt, but it was hard.
“I prefer a fair fight.” Desang came to a stop in front of her, nodding and smiling. “Something where you don’t strike at me and my reputation from the shadows, and where I don’t put a curse in the middle of your back to knock you down, some dark night in an alley. Something where we can be equals.”
Hermione knew she would have only one chance. Either Desang’s need to provoke her or lingering uncertainty about whether Hermione was under the Curse had protected Hermione so far. That protection would soon fall.
She needed Desang a little closer, though, because the spell she had in mind relied on touching the other woman with her wand. She let her mouth fall open and her eyes widen, drawing in a breath as though she was about to speak. Desang, probably because she couldn’t help herself, swayed in a little nearer. Her grip on the wand looked as if it was tight to the point of pain, and she was caught somewhere between rage and delight.
Hermione darted her hand out, jabbing Desang in the arm. Desang recoiled, but in a way that meant she was raising her wand to strike at Hermione instead of retreating. That was good enough for the spell. Hermione screamed it before she could start thinking of all the political considerations and change her mind. “Conquiesco!”
The magic left her like a bolt of lightning going in reverse, and Hermione had one crazy moment to think that this might be what it was like to be a stormcloud, releasing its weather over the land. Then Desang’s head flew back, and her arms shot out from her sides and shook uncontrollably. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, where she’d probably bitten her tongue. Then she collapsed.
Hermione tucked her wand away and snatched some of the files she’d been working on from her desk, less because they would be useful to Harry and the revolution than because they would give her some cover when she was walking through the corridors. Harry knew as much as he needed to. They had their plans in place. But Hermione fleeing before that moment had arrived had never been part of the plan, which meant that she had to get out of there as soon as possible. If anyone stopped her on the way, she had the strong feeling that she would never see the sunlight and the real world again.
Her skin felt hot and cold by turns. The electricity of the spell was meant to make someone “quiet,” hence the incantation, but sometimes it could be strong enough to kill the victim instead of knock them unconscious. Hermione didn’t know if she’d killed Desang or not, and she couldn’t bring herself to check.
She nudged the door open with one hip, shifted the stack of files in her arms, and, for the last time, fixed that bright, blank idiot’s smile on her face. Then she began to walk, her steps falling lightly and regularly on the carpeted floors.
*
From the private diary of Minister Gillian Clearwater:
When I was able to spend some time tracking them down, the source of the letters sent to me turned out to be absurdly easy to identify. Two Aurors vanished soon after the hunt for Potter began, Taliesin Graywood and Jennifer Morgan. They stole artifacts from the Department of Mysteries, experimental weapons. Desang’s later thefts and the way that she also sent me mysterious letters convinced me that the shadows were full of enemies, that I could trust no one, and that I might have one group after me, or three, or innumerable organizations devoted to destroying the only person with the wizarding world’s welfare at heart.
Now I know where the messages came from, and the Unspeakables have shared tracking spells that might mean I can follow Graywood and Morgan’s next letter back to their location. Now I can rest easily.
*
Harry woke to hammering on his door that night, and took a moment to reach behind him and check that Draco lay in his bed before he responded. The flame that represented Draco’s heartbeat shone as steadily as before, but it had in the moments right before Pedlar captured him, too.
Harry then checked the subtle strings of flame that showed the health of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy if one knew how to read them. They still quivered and throbbed with dull, low-orange flickers of what Harry thought was resentment. He shrugged. They were alive and not in immediate danger. He didn’t think he could give much more to Draco, even if Draco sometimes acted as though he had promised that.
He rose, put on a dress robe, and called a little flame into his palm before he opened the door.
He had to dismiss it again quickly, because Hermione fell into his arms, crying and laughing, and Ron was behind her, trying to hug them both at the same time and whooping in a way that reminded Harry of Hogwarts.
For the moment, Harry was too overwhelmed to question what Hermione was doing there. He hugged her, and shut his eyes, and laid his head on hers. Hermione sniffled and clung harder. Harry stroked her back and murmured reassurances, ignoring the sleepy stirring in the bed behind him. He was relatively sure Draco would understand, and if not, Harry knew the right way to fuck to be sure that he calmed down.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, when he was sure that she could take note of something other than the sobs bubbling up in her throat.
Hermione swallowed, wiped her face, and stepped away from him, smiling ruefully at the tears she’d left on his clothes. “Desang is working with the Minister,” she said. “She’d fled for a while, and there was something about a book of prophecies that she turned over to the Minister. I think she was the one who first realized that there was more than one prophecy about you. She knows that I impersonated her when I retrieved that evidence about necromancy. She would have killed me, because she didn’t believe that I was really under the Imperius Curse. I hit her with lightning instead and ran here.”
Harry nodded to her and looked over his shoulder as he heard a stronger stirring noise from the bed. Draco sat up with the sheets wrapped around him, like a nervous virgin. Well, he might be, at least where Harry’s friends were concerned. Without turning around, Harry could predict the complex but fleeting emotions that would pass over their faces and then get buried again.
He raised one eyebrow at Draco, asking without words if Draco wanted him to close the door and stand out in the corridor with Ron and Hermione. Draco nodded to him, the motion so tense that Harry smiled despite himself. He shut the door between them and faced Hermione again.
“How much do you think this will affect our plans to do with Clearwater?” he asked.
Hermione shook her head. “It would depend on whether I killed Desang or not. I didn’t stop and check,” she added, suddenly fretful. “I should have stopped and checked.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said, and rubbed her arms up and down. “I don’t think it matters. When Clearwater knows that you’re gone, there’ll be a limited number of deductions she can make, and she’ll probably reach the correct one.”
“I know,” Hermione said, and she already sounded calmer. Harry was glad to hear that. He really didn’t know what he would have done if Hermione had a breakdown. It seemed incredible that she hadn’t had one so far, but if she had her composure back for real rather than simply cracking under the weight of her situation, then he would go with it. “As for the effect it’ll have…no, I don’t think so. Clearwater told me almost nothing about what she planned to do. Most of our information on that score came from hints that Smithson heard or Raggleworth was able to collect. She might decide that I’ve passed information to you, maybe the prophecy, but she knows that the surrender she’s arranged with that delegation of revolutionaries was in all the papers. I think it’ll upset and frighten her, but there’s no way she can know the whole truth and rework her plans to wreck ours, when she doesn’t know what ours are.” She paused, and suddenly her eyes were wide. “Unless there’s a traitor somewhere in the revolution, of course.”
Harry didn’t know if she meant to do it, but she looked at the door of his rooms. Harry had to kill those suspicions immediately, so he shook his head, quietly, commandingly. “Draco is no traitor,” he said.
“Are you sure? The prophecy said-”
“If Draco was the traitor,” Harry said, still as quietly, “there’s no way that he could hide it from me. I have a flame that’s linked to his heartbeat. It would start quivering and throbbing harder when he’s around me. I don’t think Draco could be as relaxed about something like that when he’s with me, given that he’s had ample opportunity to see how strong my magic is.”
Hermione bit her lip, then nodded. “All right.”
She sounded less than enthusiastic, and Ron was behind her with his eyes shadowed, too, but that would have to do. Harry ignored them both and turned a little so that he could look over his shoulder. Yes, the flame was still, sinking towards embers, which meant Draco had returned to sleep. If he had seen Hermione and was a traitor, he would have to suspect what she had come here for, and would probably be panicking. Draco had never been very good at hiding his emotions, Harry thought, given the way he would rage at Hogwarts, even if his father had tried to teach him.
“What are we going to do now?” Ron asked.
Harry looked at his hand on Hermione’s shoulder, and smiled. “Go to our respective beds,” he said, giving them a little shove of warm wind that made them both sway in place. “We’re tired, and you two haven’t been together in months.”
“Harry,” Hermione began in a repressive tone, although her cheeks were flushed.
Harry winked at her. “I get irritable when Draco won’t spend the night with me,” he said. “I can only imagine how much worse it is for you.”
That made them both blush, but at least it also made them leave, Ron nearly dragging Hermione away, probably so that he wouldn’t have to listen to any more of that. Harry turned and went back inside to his own bed.
The flame quickened as he neared it, and Draco lifted his head and opened his eyes. He tried, but he couldn’t quite hide the bitter curl to his mouth.
“So, did they turn you against me?” he asked, stretching one arm out across the pillows and turning his head away.
“Of course not,” Harry said, and climbed atop him, and kissed him.
Draco stirred and strained against him, mostly in surprise. Harry kissed him again, and he didn’t try to get away, instead opening his arms and legs to receive Harry.
As it happened, Harry thought he might know the true meaning behind that line in the prophecy that seemed to promise a traitor.
Not tonight. He kissed Draco again, and the thoughts vanished into gathering warmth and flicking fire.
Chapter Forty-Five.
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