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An Image of Lethe	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21751 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Ten--Messengers to the World
            "I still don't like it. I had to tell you that."
            Harry paused and looked down into Hermione's face. He had escorted her into the kitchen so they could say good-bye and she could leave, cloaked in Disillusionment, through the front door. It was safer than trying the warded Floo.
            "You don't like what?" Harry had to ask, because no matter how long Hermione stood there and gave him that peculiarly piercing look, he wasn't picking up on whatever she wanted him to pick up on.
            "Working with Death Eaters," said Hermione. "Other people I can stomach. They didn't do as much bad during the war as some of the exaggerated rumors make out. Or they did it to survive. But Malfoy..." She shivered a little. "No matter how indecisive he was, he still stood there and let Voldemort brand that on his flesh."
            "Then why did you work with him?" Harry asked, bewildered. It wasn't like Hermione to sit there and subdue her natural criticism of something or someone when she had already proclaimed that she would talk about it.
            Hermione sighed, and for a second, her head drooped as though she was finding it too heavy to hold up. "Because I could see in your eyes how much you already trust and rely on him. He's the one who's giving you the impetus to rebel against the Ministry." She looked up, and this time, her gaze was searching. "He was also the one who gave you the information about Dark and Light affinities in the first place, isn't he?"
            Harry didn't look away, because that might make Hermione think he felt guilty, and actually, nothing could be further from the truth. "Yeah," he muttered. "It--it makes sense, Hermione. I don't think the Lightfinder works exactly the way the Ministry says it does. I think the Ministry has to be stopped."
            Hermione's hand found his and squeezed firmly. "I know that," she said. "I'm not sure that the methods Malfoy will come up with are the best ways to do it." She hesitated, and then abruptly flung her arms around him. Harry, startled, hugged her back, and her face nestled into his chest the way it had sometimes on the Horcrux hunt.
            "I know that someone has to stop them," she whispered. "And you have the determination and the strength to do it. And I'm trusting you, Harry, trusting you to know what's best, and that is the only reason I'm working with Malfoy at all. I'm trusting you not to have made a mistake, the same way you trusted me all those years." She drew back and gave him a direct stare. "Don't make a mistake."
            Harry nodded, touched, beyond words. Hermione had not only given him the same trust he had always thought she would, in putting him above the rules, but she was also laying her principles on the line for him. He squeezed her hand and finally managed to come up with the words he had to use. "I don't think it's a mistake."
            "Good," said Hermione, and then she turned and cast the Charm and left the kitchen without another word. There really wasn't anything else she had to say, Harry supposed.
            He stood there and breathed for a little while, and then he went upstairs and back to Malfoy and the others.
*
            Draco clutched his wand hard enough that he thought for a second it would snap. But then he forced himself to put his hands in his pockets, loosen his hold on his wand, and walk with the swagger that the man he was glamoured as would feel. He was taking a risk, trying to meet with Blaise in Knockturn Alley, but going into the Ministry would have been riskier.
            Knockturn Alley still hummed with Dark magic and the sound of trading that it always had, despite the public's panic over Dark wizards. Draco curled his lip. The Light wizards in control of the Ministry might bleat about wanting every trace of "evil" in their world eradicated, but they also wanted illegal ingredients sometimes, or forbidden pleasures. Knockturn Alley had survived all these years by being too useful to destroy.
            It was Draco's job right now to see to it that that went on being true, rather than the Ministry succumbing to panic or public pressure and destroying it whether or not they wanted to.
            "Landover! I haven't seen you here in years!" Blaise's voice said heartily from his left, and he came up and slapped Draco on the back. "Do you think you can spare the time for a drink? Or are you going to stalk off again, the way you did to me the last time we met?" He stood slightly in front of Draco so anyone watching them from the main street would find it hard to read Draco's face.
            Draco adopted the peculiar cringing sneer that Henry Landover would use if he was so bold as to come here. The Landovers were a minor wizarding family who claimed descent from a bastard child of one of Draco's ancestors, even though magical testing had proven long ago that was false. They played out a minor version of the politics that had obsessed Draco's father, and they would do things like come into Knockturn Alley thinking it was a grand adventure.
            "I'm not going to stalk off," he said, and it wasn't a problem to raise his voice a little and adopt the whining tone that was also natural to the Landovers. "I was coming to see you, in fact." He made an attempt at a smile that Blaise returned with a predatory grin.
            "Of course you were," said Blaise, and then turned and led Draco swiftly towards the other end of the Alley. Draco followed him with his head down, his gaze darting from side to side as if he was nervous about the beings of greater power he might encounter here--also a natural reaction for a Landover. Draco wouldn't have felt such contempt for them if they'd merely had the power to match their pretensions.
            But no one was looking at him. Instead, people scurried around with their heads down, even more than usual, and there were fewer hags and warlocks parading down the middle of the pavement, daring anyone to object about stepping aside for them. Draco nodded grimly. The Ministry might not have the courage or the strength to destroy Knockturn Alley after all, but the worry was being felt here.
            "Here," said Blaise, and jerked his head to a stone doorway that looked like the entrance to a dragon's lair. Draco willingly ducked in, and sighed when he felt the wards engage behind him, snapping together like the edges of a Muggle zipper.
            "You're sure that no one is going to find us here?" he asked, turning around.
            Blaise had his wand drawn, adding an extra layer of protection to the wards. He shook his head without looking at Draco. "This is one of the places where my mum hid--well, some of the bodies," he said, and turned around, gesturing to the table in the center of the room. "Sit down and eat, if you want. I had it cleaned."
            Draco grunted his thanks and stepped up to the wide table, made of age-darkened wood, the only furniture of any size in the Zabini lair. The rest was mostly cauldrons or the sort of tiny stools that one could balance cauldrons on. And while there were stains on the table that made him a little uneasy, it had been scrubbed and bore wide china plates of cut cheese and fruit, and that was the best anyone could ask for.
            "What do you want me to do?" Blaise asked Draco, coming up behind him as he hungrily ate a few fat strawberries. There were just some things Potter's house-elf couldn't do well.
            Draco paused and looked at him. Blaise's face was blank, but it would be a mistake to think he was passive because of that. "You sound as though you're surrendering yourself to my guidance," Draco said, and swallowed. "Why?"
            "Because I know what you're trying to do." Blaise's eyes were wary when he met Draco's, but he was speaking with commendable directness, something that a lot of Dark wizards Draco knew couldn't do. "And I agree with it. This nonsense is going to touch every single one of us sooner or later. Even the people who think they're immune."
            He was sneering, and Draco knew he was thinking of someone specific. Still, he didn't want to ask right now. Blaise wasn't the sort who would let grudges interfere with business.
            The way I once was, Draco thought, and took a folded note from his pocket. "We need you to do something. However, I want you to look at it and think about it before you agree. One of Potter's little friends would do it without thought, but it's incredibly dangerous."
            Blaise smiled a bit as he took up the note. "So you did manage to convince Potter to accept an alliance? He's under suspicion in the Ministry now, you know. They think he doesn't have enough of a stick up his arse or something." He unfolded the parchment.
            "I know," said Draco. "Several Aurors came into his house the other day looking for whatever influenced him."
            Blaise twitched. "And they didn't catch you?"
            "The Black house is friendly to a Black," Draco said, with a smile. That was all he intended to tell Blaise for now. He was in agreement with Potter that Aster and the secret passages were some of their most important weapons, and shouldn't be revealed until they had to do it. They could easily enough pretend that the old spells Aster was showing them came from books in the large Black library. "And I want you to think about this."
            Blaise read through the instructions slowly. Then he leaned back and stared at Draco. "Is this a long-range plan or a short-term one?"
            "Short-term," said Draco quietly, and stared back.
            Blaise looked down at the parchment again. Draco saw his hands tremble. He frowned and opened his mouth. He had come to Blaise because Blaise worked in the Ministry, wasn't yet under suspicion or on the list of people to be tested in the Lightfinder, and had some of his mother's talent for eluding suspicion. But fear could cause people to make mistakes, and Blaise was his friend.
            "I want to do it," said Blaise, and his voice was thick. "You have no idea how much I want to do it."
            "But?" Draco prompted. The shaking hadn't been fear after all, he thought, but excitement.
            "I don't know if they would manage to dismiss it as just another Dark wizard trick." Blaise corkscrewed his neck to the side and squinted at the parchment as if it hid a solution to its own dilemma. "Is there something we can use to show them that this spell is Light instead of Dark, when most people think being Dark is just a matter of a tainted soul?"
            Draco relaxed. That was the same objection Potter had come up with, and Pansy had searched until she found a solution--one reason it had taken them four days to put together this plan. "Yes. That's why there's that extra part of the incantation at the beginning there. It causes a huge burst of timed light that will only explode around you when you're finished. Harmless, but it's red. They favor red light at the moment."
            Blaise squinted at him. "Draco, no one is stupid enough to believe that it's a Light spell because there's red light when it's cast..."
            Then he trailed off. Draco smiled at him and nodded. "Exactly. They were stupid enough to believe in the Lightfinder. And it's that stupidity we're targeting."
            That had been the subject of an argument with Potter. He had wanted to work towards a way to show up and announce in front of everyone what Dark and Light affinities really meant, and that Dark wizards weren't all baby-eating puppy-killers. But Draco had pointed out that, for now, the same fear and nonsensical beliefs that had isolated Potter in his house had to be their weapon. Open announcement would come later, when they had enough of a power base.
            Make them afraid that they'll be summoned and put through the Lightfinder. Publicize the imprisonment so that they wonder if they might suffer the same thing even though they know they're innocent. Herd them in our direction the way the Ministry managed to herd them in theirs.
            Not honorable, but Draco was fighting for his life and his freedom, and the safety of people he cared for. He was prepared to be as dishonorable as it took, while clothing his actions in the right cant.
            "I don't know that it'll work when they see a Dark wizard casting it, though," Blaise returned to the attack.
            "Then don't let them see you casting it," said Draco idly, and tossed a piece of the fruit that he had picked up from the plate from one hand to another, debating eating it now or taking it with him. Practicality won out, and he popped it into his mouth. "I know you know how to bland with a crowd and cast under shelter of your sleeve."
            Blaise took one long look at the parchment again, then firmed his mouth and tucked it out of sight. "Can I let my mother help?"
            Draco felt himself smile without permission. Angelica Zabini was a woman who had ties everywhere, to relatives of ex-husbands and people who might have become husbands and people benefited by the deaths of those husbands. It was one of the two reasons she had managed to keep out of prison so long after so many deaths, the other being that air of essential innocence Blaise also had. "Isn't her current lover someone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"
            "Aaron Barnes." Blaise grinned. "Yes. He runs a sleepy little office no one pays much attention to, but that makes him perfect for passing messages. And he can get good seats at the crowd entertainments like the Lightfinder operations as long as he doesn't ask for the privilege too often."
            Draco nodded back. He honestly didn't know what Blaise's mum saw in a minor Ministry official, but right now, it was going to prove extremely useful. "All right. Then let her do whatever's not going to get her and you caught. And don't leave a trail that leads back to Barnes, either. We might want to use him later."
            Blaise sighed elaborately and tucked the spell away in his pocket. "Draco, I was learning how to do this while you were still hitting Greg over the head with your toy broom. Leave it to me."
            Draco grinned at him, and bit into his next strawberry.
*
            Harry sighed and massaged his temples. He was once again alone in the room where they'd left him to eat lunch, and he thought he was going to lose his fucking mind.
            The tests to prepare him for Lethe, or Lethe for him, had turned from strange and seemingly pointless to hard enough to exhaust him. This morning, he'd had to Summon a cup and make sure that he stopped it in midair a meter away from him. Then he had to bring it closer, and then he had to do it nonverbally.
            Harry had never before realized that he tended to use all his spells in a huge, burning rush of power, that it was hard for him to stop them or make them more delicate or not complete them all at once. Or that making any of those changes to the basic way he cast magic would hurt so much. His muscles throbbed.
            Something silvery glowed in front of him, and Harry looked up. A misty mastiff sat there, staring at him.
            Harry looked back at it and tried to remember who he knew that had a mastiff Patronus. Not Kingsley's, that was a lynx, and Ron's was a terrier, and Hermione finally had a silvery otter darting around her every time she cast the spell. Besides, they would still let her talk to him at the Ministry, even if she had to sneak into his house--
            The Patronus opened its mouth and said, "Harry, Hermione told me we needed to talk. I'll see you at seven this evening."
            Harry gaped for a moment as the Patronus dissolved, and then began to grin and couldn't stop. It continued even as he ate the dry cheese sandwiches the Ministry provided him, and although the Aurors who came in to take him for the next test gave him suspicious stares, Harry could only relax the grin to a normal smile.
            That had been Neville's voice.
*
            Longbottom came into the library taking up more space than Draco thought he should.
            He supposed it had been some time since he had looked at Longbottom, properly looked at him, but even so, he was bigger than he had any right to be. He had grown tall and sturdy, and he listened when people spoke, but he also turned his head and spoke right back to them. His confidence filled more of the room than his voice did, and nearly as much as his long, constantly in-motion limbs did.
            Draco sat back and observed him for most of the first hour, while Potter did the talking and Astoria, who had no more history with Longbottom than with any of the other Gryffindors, put in several opinions. Longbottom was courteous enough, but whenever he wasn't talking to Potter, whenever he was only listening, he watched Draco with intense, piercing eyes.
            Draco fought to keep a patient smile or a blank mask on his face. Longbottom didn't need to go through the Lightfinder; Draco could tell what he was from the way that his own aura seemed to prickle along in sweat on his skin. Light. Definitely Light.
            Which meant, if the Lightfinder worked at all according to the magical theory that the Ministry had claimed it did, then Longbottom should test red or orange. And that meant they had one ally who should be able to walk around freely after he had his test, and who they never had to worry about being arrested.
            If he would just stop looking at Draco with those eyes.
            "So that's it," Potter wound up his summary of their plan at last. "What do you think, Neville?"
            Longbottom leaned forwards and tapped a finger on the table beside the map that showed several places in the interior of the Ministry that they were considering either distributing pamphlets or letting off certain specific spells. "What they're doing to you is outrageous, Harry," he said, his voice deep. "And to Bill."
            He turned to Draco. "You, I'm not so sure about."
            Draco experienced a shiver that he thought could have been either dislike or distaste. He held Longbottom's gaze and said, "Well. In that case, I've already been tried for my crimes. They should have told me that they also wanted to imprison me for being a Dark wizard. They didn't. They just started hunting for me the minute I left the place of my sentencing. What have I done wrong that I wasn't sentenced for? They don't say."
            There was a long moment that felt important, as though Longbottom was musing on the claim, and their plans wouldn't work out if he didn't accept it. Then he gave a short, choppy nod.
            "Just as long as you don't expect me to condone Unforgivables or any other Dark spells," he said.
            "We'll leave you out of that part of the plans," said Draco shortly. He wasn't going to tell Longbottom about Aster or the Black secrets, if that was his attitude. He glanced at Potter. "Have you made arrangements to cast the Soul Revelation Spell?" Potter should have done it already, but it never seemed to be the right time; they were plotting with Granger, or they were putting up wards, or they were studying the magic Aster had given them, or Draco was going to visit Blaise.
            "Yes," said Potter slowly. "But it's strange. I seem to keep forgetting the incantation each time I memorize it." He frowned and turned to Draco. "I was hoping you would cast it on me and tell me what it looks like."
            "What is the Soul Revelation Spell?" Longbottom asked calmly. He hadn't reacted to Draco's comment about leaving him out of certain parts of the spells, but he looked back and forth between them now expectantly, as though of course their plans wouldn't go forward until they'd explained.
            That assumption of control irritated Draco, but he also found himself responding to it. He said, "It's a spell that reveals the colors and power of a wizard's magic. Rather like the Lightfinder. It was misinterpreted in earlier times as showing the soul, and the name stuck. But it's widely understood now as just a spell that shows magic, not the soul."
            "So it is like the Lightfinder," Longbottom muttered.
            At least that meant he believed the Lightfinder was not what the Ministry claimed already, and they wouldn't have to convince him. Draco nodded. "Yes," he said, and faced Potter. "I have the incantation in mind, and I only need a moment to practice the wand movements. I can cast it on you."
            "Good," said Potter, and stood up, bracing his hands on the table as he faced Draco.
            Draco paused, a little startled, when he saw the gleam in Potter's eyes. He was suddenly sure Potter hadn't forgotten the incantation at all. He had simply wanted to show Longbottom that he trusted Draco to point a wand at him and cast the right thing, instead of a harmful spell.
            Sometimes, Potter has a true Slytherin's cunning, Draco thought respectfully, and took another minute to practice the wand movements, as he had said he would. The last thing he wanted to do now was mess it up, in front of an audience.
            When he was finally ready, he faced Potter and cast the spell, slowly and without the flourishes he would have used for a spell he knew and was trying to impress someone with. The power seemed to flow through his wand like a great river, sluggish on the surface. Beneath, Draco felt the current that sprang out and arched towards Potter.
            The actual spell was invisible, but its effect certainly wasn't. In seconds, Potter began to glow like a fairy light, with the aura, shaped roughly like a silhouette, extending a good distance away from his body.
            And that aura was indigo.
            Draco took a deep breath and glanced at Longbottom. His eyes were fastened on Potter, and his face was blank for a second. But then he nodded and huffed out a breath.
            "Yeah," he said, and turned around to face Draco. "Harry trusts you. That means I can work with you, for now." He jerked his head at the aura shimmering around Potter. "And that looks exactly like the Lightfinder. Which means we can't trust the Ministry when they say that their machine displays someone's soul. And we have to stop them."
            In those words, as inexorable as boulders rolling down a mountainside, Draco heard the promise of their first real alliance with a Light wizard, and smiled.
*
            Kain: Hermione is currently dreading being tested by the Lightfinder.
            Kingsley feels that his hands are tied. He thinks Lethe is Harry's best chance to make everyone forget that he tested Dark, and until then, he should stay quiet and not rock the boat. Obviously that's not happening, and Kingsley is worried sick but also feeling the pressure of people screaming in mindless terror.
            And thanks for the link to the information! That was interesting.
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An Image of Lethe