Chapter Text
He spends the day pacing and casting, using every tool in his armoury to try to re-open the hill. It's an unseasonably warm day for Ireland in early May. Harry is still in his Sidhe robes, and before long he's glad of their gossamer airiness as the sun climbs higher and higher, and he works harder and harder to break into something that seems unbreakable.
By the fall of evening, he has to admit defeat. Every muscle in his body is quivering with exhaustion, the lean curve of his upper arms roped with veins from the effort of casting and re-casting. He's shaking with adrenaline. He has pushed every spell he knows at this place, teased around the nebulous edge of the Queen's wards. He's even managed to disturb them a little—he could see them bulging and flexing under the onslaught of his power. But to no avail.
The Irish Ministry sent a team to help, but even their specialised skills, local knowledge, and the weight of their combined casting couldn't puncture the protections in place. Harry feels despair deep in the pit of his stomach.
He knows he needs to rest, calm his jittering magic and recharge for one last attempt before the next dawn breaks. When he Apparates to the hotel, his exhaustion is so profound that he mis-directs himself, ending up at the foot of the hill rather than the top, where he can see the lights of the hotel calling him. A splash distracts him—he's on the slipway to the river, nearly toeing the waterline. He had very nearly Apparated into the river, and wouldn't that have been the perfect end to the day he's just had?
He remembers walking past this same slipway with Malfoy, before all of this happened, Malfoy's hand a steadying weight against his own palm. The night they went gathering intel from Malfoy's magical creature friend, Pooka. And there it is—like a flash of lightning, it finally occurs to Harry that he does know someone who can tell him how to get into Faoin Talamh.
"Pooka!" He's bellowing now, sliding further down the slipway, the cold water kissing first his knees, then thighs, robes swirling like seaweed in the current. He fumbles through the leather pouch at his waist, hoping against hope, but he's left all his money in his own clothes. The only thing he finds in his pouch is a small, misshapen lump of milky feldspar. It's uncut and unpolished but Harry had found it himself when he went on the hunt—knowing how precious is it to the Sidhe, he had intended on having it set into a fob chain for Malfoy, as a souvenir of their trip. It's all he has, and he's muttering half-remembered prayers to a god he doesn't even believe in as he chucks it into the water and calls for Pooka again.
The river is silent and slow tonight, but Harry tastes a brackish tang as first one drop, then a shower of them, splash up onto him out of new eddies. And then the Lee parts with a roar and Pooka rears up, his black coat scored with runnels of river water. Harry almost sobs with relief, and he throws his arms around Pooka's broad neck as they float together in the wash of the current.
It's a matter of only a few moments to explain everything to Pooka, even accounting for his creative and long-winded insults towards the Queen, her sons, and every one of her Sidhe antecedents all the way back to Danu herself. Pooka swims to the slipway, and uses his enormous head to nudge Harry out of the water and up onto the road. He lets Harry lean against him as they stand, facing the cliff with the river whispering behind them.
"Little wild one, you must know that I cannot bring you to Faoin Talamh myself? This is your journey, and you must find your own way. She expects you to fail, you are aware?"
Harry nods grimly, feeling that now-familiar jolt of pure rage.
"Look up, wizard." Pooka jerks his muzzle towards Beale's Hill where it juts out from the cliff face. "Your kind believes that place is named for a wizard taken as a changeling into the Sidhe realm, who returned aboveground and spent his days pining here for his lost home. But this is just a fairy story, though in the manner of these things, there is a kernel of truth at the heart of it.
"There was no Beale who gave his name to this place, though there have been countless wizards and Muggles alike who have been lost forever to the fairy kingdom. No, this hill is named for something far more ancient, something that lives on from the time when the barrier between our world and the world of the fairies was much thinner. Now, the Queen can open up a door to fairyland whenever she pleases—just as she did for you at Ronayne's Court. But back then, there was one way in and one way out. Everyone knew where the entrance to Faoin Talamh was. Not many ever ventured there, for fear of never returning, but they knew of it. The magical world and the unmagical world sat happily side-by-side, in those days. We all respected each other, and there was little fear or mistrust."
Pooka nods meaningfully towards this hill.
"I must away now, my friend. But let me tell you once more thing. In our language, the word béal means mouth. And it's from that word that the hill takes its name."
Pooka's gone in a splash and a flurry but Harry barely notices. He's thinking of the crawling feeling of fairy magic when he and Malfoy climbed the hill that first night, the way he could feel the dead weight of it being pulled up from the ground below their feet. He knows what he needs to do.
A turn and a crack and he's at the top of the hill, with the river splayed out far below him. He palms his wand and starts moving down the hill, and he summons every subtle and visceral part of his magic to him. He's going to need it.
As he walks, he sends his magic out, feeling around for the notch in the wards that he knows must be there. There's an expectant hum in the air, like the veil between the worlds is shivering, waiting to be brushed aside. He just needs to be able to slip in a fingertip of magic to prise the whole thing open, but he has to find it first. He's moving faster now, down the steep hill—he's on his tiptoes to keep his balance as he breaks into a run. His magic rushes out of him, flurries around the Sidhe wards—he can feel them as clearly as if he could see them.
His touch is featherlight, his magic working on instinct to find the weakest point in the wards and then it's there, right where he thought it would be, and he pushes just hard enough until he feels the click as the wards waver and disappear. He can't stop running, his feet barely skimming the stones now, improbably fast, a bit like flying, and then he really is hurtling through the air and he can see the entrance to fairyland opening up before him like a yawning chasm. It swallows him whole.
He seems to fall for ages, and then suddenly he slams to a halt on his knees in the middle of the Sidhe court. When he had imagined it, he had imagined that they would be sitting on ceremony, awaiting his arrival, the Queen in full regalia with her armed guards around her.
What actually happens, of course, is that the Queen is really not expecting him to find his way in. She had created the road at Ronayne's Court, a feat of misdirection, so she was able to destroy it too. It was only her bad luck that Harry had found another door.
She's at ease, listening to her minstrels and watching Fíachu playing cards. Malfoy is sitting nearby, arms crossed, wearing a look of bored impatience. It warms Harry, inexplicably, and as he stretches to standing, he sees Malfoy give a start as he notices Harry. The smile that spreads across Malfoy's face is so proud, and so satisfied, that Fíachu notices immediately. He follows Malfoy's gaze and then snaps to standing at the sight of Harry wincing and rubbing his knees. It's odd, Harry thinks, but under the shock he thinks he sees a flutter of relief pass over Fíachu's face.
Then Malfoy is moving and Harry is too, and the crowd is parting to let them forge a path to each other. Malfoy is solid and warm under Harry's hands, and when Malfoy murmurs, "I told that rotten hag that you were a tenacious bastard," Harry just has to bury his face in the notch of Malfoy's left collarbone lest the whole court notice the sudden prickle of joyful tears in his eyes.
The Queen is furious, practically spitting with it. She looks positively lethal, and the more she rages the less human she looks. In the slightly-too-sharpness of her teeth, the slightly-too-opaque cast to her eyes, Harry feels the weight and rage of generations of foreign gods. She is terrifying, but she knows she has lost, and all of the Sidhe are there to witness it.
Her voice is icy when she makes her proclamation.
"In the sight of this court I promised to cede this prisoner if Mr Potter succeeded in his quest to reunite himself with the Ambassador. It seems that Mr Potter's great power has not been overstated. I hereby decree that the Ambassador shall be released from his sentence, and shall instead be subject to the agreed fine of fifty thousand Galleons of wizard gold."
Fíachu causes a stir when he steps forward. His face, when he looks at Malfoy, is broken open with sadness. He drops to a knee, and lays his forehead to the back of Malfoy's hand.
"Forgive me, Draco." His voice is muffled. "I would have taken the barest crumbs you would have offered me, and I would have loved you forever, but I would have hated myself for it in the end. I wish you joy, my dearest one."
Malfoy pulls his hand away, but his face has softened, and when he hefts Fíachu up to standing, his hands are gentle.
The Queen looks heartbroken, and then glares at Harry. "You may step forward, so that the soul bond shall be performed."
"I don't think we will," Harry replies, and his wand is a moving blur in his right hand as he pulls Malfoy to him with his left. "He doesn't belong to me, nor I to him. I choose him, today, tomorrow, and every day of our lives, if he'll have me. But I'm not going to ask him to submit to some Sidhe spellcraft in order to walk out of here a free man. I want him to choose me, too. And having him as my prize for completing a quest—that's not how I want him. We leave Faoin Talamh together, as we entered it—as a team, as equals. And if we decide to complete this bond that we have at some point, that will be between him and me." And he pokes Malfoy in the ribcage and winks as he says, "I'd like that, just to be clear. A wedding, maybe? I forgot to tell you that I love you too, by the way."
Malfoy is flushed and giddy with laughter at Harry's side, and the Queen's voice is dripping with scorn. "Foolish children. You knew my terms—I shall not suffer your insolence over these matters. The bond is a condition of the commutation of your sentence, Ambassador. If you don't complete it, then you don't leave."
Malfoy spins so he's back to back with Harry, and his voice is wild with a sort of fierce joy when he replies, "Oh, I rather think we will be leaving. And if you're not opening the gate, then we'll just have to leave the same way Potter came in. Potter—shall we?"
And then Malfoy's wand hand is sweeping and he's slamming up a Protego so strong that Harry actually sees people swaying in its aftershock. And the Queen's mouth is moving in an incantation, but Harry can't hear her over the roaring in his ears as he desperately feels around for that tiny chink in the main entrance wards. And when he feels it, and grasps at it, he gathers all his power to him, presses himself to Malfoy's back and clasps Malfoy firmly to him, and he pushes, hard and swift and inexorable.
Then with a sharp crack and that dizzying rush of raw power that Harry always feels when he casts at full force, they're ripping through the wards and spinning up and out, until the mouth of the entrance to the Sidhe kingdom spits them out right into the river and snaps shut with a decisive bang.
It takes them ages to struggle out of the water. Harry is exhausted, his magic enfeebled, and Malfoy just isn't a very good swimmer, apparently. They drag each other up onto the slipway just as the sky is pinking up with the kiss of dawn light, and collapse to sitting just above the waterline.
Malfoy stares regretfully out at the water, and his voice is wistful when he says, "Do you know, I really thought we had managed to get the Sidhe onside this time. I don't suppose they'll keep to the terms of the Accord?"
Harry's doubtful look is enough of an answer, and Malfoy pulls a face. "Well Potter, if it wasn't for you, not only would I have been the first wizard to ever successfully negotiate a treaty with the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but I'd also be a fairy prince by now."
And then his eyes crinkle, mercury-bright in the rising sun, and he laughs until he shakes, leaning back on his elbows, face upturned and beautiful in the dawn of the new day. Harry turns to look at him speculatively.
"Well, I'm sure we could get you a little tiara? You already have the overbearing mother." He winces as Malfoy pokes him hard in the ribs. "And I definitely think you should wear some of these silky robes when I take you to the Ministry Yule Ball this year?"
Malfoy's eyes slide to him, and because he's Malfoy and he always understands exactly what Harry is really saying, he nods firmly and slides a river-cool hand along Harry's thigh where the robes have ridden up. "Only if you promise to get these professionally Scourgified so we can go in matching ones."
Then he pulls Harry to standing, and takes a few seconds to look at him, holding Harry's face between his hands. He kisses Harry, briefly but greedily, with intent, and then slings an arm around his waist as they walk together up the slipway.
Harry asks mischievously, "So are we going to pop back next week to settle up your fifty thousand Galleon fine?"
Malfoy groans, before the ring of his laughter echoes back from the riverbank.
"I'll let the goblins handle that, I think. Something tells me I'll be a bit too busy in the office next week for any more jollies."
Behind them, the water rushes on inexorably with the lick and curl of the current. All is quiet.
"Let's go home, Potter."