Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of The Rising of the Stones. Thank you for coming with me.

Chapter Thirty-Five—Passion and Devotion

"…And we know that we must move all our people, not only the ones who are born with conventional soul-marks, into the world as we have always understood it."

There was restrained applause for the new Minister Vance once she had finished speaking. Draco, standing next to Harry in the front row of spectators in the Wizengamot's courtroom, nodded. He suspected this Minister would be restrained in everything she did. She wouldn't inspire the kind of wild devotion that Minister de Berenzan supposedly had.

On the other hand, there were better things than wild devotion, especially for a Minister people like him and Harry had to live with. Respect, for instance. And Draco knew Vance would get that without a problem.

"Draco?"

Draco turned his head. There was a tense note in Harry's voice that he hated hearing. No one should be able to inspire that except for him. "What is it?" he murmured, and then saw the way that a woman with a young face and bright eyes was staring worshipfully at Harry.

"Get me out of here before someone else comes up to congratulate me on being so brave and showing them how to live without a soul-mark."

Draco laughed and started guiding Harry to the end of the row. "Why don't you just open the ground beneath us and drop us into it? Your earth magic can get us out of here faster than Apparition, with all these spells around."

"You want them to start panicking that we've actually disappeared from in front of them?"

"It was a suggestion, Harry, nothing more."

Harry paused and slowly turned his head. Draco looked back, wondering if the hero-worshipping young woman was following them, but it didn't seem so. He opened his mouth to suggest that Harry might be a little paranoid.

Then he had to close it and spit dirt, because Harry dropped straight down into the flagstones beneath their feet.

Draco had forgotten how odd it was to travel this way, with tunnels splitting and cracking like lightning through the dirt in front of and behind them, and his body heavy, almost swimming sometimes, other times drifting as if he was in the lightest of air. He glared at Harry's heels, and endured the dragging, and only opened his mouth haughtily again once they leaped up through the stone of his floor, inside the wards.

"It was just a suggestion, yeah. But you made it."

That effectively stole half the defense Draco would have mustered. He scowled in what he knew was a petulant way and wandered over to lean against the wall, watching as Harry shook scraps of stone from underneath his fingernails and dirt from his eyelashes. He was grinning, exhilarated, and Draco smiled before he spoke.

"Do you think people have figured out how dangerous you are yet, if you can cross under wards that they've set up?"

Harry's face abruptly crumpled into something different, and he turned his back so suddenly Draco had no chance to prepare for it. Draco blinked into the silence, and said, "Well, I'm just saying."

"I was only thinking about how wonderful it is that I can do this. Not how dangerous it made me."

Draco sighed. "Are we back to the stage where you punish yourself for even thinking of hurting someone else, then? Or are you upset because you never thought of the implications until I said it?"

"I'm upset because someone else could think of it and decide that means I'm dangerous again."

Astonished, Draco stepped over and stared at him. Harry was leaning on the windowsill that looked out over the front steps, the window Draco had dismissed Sheldon from, and even though he had no tears on his cheeks, his eyes were shut as tightly as if he wanted to hold them back. Draco put his arms carefully around Harry. "No, you heard Minister Vance. She's committed to saving people without soul-marks. Not harming them."

"In general. The way people have turned against me in the past…"

Draco leaned against Harry's side. Harry's breathing calmed down after a second, and he nodded. "Yes, that was probably stupid of me to do. Sorry, Draco." He straightened up and brushed at his robes.

"Don't simply say that it's stupid," Draco said, not moving his arm from around Harry's shoulders or his side from Harry's. "Argue with me, tell me what you're thinking, or walk away and sulk for a while if that's what you need to do. But don't hide it until you have a panic attack, and don't call yourself stupid."

Harry muttered, "I was calling it stupid." He grinned a little when Draco looked sideways at him. "Sorry. I do still tend to assume that things can't last and they're going to go back to the way things used to be, because…"

"I can't continue that sentence in my head. You're going to have to tell me."

"It's changed so much," Harry muttered. "A month ago I thought I was going to be a fugitive from the wizarding world for the rest of my life and I would never dare contact my friends again. Then I realized that I couldn't leave without someone coming after me, and that person turned out to be you. And now de Berenzan's out of office, and everyone knows about the—markless people like me, and there's not so much danger after all."

"You should have come to me the moment you found out you were born without a soul-mark," Draco couldn't help saying, smugly, as he tightened his arms around Harry. "I would have been able to help you, you know. At least, I would have come up with a better political plan than you managed to invent."

"I never wanted to go into politics. The only thought I had was to get away, and live some kind of life, and not torment my friends."

"But now you're in politics, all the time, and you can't get out of it. You know they're probably going to come talk to you about the best way to treat the markless?"

Harry squirmed a little to the side—he had to squirm, since Draco didn't plan on letting him go—and silently raised a piece of creamy parchment with the Ministry seal on it. Draco blinked in surprise and took it from him, opening it.

The letter inside had Minister Vance's name at the bottom of it, but the haughty writing—Draco could just tell—was ninety percent some undersecretary who thought the Minister too busy to bother with such things. It suggested that Harry Potter would be welcome to attend a meeting of Ministry and Wizengamot officials on the next Monday at three-o'clock to discuss strategies on "integrating the markless with their soul-marked peers."

Draco ran his finger over the open edge of the envelope, daring a cut from the paper, and finally said, "You never told me you got this."

"I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go," Harry muttered into Draco's shirt, his head turning as if he wanted to hide from anger. "They—make it sound like it's all their business. Like they did us a favor by starting to acknowledge we existed, instead of having to be forced into it."

Draco looped an arm harder around his shoulders. "That's the way the Ministry and politicians are going to behave, you know. They can't admit they made a mistake for too long, it would weaken their ability to pretend they're invincibly right. They have to say they did it and then go on and talk as if they knew it all along, as quickly as possible."

Harry snorted weakly and lifted his head. "You're right about one thing."

"I'm right about most things," Draco said automatically. "Which one are you talking about this time?"

"That you've come up with a better political plan than I have." Harry rubbed his hand along the back of Draco's neck and stared at him intensely. "That you've come up with a political plan at all puts you ahead of me. You understand politics. You want to play the game. You're the one who lets me understand and make sense of things that just seem to be—nonsense to me."

Draco dipped his head until his chin rested on top of Harry's head. His voice was gentle, a lot gentler than he'd planned to have it come out. "You realize I can't take your place in these battles? I can help you, I'll try to do that all I can, but you're the one who has to be at the meetings and lending your voice to the debates about the markless."

"I don't want you to take my place. Just help me."

Draco tightened his arms until he thought he actually heard a breathless squeak from Harry. "That I'll do, and gladly."

"Mr. Potter, what do you think about calling in the soulless you told us about, the ones who live with the rain unicorns, and asking them to give us advice about integrating the soulless into our society?"

I think you should stop calling people soulless. If only because it might make Harry do it again, and that would be hard to get him away from.

But Draco didn't say that aloud, since he wouldn't have received any sympathy anyway. He sat and stewed in his chair instead, and Minister Vance leaned forwards from the table at which was she was sitting with several Wizengamot members and looked over her glasses in Harry's general direction. They were in a small sitting room, but it felt bigger than that.

Draco could feel Harry's tension in the moment before he shook his head with a small smile and murmured, "I think that they won't have any interest in integrating into our society, Minister Vance. They would have tried before now if they wanted to. As it is, they'd prefer to live separately from wizards and take advice from the rain unicorns. I'm grateful to them for letting me know I could do magic without a wand. That's not the same thing as thinking they would make good test subjects or good advice-givers."

See, you can sound neutral when you want to. Along the side between their chairs, where it wouldn't be seen, Draco tapped a finger silently on Harry's ribs. A slight crinkle at the corner of Harry's eyes was the only way to know he smiled.

All sorts of things Harry could do, including being political, and he hadn't wanted to before. But honestly, Draco thought part of that was just lack of confidence, maybe lack of support. He would never suffer the latter again, and Draco would harass him out of any of the former.

Things work out.

"You don't think they would want to teach earth magic to other soulless wizards?"

"Please do call us markless, Minister. The other way has perpetuated stereotypes for too long."

Vance blinked and adjusted her glasses. "Of course. Markless, then."

"I think that they only directed me to the rain unicorn who taught me magic in the first place because I sought them out. They wouldn't want to establish these connections with people they would perceive as unwilling to leave the wizarding world for any reason. Maybe they could speak to other people without soul-marks, but they'd need some sign all the communication wasn't one-way."

"I never said all the communication had to be one-way…"

"I know you haven't, Minister Vance. I'm only saying that it's possible some of the markless wizards might be lazy or not want to go to them, and would interpret it that way. Just thinking aloud, thinking ahead."

He even knows the right words to say, Draco thought, unable to stop himself from smiling because of the hard ache of pride in the center of his chest. And I certainly never taught him those.

"But you don't need to worry about that," said one of the Wizengamot members who was sitting on the other side of Minister Vance. "After all, even if there are some rude people who think that these—markless—wizards who work with rain unicorns need to come to them, it's not as if you have to be involved."

Harry stared at the man with his mouth slightly open. Draco hid a frown that said Harry's mouth should only ever open like that in the privacy of their bedroom.

"But of course I'm going to be involved," Harry blurted. "Of course I will. How could I not, when I'm the one who told you about Oatten's people in the first place?"

"But you don't have to be. Why would you when you don't have to be?"

Draco thought someone touched the young idiot's knee under the table, which was preferable to a giant stone hand reaching up from under it to tickle him, which Harry's expression was leaning towards. Draco nudged him again, with more intent this time, and Harry shook his head a little and answered calmly.

"I want to be. It's a matter of what I feel is right, more than obligation and duty."

The conversation moved in other directions after that, ones that said the Wizengamot members and the new Minister were beginning to understand the limits of Harry's abilities and patience. Draco leaned back and let his mind wander. He had already been promised his job back, and many of the Aurors who had tracked him for de Berenzan had come up and personally apologized. As Draco had suspected, de Berenzan had lied to them about the crime Draco had supposedly committed.

And as for the ones who hadn't apologized…

Draco smiled. The power dynamic had shifted, and they didn't realize it. It was more than Draco being vindicated when he had been a fugitive, too.

With another slight, satisfied glance in Harry's direction, Draco returned to contemplation of the future.

"That feels so good."

"It should," Draco said, gasping a little as he moved inside Harry and felt Harry arch his hips up in response. "Since I'm the one inside you—doing it—to you." His voice stumbled and blurred, to his humiliation, but Harry felt pretty bloody good himself.

Harry reached up, and touched Draco's hair gently. Then his hand clenched, and he ripped through it, messing it up.

It never failed to make Draco come, and Draco did it swearing this time. He hadn't planned to. Harry laughed triumphantly beneath him, lifting up as if his own swollen cock was going to make Draco feel worse.

Draco worked one hand free of its clutch on Harry's shoulder and reached down to stroke him.

Harry came with a grunt and a sigh, slicking Draco's hand and chest and everything else that he didn't get out of the way fast enough. Draco didn't mind, though, or he would have moved faster. He lay back down, tangled around Harry, and closed his eyes. Normally he was fast with the Cleaning Charms, but not like this.

"Let me try something?"

Draco opened one eye. "I'm too tired right now for any 'trying' to be effective."

Harry laughed. "I didn't mean that. I meant this." He concentrated, and from somewhere—maybe the walls, which would make sense, Draco thought—a fine rain of stone dust blew across them. Draco gasped as it seemed to take most of his sticky, dirty feeling and fly away with it.

"Better than I could manage before," Harry remarked breathlessly in the pause that followed.

"You had better be breathless because of what I did with you and not because of magical exhaustion," Draco snapped.

Harry rolled over to face him. His smile was full from one end to the other. "Oh, yes," he said, and kissed Draco. "Thank you for saving me, Draco. And for being angry when I deserved it."

Draco kissed him back, sliding his tongue delicately along Harry's bottom lip. "I hope I rouse more emotions in you than anger?"

"Of course you do," Harry murmured, already sliding closer to sleep from the sound of his voice, as if he had already said the most important thing. "But you did that when I would have given up. I'm alive and in love because of you. That's a lot."

Draco closed his eyes and listened to Harry's breathing. His hand rested on Harry's chest, and he felt the rise and fall of Harry's heartbeat, his lungs, his life. The life that might have been destroyed or cast aside forever because of idiotic prejudices against people born without soul-marks.

Instead, I was smarter than everyone and saved the day.

Draco grinned, then let his smile fade again as he listened once more to Harry's breathing.

And won the only prize that really matters.

He ended up falling asleep behind Harry, his arm draped over Harry's shoulder so that the palm of his hand crossed Harry's heart.

We won.

The End.