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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20632 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Eleven—Layerings
            Harry looked around uneasily as he stepped into Malfoy Manor. Once again, the strange, grey-eyed house-elf was waiting for them, and he gave Harry the exact same smile and the greeting, “Master Potter. Welcome back,” as last time.
            “Why did you do that?” Harry asked the elf, honestly curious. Malfoy was walking ahead of him with a frown on his face, but he turned around when he heard Harry speaking. He didn’t tell Harry off, though, which was all the encouragement Harry needed to continue. “I mean, tell me that you’re happy to see me? You already know I don’t remember anything.”
            “But part of you is belonging here,” the elf said, and blinked at Harry as if he couldn’t believe Harry didn’t understand something so simple.
            Harry gave up. He didn’t think he was going to get any clarification, and Malfoy had started to tap his foot. He turned and walked down the corridor after Malfoy.
            He’d expected to go back to the same library-slash-study he’d seen last time, but instead, Malfoy led him to a heavy iron door level with the wall beneath a torch sconce. He paused and studied Harry much the same way the elf had, then nodded and laid his hand on a glittering brass ring set exactly in the middle of the door.
            The iron clanged open. Harry felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. Beyond the door were steps that Harry could hardly see even when Malfoy cast a spell that made a globe of light float up above his head.
            “The secret you want to show me is in the dungeons?” Harry croaked.
            “In the cellars. I didn’t mention that?” Malfoy had begun to walk down the steps, but he halted. He didn’t turn and look back at Harry, though, and with his skin crawling, Harry thought he didn’t mean to.
            “No.” Harry shook his head and tried to remind himself that, since he didn’t remember anything anyway, it presumably wouldn’t be too bad down in the cellars. “I wonder how my old self ever got over the memories of being captive here, though.”
            Malfoy paused for one moment longer before he continued walking. Harry found it difficult to read anything from the back of someone’s head, but he thought that extra pause was uncomfortable.
            “He had plenty of time and experiences to enable him to get over it.” Malfoy’s voice floated eerily back to Harry, as if he was already much further out of sight than he actually was. “Will you come?”
            Harry nodded, wasted as the gesture was since Malfoy didn’t look back, and set his foot on the first stair.
            The stairs bent and switchbacked a few times, and there were at least two landings. Harry thought he saw alcoves on those landings, one empty and one holding a pillar that had a crystal globe on top. He’d have liked to stop and look, but Malfoy was walking rapidly and he had the brightest light. Harry had to keep following.
            Although, why? he eventually thought. It’s not like I could really get lost, as long as I just keep following the stairs.
            But he didn’t want to be alone anyway, and so he and Malfoy got to the bottom at almost the same time. Malfoy led Harry through what looked like a wine cellar and then past a few closed wooden doors, before he turned around. His gaze was intense enough that Harry almost didn’t notice the closed wooden door behind him that had Harry’s name carved in the middle. Then he did, and raised his eyebrows at Malfoy.
            “I want you to know,” Malfoy said softly, “that this looks creepier when you experience it all at once than it was when you were giving me permission to remove bits of you at a time.”
            “It sounds a whole lot creepier the way you described it just now,” Harry said, and shuddered.
            “Perhaps so.” Malfoy continued to study him as though he expected Harry to back out, but Harry only stared back defiantly. In the end, Malfoy turned and opened the door with a subtle flourish of his arm.
            They stepped into a place that made Harry want to flinch and blush, both at the same time. He settled for reaching out and violently clutching Malfoy’s arm. But at least he did it in silence. Malfoy looked as if he wouldn’t have blamed Harry for screaming, anyway.
            The…room in front of them was set up like a museum. There were more of the alcoves like the ones Harry had seen on the stairs as they came down. There were displays on these, too, pillars that had floating bowls of blood and scraps of skin that tumbled around each other in intricate patterns. Transparent shields protected most of them.
            On a few pillars stood things Harry recognized as once having been his. Tattered textbooks from Hogwarts. A Gryffindor school tie. A robe that might have been his in first year—yes, there was the Potions stain down near the hem to prove it.
            And there were other things that Old Harry might once have owned, which Harry himself couldn’t remember: a golden watch chain, a silver tuning fork, a bracelet with diamonds set in it, a toy wand that looked like it was made of golden wood.
            Dominating the whole thing, on the opposite wall of the museum and staring out over the displays, was a portrait of Harry. But it was a frozen portrait. Harry could see that only its eyes moved, and its face was locked into an expression of incomprehensible sadness. It looked more like him than Old Harry, he thought, nonsensically.
            “You see?”
            “No,” said Harry. He turned slowly to Malfoy. “Unless you mean whether I’m seeing that you have some sort of crazy obsession with me.” He shook his head, filling as if it was filled with water and he needed to pound his ears to get some out. “But I know it’s not that.”
            “No,” Malfoy said, stepping closer. “It’s not that. But I know you. Not the personality, the likes and dislikes,” he added, as Harry opened his mouth to ask why Malfoy couldn’t tell him more about his memories and motivations for things, then. “But the blood. The skin. I know your magic and what you could be capable of if you really pushed yourself. I know—the way your body functions.”
            “The potions that my old self had you make were related to the one you’ll create to take me back into my memories, then?”
            Malfoy squinted at him as if wondering why Harry would be interested in that. Harry squinted back. Malfoy would have to remember that the current version of Harry didn’t know anything about Potions theory. If he wanted a detailed discussion, let him look at his own memories in a Pensieve.
            But instead of lecturing Harry or doing something else that would have proved he was an arsehole, Malfoy turned abruptly away and walked to one of the glass bowls that contained the floating scraps of skin. He reached out and touched the side of the bowl, and the skin congregated towards his hand like fish in an aquarium. Harry winced.
            “Not directly related to that potion,” Malfoy said. He had his eyes firmly fixed on the bowl now. “Not most of them. But a lot of potions required a bit of skin, if only to see how the composition of your body was changing in the wake of the draughts. So I grew expert at scraping it off.”
            Harry closed his eyes. He tried to imagine how many potions he must have been ingesting, if Malfoy was correct.
            And for what? Was he that obsessed with conquering his “evil” side?
            Harry snorted a little and opened his eyes. He supposed some people would only say that he’d traded that obsession for one that involved making up for the mistakes of Old Harry. “Why did you want to show me this?”
            Malfoy had turned around and was watching him. His brow had furrowed again, and he gestured randomly with the hand that wasn’t touching the glass bowl. “What’s going through your head? What’s so funny?”
            “Nothing you said,” Harry murmured hastily. If Malfoy got offended, he might refuse to help Harry. “Just thinking that I spent all this time and money and…body parts…trying to get rid of Darkness in me, and now I’m trying to clean up those same efforts.”
            Malfoy went as still as though Harry had cast a Medusa spell on him. Harry frowned at him and waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. Harry finally stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes as hard as he could.
            Malfoy jerked a little back from him, as though Harry had germs from his tongue that could cross the distance between them. “What—what are you doing?” he gasped, and raised one hand in front of his face.
            “Trying to see what you’re thinking,” Harry said. This would be so much easier if he only told me. “I want to know why you keep pausing and staring at me. You’re the one who has the knowledge. Contribute it, Potions Brewer Third Degree Draco Malfoy, or whoever you are.” He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, carefully far away from the weird displays.
            Malfoy studied him for a moment or two more, then brought his head down in a quick nod. “I was surprised you had a sense of humor about yourself,” he said. “You never did before.”
            What a strange thing to be surprised by. But ultimately, Harry was more interested in why Malfoy had kept so many—relics—from Old Harry than in the workings of his mind. “All right,” he said. “I’m a different person. Like I told you and told everyone, only most people don’t seem to believe me.” He paused, because his voice was taking on a whining tone, and tried to calm down. “Why did you keep all these things, though? Why not only a few samples, or notes? And what was that for?” He nodded at the enormous portrait.
            Malfoy took a step back as though he needed to view the picture again himself to answer that question. “He said the portrait looked like the person he wanted to be. When he looked like that again, the experiments would have been a success.” He darted another glance at Harry.
            “Oh. And I look a lot more like it.” Harry pondered the portrait a minute, then scowled at Malfoy. “You didn’t answer the other questions.”
            “Because I wanted to know you from the inside out.” Malfoy’s voice had a growling undertone to it. He moved to the side in a way that made Harry instinctively drop into a dueling crouch. Malfoy halted and pinched his nose, shutting his eyes. “You were so strange in the years after the war. And I don’t think I ever knew how strange. You would give me these little hints, and lie, the way you did when you said you would show up alone to give me back my wand. I wanted to know what changed you.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “And you decided the best way to learn that was to keep my skin floating around in a bloody museum?”
            “Yes.”
            “All right, all right.” Harry held up a placating hand. Malfoy already looked as though he was about to snap at him. “Anyway. Why did you want to show me this? Just to see if I looked more like the portrait?”
            “No. Partially.” Malfoy tugged hard at his hair. Harry kept still, although it was difficult. Malfoy abruptly dropped his hand from his head and leaned forwards. Harry kept still again.
            “You were so strange,” Malfoy told him demandingly. “I couldn’t figure it out. My potions kept failing. I managed to give all my other clients what they wanted with fairly simple brewing procedures. The only time I failed—” He spread his hand wide and displayed his curled fingers to Harry. “Was with you.”
            Harry snorted breathlessly, wishing he could feel less like he was a pinned and wriggling specimen. Malfoy already had enough “specimens” from him, Merlin knew. “What he asked for was impossible.”
            “Nothing in potions is impossible. Not for me.”
            Harry caught his eyes before they could roll. “All right. I don’t remember a thing about those potions or what Old Harry wanted, and anyway, I won’t continue to make you work on them based on what you told me.” He glanced around at the bowls and floating things. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get rid of these things.”
            “No.”
            “Don’t I own them?” Harry turned back to face Malfoy. “Why wouldn’t you destroy them if I asked?”
            “Because, as you so eloquently pointed out, you’re not the same man anymore, and don’t really own these things.” Malfoy folded his arms and studied Harry. “He bequeathed them to me, if he meant anyone to have them. I might not learn as much as I would if you still had your memories, but a lot can be learned even from the dead. I want to figure out what changed him, and what was really going on in his head.”
            “You’re trying to find out the same thing I am, then.” Harry cleared his throat roughly. It felt as though someone had poured syrup down it to seal it shut. “Listen, Malfoy. I can’t—I don’t—”
            “He never stuttered like that.”
            Harry glared and said, “You might as well learn it along with me, and give up all this creepy shit.”
            “But what you want to discover isn’t the same as what I want to.” Malfoy shook his head restlessly, making a moving shadow in the light of his globe that was, in its own way, as creepy as anything he’d brought Harry down here to see. “You want to know—inner things. Emotions. Memories.” He gestured at the bowls around him. “I want to know why my potions failed to work on him as they should have.”
            “But a second ago, you said you wanted to know what was going on in his head,” Harry said.
            Malfoy paused. “I did, didn’t I?” he murmured, and Harry thought he was talking to himself. But then he saw the way Malfoy’s eyes fixed on Harry. “He never would have noticed that I’d said that. He was focused on himself to the exclusion of all else.”
            “Yeah, I can see that,” Harry said. Even the attention Old Harry had paid to people like Ginny and Rob was about the way they would make him look, Harry thought, and what others would think if he dated them. That was probably why Old Harry had asked Ginny to date him the way he had. Attention was important, and doing it in public the way a hero would.
            But that still brought Harry no nearer the idea of why Old Harry would have decided looking like a hero was important.
            And it didn’t lessen Malfoy’s creepy stare, either. Harry looked around one more time, then focused on Malfoy. “That’s part of the reason you brought me here, isn’t it?” he asked. “To see my reaction? Because you know what he thought of it, but you didn’t know what I would.”
            Malfoy nodded. His gaze was avid in the same way a vampire’s would be. Harry found it uncomfortable.
            He would have liked to turn away and toy with something, but there wasn’t anything in here that wouldn’t make him even more uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and added, “Can you stop testing me? It’s bad enough already. Just assume that we both want the same thing, and go from there.”
            “I won’t assume anything again,” Malfoy whispered. “Not about you.”
            Harry thought about taking that the wrong way, but he shook his head and muttered, “Fine. Whatever. In the meantime, can we please start brewing the potion?”
            “I’m the one who needs to do the actual brewing,” Malfoy said. “I have the blood and skin now, and the skin only needs to settle for a few days before it’s ready to go into the potion.” Suddenly brisk, he escorted Harry towards the door of the “museum” again. “I’ll contact you when I’m ready to have you undergo the pain ritual.”
            He paused and added, “And meanwhile, don’t look at your memories in that Pensieve. You have no idea what it could do to the potion.”
            Harry nodded. “You said that before.”
            “But I know how tempting the memories could be to you.” Malfoy paused and studied him for a moment. “You don’t, you know.”
            Harry gave a hollow laugh. “Make up your mind. One instant, you don’t know anything about me, because Old Harry is dead. Then you know about me only from the outside. Then you want to know more. Now you know enough that you think you can predict what I’ll do?”
            Malfoy gave him a small, strange smile. “I’m the one who remembers better than you do, or than your friends do, what you were like at Hogwarts—”
            “I remember that.” Those memories blazed in Harry’s mind like comets, compared to everything else that he’d been forced to undergo or forget.
            “Ah, yes.” Malfoy shook his head. “I—forgot.”
            “I’m the one who’s supposed to do that.”
            Malfoy didn’t smile at the weak joke. He only looked at Harry closely and searchingly, then said, “Well, I’m the only one who remembers you that well and the man you were. You can’t know the second one, of course, and your friends have let the first fade from their minds.” He nodded slowly. “There are mysteries about you I want to solve just as much as you do. Go home. Rest. Think about what kind of pain you’re willing to suffer for the ritual to make the potion. And don’t look in the Pensieve.”
            “I get to choose the pain?” Harry asked, mildly startled. He’d thought there would be some kind of ritual requirements that limited his choices.
            “What you’re willing to suffer,” Malfoy repeated firmly.
            Harry looked at him one more time, then started up the stairs. Malfoy sent the light-globe with him, but remained behind, apparently for some work he had to do in the museum.
            Harry did pause halfway up the stairs, when he was sure Malfoy could still hear him, and called back, “You don’t need to keep that shit, you know. You could destroy it now that you have someone who’s willing to work with you to find out what you want to discover.”
            Malfoy didn’t answer. Harry sighed, and mounted the stairs to the top, where the strange, grey-eyed house-elf was waiting to show him out.
*
Severus1snape: Thank you!
I’m female.
moon: Thank you!
starr: Well, Harry didn’t know it was a chance being offered, and he really does wish Draco would share his memories freely so he could just get over the past and start living his atonement.
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The Dust of Water