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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 Eighteen—The Cresting Wave
            Potter had never been this late before.
            Draco checked the clock on the wall, and then the numbers hovering in the air beside him from his casting of the Tempus Charm. They didn’t change, and he sighed. Of course he knew that Potter was late. But knowing it instinctively and having numbers that actually told him that were two different things.
            And he had to wonder whether the wave Aster had spoken of would break today. If the Unseen knew it, or were keeping the time secret deliberately, or perhaps if Potter’s delay had something to do with this…
            Draco stood up and reached into his pocket. The shawl was in his hand in a second, leaping up as if eager to be touched, and then curling and whispering around his fingers. Draco draped it over his head and decided he would test it before he ventured to the Ministry. Aster knew Draco distrusted him. Draco would be a fool not to make sure the shawl worked as advertised.
            He walked straight past Astoria, and she didn’t turn and look at him, even though she was alert at the moment. She’d just come from dueling practice with Pansy, Draco thought, if the bruises on her forehead were any indication. Pansy had probably thrown her against the wall again. Draco shook his head. Astoria needed some more confidence in herself. She would win if she cast more powerful spells, and convinced herself she could cast them. Holding back and being diffident because Pansy had once been her older Housemate did her no good at all.
            Draco took the shawl off. Astoria leaped and fired a curse at him before she thought, if the way she immediately shrieked and threw a hand across her mouth was any indication.
            Draco blocked the curse with a Shield Charm and grinned at her. “Why don’t you ever cast like that when you duel with Pansy?”
            “Draco.” Astoria’s face was scarlet, and she brought her hands to her cheeks and shut her eyes. “Where did you come from?”
            “Something I found in the house that my ancestors used to disguise themselves,” said Draco, which wasn’t so far from the truth as some things he could have said. “I wanted to make sure that it worked like the Invisibility Cloak it’s supposed to be.”
            Astoria glared at him. “Well, it does. Are you going to test it on Pansy?”
            “I suppose I should,” said Draco. Pansy was more alert than Astoria, because, like Draco, she’d had to run when the Ministry got more interested in her than it should be.
            “Then let me watch,” said Astoria, and flashed a sharp grin as Draco draped the shawl over his head again and headed for the room they had chosen for their practice. Draco grinned back, although he didn’t think Astoria could see it since he was already beneath the shawl. Yes, he would enjoy the expression on Pansy’s face when she leaped out of her shoes in turn.
            And he would enjoy the expression on Potter’s when Draco came to the rescue.
            Because he was going to find and rescue Potter. And maybe Potter would know better than to frighten Draco in the future.
*
            “Do you really think you had to do that? You’ve ruined several plans and accelerated several others, you know.”
            Harry kept his eyes closed and his breathing as regular as he could. Not only did his head ache abominably, those sounded like words he wanted to hear more of.
            “I think he suspects something,” Splinter muttered, and then his voice soared in what sounded like agitation. Harry also heard him hitting something made of stone or wood. They probably weren’t in the room where Lethe was kept, then, Harry deduced. There had been nothing made of wood or stone there except the walls and parts of Lethe itself, and he doubted Splinter would want to hit either one of them.
            It became harder for Harry to keep his breathing regular when he realized that, out of sheer relief. He didn’t want to be near at Lethe at all if he could help it. It was bad enough that he had been feeding his magic to the thing.
            “No, I know he suspects something,” Splinter was going on feverishly. “He’s been asking me these odd little questions about Lethe and the Lightfinder, and sometimes he smiles—”
            “You’ve risked almost all of our plans for a smile.” The voice sounded disgusted. Harry wished he knew who it belonged to. There was the slightest, teasing edge of familiarity, but they’d had so many different Aurors guard him and duel and serve as the targets of his spells that it was hard to remember them all.
            “More than that,” said Splinter. He hesitated for a second, and then his voice was stronger and braver when he spoke again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, does it? I’ve done it, what we would have had to do anyway eventually, and that means we have to move.”
            The other voice sighed so deeply it was painful to listen to, and then marching footsteps came towards Harry. “I suppose so.”
            Harry had known immediately they’d taken his wand, but he had only one chance when he could really catch them off-guard, and so he wouldn’t waste it. He drew in all his anger and irritation and magic, remembering the moments when he had done this at the Dursleys’, and flung it out of him in a wandless burst of power into the face of the man who was bending over him, as soon as he felt breath on his ear.
            His captor screamed in a way that sounded more like the hiss of a great snake, but Harry didn’t recognize any familiar words in it. He was up and flying towards the door, anyway. He willed that to unlock, the way his cupboard had for him right after he blew up Aunt Marge.
            But just as the door started to creak open, it slammed back shut. Harry spun around, dodging a Stunner by force of habit as it cracked past him and struck the door.
            The figure next to Splinter was wearing a blue cloak and a necklace of small skull-like figures around a central boss. Its face was a swirling mass of clouds and soft light. Harry snarled under his breath. The voice itself hadn’t sounded familiar; what had been familiar was the glamour that must be concealing the face and the real nature of the voice. That amulet looked almost like his, too.
            This was another member of the Unseen. And now he had proof that they weren’t on his side.
            “It’s unfortunate we have to meet like this, Mr. Potter,” said the voice. It had a slight feminine tinge, but Harry was convinced now the greatest resemblance was to Oratory’s. The figure moved towards him, one hand on a wand, although Harry thought it was Splinter who had cast the Stunner. “After all, you could have benefited us more if you had remained calm until the moment when Lethe was ready.”
            Harry didn’t see any advantage in continuing the conversation. They were going to Stun him and put him into Lethe. He backed up a step, darting his eyes around in large sweeps that let him see what was in the room without ever really looking away from Splinter and the Unseen. It was a stone room with a desk that had a chair behind it, and what looked like a map on the desk surface. No other furniture, though, and no windows. There was little he could do to distract them or get away.
            But one thing that might dismay them. Maybe buy a little time.
            Splinter was pretty obvious about what he was doing, maybe because he didn’t have Auror training. So Harry saw his wand arm rise the instant he started moving, and ran off to the side instead of staying in place for the Stunner. Splinter yelped and scrabbled to keep up with him. The Unseen simply stood there and watched him.
            But its manner changed when Harry reached the desk and scooped up the map. It wasn’t really a map, Harry saw from the glance he could give it, but a thick, cloudy sheet that didn’t feel much like paper, and was covered with figures and equations that might be from Arithmancy calculations. Harry backed up, holding the map in front of him stretched to its utmost limit, like a shield, his fingers on the corners.
            “Do something again, and I’ll tear it,” he panted. “I swear I will.”
            Splinter sneered and started to say something, but the Unseen reached over and put a hand on his arm. Splinter stood down at once, staring at his feet. Harry nodded fractionally. It was plain who was in charge here, and who he had to impress or evade if he wanted to escape.
            He was sure he wanted to escape. Not so sure he wanted to impress them.
            “Can this gain you anything, Mr. Potter?” the Unseen asked, and folded his arms over his chest. “Tearing that? It won’t tell you what’s going on, or why this has to happen.”
            “You won’t, either,” said Harry, and stretched his hands a little further apart. He heard a sad, fragile tearing sound, and the Unseen lunged towards him. Harry clenched his fingers in the edges of the map, and the Unseen halted, teetering on the edges of his boots.
            “Now,” Harry said quietly. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on.” He said nothing yet about letting him walk out the door. He thought the Unseen, with the strange priorities of his weird organization, might even agree to that, but Splinter never would. This had become more about navigating around Splinter than anything else.
            “Very well,” said the Unseen. He had come down from wavering on his toes, and regarded Harry with more calmness than Harry had expected. “I know that Oratory attempted to give you part of the explanation. But he didn’t give you enough, or you wouldn’t have started this risky rebellion against the Ministry.”
            Harry wanted to ask how they knew any details of that rebellion beyond what Oratory had already told him they knew, but then grimaced. Aster. Of course. So he didn’t look like a fool, he only nodded and raised one eyebrow in inquiry.
            “You are at the forefront of a disaster,” said the Unseen. He made as if to shift off to the side, and Harry smiled at him and brought up his knee as though he was going to tear the map across it. The Unseen stopped at once and cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. There is a break, a ripple in the patterns. We can’t see what happens. We know only that it happens when you come to the Lightfinder, and after that, to Lethe.”
            Harry managed to laugh, as little humorous as he found it. “It sounds like you would have a vested interest in keeping me away from Lethe, then, rather than trying to shove me into it.”
            “We would have had the time to make the decision if someone had not forced the schedule forwards.” The Unseen turned around and glared in Splinter’s direction. Splinter stood with his wand hanging down at his side now, head turned away. But Harry had seen how quickly he could act when he got resentful, so he just waited. “We know that you are involved. We know that you are going to cause some great and powerful disruption in fate. I would ask you not to do it.”
            Harry laughed like a crow. “You mean, like the disruption I caused when I killed Voldemort?”
            Splinter jumped. The Unseen didn’t flinch at the name in any way. “No. That was predicted, known. The involvement of a prophecy will do that.” He looked at Harry, Harry was sure, despite the lack of ease of making out eyes in that swirling shadow. “This is something we have long foreseen, but only recently did we realize that you were involved. Will you resist the temptation to tamper with fate?”
            “I don’t even know what you want me to do,” said Harry, shaking his head. He tensed his hands again when he saw movement off to the right. Splinter was going to get close and Stun him if he could, he knew. However much Splinter knew about the plans of the Unseen, he probably cared more about making Lethe work. “First you wanted me to resist going into Lethe, and now—”
            “That was a mistake,” said the Unseen quickly. “Something that should not have happened. We misunderstood the crossing of the strands of fate, and we thought that was the action we needed you to take to prevent the wave waiting to break on us. Now we understand that we need you to go along with things.”
            “Go along with having my magic drained? Go along with having some machine I don’t even understand wreak havoc on me?” Harry laughed harshly. “No.”
            “Then you might destroy the world, or at least destroy a good portion of our understanding of the world,” said the Unseen, and Harry saw a sign of frustration, the movement of his clenched fists under his sleeves. “It could take us a long time to get the strands back in order and learn the new patterns, and in return, that might mean we can’t predict the next war. Are you really willing to condemn the world to that?”
            Harry stared at him flatly. “You didn’t intervene in the last two. What would make me think you’ll do it in another one?”
            “Not to intervene,” said the Unseen, shaking his head. “To know. So we can guide the wizarding world back onto the right path after the war has passed.”
            Harry laughed again, but it seemed to relax the Unseen instead of make him worry. Well, Harry was going to give him something to worry about.
            “You wanted me to do one thing,” Harry said. “Now you say it’s wrong. You told me that you were experienced in reading the path of the future. Now you say that you misinterpreted the strands of the future, whatever they are. How can I be sure that things will really go back to the way you wanted even if I let myself be a sacrifice?”
            “I thought you cared about others,” said the Unseen, and his voice was close to a snarl now. “Instead of thinking only about yourself, selfishly, perhaps you could—”
            “I care about myself enough that I know going along with this is the wrong thing to do,” Harry snapped, and ripped the map in half.
            The flare of light that burst up from within the clouded parchment burned his hands, and Harry reeled back, flinging the halves of the map on the floor. The Unseen dropped to his knees and scrambled towards the halves, crying out. And Splinter tried to cast another Stunner at Harry.
            Harry whirled out of the way and then dashed straight at Splinter this time. Splinter flinched and fumbled his wand, and dropped it on the floor. Harry snatched it up and cast as hard as he could. “Stupefy!”
            That got Splinter, although not the Unseen. But Harry was a bit busy unlocking the door and Summoning his own wand to worry about that, and all he saw when he glanced over his shoulder was the Unseen crouching over his map and rocking back and forth, anyway.
            That left Harry standing in the middle of a corridor he didn’t know anything about, although he supposed he might be near the part of the Ministry where some of the Aurors had brought him to meet Oratory. Something tapped him on the shoulder, and he spun around, but it was only his own wand. He grabbed it and stuck Splinter’s wand in his own pocket, where it couldn’t benefit one of the enemy, then started running to the nearest corner. His head still ached, but he knew he needed to get out of here as soon as possible.
            The corner showed him another corridor, this one with a few doors, but all of them looked as blank and forbidding as the door of the room he had been kept in. Harry shook his head with a frown and kept running. He would have to hope that something looked familiar around the next corner.
            And it did, but not in a way he liked. He seemed to be near the courtroom where he’d been tried for use of underage magic in the summer before his fifth year. There was a gathering of wizards in front of the open courtroom door, speaking to each other in plummy tones. At least one of them wore the robe of a Wizengamot member.
            They stared at Harry, who nodded at them and jogged past without slowing down. Whispers broke out from behind him, and his name was in them.
            Great. He would have pursuers after him in a second.
            No use trying to Apparate, not here. Harry made for the stairs, and began running up them as if Voldemort was at his heels. In a way, he wished it was. He knew how to take down Voldemort. He had no idea what the Unseen really wanted, and no idea if they were going to send someone else after him, like Aurors or Unspeakables or Hit Wizards.
            Harry reached the level of the Department of Mysteries, and heard something cackle overhead. He dropped to his knees on instinct, which was the only reason the snatching claws missed him. He rolled over and stared up, and found the thing that hung from the ceiling staring down at him with slightly parted lips.
            As much as it could have lips, anyway. It looked like a gargoyle with bat wings, made of heavy stone, and it grated when it fell down in front of him. It stalked slowly towards him, snapping and flexing its long, thin fingers, the hooked claws on the ends looking much longer and sharper than any blade Harry had ever seen up until that point.
            Harry backed away in front of it, wondering what sort of spell could affect a stone creature like this. But then he heard the footsteps coming up behind him, and he knew he would be caught between the wizards and the gargoyle in a second.
            Anger gave him strength he wouldn’t have had otherwise, and he aimed his wand straight at the floor in front of the creature and snarled, “Saltus!”
            There was a long shudder, and the floor ripped open. Harry had only seen the spell demonstrated, not used it himself, but it worked the way he wanted it to: the gargoyle fell into the crack and couldn’t get out again. Its wings didn’t seem to actually let it fly, since they beat up and down but couldn’t heave it out.
            “There’s Potter. Stop him!”
            Harry went on running again, panting as his legs pumped up the stairs. He had to go faster, he knew that, but his head was still ringing from the effect of the blow he’d got from Splinter, and his blood was pounding so hard that he couldn’t hear if anyone was coming up behind him right now or not. He swung around near the top of that last flight of stairs and flattened himself against the wall, which led to at least one person running past him and towards the commotion that must be going on down there.
            Harry took to the stairs again. They might try to close them off, but this was still safer than the lifts, and Harry was utterly determined to get to the Atrium and the Floo hearths there. All thoughts of fooling the Ministry with a secret rebellion were gone now. He had to make sure he was free, first.
            He slammed straight into a witch who was striding down the stairs when he came up to what he thought was the sixth level. She rocked back, and then straightened up and stared at him. “What are you doing?”
            Harry decided in a flash she hadn’t recognized him; sweat had probably plastered his fringe over his scar, which was the only favor it had done him right now, given the way it was running into his eyes. He held a finger to his lips, winked at her, and whispered, “I’m on a secret mission. Department of Mysteries, right?”
            “You’re not dressed like an Unspeakable.” The woman eyed him up and down.
            “What good would that be, when it’s a really secret mission?” Harry shook his head in what he hoped she would take for exasperation and tried not to listen too hard to the footsteps from behind him anymore, just concentrating on the task in front of him. The Unseen hadn’t taken their amulet back, and he was sure that was the only reason he was doing so well right now. “Listen. There’s a bunch of people behind me who want to stop the mission. They hate explorers on the bold frontier.” He leaned a hand on her arm and looked into her eyes as hard as he could. “Could you help me delay them? Do you service the cause of justice and truth?”
            The woman hesitated for a minute. Harry gave her his best smile. He thought it was working, and not just because of the amulet. This woman looked like someone who wanted to be on the side of justice and truth because she secretly suspected that she wasn’t, very much, when she worked in the Ministry.
            But then a sweat-clumped bunch of his fringe swung away from his forehead, and the woman’s eyes locked on his scar and widened.
            “You’re a Dark wizard, trying to persuade me,” she whispered. Her wand leaped into her hand. “If you try to move, I’m going to curse you.”
            Harry tried to get around her anyway, but this time, she fired a Stunner, and this close in the confines of the stairwell, it couldn’t miss. It glanced off his arm, though, instead of hitting in his chest, and for a second, as he sagged against the wall, Harry thought he could hear the excited, chattering voices.
            “Good job, Miss Gower.”
            “He was just standing there and talking like anyone else!” The woman, probably Gower, was waving her hands around excitedly. “He almost convinced me. But then I saw his scar and I knew—”
            “They won’t like it—”
            “Get him to the Lightfinder. Let them see how Dark he tests now. Come on, let’s move.”
            “He’s still awake!”
            And then someone hit him with another Stunner, properly applied this time, and Harry dropped into silence and unconsciousness, silently raging at the unfairness of the universe.
*
moodysavage: Well, but also a test subject. In that Splinter wants to see what will happen when he puts Harry into Lethe.
SP777: Well, that was deliberate, you know. ;)
TellingRiddles: Thank you! In fact, there is some advocacy going on, out of Harry’s sight. It’s one of the things Bill was arrested for (or at least sent to the Lightfinder for). But Bill’s and Fleur’s arrests did frighten them, and Hermione, at least, doesn’t think it can do Harry good right now to make any open opposition to the Ministry. She wants to wait and work behind the scenes. Not that that is going to work right now!
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An Image of Lethe