Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 23
- 24
- 25
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Four—Bear the Thunder
            “My Lord, Lestrange has returned with a message that you will want to hear,” said Fenrir Greyback, crouching in front of Harry and looking adoringly up at him as if that could make Harry want to pet him.
            Harry straightened. He had chosen a chair from the dining room as his “throne,” and used Transfiguration to alter it so that it would look like what the Death Eaters expected him to sit in when they came through the doors into this room. That had included turning it into stone and putting a curling snake around the back, continuing down onto the arms, but also adding a subtle Cushioning Charm. He didn’t want his arse to be numb if he had to move swiftly when a Death Eater challenged him.
            “Send him in.” He added a hiss to the s on the first word, and saw Greyback shudder with something that looked like both fear and desire as he moved to obey.
            Parkinson, studying from a book on the other side of the room, gave him a significant look. Harry ignored her. He was keeping her, Draco, and Astoria with him in the room on a rotating basis, supposedly to make sure that they did as they were supposed to and he didn’t have to worry about treachery from them. But Parkinson was the only one who acted like it was an inconvenience all the time.
            Harry hoped she wouldn’t act like that for much longer. He couldn’t justify not punishing her if she acted pushy, at least not for long.
            Lestrange came limping in. His right ear was still mostly gone, of course, but the black mark had faded a little. Harry made sure to look at it fixedly, and then smirk, before he turned to Lestrange.
            “What news of the fools who think that this body belongs to Harry Potter?” he asked, and laughed as if he had made the funniest joke in the world. It was unnerving to hear the Death Eaters all break into laughter along with him, but he had heard and survived worse things, and he wasn’t going to let this get to him.
            “Longbottom gave me a message for the wizard he thinks is Potter, my Lord,” Lestrange said when the laughter had faded, and bowed to him. He held out a letter that Harry longed to simply Summon to him and read. Instead, he glared at it and performed a lot of the sorts of spells that would convince someone else he was paranoid about it. Then he Summoned it fast enough to make it rasp along Lestrange’s fingers so that he winced in pain.
            “Let us see what the lead fool says,” he murmured as he tore it open. He drew out the single sheet of parchment, and snorted when he saw it. “Dear Harry. I’m not sure why you’re letting a Death Eater deliver your messages.”
            The Death Eaters laughed, the way they were supposed to. Harry fixed a sneer on his face and read some more, now and then murmuring passages aloud so they could make fun of it. They were snorting and snuffling as loudly as they could, keeping anxious eyes fixed on Harry all the while to see what his mood was.
            Harry finally crumpled the parchment up in his hand and sighed. Neville had believed him. He had accepted that the deception was necessary for now, and had told Harry that the destruction of the Lightfinder had created irrational fear in the entire watching audience, which was what Harry had thought would happen. People were plunging this way and that, and the Prophet contained a dozen contradictory articles about what the Ministry had said the public should do.
            “Well,” said Harry, and adjusted his smile to make it darker and more twisted as he rose to his feet. “The deep interest that this message has stirred in me has made me certain we can take advantage of the fear inspired by another faithful servant of mine.” He swiveled towards the corner where Parkinson sat hunched over her back. “Parkinson!”
            She rose to her feet, her eyes on the floor and her fingers twitching wrathfully on the cover of her book. Harry nodded to her, and made his smile as carnivorous as possible. The others who wanted to be close to him and enjoy his favor should make sure they saw the price of doing so.
            “You wanted something, my Lord?” Parkinson could say it sullenly enough when you gave her a chance, Harry would give her that. She mumbled the words with her eyes on the floor.
            “Yes,” said Harry, and drew the last s out until he saw her flinch. Should have done that earlier, he thought, remorselessly. Parkinson was the one who would have to feign most of her emotions, since Astoria was already afraid and Draco had his masks in place from long training by his father, but that was the way it was. “You will write back to Longbottom in my place. Tell him that you want to meet him somewhere. Of your choosing.” Harry waved his hand as though the place couldn’t matter less to him.
            Parkinson’s head came up and she gave him a startled doe-expression, blinking. Harry stared back, and she wiped it clean in a moment. Harry hoped that had been fast enough to keep the Death Eaters from thinking of her as prey. “Why, my Lord? I mean, why me?” she added hastily, as some wands rose to point at her. “I think that Longbottom would suspect the trick if I met him. We were never close friends at Hogwarts or anything like that.”
            “And that is precisely why it should be you,” said Harry, in a bored tone, yawning. “I don’t care who does it, but I cannot waste my time writing to him on a regular basis.” He paused, then gave her a wicked smile. “You wanted to prove you were faithful to me, didn’t you?” he whispered.
            “You know I am, my Lord.” Parkinson’s eyes were on the Death Eaters as she spoke. Harry wished he could shake her into looking more trusting and smug. Trust that I’m doing the best I can to protect you, Parkinson. The only thing.
            “And yet, since we came here, all you do is read,” said Harry, and stared pointedly when Parkinson opened her mouth. She closed it a second later, probably remembering that no Death Eater objected to something the Dark Lord had told them to do. She nodded and stared at the floor.
            “Yes, my Lord,” she said.
            “What is the reason for that?” Harry brought his hand down sharply on the arm of his throne, and a spell he had cast nonverbally made the crack of breaking stone reverberate through the room. More than one person jumped. Harry smirked and leaned back, putting one hand beneath his chin in the spidery way that he remembered Voldemort doing. “You will do some writing now as well. Collate your notes. Write to the Longbottom boy. Set up the meeting. Pass it to me for my approval. You are dismissed. Go to the library.”
            “Yes, my Lord.” Parkinson picked up the rest of her things, bowed once, and ran. There was some subdued grinning from the Death Eaters, who probably liked the way that Harry’s last sentences to her had all been commands.
            I only hope I can keep coming up with new ways to convince them that I’m Voldemort, Harry thought, and turned around to stare at them. “What have you done to prove that you’re faithful?” he drawled. “Any research? Any clever plans to bring us back to power?”
            The grins ended at once, and some of the Death Eaters glanced at each other. Harry flowed to his feet and reached out to grip the arms of the chair, eyeing them grimly. “Well?” he whispered, and let his voice descend into a hoarse hiss.
            “I might have one, sir,” said the blond Death Eater who had come with Greyback to Grimmauld Place and knelt to him. Harry turned to her at once. He wished he was good at Legilimency, because that way he would know her name. He needed Draco here to tell him who was who and give him some method for making the names stick, because Harry was pretty awful at names.
            For now, though, he ought to be able to feign what he needed. “Do you?” he asked, and gave her a long, slow look. “And would you have contributed this plan to Lucius Malfoy, had I not returned?”
            She flushed a little, but didn’t back down. Harry thought she seemed smarter than many of them. Perhaps that was what had got her into a position where she dared to propose plans like this to Lord Voldemort, while the rest of them looked as if they were about to shit themselves. “I would have contributed it only if he could speak Parseltongue, my Lord,” she said. “Because this plan depends on someone being able to do that.”
            Harry hissed at her, speaking the simple sentence, “The wall is dirty,” while he pictured a snake in his mind. It made even the woman take a step back, and she wasn’t the only one who paled. Someone whimpered from the back of the room, and someone else swore. Harry grinned a skull’s grin and whispered, “I trust that will do? Or do you need another demonstration?” He barely exaggerated the s there, and it still made someone sag into another Death Eater.
            “No, my lord, that will do very well.” The woman bowed to him and straightened back up with a pale face but perfect poise. “There is a vault in Gringotts that is said to be guarded by gigantic vipers, not dragons. The vault was supposedly sealed by Slytherin himself, even though he didn’t own it. It contains—”
            “Is said to contain,” Harry interrupted, letting his disdain show. “Do you know how many stories I have heard of the treasures my illustrious ancestor buried?”
            The woman shook her head a little. “I will not presume on your numbers by guessing, my Lord,” she said. “But this legend is not one circulated by many people. One of my ancestors did research on it after finding a grimoire that described it, and described it in turn only in her diary. I would not have known of it had I not read the diary.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “I can do research as well as Parkinson can, my Lord.”
            Ah, the first hint of jealousy, Harry thought, and debated and then discarded the thought of saying it aloud. He leaned in with his hands folded beneath his chin and his eyes narrowed in thought, and hissed, “Tell me more.”
            Work as fast as you can, Pansy, Astoria. I don’t know how much more I can take of this acid eating my soul before I succumb.
*
            “Draco, come with me. I have a surprise for you.”
            Although he held the thought firmly in his mind that none of his father’s surprises in the past few years had ever benefited him, Draco couldn’t help the small spark of hope that leaped to life in his chest. There was the chance his father would at least include him so firmly in his plans that Draco could foil any that were a threat to Harry.
            It’s a good thing I’m not a Seer, he thought, as he dispatched the last bite of bread and stood up to follow Lucius through a grimy corridor . I would have been screaming at myself for even thinking of Potter as Harry a few years ago, let alone playing against my own father to support him.
            Lucius turned to look back at him, face as smooth as the skin in his promise sigil, and Draco forced himself to pay attention to the present moment. His father didn’t have skill in Legilimency, but he had always been able to tell before this when Draco had let his mind wander, and take advantage of it.
            “You should know,” said Lucius, as they turned into a room that Draco thought must have been another dining room, perhaps one where the family who’d owned the manor house entertained intimate friends, “that this binds you to work against as well as with the Dark Lord.”
            Draco hastily stepped backwards, but something invisible and smothering over the doorway sank into his body, anyway. It sputtered and sparked, and Draco felt a deep ache invading his muscles. He stretched his arms and hissed, and the sensation got worse for a moment, the way that some nutrient potions’ taste did, before fading entirely.
            “It wouldn’t have hurt so much if you hadn’t been intending to serve the Dark Lord,” said Lucius neutrally. “Should I be worried, Draco, that you have given your loyalty to someone who is not your father?”
            Draco seized his anger and flung it in the only direction he could. He looked up and spat, “Should I be worried that my father doesn’t trust me enough, so he has to bind me to work with him and possibly get myself killed when the Dark Lord discovers what he’s done? Or that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me he was free? Which of those is worse?”
            Lucius straightened a little. “I never said I didn’t trust you, Draco,” he began, in a tone that was probably supposed to be soothing.
            “You only implied it,” Draco said, and looked at the empty doorway. No, there was no trace there of whatever had caused the ache in his body. Well, that in itself was a kind of clue. A promise web would have left a tatter like a spiderweb behind, and some of the others Draco was familiar with would have made the wood look sooty. “Implied it, and did things that implied it.” He faced his father again.
            Lucius made a sudden step towards him. Draco didn’t seize his wand, but it was a near thing. And from the way Lucius’s hand closed on his elbow a second later and the way his voice sank into a fervent whisper, perhaps it would have been a good idea to try and hold his father off for a few minutes.
            “You have no idea what I am attempting to achieve for our family, Draco. You said a short time ago that I didn’t trust you. A secret ought to be payment for that, shouldn’t it?”
            Draco folded his arms and said as calmly as he could, “All I want to know is what the spell will do to me if he tortures me and I have to deny him secrets. Did you even think about the point that he’s a Legilimens and can get through my Occlumency?” He felt sweat break out beneath his arms just thinking about that, even though he knew Harry wouldn’t use Legilimency. “What happens then?”
            “The spell won’t punish you for information that’s forced from you,” said Lucius impatiently, waving one hand. “Only information that you try to volunteer.” While Draco was opening his mouth to make a point about how fucked up that was, Lucius went on speaking, tone hushed and intent. “The secret is what I was hoping to achieve with the Death Eaters before he arrived. A secret that he will not torture you to retrieve, because he thought I was resurrecting the Death Eaters for his benefit!”
            That is what Voldemort would have thought, Draco had to admit to himself. He tried not to flinch from speaking the name even in his thoughts, and studied his father for a second before he nodded. “That secret would sort of make up for it,” he conceded. “What were you trying to do, Father?”
            “I was going to whip them into a series of actions the Ministry would have to notice, then turn them in to the Aurors.” Lucius chuckled gently. “We would then become worthy of notice from the Light again, gain many of our political allies back, and have my sentence lifted. The Malfoy name would be clean once more.”
            Draco opened his mouth, and found he could say nothing. He didn’t think that had anything to do with the spell thrumming in the back of his muscles, either. It was the sheer audacity of the plan, and that Lucius had thought he could do it while keeping his intentions and complicity secret from all the other Death Eaters.
            “Do you think they would have cooperated with you?” he asked quietly, not sure what else he should say.
            “Of course not, not if they knew the plan.” Lucius gave him a crooked smile. Draco held back a shudder. The smile was crooked partially because of the state of his father’s mind, he thought, and his teeth, not because Lucius had meant it to be charming. “But they would have done as they have always done, committing themselves to stupid actions in the open that would be seen, and that would mean a chance to expose them to the Ministry.”
            Draco thought of other questions he would have wanted to ask, but having Lucius know he’d thought of asking them wouldn’t be healthy at this point. And he didn’t want to know the answers. He managed to nod and give his father a sickly smile, and he thought that might be enough, because Lucius immediately began talking again.
            “I cannot do it now. I cannot risk our Lord finding out.” Lucius stepped close to Draco, looking into his eyes with a yearning gaze that made Draco feel as though someone had tried to light his skin on fire. “I would have included you, my son. I swear that. I would have contacted you once I had the Ministry’s guarantee of protection, and tried to make sure that you were safe along with me. I didn’t know where you were, or I would already have summoned you to my side.”
            Draco swallowed, and said nothing. It could just be that Azkaban had affected his father, he assured himself. It was only that. It had to be only that. If not, though…
            Draco had heard of many prices for promise sigils. Some were the victim’s magic. Some were sacrifices made to the force of elder magic that had sponsored the sigil. Some were crimes, or deeds that the bearer of the sigil would have found repulsive before they were marked. And because a certain period of time might elapse between the promise and the payment, Draco knew it could conceivably be years before he found out what Lucius had promised to make his escape.
            But if not, then Draco was afraid the price was his father’s sanity.
            “Draco? Do you believe me, that I would have tried to include you, to shelter you?”
            Silence wasn’t good enough as an answer, then. Draco nodded, hesitated once more, and extended his hand in silence. Lucius clasped it, and fastened his fingers around the spot on Draco’s wrist that corresponded to the one on his own where he had the sigil. Draco tried not to think that was a bad sign.
            “We shall conquer them, together,” Lucius whispered. “The Ministry’s ill-will against Malfoys and Dark wizards, and the Dark Lord. Neither of them shall stand in our way.”
            As Draco spoke the appropriate words, trying to sound as though he could agree fully with a man who had used binding magic on him without permission, Lucius’s robe shifted. Draco saw the promise sigil again.
            The outer ring of skin had darkened.
            Draco swallowed again. His mind sharpened, came into focus.
            It wouldn’t be easy, or pleasant, any more than most things had been since Harry started pretending to be the Dark Lord. But he knew what he had to do now.
*
            “My Lord? May I see you alone for a moment?”
            Draco wouldn’t have come up to me like this unless it was important, Harry thought, and stood up at once. Draco would have waited, he knew, until he could get Harry alone and speak to him that way. By approaching him now, he was drawing envious stares from the Death Eaters who had nothing better to do than stand along the walls of the dining room and wait for Harry to speak to them.
            “Does it concern our plans? Ways to destroy Light wizards?” Harry asked, and let his mouth widen in an eager smile.
            “It concerns several plans, my Lord,” said Draco, and the way his voice hesitated for a second convinced Harry it was at least important. He waved his arm negligently, and the Death Eaters hesitated for a moment, then backed, bowing, out of the room. Harry removed the spells that some of them tried to leave behind, mostly targeted at eavesdropping, and raised a privacy spell of his own before he nodded to Draco.
            Draco looked straight at him. “You won’t like this,” he said.
            “I rarely do,” said Harry, in an arrogant voice, just in case, and fingered his wand if someone was spying whom he hadn’t noticed.
            “You need,” said Draco, and closed his eyes for a second, his legs and knees bracing as though he was about to faint. Then he opened his eyes and went on in a voice so steady Harry was shocked. “You need to force it out of me.”
            “What?” Harry stared at him, and lost the tone of Voldemort for a moment. At least his spell would make it so that no one could hear his voice and really pay attention to the slip. “Why?”
            “I would tell you if I could,” Draco said, and then gasped a little as if something had shocked him. “You need—you need to do this.” His eyes were wide and fastened on Harry’s as though that would make it make sense.
            Harry shook his head. “I’m not going to—”
            “You have no choice. I’m asking you.”
            Harry wanted to say that he did have a choice if Draco was asking him; he could always refuse. But Draco was standing there with his eyes fixed steadily on Harry, and Harry clenched his hands and said, “Why?”
            Draco gave him a thin, cold smile, and stared at him.
            Harry shook his head. “I refuse to torture you.”
            “Then—something you should know about—is going to work against you, and I’ve got even less choice than you do about torturing me.” Draco’s voice went sharp and high in the middle of that sentence, as though he’d been about to use different words, and a spell had cut in to force him to use the ones it wanted instead. “That’s all I can say.” He started to turn towards the doorway.
            “How severe does it have to be?” Harry asked quietly. “We don’t have Snape here this time to cure Sectumsempra.”
            Draco turned back, and looked at him. Harry couldn’t define the feeling in his chest as they traded glances, but he was sure they were both thinking of the spell that had almost killed Draco, and at least Draco better understood his reluctance now.
            “Use a spell that will hurt,” said Draco. “I don’t want to suffer pain. But I won’t be able to speak if you use Crucio.”
            Harry nodded slowly. He held up his wand. “Are you sure this is what you need?” he whispered.
            “Yes.”
            Draco’s voice never wavered, and Harry didn’t close his eyes only because that would interfere with aiming his wand, and he never wanted to cast something like this again. He took a deep breath and whispered, “Dolor.”
            And Draco fell to the floor, screaming.
*
            Anon: I think they both are.
            moon: Thank you!
            SP777: Thanks. I’m glad this story is turning out new, since I wanted the idea to be original.
- 23
- 24
- 25
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

An Image of Lethe