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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20634 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 22
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Three—Broken into a New World
            “Try one more time.”
            Kingsley’s voice was gentle. Harry swallowed and nodded, then faced the broken pieces of his holly wand, and tried to remember exactly how it had felt to repair it all those years ago, after the Battle of Hogwarts. Finally, he tried to feel his way to the power in the Elder Wand, which should be practically humming in his hand, so he could actually use it.
            “Reparo!” he finally shouted when he thought he had it, and aimed the Elder Wand at the broken pieces on the desk in the middle of Kingsley’s office.
            Nothing happened. The Elder Wand sagged in his hand, and the gathered power poured away like water over a cascade. Harry slumped back into the wall and shook his head.
            “And you’re sure that someone else couldn’t have mastered this wand?” asked Kingsley for the fifth time. “Kelvin, perhaps, because he broke your old wand?”
            In answer, Harry turned and cast an Incendio at the fireplace. He cast it wordlessly, even though he generally preferred not to do that. The flames that roared up had a tinge of white and blue on the edges.
            “Right, then,” said Kingsley faintly, his eyes locked on the hearth. He turned back to Harry. “Why do you think it’s reacting this way?”
            Harry chuckled without humor and raked his fingers through his hair. “Something my other self did during the last ten years? Because I’m the Master of Death and the wand’s decided that its loyalty is to me? Because it realizes I don’t want to use it and so it refuses to fix my old wand?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s just too many things it could be.”
            “Right.” Kingsley cleared his throat uneasily. “I probably don’t have to tell you this, but it would be best to keep this under wraps for right now.”
            “You don’t have to tell me that.”
            “Right,” Kingsley repeated. He turned his head and spent a moment fiddling with his papers. Harry watched him. Then Kingsley turned back and said “You’re not going to be brought up on charges for cutting off Jansen’s hand. It can be fixed. Besides, we can get good information from him, I think.”
            “I should hope not. When they were the ones who broke into my house and took my house-elf hostage.”
            Kingsley looked at the floor. “I thought I would relieve your mind. You know nothing about this situation is simple, Harry.”
            It’s not as complicated as you’re making it. But Harry knew that he wouldn’t get anything out of snapping at Kingsley, so he nodded. “All right. Is there any way I can get an Auror to examine my defenses and figure out how Kelvin and Jansen were able to come in?”
            Kingsley shifted and shuffled some more papers. “I already sent someone to look. The news…I’m sorry, Harry. It’s not good.”
            “Just tell me.” Harry had decided that he was sick of other people keeping secrets from him, the same way he was tired of keeping them.
            “The defenses themselves hadn’t failed or been pierced. I did ask the Aurors to look for special exemptions that you might have built or had built into them for Kelvin and the like, but there were none of those, either.” Kingsley met his eyes for a moment and turned his head away. “The defenses were weakened from the inside. If someone practices Dark Arts enough in a building, then that magic can eat through the protections like acid, and it’s simple enough to take them down after that.”
            Harry sat down a little hard on the edge of the desk, next to his broken wand. Kingsley watched him and went on reciting the words. It seemed it was easier for him to speak them than it had been.
            “The rooms we use to show trainees curses here are shielded so that won’t happen to them. So is the Department of Mysteries. But the shielding is difficult to put in place and expensive to get, and you—I mean, the man you were—probably wouldn’t have been able to do it without alerting someone.”
            “And he was all about not alerting people,” Harry whispered. His head had a dull throb in the back of it.
            Kingsley nodded. “They did what tests they could without having the wand that probably cast those spells with them.” He eyed the holly wand, then turned away again and found some absorbing sights in his paperwork. “They were able to determine years of use, at least, and in multiple rooms. And not all the spells were the sort of curses you would cast at invaders, either.”
            “They wouldn’t be.” Harry sighed and shook his head. “What you’re saying is that it’s not safe for me to stay there right now.”
            “I’m afraid not, no.”
            “Okay.” Harry stood up. He wondered for a second if he should say this in front of Kingsley, but Ron would probably just tell him if Harry didn’t. “Then I’ll get a few things I need and go stay in Malfoy Manor for the duration.”
            “What?”
            “I’ll get a few things I need and—”
            “I heard that part. I understood that part. That part makes sense.” Kingsley made a rough sweep with his hand. Harry found himself wondering if he meant to take off someone’s head; Harry had to duck under it, anyway. “But why would you want to go stay with Malfoy? I thought you’d be with Ron and Hermione.”
            Harry sighed. “They’re my best friends. But I still need time to get used to being around them in their house again. There’s so many memories I should have of their kids and them and jokes they had and photographs on the walls and holidays, and I just don’t. Malfoy has been helping me.”
            “How?” Then Kingsley’s face picked up a pitying expression. “Harry, I think you have to give up hope that he’ll brew a potion that can cure your brain damage. The Healers have tried for years, and they’ve never managed it. Just because Malfoy is a Potions brewer with a good reputation doesn’t mean he can do it.”
            “It’s still my best chance.” Harry hesitated, then decided he had to give one part of the truth. It would shock Kingsley less later if he did. “And he’s been kind. He’s willing to treat me like a different person.”
            “Is he someone you—your older self—knew?”
            “I don’t know how well,” Harry responded honestly. Among other things, he still didn’t know if his older self had realized how obsessive Malfoy was about him and used that to manipulate Malfoy, or if he had been ignorant, or if he had lied to himself about the level of Malfoy’s attraction. “But he’s someone who can see the new me.”
            Kingsley gave a long, subdued sigh. “I understand, Harry. And Malfoy Manor does have all sorts of protections on it.”
            “It does.” Harry nodded and stood. “I appreciate it, Kingsley. Let me know if you need me to come in and testify.” He turned towards the door.
            “Harry.”
            Harry turned around again. Kingsley was sitting with one hand massaging his brow as if he’d need to go and get a headache potion in a minute. Harry gave him a tentative smile.
            “This is confusing. Legally, morally…” Kingsley let his voice trail off. “But I will do my best to support you. I do not think you can trust Malfoy’s motives in the same way. So, if you feel you need to leave Malfoy Manor and the thought of the Weasleys is still too much for you, my house is always open.”
            Harry felt a sharp ache at the moment that he had forgotten the whole of his friendship with Kingsley, or Old Harry’s friendship with Kingsley. And even then, he had to wonder how much Old Harry had been lying to his boss. “I’ll remember that. Thank you.”
*
            Malfoy was waiting in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, sipping a cup of tea that he must have made himself, since Kreacher was still in St. Mungo’s. That realization made Harry stop and stare blankly at him.
            Malfoy rose briskly to his feet. “You can’t stay here, It’s not safe.”
            “I know. Kingsley told me about the Dark Arts rotting the protections.” Harry shook his head a little. “What are you doing here, though?”
            “Making sure that you come with me and not to one of your friends’ houses that would be far less sufficiently protected against someone like Kelvin.” Malfoy stepped up behind him and ushered him into the drawing room with a hand on the small of his back. Harry averted his eyes from the blood splashed on the stairs and bookcases. “Only pack what you need. I’ll stand guard while you do.”
            Harry sighed. This would make it easier. “Okay.” He started up the stairs.
            “What?”
            Harry had to smile, although he didn’t turn around, because that would give the game away. “What? Everything you said makes sense. Unless you’re trying to trick me, and why would you do that?” He kept climbing.
            “But you’re going to agree to come to the Manor without fussing about your friends or whether you should spend time with someone who you know also used Dark Arts?”
            Harry turned around and hung over the banister. Malfoy was staring straight at him with such a lost expression on his face that Harry lost the impulse to smile. Yes, his old self had probably manipulated Malfoy, and even after the support Malfoy had offered him in the last fortnight, he apparently expected Harry to turn down an invitation to spend time with him.
            “I thought about it when I was in the Ministry. Your house is safer, and you’re the only one who I can trust who—won’t try to look at me and see the shadows of Old Harry. He lied to you, too, but you can accept that better than they can right now.”
            Malfoy stood up slowly. The lost expression left his face. Harry couldn’t discern what one had replaced it, though. And he didn’t think it was just the dim light that usually filled the Black house.
            “Of course,” said Malfoy softly a second later. He inclined his head. “Don’t bring much. Your material wants can be seen to by my house-elves.”
            Harry blinked, nodded, and went to fetch the Pensieve, the papers he’d found in the Shadow Vault, and a few books from the Black library that might be useful. He wondered for a second if something profound had passed between him and Malfoy. It felt like it, felt like something big had swum under the surface and ruffled it into different shapes.
            But there were other things he couldn’t worry about right now. He filled two trunks and shrank them. He started when the spell worked faster than before, and glared at the Elder Wand.
            That was another problem, and one that he might be able to address in Malfoy’s house better than by himself.
*
            Harry turned to Malfoy the second they entered the Manor, but Malfoy shook his head authoritatively and summoned elves to take Harry’s trunks up to a room.
            “Not now, Potter. You haven’t eaten, have you? I won’t have you fainting from hunger in the middle of one explanation and banging your head. Then we’d have to take you back to St. Mungo’s, and the whole thing is a waste of time and blood.”
            Harry blinked, and Malfoy took his arm and led him along a corridor done all in dark, steel-like blue to a dining room with cavorting lions on the walls and ceiling. Harry stared around. “Was some ancestor of yours a Gryffindor?”
            “Someone who had a lot of Gryffindor allies, rather,” said Malfoy calmly, and pulled out a chair. Harry waited for him to sit down, only for Malfoy to give him a patient look, and Harry realized he was apparently supposed to sit down instead. He did, and felt the surreal sensation of Malfoy pushing the chair back in for him.
            “Do you have any particular preferences for lunch?”
            Lunch? Harry looked up at the sunlight falling through the windows, and realized that it did look like it was afternoon. Between the Ministry and St. Mungo’s and the lack of windows in most of the rooms, he’d lost track of time. “Food like I had at Hogwarts or like Kreacher makes is good,” he said, a little helplessly.
            Malfoy turned and clapped his hands. There was a moment of silence, and then plates began to appear on the table. Harry gaped. There were whole wheels of cheese and giant jugs of tea and a pile of ham that seemed to have come from six pigs and porridge steaming with honey on it and bread as white as paper.
            “Is it acceptable?”
            There was that thing moving under the surface again. Harry turned back to Malfoy, hard as it was to look away from the food. “Yes, more than,” he said, and poured the tea into a cup that had appeared spontaneously in front of him. After that came a fork and spoon and two or three different knives. Harry decided to ignore the differences between the knives and started cutting up some ham with the fork and the first one that came to hand.
            “Good.”
            Malfoy prowled around the table and sat down across from Harry, picking up a piece of bread to nibble, but otherwise watching him attentively. It was creepy, again, but Harry was too hungry to care much.
            And by the time Harry had filled his stomach, Malfoy had relaxed, sitting sideways with his feet dangling and most of a bowl of porridge empty in front of him. He was drizzling honey over it with a lazy motion, and as Harry watched, he even raised the honey spoon and licked most of it off.
            “Full?” Malfoy watched Harry with a tilted head and quivering eyebrows. Harry wasn’t sure what he’d said that was so funny, or what he’d done. Knowing Malfoy, it was more likely to be something he’d done. But then Malfoy swung his legs back over the edge of the chair and reached for Harry’s hand. “We need to discuss what you’re going to do in the future.”
            “Well, for the next few days, stay here—”
            “I didn’t mean the next few days,” Malfoy interrupted. “Further in the future than that. Let’s assume for the moment that the Ministry isn’t going to try you for crimes you don’t remember and that your friends will eventually come around and accept who you are now. What else do you want to do?”
            Harry clenched his free hand down on the table. “You just have to ask the questions I don’t know the answers to, don’t you?”
            “You’re here to come up with the answers. And I’m here to offer you help.”
            Harry spent some time staring at the remains of his food. Then it vanished, so he couldn’t even do that. He looked back up at Malfoy, who had remained as still as the gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office, only his eyes shining.
            “I don’t want to be an Auror. I don’t think I’d want to go through the training again, and not remember who my friends were, and risk the chance of being cursed with something else, maybe something worse, by another Dark wizard.”
            “An excellent choice,” said Malfoy immediately, in a soft, inflectionless voice. “Are there any talents that you think you could develop?”
            “Flying. But I don’t want to be a professional Quidditch player, either.”
            “You’re past the peak age when they would take you, anyway,” said Malfoy, and Harry felt a leap of indignation in his throat, before he remembered he was twenty-eight, not eighteen. “What other skills do you have?”
            Harry sighed and muttered, “Hunting Horcruxes. Being the ridiculous Master of Death, whatever that is.” Malfoy gave a squeeze to his fingers and another to his wrist, which at least calmed Harry down and helped him think. “I think—I’m not sure how skilled I am in Defense.”
            Malfoy leaned back in his seat with a slow, languid motion, and gave Harry a look as slow and disbelieving.
            “I’m good at countercurses,” Harry said irritably, waving his hand. “And I know something about Dark creatures because of the year we had Lupin as our professor. But I know almost nothing about formal dueling, I won’t remember all the subtleties I learned as part of Auror training, and I don’t know theory because that wasn’t the focus of our Defense classes.”
            “It was in the one that Professor Snape taught.”
            “It was?” Harry stared at Malfoy, who turned up his disbelieving look another notch. Harry hadn’t even known he could do that. “But—that can’t be right. I mean, I know what theory’s like. It’s hard and knotty and it’s something you have to spend time studying with books that weigh a stone. I understood what Snape was talking about. That wasn’t theory.”
            “You have such a good grasp of Defense theory that you have no idea when you’re hearing it. You swallow it like water.” Malfoy leaned forwards. “You could do worse than try to catch up on the things that you’re missing and then offer private lessons in dueling. Or tutor children who are bound for Hogwarts. Or work with the rare children whose parents choose to keep them out of Hogwarts for one reason or another. There are finally some people waking up and realizing that Hogwarts is losing its reputation as the premiere school in wizarding Europe. The procession of poor Defense teachers we had is part of the reason. Durmstrang has pulled far ahead. Beauxbatons is leaving us in the dust. I’ve heard rumors that the Ministry plans to start recruiting French wizards for fields that require Defense NEWT’s, in fact.”
            Harry whistled under his breath. “Would people come to me because they really want to be trained and need it, though? Or would they do it because I’m Harry Potter?”
            “What does that matter?”
            “Because I want to work with people who actually want and need to learn, not people who just want to fall all over me and worship my ‘heroism.’”
            “Do you still plan on paying Galleons back to some of the people you blackmailed?”
            Harry blinked at the random change of topic. “If I can determine that they were just unfortunate and not actually criminals.”
            “That’ll take a lot of your Galleons, I should think. And you might have legal expenses. And you’ll need funds to buy books to study, food, clothes…” Malfoy smirked a little. “I suggest you get over your scruples about whether you can serve the people who come to you for tutoring in Defense.”
            Harry tapped the fingers of his free hand on the table. (Malfoy still had hold of the other). A possible objection did occur to him. “Maybe I shouldn’t make a career out of dueling people while I still have the Elder Wand. It could be disastrous if someone conquered me and took the wand’s allegiance away.”
            “Let’s test whether that’s going to happen, shall we?” Malfoy rose fluidly to his feet, still keeping his grip on Harry’s wrist. Harry stood with him and tried not to get too far away. Malfoy was already pivoting to walk out the door of the dining room.
            “What do you mean?”
            “Duel me. If I win the Elder Wand from you, I promise to give it back.”
            Harry ignored the teasing smile Malfoy shot him. He actually did believe that. “But what if you hurt me?”
            Malfoy spun and pinned him for a moment to the wall of the Manor, and Harry’s breath caught thickly at the expression on Malfoy’s face. His eyes burned as if he was charging into battle.
            “I don’t think I can,” Malfoy whispered. “But I want to learn if it’s possible. And I want to see what you can do to me.”
            “You need help, Malfoy, you know that?”
            “Look at how hard you’re breathing, Harry,” Malfoy murmured, easing closer to him and laughing softly under his breath. “And tell me I’m the only one.”
            Harry didn’t need much time to consider, honestly. He reached out and caught hold of Malfoy’s wrist in turn, and Malfoy shot his eyes back and forth from Harry’s hand to Harry’s eyes, dizzyingly fast and bright.
            “Let’s duel, then.”
*
moodysavage: Right. Plus, Ron and Hermione can’t react to Harry exactly as they would have in Hogwarts, because this Harry has also changed since he woke up and realized his memories were gone.
Severus1snape: Well, Harry knows Draco is attracted to him, so he’s much more aware of gestures like that now. But that doesn’t mean he’s committed to being Draco’s lover or anything like that.
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The Dust of Water