Chapter Seven of 'Ragnarok'- Collision

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Six.

Title: Ragnarok (7/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Heavy violence, gore, sex, angst, manipulation, discussion of suicide, arguably Dark versions of both characters. Ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Draco Malfoy, at thirty, is the youngest member of the Wizengamot. He thinks he has achieved the highest political power of which he’s capable—until he learns the secret of Ragnarok, the elite corps of wizards who deal with “unsolvable” problems for the Wizengamot.
Author’s Notes: This will be, I think, a fairly short story, somewhere between 12 and 15 chapters, and perhaps even shorter than that. It involves fairly cynical versions of the characters. The title is the name of the event that, in Norse mythology, was supposed to kill the gods.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Seven—Collision

“What’s going to happen next?” Harry asked later, when they were sitting in a different room and eating another meal. This time, Malfoy was eating with him, and the food wasn’t as wildly sweet, but Harry could bear the strong red meat and the sharp cheese. It was what he needed after an experience as intense as that one.

“That depends on what you intend to do,” Malfoy said, laying down a block of white cheese that stank, as far as Harry was concerned, and leaning forwards to study him. Harry licked his lips and tried to keep his attention focused on the table. He had no reason to be dreaming of what Malfoy’s chin would taste like. “Do you need to make up your mind about how far you’re willing to go, or can I trust you to keep up your part of the conquest?”

Harry shuddered a little and took one more bite of the lightly sauced chicken in front of him. “It would help if I knew what we’re supposed to be conquering,” he said. “The British wizarding world? The Wizengamot? Europe?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said.

Harry stared at him. He would have laughed a short time ago, if anyone had said anything like that to him. Who did Malfoy think he was?

But now all that happened was that his breath became short and fantasies crowded his mind. He couldn’t define those fantasies very well, some of them were heavy and richly colored and some of them were thin and delicate, but he knew they existed, and he knew he could grasp them if he dared.

Ridiculous things become real when you have power that’s capable of achieving them, Harry thought, and his face felt hot and his heartbeat dizzying. I always did, but I didn’t dare think that way. And why not? What kind of moral censure will come down on me if I do? Having the thoughts isn’t the same as doing the actions.

He was starting to get a glimpse of just how cramped his previous life had been. He ducked his head and ate one more bite of meat, and then he felt Malfoy’s hand come to rest on his as it reached across the table.

Harry froze and gazed at the slender white fingers, the blue veins glowing through them, the shadows of nail and knuckle. No one would ever think, from looking at that hand, that Malfoy contained enough power to break worlds, or an ambition that would set him up as a kind of king. But then again, Harry thought, turning his hand over to grasp it back, most people probably wouldn’t say that about his blunt nails or square palms, either.

“Listen to me,” Malfoy said in a focused voice. “I can only go as far as my power will take me, alone. I need your cooperation to both increase the power and achieve my ambitions. For that, I need to keep you happy. We won’t do anything that you don’t want to do, because ultimately that would be fatal to me as well as to you.”

Harry waited a moment. He would have expected to feel creeping disgust that Malfoy was speaking like that. Honesty was one thing, but transparent power-hunger and naked greed was another.

But instead, all he felt was swelling excitement, and an emotion that was so strange he waited for long moments to identify it, feeling it trickle through him like a heavy white flood of water. Approval.

He approved of the way that Malfoy was approaching this. He could have tried lies and subtler manipulations; he could have tried to pretend that he had something at heart other than his own good, such as the good of the people who would be better-ruled by him than the Wizengamot. But he didn’t.

Harry was tired of pretense more than anything else, he thought suddenly. Pretending that his magic was evil, pretending that he served the Wizengamot like a good little weapon and dreamed of nothing else, pretending that he had moved to Australia and that he couldn’t visit his friends. He had run away from all the complications because he had been sure—sure, without even questioning or testing the conclusion—that that was the better way.

But merely having this level of magic didn’t make him evil. It was the purpose he wielded it for that would do that.

Feeling as though he had smashed through a wall into the middle of a different and more difficult life, Harry lifted his head and took a deep breath. “I’m willing to begin the first of those rituals right now. We might as well take advantage of my presence in your house, don’t you think?”

Malfoy’s eyes sharpened, and his breathing briefly made him sound as if he was having a seizure. Then he leaned across the table, cradled Harry’s head in heavy, pinching hands, and brought his lips down on his.

Harry returned the kiss eagerly, thrusting his tongue out so he could match him snog for snog. His body was stiff in all the right places, and his excitement made him feel as if he was pitching downhill in a sled, out of control. No matter what he met along the way, he knew he wouldn’t die, but there were other possible destinies, other problems. Harry thought he was finally ready to meet them.

*

Draco nodded to Potter, who stopped and stood obediently in place on one of the points of the five-pointed star laid into the dungeon floor. Draco walked one more time around the circle that contained the star, studying the thin, precise lines of the carvings. One mistake could make the ritual blow up in their faces.

But he saw no such mistake. Why should he have? He cared more about these rituals to raise his power than anything else, and he had made his preparations over years and checked and rechecked them again, as well as hiring experts to check them who had agreed to be Obliviated afterwards. Of course he would leave nothing to chance, and of course he would not rely on his own eyes alone.

It was finally going to happen. He was finally going to have the kind of control and power that he’d always dreamed of.

“Ready?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows at Potter.

Potter nodded quickly, once, and then seemed to realize that the swiftness of his gesture might not inspire much confidence in Draco. This time, the nod was slower, and he offered a temperate smile. Draco dipped his head in response—he and Potter had gone over this several times now, and Potter had absorbed the instructions as if he was starved for new material to think about—and then reached down and picked up the silver chisel that had lain on the floor at his feet.

“I call the fire.” His voice sounded smaller in the confines of the dungeon room than he had thought it would. But Draco had performed rituals like this before, as many as he could alone, and he was used to the sensation. He kept his eyes fixed on the chisel, which shone like a star in his hand, and the world around him wavered as if he was seeing it through a curtain of smoke or incense. His ordinary perceptions were shifting and slipping away, to be replaced by ritual perceptions.

“I call the air.” He turned and faced the wall behind him, and a glassy image of the chisel formed and fell into his free hand. Draco held them both up, displaying them to the silent powers behind the ritual, whatever combination of forces in magic and nature made them work. He thought he could feel someone bowing to him from an immense distance, but he had never been sure how real that was. He turned to face the circle again.

Potter was staring at him in wonder, but he had remembered Draco’s instructions well enough to pick up the stone knife that had been lying at his feet. He offered it to the star, head bowed, and turned in a slow circle so that he was facing the outer ring.

“I call the earth,” he said. His voice shook infinitesimally, but steadied as Draco listened. Draco had a smile of approval ready when Potter turned round again. It wouldn’t do to discourage him before the magic proper began.

Draco looked to the center of the star, and saw an image forming there, a reflection in a seemingly distorted mirror that grew more and more real as he watched. In an instant it was a knife, with the same kind of blocky hilt and slender blade as the one that Potter held, but rippling with the consistency and color of water.

It hovered, then flew towards Potter, who barely got a hand up to catch it in time. Draco raised one eyebrow in disapprobation. Potter flushed, but maintained his grip on both knives and nodded shakily. Draco took him at his word and raised the silvery chisel of light, then the airy one. Potter mimicked him with the knives in order, the real and the unreal.

“I will carve out my power,” Draco said, and the dungeon echoed around him and then settled into a listening silence. Potter looked half-alarmed. Draco wondered why. Of course, if the ritual that had changed his magic hadn’t been of his own making, then he might have never experienced this sensation of someone, or something, watching and judging.

Draco lashed sideways with the silver chisel, towards the uppermost point of the star. The air shuddered and rang, and the chisel stuck in something invisible but solid. Draco laughed and brought the glassy chisel forwards in turn. The world sighed as he reached the full extension of his arms and then hauled back.

The air in front of him tore down the front like a set of cheap robes ruined by an impatient lover. Draco pulled his chisels towards the sides, coaxing, and the rip grew wider and wider, flooding the room with pale light. Draco stepped sideways and launched the glassy chisel from his hand. It vanished in midair, and he stood in the center of a pool of growing radiance, moving backwards in careful steps so that he could let it pour into the world.

When he glanced to the side, it was to find Potter staring at him in wonder, completely ignoring the part he was supposed to play.

Draco didn’t dare speak a word; unexpected phrases at this point in a ritual could take on a life of their own. He narrowed his eyes and jerked his head, though, and Potter started and came to life.

“I will cut out my power,” he said, voice uncertain, and then knelt down and stabbed into the center of the star with the stone knife. Draco could see the muscles in his shoulders flexing and knew he was bracing himself for the collision of blade with floor.

Instead, though, the blade slid smoothly into the floor, as if it were cutting ink or butter. Potter staggered, but luckily kept from falling face-down into the center of the star, which would have had effects that Draco didn’t care to speculate on. His watery knife joined the first a moment later, in a parallel cut.

The floor shuddered, and the stone flowed aside. Draco caught a glimpse of brightness below and licked his lips. He knew what this was—he was drawing power from the molten core of the earth—but for once, knowledge failed to lighten his impression of awe and terror.

Potter hopped backwards on his heels. Draco tensed, but he paused, teetering, on the curve of the circle around the star rather than crossing it. His eyes were even wider now, and he had lost his glasses somewhere along the way. The watery knife, still embedded in the floor, turned to steam in the wake of the fiery light.

Red light from the floor spilled up and towards the pale light that Draco had pulled out of the air. Draco watched them inch closer to each other, his nose stinging from the rapidity of the breaths he drew.

They met.

And exploded.

Draco laughed aloud and raced forwards, aiming for the uppermost point of the star. The light danced around him, not offering heat against his skin or a sensation or pressure or anything other than intense radiance, and then landed on the circle that surrounded them. It charged like a wildfire that had agreed to burn only in a designated area.

Draco grinned fiercely and bent his head to his task, his feet churning wildly along the lines of the star, never deviating from them. His task was to reach the highest point of the star before the light did. Even if he did not, however, he would catch some of the power that that mingled and dancing fire, a pale rose in color, represented.

But that was not enough for him. He did not want to absorb part of it. He wanted to absorb all of it.

On he ran, and the air around him turned sweet and warmer than before. The longer the light existed in the world, the more it took on the properties of normal fire.

Draco could hear his lungs heaving in his chest. He could feel sweat starting on his forehead, and a brief, fleeting thought crossed his mind, about how he would probably appear to Potter, who stood gaping in his place.

But Potter would see worse than that before they were done. He had seen Draco decorated with sweat already when they’d fucked. Draco laughed aloud at the thought that something as simple as that would deter him, and ran faster.

*

Harry stared. He knew that, and he couldn’t help it. If Malfoy glanced over at him, he would probably think Harry was besotted, and he would laugh the way he was doing now from what sounded like sheer exhilaration, and it would serve Harry right.

But he couldn’t have closed his jaw. He used the notion to comfort himself as he watched the fire curling like a wave over Malfoy’s shoulders, highlighting his pale color and making him appear to flush, so white was his skin.

Malfoy’s boots hit the uppermost point of the star, and he whirled around, his head tossed back, his arms wide open to embrace the crashing wave.

The light slammed into him.

Harry didn’t know why, but he had expected that light to bear Malfoy off his feet and smash him into the far wall. It didn’t, though. It snapped and sang with a noise like a fire’s crackling heard from a distance, and then Malfoy was blazing, roseate flames curling down and under his arms, cradling his legs, outlining his hips.

His robes burned away. Harry gasped aloud, but Malfoy, though he turned around to face him, didn’t seem hurt. He winked and thrust his hips at Harry, naked and glowing, sexual in a way that made Harry weak with a storm of desire.

“Look at me!” he howled, and the cry that would have seemed childish and stupid in a lot of other circumstances Harry could think of became the only reasonable option when he was shining like that. “This is what you can be if you don’t fear, if you reach out and grasp the star that’s dangling in your hand!”

Harry shook his head, wanting to ask how that could happen for him when his magic would prevent him from doing anything as creative as Malfoy came up with, but Malfoy had turned back to the fire. Most of it had gathered into a single great flame on the floor a few feet from him, between the point of the star and the outer circle.

Malfoy laughed again and hurled himself forwards, straight into the flame.

Harry shouted this time, but the sudden singing of the fire overwhelmed his voice. The flame spread out two branches like arms, as if it were imitating Malfoy, and then whirled and grew, becoming a wall, a bulwark, that stretched along the line of the circle. Harry watched it curve towards him, stupefied. He had no doubt that he could destroy it if it actually threatened him—his magic still moved inside him with more power than he felt in the room—but he was concerned about what had happened to Malfoy.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. A figure stepped out of the fire and walked towards Harry, glowing like glass lit from within. Its smile was lazy, its muscles hard and bright, its stride such a swagger that Harry again felt weak. He braced himself against the wall of the room and shook his head.

“You’re mad, Malfoy, you know that?” he asked in a pathetic voice.

Malfoy laughed that laugh again, the one that told Harry part of how they would conquer the world, and drew Harry into a kiss. Harry didn’t resist.

*

Bathing in the fire of a successfully completed ritual was like nothing else.

And this time, Draco could truthfully say that he’d never had an experience that even compared, because this ritual was more than twice as powerful as the ones that he’d been able to perform alone.

The moment when he fully grasped the power was obscure in his memory, as it needed to be. Draco was not sure that a human brain could stand the sheer drum and flame of that magic. But before and after the blankness, he was caught up in the glory, and he could have flown to the moon on the sheer strength of it.

The expression on Potter’s face when he came out for the last time made it all the better. Potter stared at him, openly worshipful, as if he was a god, and reached out a trembling hand that Draco clasped and drew around his back. His lips were not as warm as the fire, but Draco knew he couldn’t exist at the height of ecstasy at all times. Carrying stars within his skin made the kiss better.

And that was what he wanted: to be better, stronger, at all times. To soar until he reached the point where the heavens ran out.

He drew back from the kiss with Potter and waited patiently until Potter swallowed and regained his feet and could look at him. Then he smiled. Potter jerked as though someone had stung him.

“That’s the way the ritual is supposed to work,” Draco said. “That’s the way that they will work in the future, once we have mastered the proper way to conduct them—including the ones that will modify your magic.”

“If they exist,” Potter said, but Draco knew his pessimism was simply reflexive. He was looking at Draco with wide eyes, and his lips were well-kissed, and he kept reaching up as if he needed to adjust his glasses and then remembering they weren’t there, so that his hand hovered in front of his face without moving.

“They do,” Draco said. “Perhaps not the one you found. That would simply destroy your magic and leave you a Squib.” He cocked a challenging eyebrow. He had got part of what he wanted from Potter without any definite attitude change, but to win more, he would have to see one. “Are you content, now, to lose your power completely?”

Potter stood up straight and shook his head. “Not if there’s any way that I can retain it,” he said. “But there has to be a way.”

Draco laughed. “I never thought that you would be the one cautious of making commitments,” he said when Potter gave him a curious look. “You seemed more the one to spring into the fire the way I did.”

Potter’s jaw tightened. “Live under conditions of repression for ten years and see what happens to you,” he muttered.

Draco nodded, but said, “That’s why I want to see you make definite changes. If you rebel against the Wizengamot openly before we are ready, particularly when Gilfleur has access to something like my level of power, you wouldn’t demonstrate wisdom, I agree. But what about seeing your friends? Do you have courage enough to do that?”

Potter’s eyes were so wide now that Draco felt a bit envious. He hadn’t managed to do that even when he took Potter in his arms. “You would want me to speak to Ron and Hermione? Why? What if they try to stop us?”

Us. Draco had never imagined that he could like hearing a simple word so much. He handed Potter another smile, and Potter half-closed his eyes and turned his head away as if the expression was too bright for him to face.

“That’s where Memory Charms come in,” Draco said. “Always useful to ensure that certain people who disagree with me have untroubled lives. I don’t want to kill them or harm them,” he added, when Potter opened his mouth. “I think them essential to your psychological well-being, in fact. But I want to make it clear that they won’t be allowed to stand in our way because you have fears for the integrity of their minds. Do you understand?”

Potter nodded shortly. “As long as you’re delicate when you use the Memory Charm. I’ve executed a few people who went mad because the Obliviators had done their work poorly, and the Ministry didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I have no wish to kill or harm them, as I said,” Draco responded quietly. He cocked his head to the side and studied Potter, who managed to keep from shuffling his feet around, with what looked like heavy effort. “Do you still remember the names of the people you executed?” Draco asked abruptly. “And the official reasons why?”

“Of course,” Potter snapped. “I remember every person I kill.” For a moment, he looked like the haunted hero Draco remembered from Hogwarts.

“Good,” Draco breathed. That might be good blackmail material for the Ministry someday. He wondered that Potter had never tried to use it so. He might have improved his position even if he couldn’t completely escape from the Wizengamot’s control.

Then he reminded himself, again, that Potter had been alone. He seemed to need allies to do anything productive.

Well, he need not fear that I’ll leave him. Potter had some new form of power to offer every time Draco turned around. He would be a fool to abandon him when he would never find another ally like this again.

He felt a pulse of desire in his groin, and smiled. Though he was not someone to make decisions on the basis of sex alone, he would also be a fool to abandon a lover who could make him feel the way Potter did.

“We can use that,” he explained, when Potter gave him a dim, puzzled look.

Potter’s mouth opened slowly, and to Draco’s relief, it made him look simply startled instead of weak-witted. “Yes, we can,” he breathed, and then he turned his head to the side and showed a wicked grin that stunned Draco. “I never thought of that. Why did I never think of that? You’re good for me, in more ways than one.”

Draco reached out and kissed Potter again, holding him still by main force. Potter didn’t show much disposition to stay still, though, squirming against him and pressing close to him with grumbles and grunts and sighs. Draco pulled away panting, and raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to confront your friends tomorrow?”

Potter nodded. His face looked alive again, the shadows of doubt burned away by the future that Draco could offer him. “Yes. I have to get back tonight, or the Wizengamot is going to notice my absence.”

That was too true for argument. Draco kissed him regretfully one more time and accompanied him to the front door, finding Potter’s constant sidelong glances at his nakedness amusing. If there was no one to notice it except him deep in the dungeons of the Manor, there was no one to notice it in the rest of the house, either. His house-elves were too well-trained to respond to such things.

Draco leaned against the door when Potter had gone, his arms braced, and stroked himself to a second orgasm imagining Potter’s face transfigured and lit as his had been with the completion of a successful ritual.

Comments

[absynthedrinker]

I feel like I have stumbled on a hoard of cookies! I want to just go on eating and eating. This is marvelous! Thanks.

Peace,
Bubba