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An Image of Lethe	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21774 -:- 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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Chapter Fourteen—Deals Made and Bargains Struck
            “All you have to do is go out there and tell them the truth,” Splinter muttered, and smoothed some of the wrinkles out of Harry’s robe. Harry had to hold still and let him do that, but he hated the sensation; it was as if Splinter considered Harry his doll that he could pose and adjust. “That you’re hearing You-Know-Who’s voice, and you were the innocent victim in this. They’ll understand.” He paused and looked up at Harry as he straightened again from his crouching position. “They want to reclaim you, you know.”
            “Reclaim me?” Harry hated to stare blankly and look as stupid as he knew he did, but he didn’t know what Splinter meant.
            “They wanted you to be innocent all along.” Splinter made an impatient gesture, as if to say he wouldn’t have been that stupid. “They wanted you to be—I’m not sure I can describe it. The hero. Not Dark.”
            Of course they did, Harry thought, and had to fight to keep his hand from rising to touch his hidden necklace. Toying with it had become a habit when he was in Grimmauld Place and around the Slytherins who would understand. But touching it in public could render the whole secret obvious in a second.
            “Yes,” was all Harry said aloud, and ducked his head and lowered his eyelashes. “I so hated having to disappoint them. This way, I can do things.” He turned and looked anxiously at Splinter. The anxiety was entirely fake, but Splinter had shown no sign of seeing that so far. “What name do you think I should use when I’m talking about it? You-Know-Who or Voldemort?”
            Splinter visibly shuddered at the name, and then twitched his lips into a sickly smile. “You should probably call him by the name they’ll expect to hear. Not the frightening one.”
            He turned around and headed back towards the front of the little shaded alcove the Ministry had built near the Lightfinder some weeks ago. Harry thought it had a lot to do with not wanting the crowds to see the fear on the faces of some they put through the Lightfinder. But it made a useful private place for them to hide Harry now, so no one would be demanding for him to come out even earlier.
            It was also a good opportunity for Harry for other reasons. He pulled out his wand and aimed it at Splinter under the fall of his robes, muttering the spell Aster had taught them that would allow him to hear Splinter’s thoughts concerning him.
            Splinter was speaking as the voice of his thoughts began to murmur over his words, but Harry didn’t think it mattered so much if he wasn’t able to hear the instructions right now. Splinter had told him what to do already. He liked to repeat himself because he wanted to be important, and he wanted to make sure of things. Harry knew how uncertain he was about his position in the Ministry, despite the central role he’d played in designing both the Lightfinder and Lethe.
            Now, the voice of his thoughts was the far more important one to Harry.
            “Poor bastard. I never thought he would be the one who had to go through it first. But someone has to, and someone who’s powerful will probably suffer less. Where did I put that quill? Oh, it’s right there.” Splinter patted absently at the side of his robes. “Need to record the words of his speech and make sure the one published in the Daily Prophet tomorrow is an exact match. And then I need to ask him again about the Horcruxes. That’s important.”
            Splinter turned around. Harry ended the spell with a little motion of his wand and a mouthed Finite Incantatem, and gave Splinter an utterly bland look that contrasted with the brilliance of the smile Splinter offered.
            “You’re going to make a good impression on them,” said Splinter, holding aside the curtain so Harry could step out of the alcove more easily. “I know it.”
            Good in the way that you mean it and the way I mean it aren’t the same thing, Harry thought, and ducked past him into the open. He heard the crowd gathered around the Lightfinder’s stage roar at the sight of him. And what’s that mean, that someone with powerful magic will suffer less in Lethe?
            Well, he had always known the Ministry was doing things mostly for its own benefit, and that they didn’t plan to do something harmless. Right now, he put on his bland smile and his crowd face, and prepared to render them speechless with awe and terror.
*
            Draco paused when he saw a flicker out of the corner of his eye. There was a seemingly empty portrait frame on the wall of this library, yes, and Draco had wondered who would use it, since it seemed to contain nothing but a softly silver-grey background. On the other hand, it hadn’t bothered him much.
            Until now.
            Draco sat up and laid his book down beside him, making sure his wand was near to hand. If the Aurors intended to force an entrance to Potter’s house in a new place, now that they knew the doors and Floo were watched, Draco intended to be ready. “If that’s you, Aster, you might as well stop playing and just show up.”
            The flicker came back, and the grey surface surged, dancing as though someone was beneath a pool of mercury trying to force a way out. Then Aster stepped into the foreground of the portrait, brushed off the silver drops clinging to his robes, and nodded briskly to Draco. “You’re more observant than you look.”
            Draco gave him a pleasant smile. “I had to run for my life and freedom not too long ago. Of course I’m going to be.”
            Aster paused, and the one silver drop left on his robes trickled down and towards the bottom of the picture frame. But he didn’t take his eyes from Draco’s face, and certainly didn’t seem to notice the drop. “Yes,” he murmured. “Well. There was something I wanted to talk to you about, and I had to wait until Potter was out.”
            Draco waited with his hand on his wand. He had thought of bringing up the Unseen and what Potter had told him about Aster being a member, but for now, he didn’t want to. It was always possible that that knowledge was what Aster was going to offer him.
            Aster only said, however, “I think Potter would be opposed to casting any real spells.”
            “What were the ones you’ve showed us up until now?” Draco ran his fingers slowly over the soothing wood of his wand. “Fake ones?”
            “You understand nothing,’ said Aster in a hiss. For a moment, Draco thought he would take his leave in high indignation, probably having decided that Draco wasn’t worth teaching, along with Potter. But instead, Aster took a deep breath and settled back against the frame, eyes narrowed as he studied Draco. “Listen. The spells I’ve showed you so far are tiny. You know that, if you think about it. Useful, but not really Dark. The rest of the knowledge, what I’ve accumulated during my existence, is still waiting for you.”
            “But not for Potter.” Draco was impressed with himself. He had kept his voice utterly steady and calm, his face blank and neutral.
            “Of course not.” Aster made an impatient motion with his hand. “You yourself told me about the rivalry you had with this boy in school. Why would you care about what he can learn and what he can’t?”
            “What I think is that he’s the legal owner of this house, and the one who took me in when he didn’t have to,” Draco said. “The one we’ll have nothing without if he gets arrested by the Ministry. For example, if he practices magic that leaves a visible trace of Dark Arts around him. Or has someone in the house who does.”
            “I can show you ways to fool any magic-detection spells that the modern Ministry can possibly have come up with,” said Aster, and sneered as he said it. “That isn’t a problem.”
            “The other?” Draco cocked his head. “That Potter was the one who offered me sanctuary, and I can’t exist separate from it?”
            “There are ways to change the ownership of a pure-blood house,” said Aster, and looked pleased with himself. “Especially when one possible heir has a closer blood tie than the other. You are the son of a daughter of the House of Black. Potter is only a grandson. Yes, we can bind you in and make you sole owner of the house.”
            We have to make sure that Weasley never meets Aster, Draco thought. Just what he was afraid of. But he shook his head, making sure that his face remained calm, relaxed, even amused. Outright rejection of Aster’s offer would only alienate him, and if he was allied with those powerful Unseen, that could mean disaster. “No. I don’t want it.”
            “You don’t want the power to control your own destiny?” Aster stared at him for a long moment before his face hardened as if all the paint in the portrait was rushing and thickening together. “Have I sired two weak descendants?”
            “I don’t know why you think Potter’s weak,” Draco said, and let his wand sag loosely into his clasped hands. “After all, he’s managed the spells you showed us, and sometimes faster than I did. And he’s taken up arms against a lot of people and assumptions that he believed all his life were good and true.”
            “He does not have the heart or stomach to do what must be done if we are to restore Dark wizards to political prominence.” For a moment, Aster’s fingers flexed like claws. “And this is the only chance that we have had to do that in generations. Didn’t you come to Potter because that’s what you wanted to do?”
            “I wanted a chance to live,” Draco said. “It’s true that I think I can only live if people at least tolerate Dark wizards, because I’ll never be able to change my affinity. But that’s not the same thing as feeling political loyalty to people who’ve never helped me.”
            Aster paused for a long second, his eyes empty. Then he nodded and said, “I know what I have to do now.” And he disappeared from the portrait frame.
            Draco breathed out slowly and settled back in the chair. That had gone differently from what he’d imagined, although he’d thought he’d have a confrontation with Aster about Potter one of these days. But he didn’t know what that last sentence meant, and he suspected he would want to very soon.
            “Draco?”
            He started, for a moment thinking Potter had returned, although he’d never heard Potter calling him by his first name. Then he turned around and saw Astoria standing behind him with her arms full of scrolls and her eyes so wide that they seemed ready to fall out of her head.
            “Astoria.” Draco smiled and patted the chair beside him. She came drifting over and piled the scrolls at her feet. Draco bent down to look at them, and blinked when both the smell of dust and the sharp-sparking smell of Preservation Charms blew up his nose. “Are you all right? What did you find?” Because if she had been into the older libraries of the Black family, libraries ancient enough that they had scrolls instead of books, she would have found something.
            “It might be nothing,” said Astoria, and looked down for a second. But a moment later, she was meeting his eyes again. Draco nodded approvingly. Astoria wasn’t as shy and dawdling as she’d been before they came here. Potter himself hadn’t had much to do with the change, Draco thought, but an independent research task had done wonders for her self-confidence.
            “I don’t think you would be here if it was.” Draco picked up one of the oldest and thickest scrolls, and looked at the title. Changing Magical Affinities.
            A cold wind seemed to breathe down his neck. Hadn’t he just told Aster there was no way to do that? He wondered if Aster had known there was, and that was one reason he had chosen to vanish.
            “Draco?” Astoria said again. “I think—I think that there were people who tried to do something like the Lightfinder once before. Only they didn’t call it the Lightfinder, of course.” Her face was bright pink, but with excitement and not terror, Draco thought, as she took the scroll from him and unrolled it. “They called it the Releaser.”
            “And it was supposed to show them someone’s affinity?” Draco shook his head, not wanting to push back against the first discovery that Astoria had made on her own, but not understanding why she thought it was a discovery, either. “We already found the Soul Revelation Spell that did that.”
            “Yes,” said Astoria, “but the Lightfinder doesn’t just show someone’s affinity, does it?”
            Draco blinked, wondering if she’d had her brain affected by the constant Prophet stories that stated the Lightfinder also showed a tainted soul. She shouldn’t have been, but people who had acted rationally during the war were running around right now like chickens. “Of course it does. That’s what we’re trying to convince them of.”
            This time, it was Astoria’s turn to stare blankly at him. Then she said, “Oh! Pansy didn’t tell you?”
            “Pansy is probably keeping six secrets at once from me,” Draco said, and he managed to say it dryly instead of getting upset. “What particular one was this?”
            “Well, I did think she’d told you,” said Astoria, and picked up a different scroll. “This describes what happened with the Releaser when they first tested it. It was in private, with a group of Unspeakables. And Pansy was the one who noticed what it said about how it worked. I mean, the first time. They tested it later, and got it to stop doing that.”
            Draco followed her pointing finger to a line of dusty black words on the top of the scroll.
            A most unexpected Result! The Releaser touched the Minds of those who were Present; it afflicted them with Concern and Surprise, and then Fear. It was fascinating how fast the Fear overcame them. I was not affected, but I stood behind the Wondrous Machine and did not see the Glow in the same way. We will find out what caused the Reaction and correct it. It would be Inconvenient for us to affect the Public in this Way when we use it.
            It took Draco a moment to find what Astoria was talking about. And then he caught his breath and leaned back to look at her. “You think that the Lightfinder is causing extra fear when they use it?”
“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Astoria’s eyes shone, and she made a little motion with one hand as though she was trying to scoop something up and throw it away. “These people had a machine that did at first, and we don’t really know how they developed the Lightfinder. It wasn’t here, and then it was. And they had to perfect it, and they said they’d been working on it for a long time. What if they found some old notes about the Releaser or something, and they realized they could make a device that would show someone’s affinity, but they didn’t read far enough to realize it would also cause problems?”
“Just like Light wizards,” Draco muttered, and then stiffened a little when he realized how much he sounded like Aster, but Astoria only laughed.
            “I think some of them are Dark wizards and don’t know they are,” she said. “Like Potter.” Then she made a face. “But they won’t put themselves through the Lightfinder until one of them does something stupid, like criticizing the Ministry. They’ll keep putting our names on the list, and testing us, and deciding that we’re dangerous, when they’re the ones who didn’t even know what using this machine would do.”
            Draco grinned at her. “This is wonderful, Astoria. It’s something else we can use to undermine their trust in the government.”
            Astoria blushed prettily. “Isn’t it? But we need to make sure that some of those pamphlets we already have written, about the Soul Revelation Spell, are distributed first.” She paused in gathering up the scrolls and looked hesitantly at him. “And are we sure that Potter’s new tactic about telling everyone he’s hearing the Dark Lord’s voice won’t undermine us?”
            Draco sighed and shook his head. “That’s not something he discussed with me before he did it. He felt he had to do it to free his friends from prison, and so he went ahead and did it. But no, I think we can still spread this information. For one thing, we can puzzle everyone so much that they won’t know what to trust at all. And then we can start spreading the truth.”
            “How are we going to distinguish the truth from the rumors?”
            Draco smiled. He had some ideas on that score, connected with some of the “not-real” spells that Aster had deigned to teach him. “Oh, I know. Let’s get to that point, the point where we can actually do it, and then we’ll see.”
*
            It happened after Harry had made his bows to gasps and clapping and shouted concerns for him—most people did seem to think that he wasn’t guilty or evil now that they “knew” Voldemort’s soul was influencing him—and the Aurors had ushered him off the stage that contained the Lightfinder and back towards the Ministry.
            Suddenly, there were people with dark masks racing along the sides, keeping pace with the Aurors and firing so many Body-Bind Spells and Stunners from their wands that Harry wasn’t surprised to see the Aurors falling. Harry reached for his own wand, but he had to duck a Stunner aimed straight at him, and he wasn’t able to get hold of it.
            “Not him, you idiot!” snarled a deep, horribly familiar voice. “It would be insolence of the worst sort to curse our Lord into sleep!”
            Harry snatched the wand, even as another Stunner flew past his head from someone who wasn’t listening, and spun to face Fenrir Greyback.
            He had thought the werewolf had fled the country; that had been the report of those Aurors who were hunting down the Death Eaters, because they’d looked for months and hadn’t been able to find him. Greyback was kind of recognizable, too, and not known for being very cautious. Someone should at least have been able to track a werewolf massacre back and find out that it was him that way.
            But no, here was Greyback, looking worn-down and feverish but still as terrifying and shaggy as ever, making a deep bow to Harry. Then he straightened up and murmured, “My Lord, forgive the treatment we must give your mortal shell for the moment.”
            Harry, knowing full well what that meant, dodged the curse that flew at him. It was probably no worse than one that would send him to sleep, given how much it looked like a Stunner, but Harry still wasn’t keen on the thought of it being used against him.
            Greyback snarled and twisted his body, following Harry’s motions so fluidly that Harry felt his throat thicken for a second. He hadn’t received any Auror training. He didn’t think he was going to be good enough to counter an enraged werewolf.
            But instead of suffering from one of Greyback’s spells, he heard pounding footsteps, and a crunching sound. Greyback’s eyes rolled back in his skull, and he slumped to the ground. A few of the other wizards who had come with him Apparated away, but the rest apparently slammed against the enchantments that prevented it when they tried. Then more Aurors closed in, and Harry sighed in relief as he watched them arrest the Death Eaters.
            “Mr. Potter? Are you all right?”
            Harry looked up. Splinter was standing in front of him, and if he didn’t care all that much about Harry he obviously wanted him to survive until his experiment with Lethe was complete, because he was examining him minutely now. Harry managed to nod, and mutter, “It was just—really shocking to see Greyback appear out of nowhere like that.”
            “And perhaps you were hearing a voice in your head whisper to you about him?”
            Harry didn’t know whether Splinter distrusted his story or was just trying to uncover more material about how a Horcrux worked. But at a certain point, they had to take risks—more than just the risk of rebelling in secret against the Ministry. Someone could always misinterpret something that had happened, the way they had with his aura in the first place. It was time for Harry, and his allies, to take control and set out some of their own rumors.
            Harry paused as if thinking, then shook his head. “Not about him. I think that Voldemort wanted to be taken away and restored to control of my body again.”
            “But?” Splinter prompted him, eyes shining.
            Harry inclined his head. “Sometimes I think the voice has warned me about things like a stair missing at Grimmauld Place. Voldemort wants me to survive until he can take control.” He grimaced. “And I don’t want him to. I think—I think I might be encouraging him with the magic I can perform.” He lowered his voice into a whisper. “Like the spells I’ve been performing in the tests designed to strengthen Lethe.”
            Splinter blinked rapidly. “Those tests are just designed to make Lethe safer for you, Mr. Potter.”
            “I know,” said Harry, and was gladder than ever of the invisible amulet around his neck, so he could lie like a champion. “But he wakes up and gets excited when I practice those spells. Whispers to me about how he could control the magic.” Harry closed his eyes and didn’t have to feign his shudder. Although the Horcrux hadn’t ever whispered to him that he knew of, the mere thought was disgusting. “When I do magic on my own, he doesn’t.”
            Splinter looked disturbed when Harry opened his eyes again. “You think—you think that he wants you to become Darker and Darker. That suggests we should have you continue to cast Light magic.”
            Harry held Splinter’s eyes. “But not all the spells that you have me cast during the tests for Lethe are Light magic, are they?”
            Splinter stood there and stared at him with wide, stricken eyes for a second. Then he muttered, “I need to study this. I need to do more research,” and turned away and ran back towards the Ministry, leaving Harry, in the custody of the Aurors, to follow at a more sedate pace.
            Harry walked slowly, recovering from the shock of the ambush and the moment when he’d been sure that Greyback was going to grab hold of him. He had another piece in play now. He didn’t know how well it would work.
            But it might at least make Splinter think before beginning the use of Lethe as soon as possible, and that would mean more tests—and more time before they began to use Lethe at all.
            Harry was beginning to think that never mind resisting that machine; never being put into it at all would be an extremely good thing.
*
SP777: So does Harry, but he doesn’t see what else could have persuaded the Ministry to let him have even a bit of freedom.
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An Image of Lethe