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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
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Chapter Fifteen—Unexpected News
            “So I got attacked by Death Eaters today.”
            Of course Potter saved that piece of news for when Draco had food in his mouth. He barely managed to swallow, glaring at Potter the while. Across from him, Astoria swallowed hastily, and only then permitted herself to gape at Potter.
            Pansy, meanwhile, turned to Draco and said conversationally, “So is it me, or does Potter enjoy the chance to fuck with our heads?”
            “It’s just you,” said Potter, and his nostrils flared in irritation that Draco had to admit looked better on him than some of the goody-goody Gryffindor emotions he had to practice showing in front of the Aurors. “I announced it last because it failed, and because it was a sudden and disorganized attack. I don’t think they really knew what they were doing.”
            “And because you like fucking with us,” said Draco, aiming his wand at the spilled soup on the table. “There was no other reason to wait until I had soup in my mouth. You could have done it any other time.”
            Potter considered that for a minute, and then a reluctant grin tugged at his mouth. “It wasn’t a conscious motivation.”
            Draco gave a sort of grin back. At least Potter was easier to work with when he admitted his Slytherin side like this. For that matter, Draco would have found a lot of the Gryffindors more tolerable if they’d admitted to breaking rules or pranking Slytherins for their own purposes, instead of trying to pretend they were being noble about it. “Who led them?”
            “Fenrir Greyback.”
            Not smiling this time, Draco narrowed his eyes. “I thought he was supposed to have fled the country.”
            “Either he had and came back, or someone has been keeping him under control.” Potter paused and eyed Draco for a second. “There’s no way he would manage to hold himself back for this long, is there?”
            “I don’t see how,” Draco said slowly, considering what he knew of the werewolf. “No, definitely not. He could barely keep himself in control when the Dark Lord was alive.” He looked at Astoria and Pansy for a moment, but Astoria had never met Greyback and Pansy only turned her mouth down at him.
            “So we have another enemy to worry about,” Potter said, with a small sigh. “Maybe. It’s possible that Greyback did flee and came back.” He met Draco’s eyes. “He thought he was alive inside me. He apologized for having to knock me out, and then he tried it. Though not with a Stunner, I suppose.”
            Draco nodded slowly. “I think the flight is more likely. If even the Dark Lord couldn’t control him, this new leader, if he exists, would probably have had to allow Greyback some raids and activity now and then, to let him get his bloodlust out.”
            “That’s kind of what I hoped.” Potter leaned back and thumped his fingers on the table for a second. “So I managed to convince Splinter that it’s not a good idea for me to cast Dark magic. And got my first absolute confirmation that some of the spells they’ve been having me cast to ‘test’ Lethe aren’t Light.”
            “I could have told you that if you could remember the bloody spells,” Draco muttered, annoyed. Potter sometimes recalled incantations and the like, but more often he said he couldn’t remember everything they’d had him do.
            Potter rolled his eyes at Draco. “They’re keeping me as ignorant as possible. I can tell you when I remember the incantation, but otherwise, it’s not like they tell me the names of new spells before I cast them.”
            Draco had to concede that after a moment. And they would take it amiss if Potter started asking now, after being content to labor in ignorance for so long. He managed to keep a pleasant expression on his face as he asked, “So what do we do now?”
            Potter paused and eyed him for a second, then said, “I think we’ve established some good contacts. We should go about using them.”
            “Longbottom, you mean?” Draco scratched his chin and leaned back in his chair, thinking. He knew Longbottom had been good at Herbology, but for the moment, he couldn’t think of a way that particular discipline could help. “I know he’s not under suspicion and he’s willing to help, but so are others. What’s particularly distinctive about him?”
            “I wasn’t thinking only of Neville,” said Potter, giving Draco the kind of look that told Draco he was exasperated right back. “But for one thing, he can get unquestioned access to the Potions Department at the Ministry.”
            Draco hissed at himself, irritated he’d forgotten that. “And you think we should check whether some of the potions that Pansy and Astoria discovered are being brewed?” Those had turned up along with spells meant to show Dark or Light affinity—potions that were supposed to give one “control” of Dark wizards, or lessen their ability to perform certain kinds of spells.
            “Yes,” said Potter. “We’ll have to get him the descriptions of the potions and the like, but that’s not that difficult compared to some other things we’ve done.”
            Draco nodded, and looked over at Astoria. She promptly turned red and shook her head. Draco didn’t cluck his tongue, but he wanted to. He understood many of Pansy’s motivations to want limited interaction with Potter. Astoria had never had much reason to despise or fear him before this, and yet she had insisted that Draco tell Potter about the Releaser.
            “That’s a good idea,” said Draco, standing up. “In the meantime, I’ve got some research that Astoria found to show you.” He was at least going to give his friend credit for the discovery in words, if she wouldn’t take it any other way.
*
            Harry put the book down, feeling a little sick. “And you think the Lightfinder has the same effects as the untested Releaser,” he said flatly.
            “It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Malfoy lounged back against the chair in front of him, eyes bright and direct and focused on Harry. “How the crowds started immediately reacting like scared rabbits, even turning against you, who they favored until you climbed up on the stage.” He tapped one leg against the table between them. “The spread of this fear of Dark wizards has been too fast to have helped without magical help. Maybe it was brewing under the surface, but still.”
            Harry looked at the book again and nodded. It did make a horrible kind of sense. Even Kingsley, who had seemed strong to Harry in his stance against Dark wizards but not afraid of them in the same way he had been since Harry’s test, could have been influenced if the Lightfinder did spawn fear when it worked.
            However, he had one question he hoped Malfoy could answer. “Would they have based the Lightfinder on the untested notes from the Releaser, though? Why not the updated version, if they made one?”
            “If they made one,” Malfoy echoed, and cast him a sarcastic glance. “How long do you think they worked on this? How quickly? Do you think they did any work on such a machine during the war, when the Dark Lord was in control of the Ministry?”
            “Probably not,” Harry had to concede. It wouldn’t have mattered so much to Voldemort whether people were Dark or not, just if they opposed him or were Muggleborn, and the Unspeakables had probably been put to work on torture devices.
            Malfoy nodded decisively. “Based on its effect, then I think this is the same as that Releaser these notes talk about.”
            Harry sighed and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. His head was madly swimming, colors and notions darting around him as if he had jumped into an ocean and his eyes couldn’t focus. “So, where do we go from here? Zabini still has the plan to destroy the Lightfinder. Is this going to modify that?”
            “I doubt it. But I’ll be contacting Blaise and letting him know this new information.” Malfoy paused, and then shifted a little and said, “Potter.”
            That tone made Harry open his eyes quickly. It almost sounded the way Malfoy had when he was challenging Harry at a Quidditch game or inviting him to a wizards’ duel or something, and although Harry had no idea what could have made Malfoy react like that, he did know he might have to move quickly soon.
            Malfoy was gazing at him broodingly, but he didn’t have his wand out. Harry supposed that was something, but it made him a little impatient. He put his hand under his chin and gave Malfoy a steady stare.
            Then Malfoy did flick his wand, but it was to cast a hovering, mirror-like wall in front of the nearest portrait frame. Harry blinked and didn’t move as he watched Malfoy lower his wand again and touch his forehead.
            “Aster came and spoke to me while you were gone,” said Malfoy. “He thinks you’re weak because you aren’t committed to the idea of being a Dark wizard.”
            Harry snorted. “You were the one who taught me that it wasn’t an idea, it’s a kind of power I have whether I want to or not.” His neck was strained, he realized, the cords on either side of it standing out tensely. He rubbed at them. “You’d think Aster would realize that, in his infinite wisdom.”
            “You’re not committed to the idea of Dark wizards achieving political prominence, though,” Malfoy continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “And he’s decided that I’m not dedicated enough for him, either, and he has to do something about me.”
            Harry stared. “He told you that?”
            “No, I assumed it from the way he acted disappointed in me, then said he knew what to do now and disappeared.” Malfoy rolled his eyes at Harry. “I think it’s a pretty safe extrapolation, though.”
            Harry frowned, his stomach twisting, and lifted his hand to toy with the amulet the Unseen had given him. There was a reason to distrust them if Aster wasn’t faithful to him and Malfoy, and maybe another one, if he had decided that he was going to resist going to Lethe at all costs. They had told him to resist only when he was actually in the machine. “So what do you think we should do?”
            “Maintain a low profile, for now,” said Malfoy, and shrugged. “The spells he can teach us are still useful. So is the knowledge that we can learn from him.”
            “If it’s true.”
            Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “I do have a spell I can use to detect lies. I rarely use it because it needs to be renewed at the start of each conversation and it’s often visible that one is casting it, but I can use it on him out of his angle of vision.”
            Harry nodded. “Fine. Is there—I want to know if there’s something more active we can do than this.”
            “More active than research, and sending tendrils out to the world so we can change things?” Malfoy blinked at him. “I don’t know what more active things you’d have us do. You’ve had the most ‘active’ career since Astoria, Pansy, and I came here, and you’ve faced danger and people manipulating you.” He looked obviously at the invisible amulet around Harry’s neck. “I don’t know what else you want.”
            “I want—to be out on the front lines, I suppose,” said Harry, and gave an embarrassed smile when Malfoy snorted. “I know the war probably spoiled me, but I was able to personally influence it, you know.”
            “This time, you can, too,” Malfoy said impatiently. “You just have to do it with words and subtle actions instead of all in front.”
            Harry would have responded, but there was a sharp flicker around him, and through his body at the same time. Harry gasped and grabbed the amulet, wondering for a second if the Unseen had managed to hurt him through it, but the flicker repeated, and then Harry knew what it was. Several of the house’s wards had failed.
            “Fuck,” said Malfoy.
            His voice steadied Harry. If someone else was afraid, then he had to take over their defense. That had been true on the Horcrux quest, and it was true now. He drew his wand and nodded to Malfoy. “Stay here,” he murmured. “You know spells that you can raise around the room, and there’s the secret passages.”
            “I know this spell, too,” said Malfoy, his voice sharp with raw fear. Harry had never heard him so terrified in Hogwarts. “It’s a Dark one that’s meant to corrupt wards, not bring them down. Someone cast it wrong. This isn’t Aurors, Potter.”
            “Some of them might know Dark Arts and want to cast them—”
            “We’re arguing, and it’s useless.” Malfoy touched Harry solidly in the middle of his back with his palm. “I want to be with you, and I want to get Pansy and Astoria, too. We’ll be safest with you.”
            Harry could feel his mouth crimp in anger, but Malfoy had come here for that exact reason, hadn’t he? He finally had to nod. “Fine, but hurry.”
            Malfoy slipped away without arguing, and Harry paced in a circle, before he finally went to the top of the stairs and thought to call Kreacher. The house-elf appeared, but the customary noise he always did it with was muffled, and his eyes were darting around the room.
            “Who is it, Kreacher?” Harry asked quietly.
            “Oh, Kreacher knows them,” Kreacher hissed. “The ones that Master Regulus fought.”
            Death Eaters, then. Harry tightened his hold on his wand. It seemed that whatever had been holding Greyback restrained until now, self-control or a mysterious master, had finally let him slip the leash. It made sense that he could figure out a way to track Harry down at home and break the wards, now that so many people at the Ministry knew where he lived.
            A noise at the door made Harry crouch, but it was his Slytherins coming back, and Harry nodded and stood up. “Come on,” he breathed, barely letting his voice echo. “Stay behind me. It’s Death Eaters.”
            “Greyback?” Malfoy asked, and Harry started. He knew Malfoy would know to keep quiet, too, but somehow he hadn’t translated that into the thought that Malfoy would come up close behind him, his breath brushing across the lobe of Harry’s ear.
            Harry only shrugged, though, and began to move down the stairs. Malfoy was beside him immediately, and reached out and ringed Harry’s wrist with his fingers. Harry looked at him impatiently. It was still true that he was the one best-suited to defend them, even if Malfoy had learned some tricks from Death Eaters during the war.
            Malfoy shook his left arm, and tipped his head towards it. It took Harry a moment to realize what he meant. Something to do with the Dark Mark.
            Harry pursed his lips, then nodded. Why not? That wasn’t a defensive technique he could use, and whatever Malfoy had in mind, it might be something that would at least startle the other Death Eaters, who couldn’t know he was here.
            Malfoy stepped back, and whispered something to Parkinson that made her grin. Harry was suddenly sort of glad that he’d never had to face her on the battlefield. She’d been something special in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but her grin said she knew nasty things were coming up, and relished it.
            Parkinson lifted her wand, and Harry heard a hasty movement downstairs. He tensed. He hoped Malfoy and Parkinson started their diversion soon. He didn’t want to let Greyback and the others damage things because the Slytherins were taking a long time to get their spells ready.
            Then, abruptly, Malfoy whispered something, and the Dark Mark rose above the stairs. At the same moment, Parkinson cast a spell, and Voldemort’s laugh sprang up from her mouth. Harry started. It was the laugh.
            Of course Parkinson had probably used a Recalling Charm, a spell that would imitate a specific sound or scent someone had in mind, but Harry had never heard of one being used that way. He supposed Dark wizards didn’t have to use Dark spells all the time.
            And it wasn’t something that he would have thought of himself.
            “Kneel, you fools,” Harry said a second later, catching on to the plan when Malfoy’s elbow nudged him sharply in the ribs. “Or do you not know whose body I am currently inhabiting? Were you planning to try and knock me unconscious again?” He made his way slowly and majestically down the stairs, beneath the Dark Mark, although his stomach churned and ached.
            The rush of what sounded like people falling to their knees reassured Harry that part of their plan was working, at least. Now, time to see who had come to visit them, and how far they could fool them.
            The whole way down the staircase, Harry felt Malfoy’s tense, impatient presence at his elbow. It was oddly like a blessing.
*
            Draco knew that a lot depended on the next few minutes. There was no saying they could fool the Death Eaters who had come into believing forever that the Dark Lord had taken control of Potter’s body, but they could do it long enough to get into an advantageous position as far as the battle was concerned. He thought.
            But he had to admit that his main emotion at the moment, watching Potter’s stiffened back and strutting walk down the stairs in front of him, was pride. He wouldn’t have thought a Gryffindor could act like this, or would be willing to. Willing to walk forwards under the Dark Mark? That wasn’t a lot of Gryffindors in the first place, and it had to be doubly repugnant for Harry Potter.
            But he was doing it. He was a lot smarter than Draco had thought, and more practical.
            That meant they could work together.
            Potter went into the drawing room where the mantel loomed over the books and shelves and couches as if it was scowling down at them. Draco frowned a little when he saw the empty portrait frame, another one he had never seen before, squatting above the mantel, but he turned his attention rapidly to the Death Eaters.
            One of them was indeed Fenrir Greyback, and behind him, Draco made out Alexander Yaxley and Arsinoe Rosier. The others he didn’t recognize. They might not have been part of the Inner Circle.
            “My Lord,” whispered Greyback, and crawled cringing to Potter’s feet. He stuck out his tongue for a second as though he was going to lick Potter’s shoes. Draco hoped Potter would be able to permit that, if it had to happen. Draco had to admit he would have been hard-pressed to allow it, himself. “Forgive us our earlier actions. We thought there was no way you could have regained control after what Potter announced—”
            “Did it once occur to you, Fenrir, that I was capable of lying low and letting Potter make some decisions so that he would not feel he had to force me out?” Potter stalked away from Fenrir and towards the mantel, where he leaned one elbow and looked at the ragged collection of Death Eaters with disgust in his eyes. Well, he didn’t have to feign that much, Draco acknowledged, standing stiffly at attention near the doorway. “And this is what is left for me to work with, the remains of a once-proud army. Well.” Potter shut his eyes and sighed. “If I have to do it, then I will.”
            He smiled suddenly, and Draco shivered. There was an echo of the Dark Lord in Potter’s smile that he didn’t like, that made him wonder whether the leftover part of the Dark Lord’s soul might be awakening in Potter’s head after all.
            “But we can do this,” Potter whispered. “The danger will be the greater for us in a world determined to punish Dark wizards, but we can make this work.”
            “Forgive me, my Lord, but…”
            It was Arsinoe Rosier. Draco thought he was probably already standing too stiffly to reveal his fear, but he did feel it. Rosier was trouble, someone who could probe around the edges of even the Dark Lord’s plans and suggest changes without arousing his wrath. Draco wasn’t surprised she had escaped capture so far. She was smarter than most of them.
            “Yes?” asked Potter, with a hint of a hiss around the words.
            Rosier lifted her head. She had her hand at her sleeve in a way that would mean a drawn wand in a moment, Draco thought. He was only glad that he already had his out and could counter her if he had to. Potter was standing at the wrong angle—or the right one, for a curse. “How do we know that you’re the Dark Lord and not Potter trying to trick us?” She glanced around at the other Death Eaters, as if trying to recruit someone to stand at her back that way. “Potter was clever and tricky, in the end. What’s your proof that you’re the Dark Lord?”
            Potter closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to sway. Draco stood there with his lips sealed, wondering if this was the moment they should begin the attack. He knew things about Rosier’s activities during the war that he could have told Potter, but on the other hand, he couldn’t do it this way without being obvious.
            Then Potter began to hiss.
            Draco wanted to faint. He knew, and Pansy knew, and maybe Astoria, about Potter’s use of Parseltongue, but none of the Death Eaters here had been in Hogwarts, or in some cases out of Azkaban, at the time of that fateful duel in their second year. Draco watched as transfixed as the rest of them, but this time, he wondered what Potter was saying.
            The longer Potter hissed, the more Rosier’s head bowed, until she was looking at the floor and her fingers were clenched around the corner of her robe instead of her wand. When Potter finished, she looked up with tears standing in her eyes.
            “My Lord,” she whispered. “Forgive me, but we had to be sure it was you.”
            “I have already begun to gather my faithful followers again,” said Potter, with a nod to Draco, who stiffened a little. They hadn’t discussed this. But Potter turned away again before Draco could make a comment, and focused on Rosier. “Now. We shall discuss what means I may take to regain a body. The Ministry is preparing an experiment known as Lethe through which they plan to convert Potter from a Dark wizard to a Light one.” He spat the name with convincing fervor, so convincing that Draco wondered for a moment if Potter had ever wanted to be a different person. “I believe we may be able to harness the power of change in the machine and use it to make a new body for me. You are to find out anything you can about it, and steal the notes that the Unspeakables have on it for me.”
            Draco wanted to laugh hysterically, but he managed to hold it in. Potter had been wishing he could do something more active, and here it was: commanding their own little cadre of Death Eater spies who thought he was the Dark Lord reborn.
            It couldn’t last. Surely not.
            But as Potter continued spinning his convincing lies and the Death Eaters listened with devotion, Draco decided that for now, it seemed likely to succeed. Against all odds.
            He did notice that Yaxley and a few of the others were studying him narrowly, and he remained standing with his eyes aimed straight forwards. He would discuss what those stares might mean with Potter later.
            There was a later. There would be.
            And as always around Potter, the crazier things got, the more chances of survival they seemed to have.
*
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An Image of Lethe