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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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nineteen—Facing the Forgotten Music
            “I think you should have waited before coming here.”
            Harry shrugged a little and stepped out of the Floo. He hadn’t been able to persuade Malfoy to stay behind, even though Malfoy had agreed that it would be easier for Ron if Harry spoke to him first alone. Then again, Malfoy didn’t care about Ron. So Harry supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.
            “Are you listening to me, Potter?” Malfoy touched his elbow for a second.
            “Yes,” Harry said, his wand out of his pocket and his attention alert. They had only walked into the kitchen, but already he could tell something was wrong. Malfoy started to say something else, and Harry jabbed his elbow back into his shoulder. Malfoy hissed, but at least he shut up.
            Harry moved slowly forwards. He wondered for a second if it was possible for him to remember some of his Auror training after all, then shook his head impatiently. Of course not. He was probably remembering some of his war instincts, or something.
            Anyway. What’s actually wrong?
            There were dirty dishes in the sink. Kreacher would never have left them there. Two chairs were shoved a little out from the table. Harry couldn’t be sure, but he thought they’d been sitting pushed up fully to the table when he left yesterday.
            And there was a change in the magic of the house. Or the presence. Or the atmosphere. Harry couldn’t define it better than that. Just that something had changed and shifted and was blowing like a fan he couldn’t hear or see.
            “Potter?”
            At least Malfoy’s voice was softer this time, Harry noted with approval. He raised one hand and pressed it down towards the floor, hoping Malfoy would get what he meant. From the way he settled a second later, crouching behind the table, he seemed to.
            Then Harry heard actual footsteps on the stairs. He shifted his grip on his wand. It could just be Ron and someone else from the Ministry, he reassured himself. Or Ron and Hermione. They could have been concerned about how long he’d been gone and come to see if they could find any clues in the house.
            On the other hand, it could also be Kelvin or someone Kelvin’s potions had helped Harry control. He licked his lips and wished he knew if there were any special defenses for the house. His paranoid older self had probably put them in, but Harry had no idea what they were or how to command them.
            Malfoy was still staying down nicely behind the table. Harry moved his cloak back out of the way and stepped out of the kitchen with a tight stride, ready to crouch or dodge or start casting spells if that was what he needed to do.
            Ron and Hermione, on the steps, stopped and stared at him with their mouths open. Harry straightened up, feeling a little silly. But then he shrugged it off. As Malfoy would probably say, Harry’s life was in danger.
            Hermione ran down the stairs in the next instant and grabbed him around the waist. “Thank God you’re all right, Harry,” she whispered into his hair. “Oh, thank you.” She hugged him until Harry thought he would faint from lack of air, and then stepped back and stared anxiously up into his face. “Where have you been?”
            “Some place we couldn’t track you? I tried some tracking spells on you and nothing came up.”
            Harry nodded a little to Ron. He still wasn’t going to tell them about everything, given the illegal nature of some of Malfoy’s potions and most likely whatever he had done with that portrait. “I went to visit Malfoy. If anyone can come up with a potion that might restore some of my memories, it’s him.”
            “I thought you had some information about your past already. That’s what the letter you sent said.”
            Harry started to answer, but Hermione interrupted. “I think the better question is what you were doing with Malfoy in the first place, Harry.”
            Harry braced himself. He had known this wasn’t going to be easy, but he had never realized how tough it would be. “I know, Hermione. But that’s the kind of thing that I can’t answer fully. There are—things I need to process. Things I need to think about. Decisions my past self made that I’m still angry about.”
            “No matter what they are, you can share them with us, Harry. We’ll never judge you.”
            “Really, Granger? When Weasley here was ready to arrest him for crimes he couldn’t remember?”
            It was kind of impressive how Ron and Hermione spun as one unit and aimed their wands at Malfoy, Harry thought. It was the sort of coordination he had never seen from them before. Harry sighed and stepped in between his friends and Malfoy, feeling a little ridiculous for doing it, but knowing that otherwise, there probably would be curses.
            “I want him tried for crimes he committed,” Ron said. “He has to be. Everyone has to be.” He cast a quick glance at Harry, but he looked away again before Harry could reassure him. “That’s what you said, Harry, when we were discussing letting someone we liked off the hook. Everyone should always obey the same legal rules.”
            “Have you considered, Weasley, that your friend said this as he was merrily disobeying his own rules?”
            “Shut up, Malfoy!”
            “That’s enough.”
            Harry was astonished to realize he could sound that calm, and more astonished when Ron’s arm fell back to his side and he turned away from Malfoy to recover his temper. Hermione was the one who took up the thread of the conversation.
            “We didn’t know where you were, Harry,” she said. “We were worried. And not just because we want to get you arrested or—or take you to the Ministry or St. Mungo’s for any other reason. Ron said you’d received some threatening letters. We were afraid that someone might have got hold of you and taken you away.”
            “Someone did.”
            Harry made another motion at Malfoy, and this time, he shut up. Harry wanted him here, but not if he was only going to make things worse. He said calmly, “Well. I can tell you what little I’ve managed to remember. Do you want to go to the Ministry? And why would you want to take me to St. Mungo’s?”
            “Because there might be other potions there that could help you, if you’re willing to take risks to remember your past,” Hermione said, her voice low. “I wanted—Harry, I’ll do anything that you want. Even if it’s risky. You know that.”
            Harry reached out and touched her hand. “I do now.”
            “But we have to decide what we should be doing about his past crimes first.” Ron looked from one to the other of them as if he thought they were all going to try and break Harry out of Azkaban. “We need—”
            “Have you thought about asking Harry what he needs, instead of assuming that he’ll do what you ask of him?”
            “Silencio,” Harry snapped, exasperated, and Malfoy narrowed his eyes at him. Harry turned away without apologizing. He would explain later. “I’ll testify as to what I remember, Ron. But I need you to promise me one thing.”
            Ron nodded.
            “You have to be willing to see Old Harry as someone who has flaws. You can’t just attribute them all to me.”
            “We knew that already, mate. I mean, you should have heard him about some times when someone escaped or after some of the arguments he had with Ginny.”
            “But that’s different from knowing he was consorting with escaped Dark potions brewers and that he was willing to enslave people with an Enthrallment Potion.”
            “He what?” Hermione’s voice was tiny.
            “Those are some of the things I remember from the past.” Harry turned towards her. “I haven’t seen much that was good about him. And if someone uses Veritaserum on me, then that’s what’s going to come out. Not all the tidbits about how he was a misunderstood hero.”
            “But he couldn’t have hidden all that,” Hermione whispered. “He wasn’t a good liar.”
            Harry thought about the way that Old Harry had hidden Rob and Kelvin and all the rest from them—not to mention mercy-killing that girl in St. Mungo’s—and grimaced. Maybe he’d done it mostly with lies of omission, though. If neither Hermione nor Ron thought Old Harry was in any kind of relationship with Rob, they would never have any reason to ask about it.
            “I don’t know how he did it. Not all the time. I know that he lied to you about not being a Parselmouth anymore, so—”
            “He wasn’t!”
            Harry raised his eyebrows, focused on the memory of the basilisk, and hissed, “The way I’m not right now?”
            Ron jerked a little. Hermione turned pale. Harry nodded. “And I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that would return to me because I’m mentally ten years younger,” he added. “Or because someone hit me with a curse. There are all sorts of wizards who would probably be making people try to curse them, otherwise.”
            Harry didn’t understand the fascination with being a Parselmouth, but it was one of the things Malfoy had discussed when they were talking about plans earlier that day. Apparently lots of people had contacted Old Harry and asked him to teach them the language.
            “I can’t believe any of this,” Hermione whispered. She stood with her knuckles to her lips. “I can’t. That’s just not the way our Harry was.”
            “Then we’re already having a problem,” Harry said. “I’m going to atone for the crimes because no one else will. But I want your support, instead of you sitting around saying how it must be all my fault and he was such a good person and he would never do something like that.”
            Malfoy moved behind him. Harry glanced at him, sighed, and took the Silencing Charm off. He knew Malfoy would support him.
            Malfoy seemed to have thought about the ways that would happen, though, and his mouth was firmly shut for now. Harry felt able to turn back to Ron and Hermione and say, calmly, “What is it going to be? Accepting that I don’t have my full memories and this may show you some truths you don’t like? Or leaving me here and accepting that you might not have anyone to try because there’s such a difference between me and him?”
            Harry was sure he knew which one Ron would choose, and therefore it hit him like a Stunner when Ron said, “I—I need to talk about this with Kingsley. To hear what he says.”
            Harry stood there with his mouth open. This time, Malfoy was the one to nudge him. Harry swallowed with a click and demanded, “You really can’t accept that he was different from what you remember, can you?”
            Ron turned his head away. Hermione said, “Harry—you don’t understand. We thought we understood him, and we knew him, and he was a wonderful person, and a hero…”
            That’ s part of the reason he did it! Harry wanted to scream. Because he couldn’t bear what would happen if he got found out when he’d been doing this for a while!
            Hermione was still talking. “This is like—he died.”
            “Maybe you should accept that he did,” Malfoy said. For once, his voice was neutral and calm. “He isn’t the man who’s standing in front of you now. And it sounds as though those differences hurt you.”
            Ron looked at Malfoy with loathing and just said, “I’ll talk to Kingsley, mate. I’ll tell you what he says.”
            “Right,” Harry muttered through numb lips, and watched as Ron and Hermione left together. He could see Hermione leaning on Ron and hear her start to cry before they got through the Floo.
            Harry looked around and wandered over to sit on the couch in front of the fireplace in the drawing room. There were cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and dust on the floor in front of him, he noted vaguely. He supposed that had something to do with Kreacher not taking care of the house as well as he should. Or Old Harry not doing it?
            “They’re grieving.”
            Harry could at least turn and listen to Malfoy, since Malfoy wasn’t talking about his friends as if they were dirt on the bottom of his shoe at the moment. He nodded.
            “They thought they’d accepted his loss, I think.” Malfoy didn’t sit down, but paced slowly back and forth in front of the fireplace. “They knew you would never be the same. Or they thought they knew it.”
            “The way I thought I knew that Old Harry was a good person.”
            “Mmm, it went deeper than that for them. You had shallow convictions that got challenged and changed. They must really have believed he was a hero, for years, for them to react like this.”

            Harry slowly nodded. “Why did they get so invested in it, I wonder? Why did he? Things would have been so different if he could have admitted that what he was doing was wrong and asked for their help.”
            “I’m glad he didn’t.”
            Harry turned around, because Malfoy had come close to him, and Harry thought he would sit down for a second. Instead, he clasped Harry’s hands and bent over them. Harry blinked. Malfoy’s obsession hadn’t waned, as he had thought it had when he listened to him talk that afternoon. It had changed a little, but not more than that.
            “I’m glad he didn’t,” Malfoy whispered, “because then you wouldn’t have existed. You would have been able to rely on your friends for help after you lost your memory. You wouldn’t have to come to me or feel like you should hide anything.”
            Harry pulled his left hand free and rubbed his forehead. Malfoy’s eyes went to his scar once, then came back to Harry’s.
            “That’s a horrible thing to say,” Harry muttered after a moment. “You’re glad that I was an evil person and that I’m drifting away from my friends?”
            “I think they need time to grieve. They’ll probably come back to you after they start absorbing that he’s dead instead of just gone for a while. The same way they would pick up their lives at some point if your body had died.”
            “You’re a wonderful comforter, Malfoy, really.”
            Harry tried to pull his right hand free, but Malfoy turned so that he was pinning Harry’s wrist to the couch arms with his own wrist. Harry eyed him.
            “I don’t only want to comfort you,” said Malfoy. “I want you to understand me. Did you really never question this when I offered to help you before?”
            “Of course I bloody did! But then you told me you had an obsession with getting inside Old Harry’s head and figuring out how it worked. Are you saying it wasn’t that? That it was something else?”
            Harry groaned. His head was throbbing, and the last thing he wanted was to investigate some new reason Malfoy would have wanted to help him when he’d thought that whole thing was over and settled.
            “It’s more than that,” Malfoy said. “But I never knew it until you came back to life.”
            “I’m not—you realize I’m not dead, right?”
            “The one who was alive before wasn’t the real you. This you. He was a lonely, angry man who kept making the wrong decisions and then did new things he thought were wrong to get out of that bind, instead of just stopping himself from doing them. Or confessing to his friends, with consequences that we already saw.”
            “I would have thought you’d approve of what Old Harry did,” Harry said, frowning at Malfoy.
            “I could have approved of it if he had simply let himself go with Dark magic,” said Malfoy, rolling his eyes a little. “Or given up the obsession with getting himself back to ‘goodness’ and just done the ‘evil’ things that made him comfortable and let him do his job. But he wasn’t like me—comfortable with being Dark. He wanted to be something else, and he didn’t have the strength to be, and half the time he blamed other people for corrupting him, and he whined. It was pathetic.”
            “Right. Okay. That still isn’t an answer about what’s supposedly different with the way you look at me.”
            “I didn’t know until you were here. But I find someone who has some of the qualities that he did but doesn’t whine all the time, who has the strength to solve his own problems, who looks at me as if I wasn’t a means to an end or a Dark wizard he loathes himself for spending time with…”
            Harry looked at Malfoy, waiting for the last words. There had to be more words coming, right? No one would leave a sentence like that and then just look at him.
            “Intensely attractive,” Malfoy whispered. “Intensely.”
            Harry shuddered once. He felt as though someone had reached out and run a hand up his arm and made all the little hairs there stand on end.
            On the one hand, he knew he’d once been attracted to men.
            On the other hand, he didn’t think he was. Maybe that was something that had just belonged to Old Harry.
            On the first hand, he was shivering now.
            On the second, maybe that was only because Malfoy had been the only person to tell him something like this since he woke up. Even Ginny had just told him they were already in love and assumed that love would come back somehow, instead of telling him the reasons she was attracted to him.
            “I, um, we have things to do. I can’t—give in.”
            “I was telling you the truth,” Malfoy said, his eyes sparkling now with a mischief that Harry had never seen in them. It wasn’t malicious or designed to get someone else in trouble (at least, he thought so). “And I think the same is true about your friends. They’ll come back once they’ve got used to the idea of their friend being dead and the idea that they’ll have to establish new bonds with you instead of just waiting until your memory comes back.”
            “They knew that.”
            “They didn’t realize it.”
            Harry grimaced in acknowledgment and said, “But I still—Malfoy, I don’t want to go to bed with you or anything. Sorry,” he added.
            Malfoy didn’t pull back or look offended. “Things can change,” he said. “I’ll see if they will.”
            “You sound as if you mean you’ll be hanging around me until they do,” Harry muttered.
            “I want to see what happens,” Malfoy repeated. “Believe me, I know the point at which I’ll give up and decide that it’s not worth it to wait for something that will never happen. But that point isn’t here yet.” He smiled at Harry and abruptly pulled away from him. “If you’re not going to be arrested today, perhaps we can go through some of those letters and Pensieve memories you have and decide what we should do about them?”
            Harry stood up slowly. He gave another little shiver as he watched Malfoy move away in the direction of the study, and answered absently when he called.
            He still didn’t think he was really attracted to Malfoy. Not the same way he’d once been to Ginny, or even Rob, from what they’d said.
            But Malfoy was the only person who seemed to like the new Harry, the person Harry had become and was probably going to be for the rest of his life.
            And that at least made Harry want to see what happened, too.
*
SP777: Although you could say it gets worse before it gets better…yes.
moon: Yes. Help who accepts him as a different person, which is what he wants most of all.
Severus1snape: Thanks!
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The Dust of Water