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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.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirteen—Intoxication
            Harry stood with the official Ministry summons in his hand and tried to look calm and collected and poised. He had no idea if he’d succeeded. The woman who’d let him into Kingsley’s office had certainly looked at him oddly.
            Kingsley, at the moment, was standing with his back to Harry, staring out an enchanted window that gave Harry a view of a beach with pure blue water curling gently up onto it. There seemed to be a tropical sun and palm trees, too. Harry wished intensely that he was there.
            “Why did you commit these crimes?” Kingsley asked, without turning around.
            “I don’t know.”
            That didn’t seem to be the right answer, from the way Kingsley faced him and shuffled through the papers on his desk. “You implied to Auror Weasley that you had evidence in your position which documented your crimes for a long period of time. Where is it?”
            There was a strange shifting feeling in Harry’s chest, at that moment. It was as if something he had treasured and tried to protect for a long time had just shattered, and Harry took a long step back from himself.
            “In the house I shared with Ginny Weasley.” Harry thought his lips felt numb, but the words came out with perfect precision. “There’s a drawer in the desk in my study that can only be opened by someone using Parseltongue. It has a handle shaped like a serpent. Then there’s a compartment in the wall by my side of the bed. It should take some searching to find the outline of the door, but you’ll be able to see it if you look.”
            Kingsley stared at him. Then he said, “You’re acting as if you do know.”
            “I’m giving you the location of the compartments I know of,” Harry countered. He wanted to scream. He wanted to say, You’re treating me like a suspect who knows everything, like Ron is “Auror Weasley” and not my friend, and like you don’t believe me when I say my memories are gone. Why the hell shouldn’t I be as neutral and distant as possible?
            “There may be more, then?” Kingsley pulled a sheet of parchment towards himself and poised his quill.
            “Yes.”
            “Where are they?”
            “I don’t know.” Harry had never expected to feel so grateful that the rules of Gringotts prevented him from talking or even implying anything about the existence of his Shadow Vault.
            Kingsley threw down the quill and stood up, staring at Harry with appealing eyes. “Harry,” he whispered. “I’m trying to help you, here. It’s a pretty bad sign that you’re receiving friendly letters from Kelvin, but we can try to mitigate the effects of your involvement. But not if you don’t tell us the truth.”
            Harry found himself grinning. It was a strange sensation, just like the breaking one in the center of his chest. Now it felt as if the skin on his face had peeled away from everything and he was just a skull baring his teeth at Kingsley. “I don’t know. I forgot. Test me with Veritaserum if you want,” he added, when Kingsley stared at him as if he thought Harry was mocking him. “I won’t be able to tell you the truth no matter how much you try to force me, though.”
            Kingsley shook his head, the motions slow and tragic. Then he turned away and walked out of the office. Harry heard the door lock click shut.
            He sat down in the chair before Kingsley’s desk and stared out the window. The soft sound of the waves and the white clouds racing through that pale blue sky didn’t really relax him. Instead, it seemed to set his mind to buzzing as he tore through the implications.
            The way they treated him was all wrong for someone who they thought was really innocent and had forgotten things. Yet they’d had plenty of time to read the reports from the Healers—from Hermione, even—and figure out that he wasn’t faking his memory loss.
            Harry thought they were treating him differently because they saw him as a different person. He wasn’t the great Harry Potter who’d been a top Auror and the boyfriend of Ron’s sister and an exemplary citizen. He was just someone who looked like him. It would be simple if they could blame everything evil on him. This new Harry Potter. Then they wouldn’t have to tarnish their image of the old one.
            And it’s strange, the way I feel.
            Harry didn’t think he was really planning to run away, or deny the evidence they’d find in the letters and ledgers and whatever else he’d kept in those drawers and little locked safes. He would go along with the trial, let them use Veritaserum if they wanted, and answer questions to the best of his ability.
            But he wouldn’t pretend any longer that he was sorry about Old Harry dying. He wouldn’t get upset if they treated him like a stranger, because that was what he was to them. And he wouldn’t strive to be like Old Harry and try to pick up his life where he’d left it off.
            Because Old Harry was dead. And while Harry could see himself going to prison to atone for those crimes, killing himself, in turn, just because he couldn’t be Old Harry was stupid.
            I’m going to live.
*
            It seemed like an hour before Ron and Kingsley came back into the office, holding a whole bunch of letters and papers and ledgers and wrapped packages. Harry didn’t know for sure, though. They’d taken his wand, and there was no clock in Kingsley’s office.
            Ron dumped the drawer from Harry’s study down in the middle of the desk. Harry looked at it. It had obviously been torn off its hinges, and the serpent handle was half-broken. “That’s where the ledgers were that have the most information on who he blackmailed,” he said.
            “I also found out that you used to date someone before Ginny.” Ron’s voice was flat. “A man?”
            Harry gave him that skull-like grin. “And is that another crime I’m being tried for? Is it because I never told you, or because he’s a man, or because I dared to date someone who wasn’t Ginny?”
            Ron opened his mouth, but Kingsley touched his arm and shook his head. Harry watched it all with his heart beating hard but his head filled with that drifting serenity. So strange. It seemed as if he was aching all through his limbs and objective, present and removed, at the same time.
            “We aren’t here to question you about that,” said Kingsley. “But these potential crimes are very serious, Harry.”
            He didn’t say anything else, forcing Harry to realize after a second that he wanted an answer. Harry nodded. “I agree. If there’s anything else I can tell you, then I will.” That wouldn’t include the Shadow Vault, and after thinking about it, Harry had decided that he wouldn’t tell them about Malfoy, or his museum, or the potion he was brewing that would enable Harry to see some of his old memories. It would just get more questions and probably a stop put to the process.
            If I can learn something about myself, then I can tell them more anyway.
            Kingsley took the chair behind his desk. Ron fidgeted around behind Harry until Kingsley told him sharply to stand against the door. Ron crossed his arms and did that with a huff, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling.
            “I want to know, first of all,” Kingsley whispered, “why you didn’t come to us the minute you found out about the drawer and the ledgers.”
            Harry blinked. “Is that a trick question?”
            “No,” Kingsley said, his voice rough.
            “Because I didn’t understand anything, of course,” Harry said, trying to explain without sounding too disrespectful. “Maybe it was something good. There weren’t clear enough notes for me to figure out what was going on. And everyone around me kept insisting that Old Harry was a great bloke, a great Auror. I couldn’t believe he would be involved in anything illegal.”
            “But if you’d told us, then we could have reassured you that it wasn’t anything good,” Kingsley said.
            Harry sighed. “Why should I have, simply because I found something I didn’t understand? I mean, why should I have come to you, sir? I might have told my friends, that’s true. But why did I owe you the right to peer into my head and talk to me about my morals?”
            “Because you were an Auror. That means that you’re responsible for the reputation of the Department along with your own. And we had quite a friendship, outside the office and the constraints of your cases. At least,” and Kingsley’s voice went soulful while he looked over Harry’s head towards the door, “I thought we did.”
            “I wasn’t going to be an Auror again. I can’t remember anything about this famous friendship. My friends got upset whenever I revealed how different I was from the Harry they knew. What was I supposed to do?”
            Kingsley remained silent, apparently stymied. Ron was the one who spoke up. “We could have told you that we didn’t know about it. You would have been brought in earlier.”
            “And so I would have spent more time in a holding cell?” Harry sighed and turned around in his chair to look at Ron. “Spending more time cooped up and waiting for trial isn’t actually a great incentive, Ron.”
            Ron chewed his lip. His eyes and his face blazed, but if he knew what to say, he didn’t want to voice it. Harry shook his head. “Please be honest with me. Please.”
            “The Harry I knew never would have done this,” Ron whispered. “It has to be—we found the names of some seriously wrong people in those ledgers. Why couldn’t this be evidence they planted? Maybe they even planned for you to lose your memory and take the fall so that you couldn’t tell us for certain that they’d done it?”
            By the way Kingsley caught his breath, he was hoping for that to be true. Harry only went on staring. When the obvious solution didn’t suggest itself to anyone else, he sighed, went ahead, and voiced it. “In a drawer locked with Parseltongue? Are any of them Parselmouths?” He would actually be interested in that answer.
            Ron looked down. “No,” he muttered.
            “And in the private hidden compartments in my house?” Harry shook his head. “No, he did it. I did it, if you want to get technical. But I can only tell you what I know, and that isn’t much.”
            “You told us that you weren’t a Parselmouth anymore.” Ron looked up. In his eyes was such a shining pattern of devastation that Harry couldn’t even be annoyed at him. Ron was seeing a whole ten years of friendship fall to pieces, and that had to be hard. “Why did you lie about that?”
            “I don’t know.”
            “Can you make a guess?”
            Kingsley was keeping quiet. Harry didn’t know if he saw the same thing in Ron’s eyes that Harry did and was trying to give Ron a chance to get used to it or not, but then, it was useless to guess. He rubbed his scar and gave the only answer he could imagine. “Maybe because he knew how freaked out you would be if he was still a Parselmouth? So he kept it to himself.”
            “You keep talking about him and you like they’re two separate people.”
            “It feels that way.” Harry turned to Kingsley. “Sir, can I know what’s going to happen? Am I going to a holding cell? Am I going back home under house arrest? What?”
            Kingsley remained utterly silent and frowning. Then he shook his head and said, “There’s no usual procedure in place for this. In the case of criminals who Obliviated themselves, we bring in an expert in the Mind Arts who can dig through their minds and find the memories they hid. But I understand you underwent the ministrations of a Legilimens in hospital, and it didn’t do any good.”
            “And you have to work out whether it’s a crime and how much I’m really responsible for,” Harry said. He decided not to smile. It would make him look mocking, and he really didn’t feel that way. He just felt immensely tired.
            “Right.” Kingsley exchanged a look with Ron that Harry couldn’t read. Perhaps his old self would once have been able to. “Well. I’ve decided to send you home, Harry. I’ll ask that you send any other suspicious letters you get on to us. And don’t go somewhere without informing us first.” He sighed. “Other than that, you’re free for right now.”
            “Thank you,” Harry said, and stood.
*
            Ron had left not long after he got Harry back to Grimmauld Place. Harry waited to see if he would talk to him, but Ron seemed intimidated by Kreacher’s scowl. Harry had to admit that he would have felt the same, in his place.
            And so Harry sat down again in the library, feeling much the same way he had when he sat in front of Kingsley’s desk, and didn’t even feel surprised when he glanced up and saw Malfoy sitting across from him, staring at him. Kreacher had let him through the Floo, or the door, without telling Harry. That seemed normal.
            Harry nodded to the strange flask that Malfoy had, so round it looked more like a crystal ball with a hole in the top. “Is that the potion?”
            “What I can make of it without your pain,” said Malfoy. “It doesn’t come fully alive until you complete the pain ritual.”
            “So it’s inert until then,” Harry muttered. “That’s probably Dark or something.”
            “I did tell you not to tell anyone else about this.”
            Harry had in fact forgotten that promise, but it was another reason for being glad that he hadn’t mentioned Malfoy to Kingsley and Ron. They might find his name in the ledgers, but that didn’t mean they would leap straight to realizing that Malfoy and Harry had a continuing association. “You’re right,” he said. “Sorry.” He stretched out his arm.
            “What’s wrong with you, Potter?”
            Do I seem that different to him? Maybe he did, to someone who had once known him well. Harry shrugged. “Someone I used to know sent me owls when Ron was here. He recognized the name. A seriously evil Potions brewer who fled the country. I don’t remember anything of the connection, of course. But Ron took me to the Ministry and he and Kingsley discussed whether I’d be arrested. Right now I’m just sort of on a watch list.”
            Malfoy stood up abruptly. Harry thought he would ask whether he was in any danger, but instead he demanded, “How can they arrest you for something you didn’t do?”
            “I don’t remember doing,” Harry corrected softly. “That isn’t the same thing.”
            He might as well have been talking to a statue. “Where are they going to get their evidence?” Malfoy asked, and then laughed harshly. “Probably the same place that the Ministry gets half their evidence, making it up.”
            Harry shrugged quietly, watching Malfoy. “I don’t think they should connect you with anything. Your name is in the ledgers recording that I paid you for a potion, but that’s all. If they question you, face them down. I’m sure you can.”
            Malfoy shook his head at him. “If they don’t have any evidence of exactly what you did and you don’t remember so you can’t tell them, how are they going to arrest you?”
            “I don’t know,” Harry said, and told the truth. “I think it might make them feel better to arrest me because they can believe someone they didn’t know would do this, but they can’t feel the same way about Old Harry. This lets them keep believing that he was a hero.” He shook his arm a little. “Come on, Malfoy. I decided that I wanted to suffer by having you cut my arm. Can we get on with it?”
            Malfoy came striding up to look in his eyes. He seemed careless about the glass ball of potion in his hand, but even when Harry shifted uneasily, Malfoy didn’t look in that direction. He just kept his eyes pinned on Harry’s face.
            “I’m not going to see you arrested,” Malfoy whispered. “How much research would I lose? How much time? I would never know for certain what went wrong, or what you were thinking.”
            “At the moment,” Harry said, “that’s the least of my concerns.”
            Malfoy’s breathing stopped for a moment, and two intense points of color flared on his cheeks. Harry had no idea why. Maybe just hearing about Harry’s disregard was enough to get him angry, though.
            But a second later, he was doing what Harry had requested, drawing his blade and scraping it along Harry’s arm, in a longer and deeper cut than the one he’d used when he was taking the skin for the potion. So Harry reckoned that it didn’t much matter why Malfoy did it.
            The pain sliced into Harry’s system, this time. Malfoy wasn’t trying to collect blood or skin, he was just cutting, and Harry appreciated the difference through gritted teeth. His head pounded and leaped and throbbed, the blood sobbing against his temples, and Harry ended up ducking his head so that it was between his knees and he couldn’t see the blood. Malfoy cut again, and the sharpness that didn’t let Harry feel the agony immediately seemed worse than being able to feel it, so that when it came welling up, he gave a short scream without thinking.
            Malfoy curled an arm around his shoulders. He was whispering something, but Harry barely paid attention to his words, because they made no sense.
            “…you’re not him, and that’s wonderful. I won’t let them take you away. I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t—”
            His words got eaten up in a crackling, hissing flame of power. Harry blinked and turned his head. A ghostly shape of Harry himself floated above the glass ball in which Malfoy held the potion, and Malfoy nodded slowly.
            “The potion is ready.”
*
Silanae: Thank you! I really appreciate it. In this chapter, I think Kingsley gets it better than Ron, but even he is having some trouble adjusting. (He did think that Old Harry’s feelings would persist even though his memories hadn’t, and so Harry would feel trust for him).
SP777: Do you mean that Harry lost it at some point in the past? Because this Harry feels like he’s the only sane one.
moon: Yes, that’s why he decided to tell the truth about some of his old self’s hiding places. Because he had no idea what was going on anyway, and he would rather be honest.
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The Dust of Water