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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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Sixteen—An Exchange of Sentiments
            “We know that someone struck at the wards,” said the Auror who had led the way into Harry’s drawing room, his mouth set in a violent line. Harry didn’t recognize him. He had dark blue eyes and black hair. He looked a little like Tom Riddle.
            Harry used that memory, and the certainty of the invisible amulet around his neck, to pull himself up and turn a cold glance on the Aurors. “I don’t know why you’re so certain that it was an enemy, and not someone from the Ministry.”
            The Auror paused. He wanted to open his mouth and ask what Harry meant, Harry was certain of that. Yet he stood there awkwardly instead, and the people who had come through the Floo behind him exchanged glances.
            “Because the fact is,” Harry continued, and his voice was bitter and he didn’t care who heard it, in fact that was part of the deception, “I felt the wards shudder, and as though someone was forcing magic through my body to make up for the disruption. And it was so much like the sensations that I’ve felt during some of the tests to get me ready for Lethe that I didn’t blink. I assumed it was one of your lot.”
            “How could you think…” The Auror seemed honestly breathless, bewildered. He looked around as though he could find the indentations in the carpet where the Death Eaters had knelt. But Harry knew they didn’t exist, and this Auror didn’t know about the Death Eaters, and he stood there and glared coldly until the man turned back towards him. “We came as soon as we could.”
            “But not immediately, right?” Harry asked, and his lips moved in a thin smile. They didn’t have to know that the smile was because he was grateful for that little fact, which had allowed him to give the Death Eaters some instructions and bundle his own Slytherins out of sight. “Why not? If there was a disruption at my house caused by me attempting to leave and go somewhere and you hurried over as soon as you felt it, why not now? An attack from outside, an attack that corrupted my wards?”
            The Auror was silent. The others were silent. Harry swept his gaze back and forth, and finally said, in the icy, withering tone that he remembered Aunt Petunia using when he hadn’t finished his chores, “Why?”
            It was a woman who answered, someone with blond hair a little like Malfoy’s, but darker, from the back row of Aurors. “Because of the Death Eater attack that happened to you, sir. The Ministry thought it was probably Death Eaters again, and only wanted to choose prepared volunteers. It took a while to get us together.”
            The handsome Auror gave her a poisonous glare. Harry didn’t let his surprise, his reaction to finally getting a true answer, show. He only nodded and said in a voice they could take as sad if they wanted to, “I see.”
            “It’s not that,” said the handsome Auror insistently, turning back to him. “Not only that. The Minister has to think about his image, with the people so restless and prone to turn to rumors of Dark wizards lately. He has to think about what would happen if an Auror was injured investigating something that—”
            “But he doesn’t have to worry about me, right?” Harry ducked his head and shook it. The amulet was one thing, but he didn’t know if he would be able to keep the emotions he felt, half-anger and half-laughter, off his face. The amulet might not be up to disguising them. “Because I’m a Dark wizard.”
            “That’s not the reason!” The leader was almost spitting now. “We came as soon as we could!”
            “Because you had to get a volunteer force together,” said Harry blandly, and looked around at them. “Tell me. Is that not only people who would volunteer to go up against Death Eaters, but people who would volunteer to save a Dark wizard instead of just letting him rot?”
            Silence.
            Harry sighed. “How quickly the wizarding world forgets what I did for it,” he muttered, and then turned and went towards the stairs.
            “Wait!” It was the Auror behind him, almost stamping his foot. “You haven’t told us who attacked your wards!”
            Harry rolled his eyes and turned around again. “It was Fenrir Greyback. You have good instincts,” he said, and clapped his hands a little.
            The Auror’s mouth tightened, but Harry thought he was learning to ignore the provocation. “Then why didn’t he—why wasn’t he inside?” And you ripped to pieces and lying all over the floor? Harry could almost hear the silent question.
            “Because I defeated him,” said Harry, and wrung his wrist as if holding his wand all this time had hurt his hand. He turned to the side, and let their eyes imagine other wounds beneath his clothes. “Because he was with a few other Death Eaters, but they hung back and let him do all the work.” He smiled grimly. “Maybe they thought he was capable, since, after all, if he was here, he must have escaped Auror custody, after you captured him when he tried to attack me. Didn’t he?”
            Further silence, thick and suffocating. Then the female Auror who had spoken up so far stepped forwards and said, “Can we try to explain it to you, Mr. Potter?”
            “He doesn’t deserve an explanation, Deirdre!” hissed the handsome Auror.
            “I think he does,” said Deirdre, and when she went on, no one interrupted. “Yes, Greyback escaped us. We left him in the custody of a junior Auror because we thought he was safely unconscious, and he snatched that Auror’s wand and escaped.”
            Harry only nodded, not looking away from Deirdre’s face. She was still an enemy, but he thought she was also someone who was trying sincerely to do her job.
            “And there are people who don’t think you deserve protection.” Deirdre shifted her weight and exhaled and said, “I think that’s wrong. If you’ve committed crimes, you should be tried for them, but a trial isn’t the same as caging you up indefinitely and—and saying you don’t deserve to be rescued from Death Eaters.”
            “No one has said that,” hissed the lead Auror from behind her, and moved up beside her this time. “It’s true that some people distrust you,” he told Harry, aiming his eyes a little away from Harry’s blank expression. “But no one has said you deserve to be left to Death Eaters. No one deserves that. It’s only fear that holds some of us back.”
            Of course it is, Harry longed badly to say. Fear is what makes you punish me without a trial, too—and you’ll punish anyone who shows Dark in the Lightfinder the same way.
            “I understand,” Harry said, when some time had gone past and it was obvious that the Aurors would neither say anything else nor leave until he responded. Even Deirdre had gone silent, watching him with a quiet, anxious expression. “And in the meantime, I’m to say inside the house and not leave, right?” He didn’t have to pretend about the sour note in his voice.
            “Yes,” said the tall Auror, and gave him another sharp look. “I find it hard to believe you defeated Death Eaters all by yourself.”
            Harry laughed sharply, and shook his head. “Then go ahead and investigate the house. Find them hiding, if you want.” He knew that the secret passages would shield Malfoy and Parkinson and Astoria effectively. “Or cast Priori Incantatem on my wand, and find out if I used Dark spells. Look at the damage to the wards, find out if someone came through them, and arrest me if you find something.” He took a step off the stairs and snarled at the Auror. “But don’t stand here and tell me I’m wrong and evil and all the rest of it, just because you’re afraid and have no proof.”
            “I didn’t call you wrong and evil,” said the Auror.
            “You didn’t rush to my side to protect me because I have a human life and I’m a frequent target of Death Eaters, either.” Harry shuddered and brushed a hand up and down his face, feeling as though he was wiping away an invisible layer of grime from their cowardice. Maybe this was just the result of the Lightfinder, but he’d been through enough for today. “Cast what spells you need to.”
            They did look through the house, especially at the Dark Arts books that perched on the shelves of the libraries, and cast spells that would have detected the use of Dark magic. Harry only watched them do it. He knew that Malfoy’s casting of the Dark Mark would have showed up most of the time, but the Aurors who came here were too paranoid, and had been for a while; they had fine-tuned their spells to look for Dark magic from him, and not anyone else. In this case, maybe it was just because they already knew the people who’d attacked his wards had used Dark magic, and they didn’t want that result confusing them.
            This time, it was going to defeat them.
            The Aurors finally stepped back and gathered in a line in front of him. The handsome one spun and tapped his wand on the railing of the bannister. “And you have nothing else you want to tell us?” he asked.
            Harry’s head ached from his tension. The amulet helped him lie, and so did his anger, but he still wasn’t a natural liar. He only shrugged and said, “No. That’s what happened. I defeated Greyback. I didn’t kill him, though,” he felt he had to add, because Greyback was going to get himself noticed whether or not he stayed “loyal” to the supposed shred of Voldemort inside Harry. “So you might want to watch for him.”
            The moment went on and on, with the Aurors staring at him, and then the handsome one turned away with a curse and walked to the door. Deirdre lingered behind for a moment, shaking her head at him. “If you know a different sort of truth, it would be better to tell us before they drag it out of you,” she said.
            “You were the one who pointed out a different sort of truth today,” he said.
            Deirdre hesitated a moment, then said, “I tested yellow in the Lightfinder. But I was a Slytherin, and they were suspicious of me until they put me through. That means I know what the fear is like. You shouldn’t encourage it.”
            “Do you think I am?”
            She bit her cheek and turned away. Harry watched the Aurors depart. Then he sat down on the stairs and put his head in his hands.
            We’ll have to see what happens from here.
*
            “You deal with him,” Pansy told Draco as they watched Potter walk slowly up the stairs. “I can’t stand it when he gets all broody like that.”
            “How long have you even known he gets like that?” Draco protested as she stood up and retreated out the door of the library where the secret passage was that they’d hidden in. “Pansy—”
            But she was gone, and that left Draco to face Potter, who paused when he came into the door of the library and found Draco alone. Then he shrugged and sat down next to Draco on the same couch. Draco blinked. He had assumed that Potter would want to moan either about the Aurors or the Death Eaters, and either way, he would pace the room.
            Instead, Potter said simply, “They didn’t believe me, but they couldn’t find anything.”
            “Even the Dark Mark?” Draco shook his head. He thought the spell had been necessary at the time to convince Greyback and the others that the Dark Lord was the one in control of Potter’s body, but of course it was the one thing most likely to reveal the presence of something wrong to the Aurors. “I wonder why.”
            “They’ve tuned their spells to me,” said Potter. “They don’t know that you’re here.”
            Draco grunted, once, and stretched his arm along the back of the couch. It came dangerously near to Potter’s shoulders, but Potter ignored him. Fascinating. Draco hoped that comfort, which his gesture had been deliberately designed to test, meant Potter would work with him more effectively in the future. “And you think the Death Eaters can do what you’ve commanded them to do?”
            “Either way, we win,” said Potter simply. “Either they’ll actually manage to learn more about Lethe than the Aurors are going to tell me, or they’ll get themselves caught breaking in. And then they’re out of the way.”
            “I think something could easily go wrong,” said Draco, but Potter only shrugged and turned towards him.
            “If that’s the case, then we’ll deal with it when we have to,” said Potter. “And in the meantime, we have other things to discuss.”
            Draco swallowed. He shouldn’t feel that warm thrill through the middle of his stomach when Potter said something like that. It wasn’t as though they were about to discuss anything really intimate. They were allies on the same side of a war the Ministry had forced them to fight, that was all. And Potter didn’t consider him a friend. And Draco might admire Potter’s cleverness and fighting prowess, but that wasn’t the same thing as wanting to protect him the way he did Pansy and Astoria, either.
            Potter had different things on his mind. “I think that perhaps an unexpected test in the Lightfinder could provide a stunning effect.”
            Draco shook off the thought of the effect he’d like to provide, and instead merely murmured, “Who could we persuade to step into it?”
            “I wonder about one of the Death Eaters the Aurors did capture, the ones who didn’t escape custody as Greyback seems to have done.”
            Draco’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I didn’t even realize he had. You realize that could mean someone in the Aurors particularly dislikes you and wouldn’t mind seeing you come to harm?”
            Potter began to laugh soundlessly, leaning forwards to bury his head in his arms. Draco poked him sharply. “Stop laughing and tell me what’s funny, arsehole.”
            And maybe they weren’t friends, but Draco didn’t know many people who he would have dared to do that to, either. In this case, Potter simply sat up with a hoot and a gasp and mopped at his streaming eyes. “It’s j-just,” he whispered, “the way you said that about someone in the Aurors wishing me harm, so seriously. Of course I have people in the Ministry hierarchy who wish me harm. Loads of them. All the people who come here and tell me I should be grateful to them for my imprisonment, and all the ones who surround me each time I’m tested for Lethe, for starters.”
            Draco scowled. “Fine. But I’m talking about someone who might be on the side of the Death Eaters, not just Dark wizards.”
            “I wonder how much difference most of the public sees between them.”
            Draco rolled his eyes for a second. “Maybe none, maybe a lot, but can we stay on the track of what we were discussing?”
            “Of course. Mysterious enemies.”
            “No,” said Draco, and his hands itched. He realized that he wanted to jump on Potter the way he would have jumped on Blaise or Theo when they were in Slytherin together, and one of Draco’s main ways of working out his frustrations with his friends had been tickling them. He sat on one hand and used the other to brush a casual strand of hair out of his eyes, just so they didn’t get any ideas about wandering off on their own. “Listen to me, will you. The thought of getting them to test a Death Eater in the Lightfinder. But why?”
            Potter at least had calmed down enough to listen, if the silence beside Draco was any indication. Draco let out a short little breath. He had to remember the precise limitations of their alliance, and what might mess it up. Him going too far and treating Potter like his friend was one of those things.
            “I could say that I had a vision during the war about one of the Death Eaters,” said Potter slowly. “That they’re particularly Dark and heinous, and they need to be tested. But it would have to be someone we’re fairly sure would actually test red or yellow, and I don’t know how to determine that.”
            “Their power,” Draco said. “If they have the power to cast Light spells, it’s fairly certain that they have a Light affinity.” His mind was working on something else. “What do you mean, you had a vision of them during the war?”
            Potter didn’t answer. Draco looked over in time to see him wave a dismissive little hand. “I had visions of Voldemort because of the connection through my mind to his, via that soul-piece. I never saw much of anything important.” His jaw hardened. “In fact, my worst visions came during our fifth year. That’s how—well, my godfather died. I did manage to save Mr. Weasley’s life, but that’s the only good thing that really came out of them.”
            “Your godfather died because of a vision you had,” Draco said, playing along for the moment in hopes he’d get things explained eventually.
            Potter ducked his head for a second and closed his eyes. Then he muttered, “Voldemort sent me a vision of Sirius in trouble to get me to leave Hogwarts. He was really after the prophecy that linked the two of us, and it was easier for him if I went and got it. It was a really stupid time in my life and I was stupid during it, okay?”
            “I’m not the one that it sounds as if you need to apologize to,” Draco reminded him, turning neatly to face Potter.
            Potter made a sound somewhere between an angry grumble and a laugh and looked up at Draco. “Yeah, well, you’re a substitute. He isn’t here. Thanks to the stupidity I just told you about.”
            At least Draco didn’t want to tickle him this time, but there was the urge to move closer and sit beside him the way he would Astoria or Pansy if they were having trouble. Draco blinked hard and said, “So the piece of his soul in your head had a profound impact on you.”
            Potter shrugged. “Of course it did. I was a living Horcrux. Not one he intended to make, but a Horcrux nonetheless.”
            Draco pondered for a moment whether he should really ask the question, but Potter was open and vulnerable at the moment, and Draco wanted to know. “What was it like?”
            Potter stared directly at him, then dropped his eyes. “For most of my life, just my life,” he whispered. “It’s not like I knew.”
            “Yes, fine,” said Draco, and wondered if he should have started this, but it was rather late to go back now. “But when you knew?”
            For a moment, Potter tensed as if he was going to wrench himself off the couch and stride away, which Draco had thought was what he would do when Draco first started questioning him. But then Potter shut his eyes and muttered, “Fine,” and then began to recite things in a vague monotone.
            “I felt dirty. I felt soiled. I realized why Dumbledore had been so desperate to keep me alive and why he needed me to go around finding the Horcuxes and then find those memories Snape had for me, so that I would accept that the destruction of a Horcrux was worth any price. I walked into the Forest with my heart beating hard because I wanted to live, but at the same time, part of me was relieved I would die, so the filth could go away and I wouldn’t have to have it in my head any longer.”
            He paused and turned his head so his dull eyes were fastened on Draco. “Is that what you wanted to hear, Malfoy?” he whispered. “I didn’t know for very long. As soon as I did know, I had to be on my way again. To go die.”
            He stood up, and sighed, and said, “All right. I’ll try to figure out who the most powerful of the captured Death Eaters is and suggest they be put through the Lightfinder. Splinter is so anxious to have me go through Lethe and prove his precious theories right that he might just say we can go ahead and do it, instead of denying me.”
            Potter trudged through the doorway into the next room with a funeral pace, and Draco sat there frozen for only a moment before getting up and running after him.
            “Potter!”
            Draco’s shout was embarrassingly loud. He heard a door open a short distance away, the door of the room Astoria was staying in, but a second later it closed quietly.
            Potter paused at the head of the stairs and turned back to look at Draco. “What?” he asked. “You asked a question, and I answered it. And you probably got another answer, too. That was how I knew Voldemort well enough to play him. I was in his bloody head.”
            “Listen,” said Draco. “I want you to know that it doesn’t make any difference to me.”
            Potter scowled and shifted his weight. “What doesn’t?”
            “Whether you were in the—Dark Lord’s head, or had a piece of his soul in you, or had to die to get rid of him.” Draco held his steady stare. “You did what you had to do. And now you’re making sure that some of the rest of us get a chance at a better future. Thank you.”
            Potter’s hand curled so hard around the banister that for a second, Draco was sure Potter would reject the attempt at comfort along with everything else. But a second later, he bowed his head in clumsy acknowledgment, and then he turned and walked slowly, with bumping footsteps, down the stairs.
            “See?” Pansy said from behind Draco. “Broody.”
            “Sometimes it’s justified,” was the only thing Draco could think of to say.
*
moodysavage: Draco kind of enjoyed it too.
Kain: It is a gamble. But at this point, Harry thinks he’s screwed no matter what. If he fought the Death Eaters, then the Ministry would probably get upset with him for using violent or “Dark” magic, especially if he’d used some spells that Aster taught him without thinking. Once someone breaks through his wards or his Floo connections, the Ministry gets alerted either way, and them not arriving right away meant he was on his own. And while Harry could try taking “Light” actions, his actions during the war and in cooperating with the Aurors until Draco started encouraging him otherwise didn’t get him any credit; they basically think that once someone is Dark, they’re always Dark.
No, in this fic, Harry does have his Parseltongue.
SP777: The amulet and not having any other choice lent Harry a lot of credit.
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An Image of Lethe