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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.

Chapter List
- 11
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Chapter Twelve--Stand and Deliver
            The Aurors who dragged Harry into the Ministry weren't ones he had seen before, either with Splinter or when he visited the Ministry for his Lethe tests. The leader seemed to be a man as tall as Kingsley, with a frown that darted across his face whenever he glanced at Harry. He led Harry up and down corridors, through lifts, and up a set of stairs that Harry hadn't known existed, since everyone in the Ministry seemed to use the lifts or Floo connections. They halted in front of a door made of white wood with a crescent moon carved into it.
            Harry squinted. He thought he could make out facial features on the moon, a long, pointed nose and heavy eyebrows. They reminded him of someone, although he couldn't say who.
            "You've done it now," the tall man muttered at Harry, and then rapped on the door in a strange sequence. When Harry looked more closely, he could see that faint silver lines divided the door into four panels, and the Auror was knocking on them in a particular order, a different number of knocks for each part.
            The door opened before Harry could try to memorize the code, and they stepped into a room filled with smoke and flashing silver mirrors. Harry raised his eyebrows before he could stop himself.
            "Really?" he asked, since he thought he might as well. "Really smoke and mirrors?"
            The smoke pulled back while the Aurors were still poking him in the side as if they wanted him to be quiet. A tall figure wrapped in silver robes stepped out. Harry tensed for a moment, struck dumb. He couldn't see any face under the cowl, and while the robes didn't look like a Dementor's...
            "A necessary artifice," said the figure, and turned to glide in front of Harry towards the back of the room. "My name is Oratory. Come with me."
            The Aurors had released Harry and retreated out the door. Harry looked back just in time to see them opening it. Then he turned forwards into the smoke again, wondering how he was going to follow Oratory if he didn't want to be found.
            "This way," said a voice out of the smoke, and a corner of the silvery robe curled up and beckoned, appearing almost in the corner of Harry's eye. Harry swore and hurried towards it through the mirrors, trying to ignore the flashing distraction of his own image in them.
            Oratory kept moving after that, always providing enough guidance that Harry never felt completely lost, but never enough that Harry could feel confident he knew where he was going. It was still a surprise to stumble abruptly out of the mist and find himself in what looked like a perfectly normal room with a desk in the middle of it, a chair behind and a chair in front. It might have been an Auror office. Harry turned to glance over his shoulder, but the room full of smoke and mirrors had vanished.
            "Yes, that's a useful trick we've perfected," said Oratory, and took a seat behind the desk. There was still nothing inside the cowl that Harry could see, but he had the impression of benevolent, unseen eyes gazing at him nevertheless. "We do keep track of your movements, you know."
            "Then you would have caught me sooner," Harry said. He would still have to tailor his lies, he knew, but to this unknown person, which was going to be harder than tailoring them to Kingsley. Still, if they needed secret knowledge, he was willing to spin as many tales as it took. He folded his arms and glared at the space where the eyes would be. "You would have figured out my plans."
            "Oh, we don't generally intervene," said the vague voice. "Now, matters have become severe enough that we have to. Won't you sit down?" It waved one hand at the chair in front of his desk.
            Harry took a moment to check the chair for signs of a seat that would tilt up and dump him on the floor, or any violent spells. The voice chuckled in return. "You've become conscious that many of the tests they're performing on you for Lethe are not exactly for your benefit?" it asked, as Harry finally sat down.
            Harry nodded firmly, although he hadn't known that for certain. On the other hand, he had long since come to the conclusion that a lot of the tests were looking for things like the general power of his magic instead of things that would affect his safety. "It's annoying as hell, I don't mind telling you."
            "Yes, don't mind," said Oratory, and clasped his hands and leaned forwards over his desk. Harry was almost sure the voice was male, although he hadn't counted on how disconcerting it would be not to see an expression. "Now. We are not the Unspeakables, but a separate division, one committed to studying larger patterns in the wizarding world than can be found by looking at artifacts and ancient magic."
            Harry blinked. "What are you, then?"
            "The Ministry calls us the Unseen," said the figure. "That name will do as well as any. We are concerned because there was a war that could have destroyed our world, and now there is this paranoia that could do the same thing. We let the pattern of the war play out. With a prophecy and a Dark Lord none of us could challenge directly and Horcruxes on the field, we had no choice. But this paranoia is not necessary. It can still be changed and directed, and that is what we want to do."
            Harry stared at Oratory in silent fury. On the one hand, it sounded as if these Unseen could be allies of his, if they were talking about helping.
            On the other hand, if they could have made the war easier for him and had chosen not to, because of nonsense concerning "destiny" and "chosenness" and "necessity," then Harry was boiling.
            "How many people could you have saved?" he finally demanded. "Maybe you couldn't do anything about the fight I had to have with Voldemort, but you could have done something about saving the people in the Ministry! Where you work!"
            "Do you know why the Ministry banned weather magic?" Oratory asked.
            Harry stared. "What does that have to do with anything?"

            "You don't, then." Unconcerned with his closeness, now that he was almost leaning over the desk and threatening to poke the idiot in the chest, Oratory went on calmly. "The Ministry banned it because its patterns were too complex for individual wizards to see. They couldn't understand that shifting clouds even a little so that their daughter could have sunshine for her wedding could cause a devastating flood in the next county, or that trying to make it stop raining early could contribute to the lengthening of a drought. We came into being at the same time, in the hope that a group of wizards could study the long-term patterns and come to understand them, and perhaps use weather magic wisely again."
            "But that's not what you're doing," Harry said, and gave back as hostile a stare as he could muster. Fine, he didn't know how to react to the Unseen, but whether he could try his pretense on them or had to show his real emotions, his anger would be the same.
            "No," Oratory acknowledged cheerfully. "We realized there were other long-term patterns to be studied, including the waves of the future. A large number of us use Divination the way it was meant to be used, as a pattern of warnings, not of absolute knowledge. And we have seen that you stand at the fulcrum of this paranoia and the change it could make in the wizarding world, much as you stood at the fulcrum of the war."
            "Lucky, lucky me," Harry muttered.
            "Oh, no. You aren't particularly favored by the patterns of luck, you know."
            Harry gave up on trying to make it clear what he meant, because it seemed as though the Unseen would only twist his words. "Then what do you want? Are you going to help me prove that the Lightfinder is just a means of showing someone's affinity for Dark and Light? Or are you going to hang around in the background and make me more paranoid?"
            For some reason, those words seemed to affect Oratory when nothing else had. The figure sat up, and Harry had the feeling those invisible eyes had grown more piercing. Then the Unseen said, "That is unkind. After all, you have already been with one of our associates, and he has helped you."
            "Who?" Harry asked, his mind going, absurdly, to Splinter.
            "Aster Black."
            "How can a portrait be a member of your organization?"
            "Oh, it all depends on where the portrait frame is placed, and whether the knowledge of the figure in it is extensive enough to permit us to take an interest." Oratory seemed calm again. He waved one hand. "So. You have benefited from his knowledge of spells. Would you not like to do the same thing with us?"
            Harry had to stop and think about it. He was still angry that this organization that seemed to be so powerful hadn't interfered in the war, or before this to stop stupid things like the imprisonment of Bill, but Malfoy would say he should be clear-headed when he made a decision, not reject things out of fury. Harry didn't want to look stupid in front of Malfoy.
            "What can you offer?" he finally asked. "And is it going to be advice, or spells, or something else?"
            The Unseen nodded slowly. "Good. Now you are thinking instead of merely reacting." Harry bit his lips and held still. "Even better." Oratory leaned back. "Now, why did you come here? It was convenient for us, because we could intercept you, but what was running through your head when you came to the Ministry?"
            "They would know that someone had come through my Floo," said Harry. "Or that I had used it to go somewhere. I was going to tell them that I knew about them capturing my friend Fleur, who was only trying to free her mate from prison."
            "Only."
            Harry ignored that, and kept speaking. "I was going to tell them that they could condemn me, and I would confess to whatever they wanted, in exchange for them freeing Bill and Fleur."
            "They've been telling the public that you're a Dark wizard all along. What could you offer them that would be different from what they already have?"
            Harry breathed to calm his anger, and replied, "I've been resisting it, somewhat. They've already sent Aurors to my house to look around for whatever subversive book I've been reading. The tests that they said are for my safety before they use Lethe on me have got harder. I would tell them I'd cease that resistance and give interviews about my Darkness of my own free will. I haven't done that so far, because they wouldn't let me in front of a reporter."
            "Because they didn't know what you might say, and you are a terrible liar. Even the lies that you've tried to tell me, you can only do by omitting something." Oratory tapped his fingers in a pattern that made his desk glow. Harry only caught a glimpse of spirals and shapes that looked like crescent moons before the Unseen snatched his attention back. "That was a good plan, so far as it went. But then the wizarding world falls into chaos, and that is annoying."
            They really must be detached from the world, if they can think of chaos as merely annoying, Harry thought. Maybe every last one of them is a portrait.
            "So this is what you will do instead," said Oratory.
            "Only if you can guarantee that my friends and allies are going to be safe," said Harry, and didn't care that those invisible eyes on his face now felt hot enough to make his scar smoke. "I won't do anything that hurts them."
Oratory had a staring contest with him. This time, Harry thought, not seeing the face was actually an advantage. It was still unnerving, but not in the specific way that seeing a glare or a look of poisonous hatred for his Dark affinity would be.
            "The least annoying pattern needs most of your friends and allies," the Unseen finally conceded. "Fine. You want your Weasley friends freed?"
            "That's the most immediate goal," said Harry. "That's the one I was prepared to sacrifice myself for."
            "Only a small goal, considering what your compliance is worth to the Ministry," said Oratory. "They would have accepted your bargain, because the Savior condemning himself out of his own mouth is one of the major things they want."
            "Are you going to advise me to drive a harder bargain, then?" Harry wondered why the Unseen had brought him here if that was the case. Diverting the Aurors, and revealing to at least a few of them where Harry had been taken, didn't seem worth it for a plan that small.
            "No," said Oratory. "I advise you to present the face of someone struggling with his own Dark affinity. Tell them that you hear voices in your head pulling you towards the Dark and voices that pull you towards the Light. You want to be Light again. That is Lethe's purpose, you know, to change someone's magic."
            Harry swallowed. He had suspected that, had never really thought once he learned what the Lightfinder did that Lethe would scrub his soul clean, but it was another thing to hear it stated so baldly.
            "But how can I do that, when I can't lie well? And why would it convince them anyway? It sounds like a childish excuse."
            "Because," Oratory said, "unlike most other people who might tell this ploy, you did have someone's soul wrapped around yours. Yes, you will need to tell them about the Horcrux," he added, when Harry opened his mouth to protest. "You can tell them that the voice of the Dark is the voice of Voldemort, and the voice of the Light comes from your own, uncorrupted soul. Portray yourself as struggling with this last remnant of the one who called himself the Dark Lord. They will buy it."
            They might at that, Harry conceded slowly. They were still more afraid of Voldemort than anything else. The Lightfinder had been created in the first place to try to find wizards like Voldemort before they grew too strong. Fear was guiding the Ministry's decisions right now. An even more profound fear would probably seem all the more convincing for that.
            "As for how you can lie to them," said Oratory, and brought something out. One moment his hand didn't hold it, and the next it was there. Harry tried to conceal his jump, though from the way that Oratory didn't bother hiding a smile in his voice, he wasn't entirely successful. "Here. This amulet will fool those who hear you into thinking you speak the truth. Whatever they want most not to hear is what they will hear. And with the Ministry's current mood..."
            Harry lifted the amulet up slowly. It looked like a carving of golden wood, set with a single eye that had long rays like the sun's extending out from it to the edge of the amulet. The chain itself was also wood, made of fine links that didn't seem to have any join. "What about someone with Legilimency? And how will I hide the amulet?"
            "Good," said Oratory. When Harry shot him a look, he had the impression of a smile returned from under the hood. "You are more intelligent than Aster implied you were. The amulet uses the fear magic associated with it to deflect Legilimency as well, and makes the mind-reader's fear too intense to go further. Put on the amulet for the answer to your other question."
            Harry spent another moment studying Oratory, wondering why in the world he wanted to trust the bugger. But on the other hand, it wasn’t as though he had come here with a safer plan. His would have ended his freedom. This promised a way around that, a way that would let him still help Bill and Fleur, and maybe Malfoy and the others, too.
            Harry slung the amulet around his neck. The wooden links immediately glowed, a soft, silvery light that Harry had to admire. Then they pivoted around each other, turning as though to face him. Harry stared down at them and waited for them to stop turning.
            It didn’t really happen. Instead, the links began to fade. Harry breathed in and out, experimentally. The links were still there; he could feel them pressing against his neck. But they didn’t rattle when he moved, and there was no sign either of them or the slight bulge he knew the amulet must be making beneath his shirt to the searching eye.
            “That’s brilliant,” Harry breathed.
            “We rather thought so.” Oratory waited with his hands clasped until Harry stopped toying with the amulet and looked up again. “We require a price for this assistance, of course.”
            Harry nodded. For once, he didn’t feel the bitterness that he had started experiencing when he realized how the Ministry was using him, and even towards Dumbledore at the very end. Oratory and the Unseen wanted something; they were providing something. With help, this could be a good alliance, the way Harry thought he was forging with Malfoy.
            Well…perhaps not exactly like the one with Malfoy. Harry had to admit that so far, Oratory, and even the other Unseen whose purpose he had explained, didn’t interest him the way Malfoy did.
            “We wish you to resist Lethe.”
            Harry blinked. “But won’t that tip them off? I’ve cooperated with the tests so far, and if I’m going to lie to them about being influenced by a piece of Voldemort’s soul still, then I’ll have to do that some more. I have to pretend that I want to be Light again.”
            Oratory made an impatient motion with his hand. “Not the tests. We wish you to resist Lethe itself, when they try to put you into the machine.” He seemed to see the next question dawning on Harry’s face, because he added gravely, “Not the Ministry Aurors. Let them push you into the machine, if you must. But resist the machine when it tries to change you. Do not let it.”
            Harry paused. This seemed too good to be true, at last. He had no opinion on a lot of what Oratory had told him; it wasn’t like he had ever known about weather magic being banned, or what “real” Divination consisted of. But this…
            “You mean that you want me to do something I would do anyway?” he asked.
            Oratory touched his hood for a moment, as though he was considering pushing it back and letting Harry look at his face, but in the end, he dropped his hand and left the hood in place. He did lower his voice in emphasis. “I think that you would have sacrificed your magic and your affinity if you thought your friends required it of you. What did you come here to do?”
            “Not that,” Harry declared, shaking his head, but then sighed. “All right, something not much less than that.”
            Oratory nodded. “Then go and use the amulet.” He stood up abruptly, and the smoke was suddenly there, snaking through the room and around the desk as if it had never left. “I promise you it will work exactly as I explained. Don’t worry about the Aurors who escorted you; they are some of ours, and know better than to chat.” He stepped away from the desk. “When we need you again, we will contact you.”
            “Even though I haven’t agreed to resist Lethe yet?”
            Oratory paused and looked back at him. “You gave your agreement when the smoke appeared. I would have stayed here and conversed with you longer if you hadn’t. The mirrors know, and the smoke knows.”
            Then he vanished, trailing into the flash of mist and light, and Harry found himself standing in what looked like a normal corridor of the Auror division. He turned around slowly, although he didn’t expect to see Oratory behind him, or the mirror that he thought he had come through.
            In front of him was Splinter, who gave him a harassed look, as though he’d been waiting hours for Harry.
            “Come on, then,” he said, and jerked his head. “If you tried to open your Floo to go somewhere, then we need to talk to you about restrictions.”
            Harry relaxed. As he had thought, the Ministry had only set up alarms to warn them if the Floo was opened, not to tell them whether someone was coming or going. They hadn’t been able to distinguish Ron’s entrance from his own attempt at an exit.
            “And about Fleur and Bill Weasley,” he murmured.
            Splinter paused and rolled one eye back at him. “Then you need to talk Minister Shacklebolt about that. I only handle Lethe.”
            Harry refrained from raising a hand to touch his amulet, but only barely. “I’d like to talk to him. And you. About the voices I’ve heard that are tempting me to the Dark and changing my behavior lately.” He stepped closer and whispered, “Trying to convince me to abandon everything I hold dear. I think it’s Voldemort.”
            The look of terror on Splinter’s face was heart-warming. Harry bit his lip so as not to laugh, and thought Splinter would give himself whiplash from nodding.
            “Come on, then!” Splinter scurried off towards a corridor Harry didn’t recognize. “The Minister will have to be called right away. We’ll need to—”
            Harry tuned out the rest of it. The amulet had worked as promised. So far, the Unseen were his allies.
            But only so far.
*
staar: Not that Harry wants to be in the middle of everything, but yes, he is.
SP777: Thank you!
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An Image of Lethe