Chapter Forty-Seven of 'Intoxicate the Sun'- Back to the Fire
Chapter Forty-Six.
Title: Intoxicate the Sun (47/50)
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-Seven-Back to the Fire
Draco flung one hand across his eyes as the fire broke out before him. For a moment, he thought he could see Harry in it, a laughing Harry a thousand times bigger than the real one, his eyes made of green flames, his black hair swirling and tinged with red and gold that looked strangely natural on him, his hands reaching out as though to embrace the furthest corners of the earth.
And then the vision was gone, and he could hear the shouts of the Aurors and the reporters on the other side of the hill. Beside him, the mad Weasley was laughing, but with a low, coughing laugh, the kind of thing Draco thought a lion would make while watching a weak animal die. Everywhere were screams and confusion.
The fire was rising above them. Draco tilted his head and watched it go, watched it striking upwards and higher, and higher. Nothing touched the ground, not even the sparks that he would have expected to rain down, as good as Harry’s control over his magic was. He felt his spine hurting with the force of the pressure he was using on his hands. He opened them and swallowed.
His skin felt hotter and tighter than it should. The fire was pushing down on them all, affecting them all, he thought, but he didn’t understand how. He kept waiting for it to lash out and burn someone, and he kept waiting to be snatched away, along with his parents, to the safety Harry had promised, but neither occurred.
“Do you understand?” he asked, turning to the mad Weasley. Perhaps he should have asked Harry’s friends, but they were clinging to each other and staring at the pillar of fire with expressions that didn’t reassure him. Quite clearly, Harry hadn’t confided anything in them that he hadn’t said to Draco, either.
Weasley smiled at him. Draco would have said there was a different personality behind his eyes in that moment if he didn’t know better. “Yes,” he replied. “We don’t know the specifics, but we did make a machine for him with three loops of metal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were three things happening here. Let’s watch and see if we can distinguish them!” He turned back to the pillar of fire, his eyes and mouth both wide with wonder.
Draco moved up beside him, forcing himself a step closer to the fire, and swallowed again. Harry, if one of those things isn’t your best attempt at surviving this situation, then I’m going to hurt you.
*
He was above them, and he was weaving around the lightning stag, which tossed its head up and presented its flickering antlers to him as if it would charge.
This was the way, this was the thing Harry had planned, and so far it was going exactly as planned. He had known that the future and the prophecy would never leave him alone, that there was no way he could please them but surrender, and here it was.
Feigned.
He danced, consciousness and mind and memory and imagination, through the fire, and wove from it the finest of his illusions, the most real of them. He could not transform himself as he had transformed the meeting room into the Gryffindor common room for Ron, because he had other plans to fulfill and other things to do, but he was still committed to this, so that the prophecy would leave him alone.
And others. The Ministry was less likely to come after someone who had risen to the sky in a blaze of glory.
Harry sang to the stag, and out of the song came ascension. He sang of the lightning road, and the lightning road was there, hanging in the sky, stretching to the future, dividing in two, and then three, and then four, and then five. He sang the memories of the distant worlds he had seen in the stag’s eyes, and strung them across the heavens.
He held out his hands, and the fire foamed in front of him and formed into the figure he knew he should have been, the figure the lightning stag had wanted him to be, the figure the revolutionaries had wanted to follow. This fellow had a fine fair face, and eyes through which the fire gleamed, and a stance that could make people want to kneel at his feet. He made righteous and just decisions; you could see it in his smile. He would never have burned a woman to death in a duel or fallen in love with his childhood enemy.
He would never do anything so disgraceful as to stay in the world when he realized that his magic was growing too strong for it. He would leave.
Harry gave him wings of delicate golden flames, arched with blue, canopied with orange, and then launched him at the lightning stag. It drew back, and then reared up and flew alongside him, bugling with delight.
Harry watched his angel-self wheel, perfectly visible to everyone, smiling down at them. He saw some people below fall to their knees, and other stand angrily shouting, and still others open their mouths and gape. They would react to him as the wizarding world had always reacted to Harry Potter, with a variety of wrongness, but this time, all the wrongness would be put right. They would be seeing the heroic man who couldn’t stay with the peons any longer or the cowardly deserter, whatever they wanted to see.
He reached out, and plucked something from the sky he hadn’t known would be there: the force of their belief, the invisible weaves of desire and admiration and longing to think that he was pure and good. He draped them around the ascending figure, and the illusion became strong enough to live and last long past the point when it would pass out of earth’s sky, into those other worlds the stag had shown him.
They would think that was what had happened to him. They would think that was the real gift he gave them, leaving the wizarding world open to their influence or giving them a legend to retell forever.
They would not see the real gift he had given them, until later.
He turned, and dived back into the fire. That was the first third of what he had to do done, but only the first.
*
Hermione closed her eyes. The tears burned and stung, but she swallowed, and her throat cleared. She was sure that she could see again when she managed to open her eyes and see what was actually there, instead of what she had imagined.
Because she must have imagined Harry vanishing. He couldn’t truly have done it.
She opened her eyes again and looked up, ignoring the way Ron clutched at her arm, ignoring the shouts that stung her ears. The column of fire loomed overhead, but it dimmed and vanished as she watched. What was left was a trembling smoke, silver with the rays of the sun stabbing from behind it, curling in on itself and dissipating into nothingness. Hermione leaned forwards, straining for a glimpse of black or green in it.
Nothing.
Hermione leaned on Ron. She didn’t consider herself weak, but having just seen her best friend depart on wings of flame and nothing where he had stood-
Yes. She thought it was an excusable time for weakness if anything was.
The shouts got worse. Clearwater was on the hill now, flanked by her Auror guards, waving her hand in the space where the table with Harry’s documents on it had stood. Hermione managed to smile despite her own worry balling up in her throat. At least Harry had puzzled the Minister one more time if he was gone.
He can’t be. Not without telling us. I know he wouldn’t tell us his plan, but he would have told us if he was going to go forever. And…and he wouldn’t have had a reason to hide that from the lightning stag, if he was just going to do what it wanted. He would have had time for farewells and reassuring us he’d be all right.
This has to be something else. A trick of some kind.
She had just started to cheer up because of that when Ron stiffened next to her. Hermione looked up and found Clearwater staring at her. She said something to her guards, and most of the Aurors fell back, but Clearwater hurried towards them with two at her sides.
Ron made a sound like a hungry lion, and Hermione reached up and clutched his arm. “Don’t kill her,” she whispered.
“I want to,” Ron said. “And if she comes close enough to actually threaten you, instead of only dreaming of doing it, then I’ll hurt her.” He moved around in front of her, his head lowered and his eyes on the Aurors. Hermione remembered that he’d had their training, too, and he might know them and the way they fought.
She pressed around her husband and nodded to Minister Clearwater, trying to maintain a calm, polite expression. She doubted it did any good, but she could look more mature than the Minister if she tried. (Not that that was difficult). “Good afternoon, Minister. Was there something you wanted to say to me?”
“Yes,” said Clearwater, and her voice carried. She was trying to make this public, Hermione realized, probably so no one could say she’d done this clandestinely. Unfortunately, she’d chosen her moment wrong, since everyone was still gaping at the smoke that burned away in the sun, and the spectacle Harry had made on rising.
He’s not gone. He’s not.
“Arrest the traitor,” Clearwater told the Aurors with her, and stepped aside.
Ron moved so fast Hermione didn’t actually see his wand gesture, only the flash of red light that indicated the Stunners at play. Both of the Aurors slumped to the ground and lay there, Stupefied. Hermione had the presence of mind to Summon their wands before Clearwater could do something with them.
Ron edged forwards again. His eyes were wide, and dreamy, his mouth set in a smile Hermione had never seen before. He continued looking at Clearwater as though she was the center of his universe.
Hermione had seen the real version of that look, though, and knew that Clearwater was only the center for one reason. “Ron,” she said quietly, and moved up beside him again. “I can protect myself.”
“No,” Ron said. “I know you can take care of yourself, love. You proved that when you got out of there. But I couldn’t do anything for you for the longest time. And I had to watch from a distance as you were put under an Unforgivable and then had to stay there and maintain a cover that was even harder than before.” Clearwater matched him stare for stare, but Hermione could see the way her cheek twitched. “I’m going to have payback for that. From the Minister who thought that she could use the Imperius casually, to get what she wanted, on my wife.”
“I’ve studied your criminal records, Weasley,” Clearwater said. “I know you used the Imperius Curse during the war. All of you did.”
“Stupid kids, using those spells in a war that would have killed them,” Ron countered instantly. “A little different from the Minister using it on someone who hadn’t offered her direct harm.”
“She was a spy,” said Clearwater, and Hermione stepped back in spite of herself when the Minister looked at her. The hatred there was more than she had ever thought she would inspire. People hated her for her blood, hated her out of jealousy, hated her because she pushed legislation for house-elves. They didn’t hate her because of something she had done to protect herself, until now. “I had every right to stop her from feeding information to the enemy.”
“Not with that spell,” Ron said. “Never with that spell. And never her.”
“You know nothing about politics,” Clearwater said, and drew her wand. She had been an Auror, too, Hermione thought, in between and behind her fear. She didn’t know that she could stop what was going forward, and increasingly, she was losing the desire to try. “Nothing. You have no idea what I could have done to her when I suspected her spying. I could have had her tortured. I could have had her locked up. I did the kinder thing, and allowed her to maintain her freedom and a semblance of use. Doesn’t she love being useful?”
“Not to someone like you,” Hermione said, and didn’t know she was going to say it aloud until she heard the words emerging from her lips.
Clearwater threw her one lingering look, as though to memorize what her face looked like before a spell destroyed it. In the moment she was turned away, Ron struck her with a blast of steam that almost rocked her off her feet, and then the battle began.
Hermione fell back from it so that she could judge better where she should stand and how she could intervene, and in the meantime, couldn’t help throwing a glance up at the sky.
Come on, Harry. I know you wouldn’t abandon us without a farewell, that part of this must have been a ruse to fool the lightning stag and the prophecy. Come back and help us.
*
Harry turned to the second far loop, leaving the central one smoldering with a sullen silver light for now. He had to use the machine for its intended purpose, and hold back one of the concentrations of his magic, or he would try to spend himself too far and fast, and lose everything in trying to do everything.
He reached down and scooped the magic of the second loop into his hands, and it sparkled in front of him, pure and blazing white. Harry smiled. That was the color that came to mind when he thought of Draco, apparently. Stainless. Flawless. He wondered how Draco would feel to know that.
When this is over, I’ll ask him.
He tossed the magic into the air, and it caught and turned above him, shining like the head of a white flower. He ignored the gaping stares he was sure he attracted. The illusion was gone now, and the people who watched would be able to see the fire flaring, but none of them would know what it meant. And if the lightning stag looked down, it would think only that he had left some of his magic behind. Even it had not desired that he bring the whole of his fire with him when he went to the other worlds.
Harry spun and twisted the power in front of him, weaving it together, and adding other, smaller threads as he thought about them. Lucius Malfoy. Narcissa Malfoy. Ron. Hermione. He hesitated a moment over whether to add two threads for George, and finally settled on two as the number that felt right, rather than the number that made logical sense. After that came eight more, for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fleur, Ginny, and Bill and Fleur’s daughter. They hadn’t joined him in the revolution, and he understood why: because they had been able to see from the beginning that he didn’t need the help and that it probably wouldn’t work out the way he wanted it to.
But he would keep them safe anyway. The Ministry might strike at innocents to try and hurt him, but these were the most likely targets. His friends. His family.
His lover and his lover’s family.
Harry glanced up at the ball that hovered above him, and the nest of threads, and then reached up and added blue fire to the nearest three strands. Draco and his family would need a place far away from here, a place where Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy could stay and recover. Harry doubted they would ever be the same people they had been before Azkaban, but they should have the chance. And that meant Draco would have the chance to watch them become stronger again, as well.
The rest of the strands, he wrapped a gold and scarlet cloak around. Let the Ministry try to threaten them. Spells would bounce from suddenly-appearing wards, and potions they hadn’t agreed to swallow would simply turn into balls in their throats or on their skin and be coughed or lobbed back up. In times of emergency, if they wished to flee, they could come to the same haven that Harry was constructing for Draco and his parents.
A place far away, where no one else could ever find them, because no one else would have the key. An ideal place.
He hesitated. He thought he was forgetting something, but it wasn’t until he thought back on his last few conversations with Draco that he realized what it was. He smiled and wove another thread through the nest, for himself. That meant he would be added to the place and pulled along with them, when they went.
Which was necessary for another reason.
Harry turned the glittering ball in front of him, and then lifted it and threw it high. It burst above him like a firework, orange and gold and red, partially in tribute to Fred and George and the fireworks they had sometimes included among their Wheezes. The rain of sparks that would fall would cover those the spell was intended to protect, and bind to them. That would mean it lasted, permanent as their skin.
He hovered there, shaken and drained, after the spell left him. He had known he was strong, but he didn’t know if anyone else recognized the extent of his strength. He was shivering, holding himself.
And then he remembered there were still other things to be done, things that the magic in the central loop waited for. He turned and stooped down, towards the place where the greatest fire still shimmered.
Where his surrender waited.
*
George felt the flame that settled around him, and although he could have fought it-he carried some pranks and inventions in his pockets that could disrupt virtually any spell, as well as Fred in the back of his skull-he was curious about what it might feel like. He let it settle around him, and then peered at the world. If the spell had changed his perceptions of the world, that might be annoying. He would need to know.
The flames that cut his vision were soft and shimmering, green and blue and red and white. George reached up and patted the air around his shoulders, and felt more currents of warmth than should be there, darting in several directions and caressing his fingers. He let them nip at and play with him, and then stepped back. Yes, the giant ball of white flame above them had faded.
Whatever this was, it was a gift from Harry to him. George had absolutely no doubt about that.
He turned, and saw that Malfoy was sheened in the flame, too, with it gleaming in his eyes and turning them blue, around his arms and making them paler than before, adding tints of gold to his almost-white hair. He caught George’s gaze and stood there, uncertain, for a moment, as if he thought George would tell him something bad.
George smiled at him. Malfoy had been more courageous in the face of Harry apparently going off like a firework than George would have thought he could be, and that had earned him some indulgence, if they hadn’t already built something like an awkward, straining friendship. He nodded up the hill. “Are you going or not?” he asked.
“Going?” Malfoy repeated the word like it was a foreign concept, staring at the hill and blinking.
George rolled his eyes. “Yes, idiot. Harry’s still there. He only used the illusion to make everyone think he’d vanished and they had nothing more to fear from him. There’s no way that he would actually go and leave you behind, even more than all the rest of us. And you’re mad if you don’t think that this fire came from him and nowhere else.” He gestured at the sparks that still fizzed and danced on his clothing. “Go up to him. I think he must be waiting for you. Why else would he have lingered?”
Malfoy hesitated once more. Then he began climbing.
George climbed behind him. He believed what he’d said, but he still wanted to shake Harry for not telling them what the machine did earlier. He could have made it even more impressive and easy to use if Harry had just said that he wanted it to create a giant illusion and then channel his magic into some kind of magical safety-fire.
And I could have helped more, Fred said, with immense dignity, in the back of his mind.
George snorted. “You’re just angry that you think he didn’t provide you with any special protection,” he muttered. He didn’t think Malfoy, climbing with unusual dedication beside him, would notice him talking to himself, as he would think it. “Look into the back of your thoughts, and then talk to me again.”
Fred grumbled, but did as George had said. Then there was some blank silence, while George continued climbing with some smugness. Fred whispered at last, How in the world did he do that? I can see it, there in front of me, like a blue coat hanging on a hook. I don’t-how did he reach into your thoughts and find me? How? Fred’s voice was getting slightly hysterical.
It wasn’t the reaction George had thought he would have to proof that someone else saw him as real, but he could understand it, too. Their thoughts had always been private between them, flowing along a channel no one else had access to. That Harry had reached out and invaded that link without so much as a by-your-leave was one of the more interesting things George had ever heard of, and one of the most terrifying.
“I don’t know,” he said back, gently. “But it’s there, and it means that he’s concerned about you and thinks you’re real. So. Stop complaining.”
You’re climbing the hill all wrong.
Then again, it probably wouldn’t be his brother if he stopped complaining. George grinned and scrambled after Malfoy as he started to near the top of the hill.
*
The central loop loomed in front of him, and the magic in the midst of it, the way it shone and foamed, was enough to awe even Harry into silence for a moment. He hadn’t known he had that much power in him.
He reached out to it, and it extended a single, bright tendril to him, like molten lava with spots of gold and orange floating reflected in it. Harry swallowed. It was so beautiful, so bright, and he didn’t know how to hang onto it. It seemed to slide through his hand, caressing him. Harry shook his head again.
With this much power, he could do anything. Go anywhere. Explore the universe as the stag had urged him to do, but without the constraints of obeying prophecy and destiny.
But no. He had made a promise to the people he led into the revolution, and he hadn’t kept it. He had vowed that he would make the world safe for Muggleborns and stop them from being condemned by people who had the money or the political favor to get away with crimes.
So.
He reached out, with his magic, and began to make it so.
Chapter Forty-Eight.
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