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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
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Chapter Twenty-Six—A Moment of Rationality
            “My Lord, look at her.” Draco’s voice was a bare breath, tickling Harry’s ear, and he shuddered a little. He wished Draco dared to whisper to him without the title, but he could understand perfectly why he wouldn’t, and he couldn’t blame Draco for refusing to take the risk.
            Harry obediently trained his eyes on the woman who stood at the back of the Death Eaters gathered in the dining room, listening to a report by the Lestrange brothers on the Ministry’s defenses. For a moment, he thought she looked familiar, but he was also sure that he’d never seen her properly before. She ducked her head a little as his eyes fell on her.
            “What?” Harry asked back, out of the corner of his mouth. It helped that the Lestranges weren’t facing the throne as they spoke, and that most of the Death Eaters were afraid to look at Harry’s face for too long, letting their eyes dart away to fix intently on other things instead.
            “She’s trying to look like Bellatrix Lestrange,” Draco breathed. “Her actual name is Elinor Yaxley-Jones—related only by marriage—but she knows that Bellatrix was favored by him, so she’s trying to look like her.”
            Now that Harry took a more critical look, he supposed he could see the resemblance in the wild dark hair that Yaxley-Jones was sporting, with a glint here and there of chestnut that he thought was probably her natural color. Harry stifled both a snort and a sigh. This was another problem that he would need to deal with, but at least Draco had called it to his attention, so he was ready if Yaxley-Jones approached him.
            He nodded curtly to Draco, and then leaned forwards and claimed the attention of Rabastan Lestrange as he was about to start speaking again. “Ssssoo,” he drawled. “The Ministry is off-balance. Ssssscrambling. We will never have a better opportunity.” Or get another one, probably, he had to admit to himself.
            The Lestranges turned around and fell on their knees. “My Lord?” Rosier whispered, from near the side, where she stood with her mamba coiled next to her. “What do you mean?’
            “To go into the building and get the plans for Lethe, the machine they were trying to build to steal my host body’s magic.” Harry plucked disdainfully at his own sleeve. “I pulled most of it back, into a greater magical core than he would have been capable of having.” He paused, and the smarter Death Eaters rushed in hastily to fill the silence with applause and cheering. “But there may be some magic still remaining. And I am interested in what the Ministry put so much effort into constructing, in any case. I want it brought to me.” He paused, his eyes on the faces of the Death Eaters who looked to be panting with eagerness. “But only the most prepared and skilled and intelligent should go in,” he added. “Since the Ministry could torture you if they captured you, and learn about my planssss.”
            “If you need someone intelligent, my Lord, I will go.”
            That was Parkinson, moving forwards despite the silent messages Harry thought Draco was trying to send her with his eyes, and the almost agonized, pleading expression on his face a second later. But Parkinson probably didn’t see them, because she was too busy glaring at Harry. Harry didn’t want to punish her, but he would have to if she kept doing that.
            He could at least punish her in a creative way, though. He nodded. “Then you will go. And you will carry a message to the Light fools who think their friend still exists, as well.”
            Parkinson’s face flickered a little. “What? I mean, I thought one of the Lestranges had already brought back a message from them—my Lord.”
            “From Longbottom, the boy,” Harry said, and let his voice deepen into anger, “who killed my snake.” There were sympathetic winces from all along the room. “You will take this message to Granger and Weasley.”
            Parkinson understood what he was about, of course, and for a second Harry thought she would give them away by gaping at him. Then she lowered her eyes and nodded, and Harry decided, from the snickering of the Death Eaters, that most of them thought gaping fit in with Parkinson’s general personality.
            “Of course, my Lord,” she murmured. “I will do both missions at once?”
            “No,” said Harry, and thought he did a pretty good job of sounding bored as he waved his hand. “You will take the message first. Come to me after the meeting. I will write it. They still think they know his hand.” It was surreal, sometimes, to be calling himself “him” when he thought of Voldemort that way so often, but he shouldn’t have started this game if he thought the surreality of it would defeat him. “Then come to me to make plans about the mission to the Ministry. For now, go.”
            Parkinson bowed and backed out of the room. While the Death Eaters were watching her go, Draco leaned in and breathed softly into his ear, “She thinks that you’re mistreating me and putting yourself above me.”
            Harry would really have liked the freedom to say, “Fuck,” or something like it. As it was, he drew in a long, slow, deep, exasperated breath, and shook his head. “The rest of the plans must wait for the return of Greyback,” he told the Death Eaters. “Dismissed.”
            It was comical how fast most of them slipped out of the room, bobbing their heads or bowing and holding it in a competition to see who could bow lowest and therefore stay respectful for the longest. Harry just stayed there, impatient and bored both, until he noticed one man wasn’t slipping out of the room.
            Lucius Malfoy stood along the back wall and stared at him with a cool look of challenge on his face that made Harry honestly want to gape. Did Lucius think Harry was going to forgive that? Or rather that the Voldemort Harry was playing would forgive it?
            I have to remember who I am. I have to hold onto myself through him and his Darkness, or this will all have been for nothing.
            He felt Draco’s hand briefly grip his arm, grounding him, reminding him of where he was and who he was with. Harry stood up and came down from the throne, while Draco trailed behind him. Harry knew without turning that he would have an uncertain look on his face. He would play as if torn between his father and the Dark Lord, or rather torn between supporting his father openly or covertly. They couldn’t afford, right now, for Lucius to believe that Draco was less than fully on his side.
            “Sssso,” said Harry, when most of the Death Eaters had gone and only Lucius and Draco remained. Lucius should have challenged him in front of others, Harry thought, if he was going for an open duel. As it was, Harry didn’t have to work hard to feign the disgust in his voice. “You dare to challenge me, Lucius? You dare to think that you could lead the Death Eatersss better, perhapssss?”
            Lucius didn’t move from the wall, save to let a small flicker of a smile cross his lips. “You are not the Dark Lord,” he said.
            Harry looked at his neck. “Are you saying that Harry Potter occupies this body?” he whispered, and raised a hand he’d glamoured to be long and pale again that morning. He closed the fingers around Lucius’s throat and squeezed. Lucius bore that without a sign of discomfort for a lot longer than Harry had thought he would, and only squirmed and reached up to curl his fingers around Harry’s when Harry began to seriously press down. “Of course he does,” Harry went on, whispering in a deadly tone. “I leave him partially asleep, mostly awake, and let him watch what I am doing without letting him interfere. I love the way he squirms.”
            Draco gulped behind them. Harry didn’t know if it was because he was listening to Harry imitate Voldemort or because he thought Harry might kill Lucius.
            And Harry didn’t want to. He would only kill them if he had to. Gestures like burning off Lestrange’s ear and giving Rosier a viper would do for the moment.
            Lucius, though, could change that moment to another one. It was one reason that Harry intended to be very careful with him.
            He squeezed anyway, knowing his eyes were perfectly blank and his expression distant and listening, until Lucius finally gasped out, and Harry opened his hand and let him tumble to the floor. Lucius knelt there with darkening bruises ringed around his throat, and he shook his head and looked up at him a second later.
            “You’re not the Dark Lord,” he said, his voice confident, if hoarse from the strangling. “The Dark Lord would never have let me live even this long if I was challenging him.”
            “Well, of course I would,” said Harry, and bent towards him with a smile that he thought was friendly enough to make even Lucius squirm, unless he was mad. Of course, Draco had said that part of the promise sigil’s price might be his father’s sanity…
            Harry repressed that part of him, the way he’d had to do with so many of his natural instincts since he’d assumed this role, and said, “Because I like to see you squirm, Lucius. I wonder what it would take to make you flinch?” He reached out and slowly traced a finger up Lucius’s cheek, aiming for his eye.
            Yes, there was a flinch before Lucius could stop himself. He might doubt that Harry was Voldemort, he probably did even more than his words had let on, but he also didn’t disbelieve it enough to hold himself steady and smile when Harry acted as if he might put his eye out.
            That’s all this is. Acting. Playacting. I can go on without losing myself.
            But Harry still shuddered on the inside, and dropped his hand, staring down at Lucius with a boredom that he thought he feigned pretty well. “Don’t push me, Lucius,” he warned him, as gently as possible. “You might think you have the sole secret to defiance in your hands, but I have some of my own.” And he let his flickering gaze pause on Draco for the slightest moment.
            Lucius knelt up at once, his head bowed. “Lord, if my son is your most faithful follower—”
            “He is,” said Harry. “One of the many.” He gave Lucius a snake-like smile and swept out, beckoning Draco after him with the hand that he thought he’d cast the glamour of long, pale fingers best on. Draco walked after him with his steps stiff. Pride, Harry thought, or feigned pride, and held-in fear. No need to tell Lucius that the fear wasn’t of what he thought it was.
            Once Draco was outside the throne room, though, he began to shake and obviously found it hard to stop. “Merlin,” he whispered, once Harry had put up Privacy Charms that linked to the walls around them and would keep people from hearing what they said even close at hand. “Is he going to push you into killing him?”
            “I have to have some means of keeping that from happening,” Harry muttered, and his mind was already working. “Have you heard from your mother at all since you arrived here?”
            “What?” Draco wasn’t normally slow, though, and Harry thought he only sounded stupefied now because he’d had to jerk his mind in such an unexpected direction. “No. I haven’t—I haven’t heard from her since I had to take shelter at Astoria’s house.”
            Harry nodded. “Send an owl to her. I assumed she would show up soon and support your father, but I think we need her here to support you and keep your father under control instead.”
            Draco stared at him, and Harry saw a spark of hope in his eyes. He had almost given up on his father, Harry realized abruptly. He had thought Lucius would goad Harry into killing him, and Harry would go along with it because he had to.
            I want to spare him worry like that. I wish I knew how.
            But at least Harry might hope, in his turn, that this measure was some means of doing that. He waited, and Draco finally stuttered and bowed his head a little. “Yes, she would at least restrain him,” he whispered. “And she knows more about promise sigils than I do. He only made me promise to never create one. I don’t know any means of telling what one of them exacts as its price, anything but—what Father told me.”
            “Good,” said Harry softly. “Tell her to say that she found us on her own, or from clues Lucius left her.”
            Draco gave him a flick of a glance. “I know that much, Harry. Or at least she will.” He hesitated, squeezed Harry’s wrist once more, and then turned and disappeared into the darkness down the corridor.
            Harry shut his eyes. He wondered if it would be too weak, too obvious, if he commanded Astoria to come to his room and sit with him, or went to the library to sit with her. Probably not. The Death Eaters would only think he was fucking her, or doing it as a power play to overcome Draco. Most of them assumed she and Draco were betrothed, and that Draco was weak enough to require her.
            Harry sighed. No. Aside from the fact that it might mean Astoria was in danger because she was in his “favor,” it might also encourage them to attack Draco because they would think he was fallen from “favor.”
            I hate this, Harry thought, and walked on down the corridor with a swagger in his step, his head up. Maybe he was doing the only thing he could, but he wished he wasn’t.
*
            Draco watched the owl winging away, and sighed a little. Some of the unquiet pounding in his heart, the pounding that had been there since he saw Lucius open his mouth to challenge Harry, had gone away. He knew his mother would come if there was any way possible for her to do it.
            And not much could stand up to his mother when she was in the mood to rescue her family. Not even Voldemort had been able to, since she had lied to him after Harry told her about Draco.
            He turned away from the window with a smile, and paused when he saw Fenrir Greyback behind him. He knew Harry had sent Greyback on a mission, but he must have returned. He was standing very still now, and staring at Draco with a distinct expression of glee. Draco stared back, and kept his face as neutral as possible. Greyback had to know he would be in trouble if he attacked Draco right now, the way things stood.
            “You don’t know what I know,” Greyback said, in a singsong tone that gave Draco a sudden flashback to Malfoy Manor and some of the times Greyback had cornered him there. He hadn’t always touched Draco, but being pinned in a corner with a crazy werewolf in front of him had been bad enough.
            At least he could make sure that wouldn’t happen now. Draco took a single, springing step to the side, and swung his wand into his hand. Greyback let his tongue loll as if he was the dog he resembled and moved with him, but he wasn’t holding Draco in the corner, and that was enough to calm Draco’s breathing.
            “Yes,” said Draco, which made Greyback stop panting like a dog and pay more attention to him than ever. “I don’t know lots of things which you know, I imagine. What it’s like to transform during a full moon, for example.”
            Greyback was grinning, at least if any expression he made could be called one. “Would you like to, puppy?” he rumbled, and took a step forwards that resulted in his nails projecting out like claws.
            “What do you think he would say?” Draco asked, shrugging a little and calling up a fiery incantation in his mind. “I wouldn’t be as useful to him if I was a werewolf. And I still have a father here who would also be annoyed with you.” His father had been the one holding Greyback in check, so Draco reckoned it was a good move to invoke his authority, even if most of the time Greyback wouldn’t consider himself bound to obey it with the Dark Lord around.
            For a second, Greyback froze, with what looked like most of his face quivering. Then he lowered his head and pushed it slowly towards Draco. Draco, even knowing he was probably safe, found it hard to take his eyes off those yellow teeth.
            “Don’t push me, puppy,” Greyback breathed. “Yes, I know lots of things that you don’t know, but this one concerns my mission for Himself.”
            “Then don’t let me hold you back from going to report to our Lord,” said Draco, and nodded graciously down the corridor towards the throne room, while he subtly tightened his hold on his wand.
            For a second, it seemed as if Greyback might stay there to argue with him. Then Greyback’s jaw tightened and his hands flexed as if he would stab his nails into the stone. Draco waited some more, heartbeat high and singing in his ears like a mosquito.
            Greyback turned and left.
            Draco sighed shakily and dared to shut his eyes. Except that he didn’t have the actual pressure of Voldemort, Nagini, or Bellatrix on him, this was too much like his memories of Malfoy Manor for comfort.
            I have to do something to ease this tension. And my mother won’t be enough. I have to figure out something else.
*
            “This was in the Gringotts vault, my Lord,” said Greyback, abasing himself in front of Harry’s throne-chair and holding out a packet of books tied together tightly with what Harry thought was a piece of gold tissue at first. When he touched it, he realized it was an ordinary ribbon, but turned absolutely yellow with age. “You knew it would be, didn’t you? You know so many things, my Lord.” The eyes that rose to his face were filled with mad adoration.
            “It was easy enough to know that the grimoire Arsinoe brought me didn’t contain what she thought it did,” said Harry, and gave Greyback a demented grin that brought the adoration even more strongly into Greyback’s eyes. “Yes, it spoke of treasures in a vault that had once belonged to Slytherin, but she was wrong to think it was guarded by serpents and one had to speak Parseltongue to enter it. If she had read more closely, she would have known that.”
            “I could get into it, my Lord,” said Greyback, and gamboled around the room like a puppy who wanted attention.
            A savage puppy. A mad dog. Harry held back his words, the impulse to say something like that, and inclined his head. “Or I would not have sent you,” he said, a soft warning tone in his voice that made Greyback straighten up and pay attention. “It was clear from the book itself that the serpents who guarded the vault were not real, and they had to be appeased, but not by Parseltongue.”
            “And I contributed my blood, my Lord,” said Greyback. His head bobbed back and forth as though it was on a spring, and someone who stood off to the side was manipulating him. “Just as you said.”
            Harry only nodded shortly. Arsinoe had been mistaken about what the book contained, probably because it had been years since she had read it, and then she had only dared to skim it once before she handed it over to Harry. “Slytherin’s” vault was in truth one that had belonged to Hogwarts, but been forgotten by most Headmasters and Headmistresses just as the Chamber of Secrets had been. As long as the blood of a sufficiently powerful wizard or witch got offered to the serpent guardians, they would let anyone inside.
            And whatever else Greyback might be, he was a werewolf, and they were powerfully magical.
            Harry spent a moment looking at Greyback, and then said, as if randomly, “Why did you obey Lucius Malfoy, my hound?”
            Greyback took what he would probably have seen as an insult from anyone else and transformed it in his own mind, shaking and shivering in pleasure before Harry. “Because he was powerful, and he said that he would bring you back,” he said. “He said that we could get revenge on the Ministry, my Lord, and they would release the secret we needed to resurrect you.” He prostrated himself abruptly before Harry, whining. “But I would never, never have gone along with it if I knew you were already alive, my Lord! Never.”
            Ah. Harry should have known it would be something like that. At least, it would be something like that for Greyback. Lucius had probably made special promises to each of the Death Eaters, and made each of them believe that they would be special and favored and all the rest of it.
            “My Lord?”
            Harry looked down at Greyback, who was giving him a pouting look now. “Speak.”
            “Why did you give Arsinoe a snake, and not me?” Greyback burst out, looking resentful. “Why do you favor Malfoy and Greengrass and Parkinson, and not me? I’m faithful to you, Malfoy was a coward, Arsinoe never even thought you were still alive! Why do you favor them?” A second later, he cringed, but his eyes remained on Harry, and there was a pleading in them that could be as dangerous as the devotion.
            Harry held in his immediate reaction, which was to curse and ask aloud for patience. But by breathing slowly in and out, he held back the impulse as he had many others since he had come here, and leaned slowly forwards.
            “Arsinoe and the others did something that I am not certain I can trust the other Death Eaters to do,” he whispered. “Even you.”
            “Research, my Lord?” Greyback jumped to his feet. “I can do research!”
            Harry shook his head impatiently. “Not that. I think I cannot trust you to be loyal to me in this body. To see me as your Lord, not Harry Potter.”
            “No, no, no!” Greyback was almost babbling, and he’d rolled on his back to expose his belly to Harry. “I can see you that way, my Lord! I know you’re not Harry Potter, even with the scar!”
            Merlin save me, Harry thought. He’d never wanted werewolves fawning at his feet, but it seemed he was to have them.
            “Then prove to me that you are loyal to me and only me,” he said. “Pass the test I set you, Fenrir.”
            “Yes, my Lord. Anything!” Greyback jumped to his feet and stared at him in excitement.
            “Spy on Lucius Malfoy for me,” Harry whispered. “Without letting him know you are doing it. Report his every movement and plan to me, especially if he intends to recruit any of the other Death Eaters to his own side.”
            There. That will give Greyback and Lucius both something to deal with that’s not plaguing me. It didn’t matter if Lucius found out Greyback was spying on him, which he probably would, since Greyback wasn’t the most subtle of people. What mattered was that he would have to do something that wasn’t concentrate on Harry.
            Greyback bowed to him with his arms splayed on the ground, his voice breathless with excitement. “Yes, yes, my Lord, I will!” He pranced out.
            Harry sighed and leaned back on the throne. I hope Narcissa Malfoy gets here soon. Draco could use the support, and maybe she’ll even have some to spare for me.

*
Ciara_D: They might not put it that way to themselves, but that’s a good way to phrase it.
Severus1snape: They are closer, but I don’t think kissing is the first thing on either of their minds right now. Sadly.
SP777: You mean Arsinoe’s name? It was actually the name of a sister of Cleopatra.
Harry isn’t thinking in those terms, but he does think that even having Draco by his side exposes him to more danger.
You’ll get a glimpse of that in the next chapter.
- 25
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- 27
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An Image of Lethe