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.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Two—On the Roll
            “I think you should have a seat, Potter. That would show everyone that you’re going to cooperate and you don’t have any hostile intent towards us.”
            Harry thought he could see, as he slowly eased towards the couch in front of the fireplace, why Kelvin was the sort of person who brewed Enthrallment Potions to enslave people he’d never met. He enjoyed this. The other man remained motionless, other than his head swiveling to track Harry.
            “That’s right.” Kelvin aimed his wand at Harry and smiled. “Do you have any memories left of the secrets you learned?”
            “No.”
            Harry didn’t think he would mention the memories gleaned from Malfoy’s potion. Partial truths would do more harm than good at this point. And he didn’t have enough knowledge of Kelvin to say what would make the man believe him and what would make him kill Harry. Then there was his friend, at his side.
            “I think you should give my friend back his wand first,” said Kelvin, moving his own wand up and down Kreacher’s side. More blood traced the movement, forming a curlicue pattern that reminded Harry sickeningly of patterns of frost on the windows of Hogwarts.
            Harry kept himself from snarling in outrage. Kelvin would only laugh at him. He tossed the wand to the blond wizard, who grabbed it and moved back a step behind Kelvin. Harry eyed him for a second, and the way he stood in relation to the bookcases in the room.
            A small idea formed in his head, only to be dashed when Kelvin added, “And I think we should have your wand, just to be safe.”
            Without his wand he couldn’t do anything. Maybe Old Harry would have put defenses in the house that he could trigger just by speaking, but once again, Harry had no idea what they were. And Kreacher was the only one who could have told him.
            “No,” Harry said.
            Kelvin only smiled. The line of blood still followed his wand down Kreacher’s side. “Are you so eager to see your elf die? That would be proper of you. Of course a real wizard values his wand more than his friends. But I didn’t think you did.”
            Seething, Harry pulled his wand out from under his thigh and tossed it to Kelvin. Kelvin caught it and examined it curiously for a second. Catching Harry’s eye, he smiled and shook his head. “It’s strange to me that a wand which defeated so many Dark wizards doesn’t look extraordinary. But then, you’re no longer the same wizard you were, are you? Perhaps the man who sought me out and blackmailed me was the only extraordinary one in the situation.” He lowered Harry’s wand to the floor by his feet, where he could step on it easily, Harry noticed. “How disappointing, that I won’t get to see the look on his face by torturing you.”
            “And that doesn’t change your intentions? That you won’t get to take revenge on the man who actually hurt you?”
            Kelvin laughed gently. “I think my colleague is more disappointed about that than I am. But it’s still the same body I’ll watch writhe in pain and the same eyes I’ll watch widen with fear. For me, that’s enough.” He shrugged and finally took his wand away from Kreacher’s side, to Harry’s relief. “Well. Now we shall discuss what we’re going to do with you.”
            “You promised we could do what I wanted,” the blond man whispered. Harry shuddered. His voice had a rattling hiss to it that reminded him of the way his own voice had sounded after riding the dragon out of Gringotts, when he’d been breathing in smoke.
            “Yes, I did. Although I’m in charge here.”
            The blond wizard lowered his gaze and said nothing. Harry watched his hands go white-knuckled around his wand, and thought he was unlikely to be more merciful than Kelvin.
            “I suppose you’ve also forgotten the existence of any treasures in the house and the places you put them? Of course you have. You seem to have done the thing very thoroughly. My congratulations.”
            Harry stared at Kelvin, blinking. But Kelvin didn’t say anything else, standing there as if he was content for Harry to figure it out, and finally Harry asked, “You think I got myself cursed on purpose?”
            “Why not? You grew increasingly unhappy with your own power in the world of Dark wizards, during the last few years. You even tried to persuade me to turn myself over to the Aurors. I think you realized that you would never be happy the way you were—but you also didn’t want to simply kill yourself, as that would have left grieving friends behind. You always cared more about your friends than yourself.”
            Harry grimaced. There was another piece of the puzzle of Old Harry, then. He had done a lot of what he’d done because he thought his friends would otherwise be disappointed in him.
            In doing so, he’d never considered that his friends might want to know the truth about him and help him more than they’d want to be protected.
            “So I’m more impressed than I should be, at how you figured out that a Killing Curse would be enough to damage the memories in your brain but still leave you alive. You never asked me for the kinds of intricate Healing books that you’d need. How did you arrange it?”
            Harry just stared at Kelvin, and a second later, Kelvin winked and tapped a finger against his forehead. “Right. You don’t remember. Do excuse me, dear Potter. It’s hard to keep that in mind myself.”
            “Can we get on with it?” the blond wizard asked. He had moved a little to the side, around Kelvin, but not far enough from the bookshelves to avoid falling books. Harry wondered if he would be able to windlessly Summon the books down, but he didn’t think so; he had never been able to really rely on his accidental magic.
            “I suppose we can. There’s not much fun to be had in taunting him if he doesn’t remember.” Kelvin sighed and aimed his wand right between Harry’s eyes. Harry clenched his hands on the couch. He would have to move in a minute, Kreacher or no Kreacher. He couldn’t help anyone if he died. “I’ll cast the Binding Spell, and then you can use whatever curses you want, Jansen. All right?”
            Harry flung himself to the right at once. Kelvin laughed, sounding delighted, even as Jansen cursed and his spell blew up the couch Harry had left. Harry squinted through drifting feathers and cloth to see Kelvin turn and take a very deliberate step.
            Harry’s holly wand broke beneath his foot.
            At the same moment, Kreacher began to scream. Harry couldn’t see who was torturing him, Kelvin or Jansen. He only knew that the screaming cut through him, and so did the loss of his wand, and he screamed, too, a high, hoarse shout that actually startled both Dark wizards into pausing to stare at him.
            Harry charged them, not knowing what he was going to do. They could stop him before he even got close. He only knew that he was going to hammer them with his fists and do as much damage to them as he could before he died.
            His need and his outrage churned inside him, and his magic lashed out, undirected, screaming too, trying to break the cocoon they had Kreacher wrapped in and free him, trying to find some way that he could punish Kelvin and Jansen for what they’d done—
            Something hit him in the palm. A wand. Probably Jansen’s wand, but Harry didn’t care. He slashed down with it.
            Kelvin went flying as the wordless Blasting Curse hit him, and smashed into the stairs. Jansen backed up in front of Harry, his eyes wide. He still had his wand, but Harry snarled a Shield Charm and the first curse deflected off it. Jansen turned and tried to jab his wand into the cocoon around Kreacher, but Harry barked a spell he hadn’t thought of in two years. “Sectumsempra!”
            The curse hit Jansen in the arm, and then he was falling in one direction and his hand, with his wand, in another. He was screaming. Harry didn’t care. He hurried up to the cocoon and tried as delicately as he could to cut the bandages off it.
            Kreacher came out limp and bloodied, his eyeballs twitching and rolling under his eyelids. Harry held the wand against him and muttered, “Episkey,” the only real healing spell he knew.
            He couldn’t fix everything, he knew that, but at least a few of Kreacher’s wounds visibly closed and Kreacher’s eyes stopped twitching so desperately. Harry followed that up with “Somnium,” and Kreacher fell asleep. Harry laid him down on the floor and wrapped him in a Shield Charm before he turned around.
            Jansen was crawling after his fallen wrist with his severed stump trailing blood all over the floor. Kelvin was back on his feet, but bent to one side as though he’d cracked a rib when he hit the stairs. His dark eyes had fixed on Harry and were shining with hatred.
            “You,” he whispered, then shook himself. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Harry started towards him, but Kelvin had already begun to shimmer. In seconds, he dissolved into the colors of a Portkey and was gone.
            Harry stood there, panting, then made his way over and knelt next to Jansen, feeling reluctance in every line of his body. Did he have to do this? Would anyone really care if a Dark wizard died of blood loss after he’d been trying to kill Harry?
            I would care. And I don’t want to become the kind of person Old Harry was, even if it’s just for an enemy.
            Harry cast a Sealing Spell on Jansen’s wrist, probably not ideal, but at least it made a seal pop into existence over the stump and stopped the blood from flowing. Then Harry Stunned him and turned around to find the Floo powder. He would Floo St. Mungo’s first and turn Jansen over to them. Then he would find out what in the world Healers could do for Kreacher. And only then would he call the Aurors.
            He glanced at his holly wand, and then away. The loss twinged in him as if he had been the one, instead of Jansen, who’d lost a hand.
            That reminded him to glance at the wand he still held. It must be Kelvin’s, but—
            The cold twinge returned and filled Harry until it felt as if he was trying to swim underwater. He swallowed, reminded himself he could still breathe, and then consciously controlled his hand into reaching for the Floo powder and tossing it into the fire. His voice was under control, too. He could still croak, “St. Mungo’s!”
            Then he sat back and stared at the wand. He had expected not to recognize it, because of course he’d never handled Kelvin’s wand before, and he hadn’t even got a good look at the wood it was made of before the duel started. But he did know this one.
            No.
            It was the Elder Wand.
*
            “Harry.”
            Hermione’s voice was breathless. Harry hardly managed to turn around in time before she was flinging herself at him and squeezing him. Harry squeezed back, bowing his head and shuddering. He was most concerned about Kreacher; the Healers had acted like they didn’t know anything about treating house-elves, even though they’d taken him into a ward. Still, only now was it really hitting him that he could have died.
            He’d faced that plenty of times. But he’d had the Horcrux quest to sustain him then, and the hope of living a normal life after the war. And Ginny, and the Weasleys, and—
            Too many other things to name. Too many things lost to him now. Or maybe it was possible for his body to remember what it felt like to nearly die multiple times even if his memory didn’t hold those things anymore.
            “Harry? What are you thinking of?”
            Harry blinked a little and turned back to face Hermione. “Whether or not I can continue to live this life,” he said. “Whether Kreacher is going to be all right.” He paused and looked up and down the waiting room, but there was no one else nearby. He swallowed and took out the wand.
            “Kelvin broke my wand. Now I have to use this.”
            Someone else might not have recognized it, but he could count on Hermione for that. She paled the instant she looked at the wand, and then she shut her eyes and shook her head. “You can’t really—I don’t think you’ve used it for ten years,” she whispered.
            But there was a wisp of doubt in her voice, and Harry knew why. She had thought she knew Harry Potter, the way he was. But he had hidden so much of himself from her. That might have included using the Elder Wand, too.
            “I know,” Harry said, and slid the wand back into his sleeve. Right now, anyway, it didn’t feel more powerful than any other wand he’d touched. It was quiet, as if the way he had used it earlier had satisfied it. “But I really wanted to save Kreacher. And they’d broken my wand. And that was the wand that came to me. I thought I’d stolen it from one of them at first. But—” He shook his head.
            “Them? Who were they?”
            “Kelvin. You know who he is?” Hermione nodded. “And Kelvin called the other one Jansen. I have no idea who he is or how they got into the house, except that I must have some weakness somewhere. What I do know is that I cut off Jansen’s hand, so I had to bring him here. But I contacted the Aurors, and they’ll be the first ones to know if he wakes up, so they can take him into custody.”
            “I think I might have heard Ron mention a Jansen once, but I can’t remember the context.” Hermione sagged back with a small sigh, as if she was exhausted. “Merlin, Harry, this is going to make things harder.”
            “I know.” Harry shut his eyes. “But I had to defend my life, and Kreacher’s life, and if I had it to do over again, I would still prefer—having this wand to dying.”
            Hermione clasped his hand once and squeezed. Then she said abruptly, “What are you doing here, Malfoy?”
            Harry snapped his head around. Malfoy stood in the doorframe of the waiting room, leaning against the side of it as if he was about to start sarcastically applauding. His gaze ran up and down Harry for a second before he snorted and looked away. “You seem to be doing all right, Potter.”
            “What are you doing here?”
            Harry put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder and held her still. “Hermione, will you go and ask them how Kreacher is? They won’t tell me if they can actually cure a house-elf or not.”
            “I know when you’re trying to get rid of me, Harry. I’m not as stupid as you assume.”
            “I’m not assuming.” Harry had to admit that that tactic would have worked better on the Hermione he remembered best, though. He looked at her as steadily as he could. “I do want to know how Kreacher is, and I want to talk to Malfoy in private.”
            “Then you could have asked.”
            “Go away, Granger.”
            Malfoy’s words were edged with poison, and Harry shuddered to imagine how bad this would become if he let them continue. He held Hermione’s eyes demandingly, and she sniffed and muttered, “You still could have asked. But I’ll go and see.”
            Harry smiled. “Thanks, Hermione. You’re a life-saver.”
            Malfoy stepped aside so Hermione could get through the door, then moved in, and shut it, and stared at Harry.
            “I tried to Floo you, and neither you nor the house-elf answered. You might have gone somewhere, but Kreacher would never have left his house. Tell me what happened.”
            “You still haven’t told me how you knew to come to St. Mungo’s instead of contacting Ron and Hermione, or something.”
            “Please, Potter.” Malfoy had the audacity to roll his eyes. “If something happens to you, it always happens with force. I knew you’d probably be wounded, or more likely, the house-elf would. So I came here.”
            Harry wanted to ask how much time he’d spent searching the hospital before he found Harry, but the forbidding look on Malfoy’s face didn’t encourage that sort of joking. He sighed and sat down.
            “When I came home from Ron and Hermione’s today, two wizards were there. That potions-brewer, Kelvin, I told you about, and another blond one called Jansen. They’d taken Kreacher prisoner. They told me they were going to take revenge on me, and they took my wand.” Another shudder ran through Harry. He was feeling the loss of his holly wand more keenly now, as though someone had taken away his arm. “Then I realized that I would get killed if I just sat there, and I attacked them. Kelvin broke my wand.”
            Malfoy was by his side in an instant. Harry looked up at him and found Malfoy resting his hand on his forehead, then on Harry’s wrist. His expression had gone from wide-eyed to puzzled.
            “I don’t feel the disturbance in your magic that you should have.”
            “I—I had another wand in my hand when I attacked them.”
            “You conquered one of theirs?”
            “I wish.” For the second time that night, Harry slid his sleeve back so someone could see the Elder Wand. Part of him wondered if he was trusting Malfoy too much, but on the other hand, this was the wizard who had once, if unknowingly, owned the wand, too. Harry thought he could trust him to understand the gravity of this situation.
            Malfoy stared at the Deathstick without looking away. Then he nodded and looked up.
            “This changes things.”
            “I know. Merlin knows how it’s going to affect my magic.”
            “No. I mean—there’s something else I could help you with.”
            “Another potion to help me recover my memories?”
            Malfoy shook his head. “I told you, that can only be done once. But this is a fundamental change in your magic. I can create a potion that will show you how it’s changed, and that should include how resisting the Killing Curse affected your magic.” He paused, his eyes holding Harry’s. “And there are some beliefs that getting a new wand affects a wizard’s personality and the path they’ll take in life.”
            “Oh, great. As if I wasn’t in the middle of enough transition.” Harry sighed and let his head fall back against the wall. “Let me guess. You’ve never had the chance to study a wizard who’s doing that before, and you want the chance to peer at me.”
            “No.”
            Harry looked back at Malfoy. Malfoy was smiling at him.
            “I’m happy for you because this will help you leave the old Harry Potter further and more firmly behind.” Malfoy took his hand and squeezed. “To become a new person. One who might be able to convince even the most stubborn holdouts that he’s different from the man he used to be.”

            Harry said nothing, but covered Malfoy’s hand with his, and they sat there comfortably enough until Hermione came to tell him that Kreacher was expected to heal. Then Malfoy stood and left.
            But he didn’t apologize for his presence. And the hand he glanced along Harry’s shoulder was done right in front of Hermione, who didn’t argue, either, although she pinched her lips together hard enough to make Harry wince a little.
            She didn’t say anything, though. She sat down next to him, and took his hand, and held it tightly until the Aurors came to talk to him.
*
Severus1snape: Me either! I think Harry’s loyalty to Kreacher is even stronger here because Kreacher is one of the few people who hasn’t cared that much about the way he changed.
moodysavage: Yes, but those memories are ten years old. I don’t think you can blame them for being slow to remember what Harry was like then. I would be hard-pressed to remember exactly what my parents were like ten years ago, if the same thing suddenly happened to them.
moon: Thank you!
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The Dust of Water