Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20632 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen—The Inner Experience
            Harry hesitated a long time before he dipped his quill in the ink and began to write.
            Dear Ron,
            I’ve learned a little about my past self’s connection with Kelvin, if you need that information to keep people safe. Apparently a lot of the people that Old Harry was blackmailing were under an Enthrallment Potion. They probably spied for Old Harry as well as giving him money. This was part of a plot to take on Dark wizards. He learned some of Kelvin’s secrets by bribing people with his time and attention.
            I think Kelvin was writing to me because the people who were under the Enthrallment Potion are waking up or realizing that I probably don’t know their secrets anymore. I don’t know how Old Harry was getting them the Enthrallment Potion. He might have been feeding it to them. Or maybe he wasn’t using it anymore once he knew some secrets that would let him blackmail them. I don’t know.
            I hope this is enough to help.
            Harry paused for a long name before he signed his name at the bottom of the letter, too. Then he called Kreacher, who popped up and gave Harry a gloomy stare.
            Harry ignored that. Kreacher seemed to believe that Harry’s life wasn’t worth living when Draco wasn’t around. “Find an owl to take this, please, Kreacher.”
            Kreacher nodded and took the parchment from Harry. Then he took a different letter from somewhere in his rags and handed it to Harry. “Kreacher was taking Master’s post,” he said in an expressionless voice.
            Harry stared at him. He hadn’t even known house-elves could do that. But then he remembered Dobby and the way he’d taken Harry’s letters in second year, and shook his head. He was being stupid.
            “All right,” he said, and looked at the letter. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but at the bottom was Rob’s name.
            Wonderful.
            Harry tucked the letter away again. He would read it later. “That needs to go out right away,” he said, nodding at the parchment he’d handed Kreacher.
            Kreacher plodded out of the room with his head hanging. Harry shrugged. Yes, it would probably distress Kreacher to have him arrested. But he still had to send the letter to Ron and let him know what Harry knew and what he didn’t.
            Besides, Kreacher would probably feel better if he knew where I’m going next, Harry thought as he took out a pinch of Floo powder and cast it into the fireplace. “Malfoy Manor!” he called, and hoped he wouldn’t fall over the hearth this time as he stepped into the flames.
            He did think he heard a squeak of happiness behind him as he began to whirl around.
*
            He fell over the hearth when he came out, because of course he did. Old Harry was probably much more graceful, Harry thought, as he stood up and brushed out most of the soot. Maybe it came with being evil.
            “Potter. So good of you to come.”
            He had Flooed straight into Malfoy’s museum, this time. Harry deliberately didn’t look at any of the floating scraps and said, “Okay. You promised me you’d answer a question in return for letting you do some more research on me.”
            Malfoy had been sitting in a skeletal chair near a wrought iron table, playing with what looked like a crystal ball. He froze in a hunched position in the middle of getting up. “I did say that?”
            “Yes. You did.”
            “I do not think that you would mistake that memory,” Malfoy muttered, and twisted to put the crystal ball on the table before he stood all the way up. “All right. What is it?”
            Harry turned to the trapped portrait. This time, he thought he could see tears gleaming in its eyes. He winced. “What—what is that? What was it for?”
            “The results of spiritual experimentation,” Malfoy said. He might as well have added Idiot to the end of his sentence.
            “Right.” Harry waited.
            Malfoy folded his arms and said nothing. Harry finally decided that he cared more about hearing the truth than winning this stupid staring contest, so he added, “What spiritual experimentation?”
            “I wanted to know what was going on in his head. I told you that last time.” Malfoy pointed at the portrait’s eyes. “That has a tiny part of his essence in it, not nearly as much as would happen if it was a real portrait brought to life after someone’s death. The sliver can react to soul magic, the kind that would be fatal if I tried it on a living being.”
            Harry recoiled. “He was letting you make a Horcrux of him?”
            Malfoy’s hand twitched as if he was going to slap Harry, but he answered, “No. I can see why you would—think of it that way, but there are other kinds of soul magic than just Horcruxes. I wanted to figure him out. Some things would have been too intrusive or fatal. This way let me study him.”
            “I think you should let it go. Destroy the poor thing. Whatever the right word is for a portrait that’s not really alive.” Harry risked a glance at the picture, then away. It was too disturbing. “You can’t learn anything more about it now, since that was Old Harry, and he isn’t alive anymore.”
            “But I want to know both you and him. I won’t.”
            “What do I have to give you to make you let the portrait go?”
            “Such sentiment over a non-living object.” Malfoy smiled at him thinly. “Not even an animate one, not really. I’ve known you to be sentimental over house-elves, though. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
            “What, then?”
            “Disgusted.”
            Harry folded his arms. “You didn’t answer my question.”
            “Let me make another potion. One of the ones that I wanted to make with him, but which he never let me make.” Malfoy’s face was white with passion. “Let me take enough of your inner flesh for the prime ingredient.”
            “Inner flesh?” Harry imagined Malfoy trying to scrape the inner sac around his heart or something, while still keeping Harry alive.
            “Your muscle tissue. It was one of the things that he might have granted me ultimately, but he never did.”
            Harry closed his eyes a little. He knew potions with blood were Dark; what kind of potion would this be, that used those kinds of ingredients? Was he only stepping further into Darkness in an effort to get away from it?
            Then he cast another glance at the portrait on the wall. The trapped, suffering eyes were locked on him, although Harry supposed they had little choice as long as he stood in the “museum.” He rubbed his scar and turned to look back at Malfoy.
            “What kind of potion would it be? What would it be for?”
            Malfoy smiled and stepped towards him. Harry forced himself to stand still as Malfoy’s hand trailed along up his arm and to his shoulder. He wondered if Malfoy was thinking of digging muscle tissue out of there, and this time, he couldn’t restrain a shudder.
            “It would be to give me the sensation of inhabiting your body for a while,” Malfoy whispered. “Including any sensation your body has ever experienced. It would tell me how it felt when your scar burned during the war, and it would also—it would tell me so much.” Harry wondered for a second what else Malfoy had been about to say, but then Malfoy breathed into his ear and stole the thought. “I would finally understand the things that I wanted to understand and couldn’t.”
            He stepped back, and suddenly his hands were back at his sides again and his face was neutral. “And in return, I would let the portrait go and get rid of all these.” He gestured around at the floating scraps of blood and skin. “I wouldn’t need them anymore. I would have what I needed to tell the truth.”
            Harry could feel his face burning, but he had to know. “Would it tell you what it was like to have sex with Rob and Ginny?”
            Malfoy gave him a look that needed no translation.
            Harry drummed one fist into his palm. He would have wanted to ask permission, but—there was no way to do that without telling Rob and Ginny exactly what sort of potion Malfoy wanted to make.
            And then they would ask why he was in contact with Malfoy, and Harry would have to tell the truth, and Ron would probably arrest him.
            Harry turned to Malfoy. “No one is expecting me for a little while.” Except maybe the Ministry. But Harry might be arrested anyway. So he was going to use his freedom for as long as he had it. “We’ll make the potion today. Tonight. Whatever immediate time-scale is feasible. And before we begin, you’ll destroy the mementoes you have and let the portrait go.”
            Malfoy’s eyes widened. Harry stared into them and wished he could see something other than blank brilliance at the bottom.
            “You’ll let me do that?” Malfoy swayed. Harry thought he looked drunk. “You—really will. This isn’t a trick. Oh, Merlin.”
            And wasn’t the way he said that disturbingly sexual? Harry looked off to the side. “Yes. As long as you keep your side of the bargain.”
            Malfoy drew his wand, laughing. The laughter sounded as if he was ripping out his own muscle tissue along the way, something Harry could have lived without ever hearing. “Of course. Ignis excoltum!”
            Harry ducked as fire sprayed out from Malfoy’s wand, hitting alcove after alcove and vial after vial. In seconds, they stood in the center of a harsh, glittering arc of white light, braided back on itself and folded around until Harry flinched from the enclosing heat. And he thought he could hear small shrieks as the fire burned and danced in multiple diamond-colored flames.
            He could certainly hear Malfoy’s laughter through the blazing of the fire.
            The fire arched over Harry at last, with small shadows still floating in the white stream. Harry squinted, and thought he could make out the shapes of vials, and some of the tumbling, floating scraps that had formed the skin, and even a few curved pieces of stone.
            Then the white fire snapped together into a blazing pinpoint, and Harry was left blinking in the purple shadows. All of the “museum pieces” that Malfoy had preserved of him were gone.
            “Now.” Malfoy turned towards the portrait. “As I said, this has only a shard of the soul in it. Do you want me to destroy it? Or free the portrait? It might well go somewhere else and tell someone all about what I was doing with your former self.”
            Harry turned on his heel to look at Malfoy. “Then why did you offer to free him at all?”
            “It,” said Malfoy, but without any malice. “Because any price would be small when it comes to what I gain in return.”
            Harry swallowed and said, “Take off the spell that holds the portrait immobile. I need to ask him what he wants.”
            Malfoy laughed a little. “You don’t really know much about wizarding portraits, do you, Potter? There’s no spell. As long as you’re alive, the portrait will remain like that.” He sucked on his teeth a second. “If you want, I could of course kill you and free it completely. But I don’t think you’ve chosen that solution, based on all your hard work so far.”
            Harry glared at Malfoy and turned back to the portrait. “Close your eyes if you want to be free,” he said. “Leave them open if you want to be destroyed.”
            The portrait immediately strained his eyes as wide open as they could go. Harry had the discomforting situation that he was looking into the future rather than the past—a future where he’d spent years under a Dark wizard’s wand.
            “All right,” Harry said quietly. He hesitated, then decided that he could add something else. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here before. I’m sorry I came the first time and didn’t free you.”
            The portrait locked his gaze on Harry and didn’t move. Harry bowed his head and added, “And I’m sorry that he did this to you. I don’t know why he did, but that’s the way it is, and I hate it.”
            The portrait widened his eyes more.
            Harry nodded. Message received. You understand what I’m trying to do, but you want to be free, and you don’t care what I have to do to achieve that.
            Harry saluted the portrait and then turned to face Malfoy. “How are you going to get this muscle tissue?”
*
            The answer to that question turned out to be agonizing.
            Harry knelt there with his eyes closed, his mouth shut on a scream, as Malfoy dug into his shoulder with a delicate pair of silver scissors that were enchanted to cut through flesh. And to cause pain, Harry suspected.
            But Malfoy had told him that he had to be conscious and silent during the procedure, and that he couldn’t take any Pain-Killing Potions until afterwards. That let Malfoy whisper his own spells to speed up the procedure and make the brewing more painless.
            For him, anyway.
            Harry listened to the hissing of the spell and the snip of the scissors and opened his eyes again, but this time he kept them fixed on the portrait. Whatever was happening to Harry, worse had happened to him. Maybe the shard of soul affixed in the portrait was the last left of Old Harry. Or the last good part of him. Or it had been tortured by Malfoy.
            Either way, Harry looked into those green eyes stretched so wide with pain, and he didn’t flinch.
            Malfoy lifted out something dark red and dripping that Harry honestly couldn’t look at, cast another spell to stop Harry’s bleeding, and laughed softly. Then he turned around and cast the spell that ripped apart the spells on the portrait. Because of course he had dictated that he had to wait until he had the muscle tissue before he could free the portrait, despite their earlier agreement, because he had said reversing the soul magic would hurt so much that he had to be high on the adrenaline of achieving what he wanted.
            Harry just watched as the painted canvas rippled and Malfoy’s magic stabbed into it, ripping the portrait from top to bottom. The portrait shut his eyes just before Malfoy’s spell got there.
            Harry knew he wasn’t deluding himself. There was an expression of unqualified joy on the portrait’s face.
            Harry didn’t expect what happened next, however. A small, fleeting piece of something green and bright tore itself away from the portrait. Harry scrambled to his feet as it zoomed towards him. The first thought he had was that Malfoy had decided to kill him and had reflected the Killing Curse off some mirror hidden behind the portrait.
            But the green thing landed on his arm and looked like a blazing triangle there for a moment before it sank into his skin. Harry stared with wide eyes as the triangle cut apart his arm, beside the slice Malfoy had made to take the muscle tissue, and vanished inside it.
            Then he tossed his head back and screamed as the piece of soul reconnected itself.
            The tide of remorse knocked him down. He knew the pain his crimes had caused, or he could imagine it. The breathlessness that had caged people who lost loved ones due to the actions of wizards like Kelvin, people Old Harry could have stopped and hadn’t. The chains that had constrained his blackmail victims. The suffocation of deceit and disappointment Rob had felt. How his victims had suffered under the Enthrallment Potion.
            Harry turned his head groggily on the floor. Not a Horcrux, my arse, he thought. He was only glad that he hadn’t been so far gone as Voldemort and had managed to reabsorb the torn shard of his soul.
            Malfoy was brewing, from the sounds. Harry heard things churning and bubbling and burping. He closed his eyes. He was too worn out to stand up, and now and then a new pain would burst in his mind and rise to the surface.
            He had no idea, now that he was a little more distant from the first emotions, if all the remorse was real. But it didn’t matter. He had felt it, and he wouldn’t be the same again.
*
            “The potion’s ready, Potter.”
            Harry forced his eyes open. He didn’t know how long he had lain there, he realized, and he was hungry and thirsty. He got his elbows under him and sat up, running his tongue up the inside of his cheeks.
            Malfoy stood in front of him with a chalky potion in a flask. Harry blinked at it. Even that looked good to drink right now.
            “Watch,” Malfoy whispered, and tilted the flask back.
            Harry didn’t know what he was supposed to watch. Malfoy swallowing, maybe. He did watch, and then Malfoy closed his eyes and stood there with his arms extended and his hands twitching.
            Harry didn’t know what he expected to happen. Maybe Malfoy would start telling him the story of his life, or gasping in ecstasy.
            In fact, what happened was a scream so piercing that Harry thought his ears would start bleeding, and then Malfoy dropped to the floor and writhed for a few seconds before passing out.
            Harry blinked, got his hands under him, and began the business of standing. I reckon it’s up to me to do something about this.
*
Severus1snape: Because, essentially, that potion is a form of spiritual time travel. He can’t put the memories in a regular Pensieve or exactly direct where he goes because it’s finicky and the memories aren’t his in the sense that he didn’t have them. It would sort of be like trying to put a hallucination into a Pensieve.
And thank you!
moon: Thank you!
- 16
- 17
- 18
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Dust of Water