Chapter Seventeen of 'Burning Day'- Mixed Forms of Reality
Chapter Sixteen.
Title: Burning Day (17/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Angst, violence
Rating: R
Summary: In the lead-up to Draco’s election as Minister, Dark Lord Harry Potter broods. Only he can’t do that all the time, even with most of Britain terrified of him now. So he has to find something else to occupy his time. And being a Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord is it.
Author’s Notes: The sequel to Easy as Falling and Black Phoenix, but still prequel to “Charming When He Needs to Be.” This will be a shorter story than the others, mostly tying up the loose ends of Draco as Minister and Harry as Dark Lord, and the last story in the series.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen-Mixed Forms of Reality
“I wanted to see you, my Lord.”
Harry looked carefully at the man across the table from him. He seemed to be the same kind of person Harry had been interviewing lately in relation to the Court. He had a furtive look, but that probably came from dodging Ministry people as much as anything else, Harry thought. He had large hands, and a scar on the right side of his face that stood out long and silvery against his tanned skin.
“Yes, I know,” said Harry. “And you don’t need to actually call me Lord until I’ve accepted you into Hogwarts, you know.”
The man frowned. “But that’s what I need to talk to you about. I have to admit that I came here under false pretenses. I don’t want to enter the Court.”
Harry gestured with one hand, and the feet of the chair the man sat in curled around and trapped his feet. The man’s face went very still. “I mean no harm,” he said.
“You can’t mean any harm in the traditional sense, no, or my wards on the castle would already have taken care of you.” Harry put his fingers together, purely for the way that it made the man start and stare at him, and smiled. Well, you could call it a smile if you stretched things a bit. “I just want to know what you think you’re going to accomplish.”
“I was sent to sue for peace.”
Harry eased slowly back in his chair. The response wasn’t one he would have expected, and he wondered if the man would have let things go on through the proper interview and then walked away if Harry hadn’t forced the issue.
But you didn’t force it. He was the one who said that he didn’t come here for the purpose of joining the Court.
Harry decided that a neutral face was the best one he could put on it right now, and nodded sternly. “Who are you representing?”
“A certain faction in the Unspeakables which has tired of this war.” The man’s eyes went back and forth between him and the bottom of the chair, as though judging the strength of his magic from the tightness of the chair’s grip. “We know that you’re powerful. But we don’t think that’s the defining fact of the relationship the Ministry needs to have with you. You’re here to stay. All right. Then we need to understand you and work around you.”
Harry snorted a little. “The way that you did the laws that would restrain the operation of the Department of Mysteries.”
“The laws aren’t made to contain truly extraordinary situations,” the man pointed out to him, so unruffled that Harry had to smile. “You’re proof of that yourself, my Lord.”
“Why are you using the title, though?” Harry wanted to know. “Most of the time, it’s only people who’ve sworn to me who do that.”
“I believe in the practicality of acknowledging power. I was the one who volunteered to come here.”
Harry glanced at the papers on his desk, then disregarded them. He was pretty sure the man wouldn’t have used his own name when applying to come to the Court, in case someone investigated, found his connection to the Unspeakables, and denied him the right to walk onto the grounds in the first place. “What’s your name?”
“Edward Ende, my Lord.” Ende smiled at him cautiously.
“It sounds like it would have suited the Unspeakables a lot better to put you in charge from the first,” Harry told him. “Why didn’t it happen?”
Ende settled more comfortably in his chair, as though it just happened to want to hold his feet on its own. “Because they wanted war instead of peace. They thought they could beat you.”
“They should have known better.”
“Feeling your aura this close, my Lord, I’m inclined to agree.”
Harry lifted his head. “You can feel auras of power?” He knew some people could, but it was rare when it wasn’t connected to great magical power itself, and he would have felt it if Ende had that kind of strength.
“Yes.” Ende gave what looked like a self-deprecating shrug. “Not actually all that useful unless there’s a lot of powerful wizards around to feel, and that’s not always true.”
“Hm,” said Harry. He would have posted Ende on the entrance to his Court-or the Ministry-to make sure that not a lot of powerful wizards were entering unacknowledged. But it had already been forcefully brought home to him that Unspeakables had different priorities. “So. What terms is your faction of the Unspeakables going to give me?”
“I have a map in my pocket. May I get it?”
Harry lifted his hand and conjured a small, intense flame on his palm. Not hard to do, and it drew Ende’s eye. “Keeping in mind what I can do to you if you play me false, yes.”
Ende paled a little, but took out the map without trying anything funny. He held it up obviously, even sort of ostentatiously, so that Harry could see it. Harry squinted at it. He had thought it would be a map of Hogwarts and the territory around it, and that the Unspeakables would want him to give up the Forbidden Forest or something. Since that wasn’t about to happen, he would send Ende back to his people just as empty-handed as he had been when he came.
But it wasn’t a map like that at all. Instead, Harry made out what looked like a series of concentric rings around something in the center that was Hogwarts. He shook his head and glanced back at Ende. “What does that mean?”
“It shows the influence of your magic, and how far it reaches out from the castle,” said Ende. “Politically, I mean, and we did some speculation about how far you could reach with your power, too, without leaving your Court.”
Harry smiled at him. “As far as I want.”
Ende swallowed, but he didn’t look daunted. “Beg pardon, my Lord, but if your people aren’t being directly threatened, then I think that you wouldn’t want to do that as often. You’ll want to stay home and reserve your magic for more direct enemies.”
Harry considered that, then nodded. “But what’s the point of showing me how far I can reach, if you believe that?”
“We’re trying to set up a series of zones,” Ende said. “Spaces where certain actions aren’t appropriate. For example, we can gather Potions ingredients near the Ministry and London without trouble, but not in the Forbidden Forest. We should be cautious and only take plants around Hogsmeade. And so on.”
“You should be cautious even with plants around Hogsmeade, if you’re taking too much or ingredients that are really profitable,” Harry said, but he was intrigued. At least this sounded like some of the Ministry was willing to leave his Court alone, and since the Unspeakables had been responsible for most of the attacks on him, he was getting rid of some of his most powerful enemies.
“I thought you would see sense,” said Ende. “I did tell them that, that you weren’t as ruthless as they wanted to think you were, but I don’t think many of them actually listened to me.”
“But this doesn’t actually stop the attacks of the Unspeakables, does it?” Harry continued, deciding he didn’t need to comment. “Just the faction you represent. How are you actually going to restrain the rest of them?”
Ende smiled tightly. “We can do it-but we need a week. It’ll take that long to remove some people from key positions and make sure that others don’t have access to the artifacts that let them get through wards and pose more of a threat.”
“I want those golden crystals gone. Destroyed.”
“We already did that.” Ende didn’t look perturbed. “They’d outlived their usefulness, anyway.”
Harry considered asking about that, but he thought he knew what it meant, and he didn’t really want to get into Unspeakable politics. “And you think that you can keep the others in check this way?”
“Yes.” Ende’s eyes met his, and he looked unshaken. Harry wished, again, that they’d sent him to negotiate in the first place. “What we need is a distraction. Someone who can keep the people who don’t agree with us occupied while we move in behind them and stab them in the back.”
At least he’s honest about what this will be, too. Then again, Harry didn’t care enough about people who had wanted to attack his people to give a shit. “But if I be the kind of distraction that you want, then what’s going to happen to my reputation with the public? They’ll only think that I’m more violent and sadistic than ever in the end. My Court will shrink. That agreement we negotiate won’t last.”
Ende shook his head impatiently. “Some of us, at least, realize the great things that you can do with illusion. You can do things that look great and impressive but aren’t damaging. We trust you that far. Hold them for a week.”
They know that my dragon and phoenixes are illusions. Harry kept his face calm. He was glad now that he hadn’t called in the black phoenix when Ende first revealed his mission. “What happens if you don’t keep your bargain at the end of the week?”
“If we lose, this will turn green.” Ende waited for Harry’s nod before reaching into his pocket again and taking out a glinting little bubble that had smaller patches of brilliant blue colors moving around near the surface. He put it carefully onto the desk, and Harry promptly cast a few spells-with his wand, since they were easier that way-to ensure that it wouldn’t burn the wood of his desk or spy on him. It wouldn’t. “If we win, it will turn blue.”
“In a week? What happens if I’m out of the room dealing with a problem that your opponents caused?”
Ende smiled. “We thought of that. It also has an alarm built into it that will shrill all through the castle. Someone is sure to hear it and bring you word.”
Harry looked carefully at Ende. It was ingenious, and he didn’t know if he should completely trust it. Then again, the Unspeakables had shown great cleverness getting around his prohibitions and attacking him. Maybe he should accept, for once, that they were also clever when they were fighting on his side.
“I’ll take this bubble and the deal for now,” he said. “If you turn on me, then so much the worse for you. I’ll hardly be accepting or polite then.”
“I understand.” Ende gestured at the chair that held his feet prisoner. “Will you let me go so that I can return to my people and report our success?”
Harry considered him closely one more time, then snapped his fingers. The chair’s feet loosened and flowed away from Ende. He stood up carefully, arranging his robes around him as though he was worried he would walk out of the castle and into a newspaper reporter.
“We won’t fail you,” he said, finally looking up from his robes and into Harry’s eyes.
“I hope not,” said Harry. “It’s going to go badly for you if you do.”
Ende’s smile this time was thin. “We fear what they can do to us more than we fear you. Not because you’re not capable of it,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth to defend the power of his magic. “I can feel that from your aura. But because we think you’re more merciful than they are.”
“At least you have the consolation of knowing they’re going to be roasted if you lose and they come against me,” Harry said.
“That is a comfort,” Ende said, and left. Harry thought he might even have been telling the truth.
*
“I need to talk to you about this phoenix,” Draco said.
He thought Harry might have looked a little offended. He certainly rolled over towards Draco and frowned as though he couldn’t understand why Draco should be talking about phoenixes when they’d just had sex. “What about it?”
Draco extended his arm to Brightness. The illusion had landed on the bedpost a second ago, perhaps summoned by Draco’s reference to it. Draco concentrated carefully on the sensation, but there was no weight behind those gleaming talons, no sign that a heavy bird had just landed on his arm.
“I want to know how much reality it actually has,” Draco said, stroking the feathers of its back. Perhaps there was a slight cool feeling when he touched them. He thought that was his imagination, though. “It saved me from a lightning bolt the other day, when I thought the only thing it could do was scream alarms.”
“A lightning bolt?” Harry went still beside him in a way that made Draco think the whole castle was listening. “Where did that happen? And why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “What was I going to say? ‘I have to stop the meeting and go report on this to the Dark Lord who’s also my lover?’ No, it’s okay. But how real is Brightness, if he could do that? It made me look foolish, when people asked me questions after that and I had to say I didn’t know.”
“The Unspeakables know about at least some of the illusions,” said Harry absently, reaching out. Brightness hesitated perceptibly before it hopped over to Harry’s arm. Draco watched and thought how strange it was that they all treated the phoenix as real, although Harry, at least, knew he had created the bird out of magic and light and nothing more. “That Ende bloke I told you about told me they did.”
“That’s something you also should have informed me about,” Draco began, outraged. That would definitely make his job harder, if the Unspeakables might think that Harry’s dragon couldn’t do anything to them and they stepped up the attacks on Draco again.
“Oh, hush. They attacked you with that lightning bolt before they told me that. And I don’t think Ende’s faction told the others that they were sure about the illusions only being illusions.” Harry tilted his arm back and forth, watching the shine of light off Brightness’s feathers and other things that Draco couldn’t be sure of.
“That’s just conjecture, all of it,” Draco said sulkily, but went quiet when Harry raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s strange,” Harry finally said, after peering deeply into the heart of Brightness’s silver beak and breast feathers. “It’s as though he’s taken on some extra reality.”
“Will you please explain what that means,” Draco said, rolling over and moaning into his pillow.
“Of course,” Harry said, and Draco heard a crisp sound like his hand smoothing back feathers. “It means that I made him as a pure illusion, but extra magic got added to him. He was real enough to absorb perceptions. That was the level he existed on. He could only create certain perceptions, though, you know? He could be seen and heard, but not touched.”
“It sounded like you were touching him.” Draco turned over again.
“That’s because I am.”
Sure enough, Harry was cradling the phoenix, holding it like a dove with its breast in his right hand and his left hand cupped beneath its butt. Draco stared, but couldn’t see any sign that Harry was having to be careful not to let his hands go through the illusion.
“Where did he get the rest of the magic?” Draco breathed.
“My guess? Some of it was the lightning bolt you mentioned.” Harry tossed the phoenix lightly into the air, and it flew over and landed on Draco’s shoulder, nudging its beak gently against his chin. Draco felt something this time, on the edge of sharp and round. “And some of it was my love for you.”
“That sounds very sweet, but it doesn’t make much sense,” Draco said, and he stubbornly maintained eye contact when he thought Harry would have looked away. Harry sighed and looked at the floor instead.
“All right,” Harry said. “I sent-I can send magic to strengthen someone I care for. I did it for Persephone when she was caged by the Unspeakables. I didn’t think I would be able to get out myself right then, but I knew I could help her break free, and she could go and tell other people.”
“She did that,” Draco muttered, remembering the way that Persephone had lit up all the skies between the Ministry and his house. “But what does that have to do with me?”
Harry bit his lip and reached out to take Draco’s hand. Draco took it, and looked sideways at Brightness sitting proud and alert on his shoulder. He didn’t think this was going to be a bad thing…
Of course, he had been wrong before.
“I think I sent magic to you through Brightness,” Harry whispered. “I left open a conduit through which magic could flow if you were in danger. If I had an ally among the Unspeakables I cared deeply for, then maybe I could send magic through the black dragon in the same way if they were attacked.”
Draco viciously threw the thought of someone else Harry loved with equal intensity away from him. “That’s your best theory about what happened?”
“It is.” Harry fastened his gaze earnestly on him. “Brightness shouldn’t be as mixed in reality as it is. But that’s the only thing I can tell you for certain happened, because it happened once before with Persephone.”
Draco sighed out. Of course that kind of thing would happen when your lover was a Dark Lord. He tightened his clasp on Harry’s hand. “I’m honored that you love me as much as you loved Persephone,” he said.
“More, I think,” said Harry. “It’s just-I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would happen with Brightness. And you’re right, I should have warned you.”
“How could you have warned me against something you didn’t know would happen?” Draco countered, light-headed with relief. At least he thought it was something normal, and not something that would make Harry have to take Brightness away.
“Draco.”
Draco looked up. Harry was leaning towards him, and there was a sharp gleam in his eyes that Draco recognized and responded to.
“So, I have to create this illusory distraction for a week to give Ende’s people time to rebel against the other Unspeakables,” said Harry casually. “Would you like to help?”
Chapter Eighteen.
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