lomonaaeren

Chapter Nine.

Title: Chains of Fool’s Gold (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Blood, gore, violence, torture, angst
Rating: R
Summary: The Ministry has driven Harry and Draco, formerly Aurors of the Socrates Corps, too far. Now they’re turning at bay, and they’re going to take the whole Ministry down with them—if they have to.
Author’s Notes: This is the sixteenth fic in the Cloak and Dagger series, following "Invisible Sparks", Hero's Funeral, Rites of the Dead, Sister Healer , Working With Them, This Enchanted Life, Letters From Exile, Writ on Water, "Evening Star,", The Library of Hades, "There Was Glory", A Reign of Silence, "Dictionary of Losses", Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity, and "The Horn That Was Blowing". I don’t yet know how many chapters it will have, although somewhere between fifteen and twenty is a good guess. It will be updated every Wednesday.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—For Tomorrow We Die

“We’ve done all we can,” Granger said, and set her mug down in the middle of the kitchen table with a bang.

“Except figure out a use for some of the toys that we gave Malfoy to work on.” Prince sounded complacent, one hand even stroking his beard in a motion that had been used by grandfathers around the world to make their grandchildren think they were forgiving, but his eyes shone hard in Draco’s direction.

Draco snorted. “No. I didn’t have enough time.” While Prince was still blinking from the fact that he’d admitted it, Draco took out the hummingbird Prince had given him with the chains hanging beneath it and held it up. “But I did figure out a use for this, which I reckon is more than you expected me to do.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” said Prince, his eyes narrowed a little as though he was trying to figure out what Draco was playing at. “That doesn’t mean that I’m not pleased.” He settled further against the back of his chair and looked at Draco.

Draco smirked at him and tossed the hummingbird into the air. That was the signal that made its wings begin to whir, and it tilted back and forth in place above the table, the chains braiding around each other and swinging wildly, entangled.

Prince opened his mouth. Draco knew, knew, it would be something pseudo-comforting about how they couldn’t expect results right away, and took great pleasure in casting the spell that commanded the bird nonverbally, so Prince wouldn’t be able to know how Draco had done it until he asked.

The hummingbird sped forwards, its chains enlarging and untangling themselves so that they formed into a loop. By the time Prince got it and started to rear back, the loop of chain was around his neck and tightening against his windpipe. The hummingbird turned back the other way and began to drop the next loop over his ears, prefatory to strangling him.

“No need,” said Prince, holding up one hand and bending forwards so that he wouldn’t pull against the strain. “I’m convinced.”

Draco gave him a thin smile and cast the next nonverbal spell that would stop the bird in its (hovering) tracks. “Are you?”

“I am.” Prince stared straight at him, and nodded. “You’re not as good an inventor as I am, or Weasley,” he said. “But you show some promise as a spell creator.”

Draco paused. It was not a career that he’d ever considered for himself. For one thing, spell creators tended to work in relatively low-level jobs. They specialized; they created spells for clothing, or wands, or brooms, and just functioned as part of a greater industry, with no renown for themselves. It was the wandmakers’ names that everyone remembered, not the names of the spell creators who came up with the proper way to put a phoenix feather inside a wand without splitting the veins or bending the edges.

But Draco had had enough of prestige, at least of the kind that having his name on the front page of every paper offered him, and he suspected Harry might be the same way. He found himself chewing his lip and leaning back in his own chair, contemplating the ceiling. Already he was wondering where he could go and what ways he could show this promise Prince talked about.

“Draco? The bird?”

Draco glanced up in absence that was all the greater, he thought, because he really had forgotten about the hummingbird that was almost strangling Prince. “Right. Sorry.” He gave Prince an insincere smile and spun his wand, and the loop of chain fell away, shrinking back into the normal size a moment later. The hummingbird became a motionless toy the next second, and fell to the tabletop with a clatter of wood and metal.

Prince picked it up and stroked its back. “Promise, indeed,” he murmured.

“Draco always has that.”

Draco reached back and clasped the possessive hand that Harry laid on his shoulder, recognizing the edge in Harry’s voice. He’s not really making fun of me, his clasp of Harry’s hand said, and a moment later Harry relaxed, squeezed once more, and let him go.

“I do,” he said, and stood up, smiling around at Granger and Prince and the Weasleys, who both sat on the other side of the table. “Are we agreed that we’ll leave in the morning?”

Granger nodded. “Hagrid is out talking to the thestrals right now, and making sure that they understand what they’re supposed to do.”

“I don’t think there’s much of a problem with that,” Draco said dryly, thinking of the strength of Carvenhoof’s body shifting beneath him, the way his wings had snapped and he had soared straight to the destination. Of course, part of that was probably the will of the herd and the guidance of the lead stallion as much as anything else, but Draco preferred to think that it was really Carvenhoof who had come up with the way they would fly. “But we’ll leave you alone for right now.”

He turned and clasped Harry’s hand. He had hoped that he wouldn’t need to explain what he wanted, and from the way Harry was smiling, he didn’t. Harry probably would have been happy to bend him over the table and kiss him right there, but he honored the tender sensibilities of his friends and pulled Draco towards the stairs again.

“We haven’t made the decision about when we’re going to release the Auror prisoners yet,” Weasley complained from behind them. “You’d think that you could at least stay long enough to talk about that—”

Draco turned and stared at Weasley. He couldn’t have seen his own face unless he was holding a mirror, but there was something frozen and effective in his eyes, it seemed, that shut Weasley up without a murmur. He looked down at the table and cleared his throat awkwardly.

“So,” he said. “Right.”

Draco considered that an improvement on the long explanation he would have demanded otherwise, and which Granger already seemed to be in the train of giving him. He drew Harry on up the stairs, and didn’t wait until the bedroom door had closed behind them before slamming Harry against it and kissing him.

There was a sound downstairs that might have been Weasley dropping his teacup, and then a sharp flow of words that was definitely Kreacher scolding someone, no matter what had happened. Draco smiled against Harry’s lips.

*

Harry had planned to make this solemn and tender, since they were going to begin their assault on the Ministry the next morning and they could die doing it. They had a pretty good plan, all considered, and they had the advantage of allies inside who had written them during the past week to coordinate the plans. And they had Prince and George’s toys, and the thestrals, and the memories, and the confused Aurors, who they were going to release the next day. Their assault on the Ministry would take more than one day to complete.

But the Ministry was likely to have traps and guards of their own, and it was possible that he or Draco might fall victim to one of them. So Harry had wanted to say something to Draco that was moving and profound, and also something that expressed how very much he loved him.

Instead, though, it was like this, Draco sweating under his hands and twisting so that it was hard for Harry to even help him get his clothes off, and wincing when Harry touched a bruise that he thought came from sitting on Carvenhoof’s broad back. Harry pulled his shirt out of the way and bent to suck on the bruise.

“Just like that,” Draco whispered in ecstasy, his neck arching back. “Oh, you know what I like.”

Harry did, and he ended up smiling around the flesh in his mouth. Draco seemed to feel the smile, and paused in his twisting to look down at Harry, who was kneeling on the floor beside him.

The seriousness came back.

Harry let Draco’s side go with a pop, and reached up to take his hands. Draco let him do it, although there was a brilliant shine to his eyes that told Harry how hard Draco was working against the shedding of tears. He wouldn’t really forgive Harry if Harry made him cry.

Tonight, Harry didn’t need to make him cry. He just needed him to listen.

“I love you,” he told Draco, who stared down at him as if memorizing the expression on Harry’s face or the way that he knelt in front of Draco would make this more real. “I love you so much it hurts, and I wish that I had—I don’t know, a ring and the ability to marry you in front of everybody. I wish I had the ability to give you your parents back.”

Draco shook his head, eyes still suspiciously bright, but no longer as hard. He might not mind some of the soppy stuff, then, Harry thought, relaxing a little. “You convinced me that I was better off without them,” he muttered, drawing Harry up until they stood on the same level. “Don’t ruin the fine effects of all your speeches by telling me that you regret that, now.”

“No,” Harry said, and wondered how he could say it, holding Draco’s hands, cradling his arms in his. “But—I wish I could give you everything you want because you’re special and you deserve it, not just because you need it.”

Draco showed him a small, private smile. “You’re doing a good job now,” he murmured, and curved an arm around Harry’s neck, and led him as firmly as he could towards the bed. Harry moved with him, unable to take his eyes off Draco’s face right now, which meant the bed came as a surprise and he fell into it with a grunt.

He started to sit up and reach for Draco, but Draco gave him an unexpectedly fierce look and said, “You wanted to give me what I wanted?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and lay back with his arms above his head on the pillow, as Draco proprietorially positioned him.

“This is what I want,” Draco said, and then smiled at him with his eyes shining like the sparkle off hematite. “For now. I’ll probably want something else tomorrow.”

“It would be more boring being with you if you weren’t like that,” Harry said, and then Draco stopped his mouth with a kiss.

*

To touch Harry this way was freeing.

Draco had endured years of loneliness, after Daphne, the woman he had thought he would marry, went to Azkaban for murder. His partner Kellen Moonborn had supplied the place of someone he could work with and trust to guard his back in a dangerous situation, but outside the Ministry, they pursued their private lives and had their own families—or didn’t. With his parents rejecting him for seven years even before they decided to forget him, Draco had made casual acquaintances, invited home some people who didn’t want an emotional connection any more than he did, and talked to portraits and colleagues he had to work with from time to time. He had wanted something more, but he hadn’t been willing to compromise his standards—such as swallowing his pride and bending his neck to his parents—in order to have it.

Harry gave it to him, freely, without asking for it. That had been true almost from the beginning of their partnership, long before they had become close outside saving each other’s lives. Draco didn’t know why it was different with Harry than it had been with Kellen, but it was.

And he intended to savor it, not do something that would put his lover off.

Harry lay there, smiling and waiting for him, and Draco started by running his fingertips rapidly and lightly down Harry’s sides, as if he was playing a harp. Harry gasped, and his face turned red, while he too obviously tried to keep his hips from twitching.

“You’re just teasing now,” Harry whispered, his face turning an even darker red. He let his head roll back, and looked up at Draco with his eyelids fluttering, as if he knew that would provide an irresistible temptation for Draco. Sure enough, Draco had to lean down and kiss them shut before he could continue.

He moved on to investigating the little freckles, the moles, the twists of skin, the corners that lapped oddly and weren’t scars, the marks of bruises, all over Harry’s chest and legs and arms. By the time he returned to Harry’s sides, sucking marks under the ribs because he didn’t think there were enough there, Harry was whimpering, high and sweet, and he had only kept himself from reaching out for Draco by linking his fingers behind his head. Draco paused and reached out to draw one of those hands free, gently massaging Harry’s fingers until they opened fully. Harry whimpered again.

“I can’t take much more of this,” he whispered. “Let me touch you, or do what you’re going to do.”

Draco laughed a little and flopped down in the bed beside Harry. “What if I’m not going to do anything more than this, and we’ll just both roll over and go to sleep now? Would you do that, if that was what I wanted?”

The horrified look on Harry’s face surprised more laughter out of him, but he didn’t get to enjoy it for long before Harry swallowed and nodded. “Of course I would,” he whispered. “If that was what you wanted, and a good night’s sleep on the night before what could be our last struggle. If that was what you wanted…”

Draco leaned over and kissed him, more moved than he could say. “It’s not what I want,” he whispered into Harry’s open mouth.

“Thank fuck,” Harry muttered, and then closed his lips into the proper kissing position and his eyes into the proper dreaming position at the same time.

Draco rolled him slowly deeper into that dream, one of slow, long touches, not the quick or teasing ones that he’d been doing until now. And Harry went with it, moaning in a way that reminded Draco of the sounds he heard when he was drifting somewhere between sleep and waking, not all of them real.

But this was. And it was beautiful.

Draco played Harry until he thought Harry was back near the pitch of passion he’d been in before Draco’s question, and maybe even past it. Then he laid one hand on Harry’s chest, and waited until Harry opened his eyes and looked at Draco. He was so distant, so beautiful, that Draco’s breath caught, and he nearly didn’t have the ability to proceed.

But Harry smiled at him, trusting, obvious, and Draco found that he had the nerve after all.

He had to grope after his wand, something more difficult than he had anticipated when he couldn’t take his eyes from Harry’s face. Harry smiled at him again, and his legs fell open and his hips began a rising, languid, lazy dance. Draco gasped and kissed him again, hungry enough to devour. Harry welcomed him with hands and lips and eyes.

Draco finally managed to get his own arse and fingers slicked, and reached out to stroke Harry’s cock. Harry threw his head back with a silence more exquisite than sound, and his cheeks were the color of plums.

Draco reared high, his heels braced on either side of Harry’s legs, and then sank down onto his cock.

It was so long and slow that Draco lost track of time. He forgot the battle the next day. Those words whirled away from him and disappeared down the long tunnel into the distance. He was moaning and shuffling back and forth on his heels, mind focused on Harry’s cock the same way his body was.

Everything became part of the same insistence, the tugging, pulling insistence that flamed to life in his stomach and sped through his stomach to the rest of his body. Draco was slick and wet, hot and messy, and everything that he moaned seemed to find an echo in something Harry did or said. Harry’s hand was sliding slickly down his back, and his groans were entwined with Draco’s until Draco thought that someone sticking their head inside the room wouldn’t know which one of them was which.

That was what finally made him come, slumping over Harry’s hips and gasping as he landed on his stomach. Harry followed him with one last triumphant grunt and thrust, and then wrapped his arms around Draco and hugged him tight, mess and all.

“It’s all right,” he whispered into Draco’s ear.

Draco started to say that he knew it was all right, and what was Harry talking about, and then realized that he was crying, his stomach convulsing with sobs, as though the pleasure had left sorrow behind as a residue. Harry stroked him and murmured to him, and Draco wrapped himself around his partner, holding, clinging, willing their bodies to melt together the way their sounds had.

“It’s all right,” Harry breathed into his ear.

And it was, and Draco needed to stop being so stupid. Only he couldn’t stop crying.

“We’ll survive the battle tomorrow,” Harry whispered. “The first stage of it. We’ll retreat if we have to. We have good allies. They won’t let this go wrong. If one of our allies inside the Ministry had been compromised, we would know from the others. We’ll live.”

Draco couldn’t find the words to say that he was crying about far more than their chances of surviving the battle tomorrow, maybe about wounds that he had never cried for, wounds carried inside him and sealed shut for years. But Harry seemed to understand him without Draco needing to say anything, because he continued saying soothing things, things about the Malfoy family and Draco’s record as an Auror that Draco didn’t need to listen to.

He just needed to know that they were being said.

*

“And you really think that this is going to work?”

Harry put a confident smile on his face and turned to Hermione. They were on top of one of the great flat roofs in London, under a charm that would prevent Muggles from seeing them even if they glanced up. Beside them, their thestrals stamped and stirred. Below them, beneath them, the Ministry bustled on.

Or it would, until the moment when they burst through the doors and put a stop to its normal functioning, beginning the motions that would herd great sweeps of people through the doors and into the Atrium.

“I think that it should work,” Harry said. “Otherwise, everything that we’ve come this far to do is in danger.”

Hermione made an impatient noise and threw a crumpled piece of paper at him. “That’s not what I mean,” she muttered, while Harry wondered where she had found the crumpled piece of paper given that they had the thestrals and their wands and a few Pensieves and nothing else, really. “How likely do you think it is to work?”

Harry eyed her. “Fairly,” he said. “Or I wouldn’t have put you lot in danger.”

Hermione folded her arms. “Not that comforting, Harry.”

“I don’t know how much more comforting I can be,” Harry said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. This must be Hermione’s version of pre-battle jitters. He didn’t think he’d ever actually been through that with her before. Most of the time as kids, they’d just leaped into battle before thinking about it, and when they hunted Horcruxes, the painful times had been the long and grinding ones.

Which he supposed this was, in a way, standing around on a roof waiting for a fight to start.

“I think this plan has a good chance of success,” he said. “Draco and I worked it out first, but you and Ron and Prince and George have added refinements since then that make me more confident in it.” He looked over his shoulder to where Hagrid stood with the lead stallion, hands on either side of his neck, shaking it solemnly back and forth while Hagrid gazed into the thestral’s eyes. It was his version of communing the way Harry and Hermione were doing, Harry thought, and as likely to produce comfort as anything else. “And you’re here,” he added, his gaze going back to Hermione. “I always feel better when you and Ron are fighting with me.”

“Then why did you wait so long before you contacted us?”

Harry winced. Damn. But he did have an answer. Whether or not Hermione would like it was a different matter, of course. “Because at the time, I thought the Ministry was sane and the rules worth obeying, and the rules said that I couldn’t tell anyone the details of what I did in the Socrates Corps,” he said. “I didn’t have enough proof to fight a battle with the Ministry then, anyway.”

“We would have helped you find some.” Hermione’s head was up, her nostrils flaring furiously.

“I appreciate that,” Harry said, which he did. “But when the Ministry tried to get rid of us the first time, Draco and I just wanted our jobs back. We managed to achieve that. We should have known it would only be a slight break before we would be kicked out again.” He sighed. “I’m glad that you’re here to help us now, when it actually matters.”

Hermione gave him a tremulous little smile. “You’re never going back to the Ministry, are you?”

“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Even this will only take out the people who were fools enough to speak against us and claim that Ernhardt was an innocent victim of our murderous plans. We could never be sure that we didn’t have enemies lurking somewhere else in the Ministry. And I don’t want that to happen.”

Hermione smiled at him this time, and Harry was grateful to see real understanding in that smile, rather than the urge to make him compromise with the Ministry that he had half-feared. “As long as you know what you want,” she said, and squeezed his hand, “then I think it’ll work out better than trying to go back.”

Harry didn’t know how to say that he and Draco had no solid plans for future careers, so he didn’t. He turned and looked out over the Ministry instead, and saw the signal they had agreed on: a turtle Patronus, gleaming in an alley beside the Ministry entrance. It was Hale’s. It raised its head and tail high, and then vanished.

Harry swallowed and drew his wand. Hermione stared at him, scandalized, since they weren’t going to cast spells—supposedly—until they were inside the Ministry, but Harry conjured his silver stag and murmured, “Go to Diane Athright and tell her that the revenge she helped us plan is beginning.”

“Another ally we never met?” Hermione asked, as the stag bowed its antlers and vanished.

Harry nodded, his eyes never wavering from that place the turtle had been, even as he climbed onto the thestral. “She has a right to witness what she fought for.”

What Hermione would have said, he didn’t know, because the thestrals spread their wings, and Draco and Carvenhoof were beside Harry and his mare before Harry could look for them. Harry touched Draco’s hand and smiled at him.

Then their thestrals leaped off the roof.