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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23338 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
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Chapter Fifteen—Good Vibrations

            Draco whipped his head to the side the moment they stepped through the doorway. They were in a small room in what might be the middle of the Department of Mysteries, as Blaise had described it, and it was octagonal, with walls that shone steadily, blue-black as cobalt. The light came from inside them, a fact that already fascinated Draco, and which he would have to explore.

            But there was that distinct sensation of another presence in the room, and Pansy, whose job it was to find dangers like that, called out at the same moment, her fingers on the tiny golden keys that covered her robes. Draco raised his hand, the spells flexing in his mind, his tongue darting into position to speak them.

            The creature there moved faster than Draco had been prepared for, however—always a risk when one was following the Dark paths into a new place. They promised information, not safety. The three heads, each on a separate neck, whipped out, one aiming for each of them, and the heavy body behind them began to charge, bringing the danger closer.

            Hydra, Draco thought, old secrets clicking and spinning in his mind like glass beads falling into place. He flung himself to the floor, on hands and knees and then back, and spotted Pansy flipping head-over-heels behind him. The heads that had targeted them paused, jaws snapping uselessly at the air. Draco let out a small breath. Well, no one had ever said that hydras were smart. It would take it a moment to figure out why its attack had failed.

            The one that had headed for Harry was still suspended in midair. Draco turned his head, wondering if Harry had been stupid enough to get himself killed in the first minutes of the attack.

            No. That particular head had eyes that stared at the wall instead of at Harry, and there was already a faint glaze over them. Harry hissed to it, his hand lifted, his fingers hovering over the wrinkled blue-black skin of the hydra’s cheek.

            As Draco watched, his mouth open, the other two heads came around and slowed to a dangling version of the same beat that consumed their companion. The body was huge and heavy and relaxed behind them, as dark as the walls.

            Well. A hydra was a sort of a snake or dragon, after all, if one looked at it correctly.

            A forked tongue touched Harry’s fingers, and Harry cocked his head to the side. Draco felt a faint vibration in the bones of his wrists and hands, and thought it might be the hydra’s hissing, too low for most human beings to hear instead of feel. Harry nodded and turned back to face Draco and Pansy.

            “He says that there are two empty rooms beyond this one,” Harry murmured. “He would have sensed any other creatures if they were near, and either wanted to destroy or eat them. I think we can trust his perceptions, and him. He doesn’t have any concept of lying.” He stroked the hydra’s cheek again, giving it a ridiculously affectionate smile.

            Draco told himself it was degrading to be jealous of a monster, and stood up with a slight shift and jangle of his shoulders so that he could make sure all his hidden weapons were still concealed in his sleeves and robe collar. “You’re sure about that?”

            “About him not lying? Absolutely.” Harry had a quiet tone to his voice now that Draco hadn’t heard since Hogwarts—since the final battle with the Dark Lord, in fact, when Harry had confronted him and told the truth about the Elder Wand. “About being able to trust his perceptions? Not absolutely. Perhaps ninety percent. Perhaps the Department of Mysteries has bred some animals that a hydra can’t detect.”

            He turned around and smiled at them, while the hydra nuzzled the middle of his back like a three-headed kitten. “But I doubt it.”

            Pansy stood up, shaking her robes down around her. Draco nodded back to her glance and moved towards the door that he knew was hidden in a far wall. “Then let’s go,” he said, not looking back at Harry.

*

            Harry spent a moment longer stroking the hydra’s skin. It was different from the scales of his serpents, not segmented, but cracked and sharp with it, small ridges poking him in the skin of his palms. He wished he could take the creature with him, but he thought Malfoy might object to giving it a home in the Manor.

            And I don’t have any other home right now.

            “Don’t tell anyone where we went, please,” he told the hydra in Parseltongue. “They would be able to find and destroy us.”

            The hydra gave his face another tongue-bath with all three tongues working in concert, and then turned away and lay down. Its body looked like an elephant’s, except for the wriggling tail that was another serpent. Harry hissed soothingly to it and then stepped out of the room, following Malfoy and Parkinson.

            Parkinson gave him an enigmatic glance as she passed, one that Harry didn’t think he could have read even if he knew her well. Perhaps she resented that he had saved her life, or resented that he had the skills to deal with the first threat when she didn’t. Harry mentally shrugged. It shouldn’t disrupt their alliance as they worked at finding the evidence of the Dark Arts in the Department and taking it out. He thought Parkinson was too professional for that.

            And she’s teaching you to be the same way, along with Malfoy.

            Harry bit his lip thoughtfully. Perhaps that was true. But he had trouble seeing it as a bad thing, now that he had finally accepted his position as a Dark wizard. No matter how Ron and Hermione decided to relate to him, he would never be the person he had been again. He would only be a happier Dark wizard if they decided to continue their friendship with him, not a Light one.

            And now that his accounts were frozen, he had to do something to live—something that didn’t involve simply relying on Malfoy for the rest of his natural lifespan.

            Which could be very long.

            Which will be, said the white serpent, and wound another coil of his body around Harry’s neck, only lifting his head as they came out into the first of the uninhabited rooms that the hydra had told them about.

            No animals here, no people, but a strange contraption in the center. Harry took a step away to look at it from the side, since Malfoy and Parkinson had already fanned out in front and back of it.

            It seemed to be a platform of glowing marble, lit from within the way the walls of the hydra’s room had been; Harry decided the Unspeakables must have a predilection for that kind of thing. It had four squat legs on the bottom, and an arch of silver extending up from the top that reminded Harry uncomfortably of a guillotine. Wheeling around the arch was a flock of what looked like crumpled balls of parchment, all shining as white as the marble. They darted through the arch in a regular rhythm, and each time, a flash of sulfur and brilliant light succeeded their passage. Harry thought some of them might have disappeared in their passage, but since the balls were moving too fast in the first place to keep track of, he wasn’t sure.

            “Look at that.” Malfoy leaned forwards on the balls of his feet, his voice sensual. The hand he stretched out towards the machine trembled. “Just look at it.”

            Harry did, and still didn’t see anything different from what he’d already witnessed. “What?” he asked, knowing there must be something he missed.

            “Can’t you feel the magic?” Malfoy licked the air as if he was a snake himself, and Harry had to fight to keep his face stoic, to hide how much interest that simple gesture stirred in him. “The Dark power beating out from it? It’s like standing in the desert at noon.” He moved forwards and laid his hand on the silver arch before Harry could think to discourage him. Then again, he hadn’t thought Malfoy would be enough of a fool to do anything like that, either.

            Harry and Parkinson didn’t even look at each other, but acted together as if they had been doing it all their lives. They flung themselves forwards at the same time, and seized Malfoy’s arms.

            And then things erupted.

*

            Draco knew that the others would think him stupid for acting on impulse—well, Harry would think Draco stupider than he already thought him, and Pansy would think that he should have told them what it was before he moved, and whether it was something they needed to be concerned about.

            But he knew the Dark power of the thing the moment he stepped into the room. It was the same kind of power that he had felt on the most distant paths he had conquered, a kind of power that needed to be courted into submission. And it loved nothing so much as daring, as an approach that didn’t flinch.

            Draco could have spoken to it or hesitated, but that would have lost him any chance of its respect. Now, although it might destroy him, it wouldn’t do that because it hated him or despised him.

            A small consolation, Draco thought, as silver lightning tore through him and kept his hand locked against the arch, while Harry’s and Pansy’s hands stuck to him in return. Draco felt as though he had been lifted off his feet and flung into the nearest wall, and even seeing that he was standing still and the machine’s white fireballs had spun towards him did nothing to contradict the impression.

            The light flickered and danced about them, and for a moment, Draco had an image of white paths stretching away in front of him, the obverse of the Dark paths, bounding up unfamiliar hills and down into valleys that made his soul ache, with and for all the things that he didn’t know.

            Then that particular image vanished, and Draco staggered back, released from the arch. But not from the hands of Harry and Pansy, who moved with him.

            You wished to know.

            The voice blistered Draco’s skull. He raised his hands to cover his ears, even though he knew the uselessness of the gesture, and Harry and Pansy’s hands came with him, still attached to his arms.

            This is knowledge.

            And the scalding flash, this time, was.

            Draco had poor eyesight, and snakes wrapped around every inch of his body, and the memory and sympathy of the hydra thrumming in his bloodstream. And he had a lightness on his feet, and instinctive awareness of every exit in the room, and a frightened, furious concern that made his blood dance. Because he was Harry and Pansy and himself, and in that moment, he knew everything about them, though those sensations were the only ones that he could come out of the memory with.

            That one glimpse, of something so stupefying that Draco fought bitterly to hang onto it, knowing as he did that the battle drove it further away, because it was a glimpse into a reality that could only be enjoyed, not comprehended—

            And then Harry and Pansy’s hands fell away from his arms, and they stood separated before the machine, which looked exactly as it had before, with the white fireballs buzzing through the arch and each one being consumed, or touched, or changed, by the light that burst through the arch when they did. Draco licked dry lips and touched his own shoulders, convincing himself they were without the weight of snakes, the burden of old concerns.

            “The next time you want to do something like that, Draco,” Pansy said, flatly, “leave me out of it.”

            Draco raised an eyebrow. “But now we have proof that there is indeed Dark magic in use in the Department of Mysteries. Forced transfer into another person’s perceptions is illegal under the same laws that regulate Legilimency.”

            “I never heard that.” Harry’s eyes were bright, and he stood rubbing his arms as though he thought that he needed to grow an extra protective coat of scales because of what Draco had done to him. Draco sniffed and shook his head. He couldn’t deny enjoying himself, but he thought he should wait to express that, because Harry and Pansy would probably both get angry at him.

            “There are advantages to knowing the Ministry’s laws about Dark Arts,” Draco said, and smiled when Harry glanced at him. “Our exact description of the machine and the way that the fireballs float through it will gain us a lot of credibility.”

            “Fireballs?” Harry stared at the silver arch and shook his head. “I thought they were pieces of paper.”

            “That’s because you’re unobservant, and you have to try and become more cautious,” Pansy said, and turned towards the door into the next room, a solid sheet of steel without a keyhole or lock. Draco saw her eyes light up, and smiled again. This was Pansy’s specialty, finding a way into places that no one wanted her to go. “Draco?” she added, glancing back at him.

            “We’re going that way,” Draco said, and watched as she touched her robes and closed her eyes. He could feel Harry watching beside him, too, hungry for another sight of the Dark Arts even though he might deny it.

            The golden keys leaped off Pansy’s robes and began to rotate around her, making her the center of a spinning whirlwind of loops and whorls and straight shafts. Pansy took a single step forwards, her hand extended towards the door. For a moment, Draco thought he saw a Dark path opening in front of her, a road that slanted sharply downwards and which Draco wasn’t familiar with. Well, she had advanced further in her study of certain kinds of magic than Draco had, and it wasn’t surprising that she would know things he didn’t.

            With someone else, he would have felt the intense hunger to know, to explore further. But he had just had a glimpse of what it was like inside Pansy’s mind, and besides, if he ever wondered what a particular spell felt like for the person casting it, she would tell him.

            Draco would have felt the same way about Parseltongue, to be honest, if he trusted Harry to know and understand all his own sensations and to explain them accurately. But he didn’t, so he clenched his fingers down into his palms now and awaited the result.

            Pansy opened her lips and blew out gently in front of her. As she had explained it to Draco once, this breath connected her and the path, and the path ran to an answer, rather than to a physical location like the one that Draco had used to lead them into the Department of Mysteries. It was very quiet here, and the way that the air tingled around them made Draco all the more aware of the sweat under his arms and the flashes from the machine behind them.

            And the soft, subtle hissing that rode Harry’s breath as his lungs moved beside Draco.

            Then Pansy stuck her hand out, and the right key dropped into it. Draco knew it was the right key even before Pansy moved in and laid the key against the door, because Pansy had been doing this for a long time and her magic wouldn’t fail her now. And her talent was to find the way in.

            The door trembled, the steel rippling as though the key was a lure Pansy was using to pull a fish to the surface. Then it solidified, and the key sank into the surface and clicked. Pansy opened her eyes and turned her head to smile at them.

            “Here we are,” she said, and turned the key.

            The door opened. Harry was shaking his head as he stepped forwards to accompany Draco through it. Draco touched his shoulder, and smiled when Harry glanced back at him. “What do you think of the Dark Arts now?” he whispered.

            “They’re dazzling,” Harry whispered back.

            In the face of that tribute, Draco found it hard to say anything else. But he touched Harry’s hand, to feel the scales, as they went through the door, and from the way Harry nodded back, he’d understood.

*

            This room shone so much that Harry found himself shading his eyes as he stepped into it. At first, he thought they were standing in the middle of an immense prism made for focusing light. Then he thought that they were floating in an ice cube.

            When he could finally blink away some of the afterimages and focus on the walls and floor instead of the spots drifting in midair, then he understood. The floor was one mirror, and the walls, in the shape of a hexagon, were each a mirror in return. The sheer effect of the focused light—though he couldn’t see a source of that light—made it hard to see their reflections, and every movement they made seemed to throw up a new spark.

            Malfoy’s hand had risen at once to his collar. Harry, squinting at him, wondered if he sensed a trap in this room that Harry didn’t. Harry knew that his Dark Arts abilities were more focused on living creatures, but still, he thought that he would have felt something dangerous enough to provoke that expression on Malfoy’s face.

            Malfoy breathed smoothly and quietly as he looked around, his eyes shifting from wall to wall. Harry followed his gaze. There was his reflection, and Malfoy’s, and Parkinson’s—

            Then Harry’s eyes shot back to his own reflection. It showed the white serpent coiled around his throat, something that no ordinary mirror in the Manor had done. And there was a blue-black shadow spreading out behind him, too, something that Harry hadn’t summoned and which wasn’t there when he turned his head.

            “Malfoy,” he murmured, at the same time as Pansy said, “Draco!”

            “I see it,” Malfoy said, and then gave a smile sharp enough to cut. “Them.” He whipped his head out from beneath his collar and tossed whatever weapon he’d concealed there at the mirror. Harry thought he would try to break it, and wondered uneasily if that was a good idea, if that might not rather let the reflections free.

            Instead, the weapon broadened out in the air as it flew, and Harry found it as difficult to see as he had the reflections when they first stepped into the room. A whip, a question mark of starry night, it was the blue-black that the hydra had looked like, and it unfolded further and further as it flew, until it hit the mirror that reflected Harry’s serpents and that spreading shadow.

            Part of the glass vanished, a cut in the exact shape of the flying thing appearing in it. There were no cracks around it, but Harry could see the shadow in the mirror and their reflections turn to look. Those reflections suddenly wore looks of apprehension that Harry knew had nothing to do with their own faces.

            Out of the cut came spiders.

            Or, at least, Harry preferred to think of them as spiders. They had jointed legs and dark bodies and they crawled like spiders. He couldn’t count the exact number of their legs, and he didn’t know what the nets they dragged behind them, gleaming like spun sapphires, were made of. But he didn’t need to. Unlike Malfoy, he didn’t have the craving for that much information, and he had learned all he wanted to know about Malfoy’s mind for the present from that machine in the other room.

            The spiders filed towards the reflections, and the reflections turned and fled. That didn’t seem to bother the spiders, who never hurried their pace. Hairs bristled out from their legs, and dug into the mirror, carving long, shallow, empty grooves as they walked after the reflections, and the darkness spread back along those grooves into the original cut.

            After that, the darkness began to spill out of the channels, flowing over the glossy surface as though they were a river flooding the land. As Harry stared, fascinated, the places where the reflections could run became smaller and smaller, and then the spiders closed in on the staring faces left in the one tiny triangle of glass. Harry caught a glimpse of spider legs shearing off their skin before he turned his own face away.

            “There,” Malfoy said, when moments had passed and the spiders had turned and crowded back into the darkness at the hole they’d come from in the beginning, although the whole mirror was dark now and Harry thought they could have had their choice about which part of it to crawl through. “I thought the Unspeakables would try to use a mirror as a trap. This is the way I chose to deal with it.”

            He arched an eyebrow at Harry and turned away. Harry shrugged and followed. He thought they had plenty of evidence that the Unspeakables used Dark magic now, but he knew what Malfoy probably wanted to find: a real artifact that they could bring back with them. The machine they had seen in the other room was too big to transport, and so were the hydra and the mirrors.

            “Pansy, if you would?” Malfoy asked, stepping back and gesturing towards the mirrored wall that faced the one they had come in.

            “Shows what you know,” Parkinson said, with a faint sniff that Harry thought was her way of trying to hide how impressed she was with Malfoy’s mirror trick. “As if that needs to be the entrance.” She moved towards the wall next to the darkened mirror instead, and began working in her storm of keys without turning her head to look at the blackness.

            Harry took a deep breath, and Malfoy glanced at him. “How long did it take you to put that piece of magic together?” Harry asked, nodding at the dark mirror and forcing himself not to think about how their reflections had been chased and cringed. Those reflections would have harmed them if they could, and the Unspeakables were massive hypocrites, pushing for control of the Dark Arts while using them themselves.

            “About three days,” Malfoy said. “And the research took longer than that.”

            Harry nodded slowly. “Do you think that’s going to be a problem if we have to seriously defend your house? I mean, if the battle moves fast and our defenses can only move slowly?”

            Malfoy blinked, and his eyes and face glowed. “Now you’re thinking like a strategist,” he said approvingly. “But no, I don’t really think that will happen. I’ve been planning for this day for a long time, and I have a store of such enchanted objects and weapons built up. I’m not afraid that we’ll lose.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “Good. Good. That was all I wanted to know.”

            Malfoy’s eyes laughed at him, but he swept a bow and said, “I live to serve. My goals and my allies.”

            His eyes lingered on Harry, but before Harry could respond, Parkinson gave a shrill scream from the other side of the room. Harry whirled around, already berating himself for not watching her back. But he had assumed that her competence, after the first door he had seen her open, was too great for her to need that.

            Parkinson retreated towards the center of the mirror room with her arms folded over her head. Rising like a wave beyond the open door were cobras like the one that Ron had wielded against Malfoy in hospital, all of them hissing, all of them aimed straight for Harry and his allies.

            And none of them responded when Harry called out to them in Parseltongue.

            A moment later, they were drowned in writhing bodies.

*

            SP777: Sort of, yes. But as you can see in this chapter, some of them are more mental or metaphorical.

            she-who-waits-in-darkness: Thank you! I appreciate it.

            Talltree-san: Ron might well be there, but he probably won’t hear about the break-in in the Department of Mysteries in time to do anything about it.

            And yes, Draco’s noticed. ;)
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