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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Seven—Calling Up the Troops
            Harry spent a moment quietly breathing to himself before he stepped into the dining room. He’d called a general meeting of the Death Eaters to tell them the plan he had come up with once Greyback had delivered those tomes from Slytherin’s vault to him. He knew he could act his way through it. He’d acted his way through plenty of harder things by now, hadn’t he?
            But his throat ached as though he’d swallowed something slimy and spicy at once, and his hand trembled. He was only glad that this was the corridor that led to the bedroom he’d been using, so no one except him was here, and no one except him was even allowed to walk down it. The game would have been up in a second if someone else was here.
            Anyone else except Astoria or Parkinson, who know the truth. Although Parkinson might want to see me go down just so that she and Draco and Astoria could get out of here.
            And Draco…
            The way he wanted to linger on that thought made Harry shake his head and fling the door of the dining room opened. He had a vague, rustling impression of a lot of people standing to attention as he strode past them and towards his throne.
            As he climbed onto the throne, Harry realized that he would have to renew the Cushioning Charm soon. He wondered for a second if Voldemort had ever had to cast one, and then snorted to himself. Of course. His head was cushioned by being so far up his arse.
            But he didn’t have time to do it right now, so he turned around and sat down in view of his watching, “adoring” audience all regal and proper. He wanted to shake his head when he saw the people cringing in front of him. He reckoned that there must be some people—the Dark Lord types—who enjoyed this, and it had to be more common than he thought, since within a few generations there had been both Voldemort and Grindelwald.
            But Harry himself wasn’t born for that sort of thing.
            He opened his eyes and glared out over the Death Eaters. Some of them were trying to take shelter behind the others. Harry felt his hand curl, and knew he wanted to be holding his wand. But Voldemort wouldn’t have looked threatened by people who were trying to piss themselves, and that meant Harry couldn’t, either.
            “We are not all assembled,” he said, and looked up and down the rows. “Where are the Malfoys?”
            “Here, my Lord.”
            It wasn’t Draco’s voice, or even Lucius’s, that responded. Harry turned to face the doors, trying to make sure that he didn’t scramble or spin around on the throne. He had to look as though he had expected this, as though nothing could challenge his supreme imperturbability.
            But it was hard not to feel his heart lift when he saw Narcissa Malfoy standing on the threshold of the dining room. He nodded, and waited until she had come to the middle of the room before he mused aloud, “Some would say I should punish the woman who told me that Harry Potter was dead when he had not fallen before my wand in reality.”
            There was a tense, breathless hush. Narcissa stopped walking and bowed her head, but in such a way that Harry didn’t take it as cowering. He didn’t think anyone else did, either. Perhaps no one else knew her that well, but even strangers ought to have been able to see that she was willing to die for her family.
            “But since the survival of this body led to a survival of a shard of my soul, and allowed me to return to lead you to glorious victory,” Harry finished, waving his hand, “then I shall let you live. This once,” he added, and grinned in a ghastly way at Narcissa.
            Narcissa looked up at him, so calm and steady that Harry knew she knew the truth. He didn’t think Draco—who stood behind his mother looking as if he’d like to use her as a shelter for the rest of his life—would have told her, but then again, she was brighter than most of the people who had sworn their lives to Voldemort’s service. She could have figured it out.
            Lucius, behind both Draco and Narcissa, was trying to look as if he was also pleased. But Harry could see straight through him. He smothered a smile and spread his hands.
            “We are all here,” he said, ignoring the fact that Parkinson was still on her mission to deliver his messages to Ron and Hermione. “We will speak now.” He reached out and picked up the ancient books and thumped them down on the arm of the throne. They made an impressive thwacking noise, he’d admit. It was probably the only advantage of making the seat out of stone.
            “What are those, my Lord?” It was Greyback, sounding outrageously pleased with himself and presumably wanting Harry to tell everyone about the part he had played in fetching the books back. Harry managed not to roll his eyes, but it took a lot of the patience that he had learned at the Dursleys’.
            “They are the books that Salazar Slytherin left on forming a machine similar to the Lightfinder,” he said, and spread his hands out and clutched the arms of his throne. “But unlike the Lightfinder, it identifies Dark wizards. And it can make them other than they are.” He let out a cackling laugh that he’d been practicing in his quarters, and saw most people other than Draco and Narcissa shudder. “It can make the Light into the Dark, and the Dark into the Light.”
            “Why would we want to do that last one, though, my Lord?” It was Rosier, her mamba swaying beside her and looking critically at the back of her leg. She didn’t seem to notice, though, with her eyes focused on Harry’s face. She seemed to have decided that his giving her a snake meant she could question him.
            “For the same reason that we wish to destroy the Muggles,” said Harry, and parted his lips, and laughed crazily enough that most of them shuddered. Narcissa didn’t; Lucius didn’t; Greyback didn’t. Harry thought all of them had different reasons for it, too. “Because we have the power. Dark wizards shall not be Dark if I say they shall not. They shall be defined by me, and destroyed by me.”
            He stood up and looked around the room, collecting their eyes, gathering them, drawing them. “Are you going to deny me my right?” he asked, and his voice sounded like the hiss of a sword through the air. The mamba beside Rosier swayed up and down as though someone was dangling it at the end of a string. “My desire?”
            “My Lord, no, my Lord,” and even Rosier knelt.
            Harry nodded, and turned back to the books, which really did explain what he had said they did. Of a sort. “Then I will need the ingredients that we require to form the machine. You will go and seek the wool of a mountain sheep, both you Lestranges. Rosier, I require hen’s teeth. Yaxley-Jones, you will have the scales of a Hungarian Horntail in your hand before a week is out, or I will know why. Lucius…”
            Lucius tensed his muscles, as if getting ready to reject the suggestion, and anxious to show off why. Harry looked at him for long, silent seconds, and then tossed his head back and laughed.
            “You will bring me a finished potion,” he said. “A Pepper-Up Potion. That shouldn’t be beyond your powers.”
            Lucius’s teeth ground; Harry could see that from the movement of his cheeks, although he couldn’t hear it from here. Draco looked at Harry with eyes that seemed to dart daggers, as if asking what he was doing in antagonizing his father. Narcissa was the one who saved the situation, moving forwards and taking her husband’s arm while giving Harry a cool look.
            “We will attain the potion, my Lord,” she said.
            “Excellent, my Narcissa,” said Harry, and he hissed her name, and saw her shudder. He made himself turn away. He would have to meet with Draco later, in privacy, and hope that he could explain what he might need to explain to Narcissa, and accept Harry’s apology for the way he had behaved, as well.
            “Now,” said Harry, and flourished the piece of parchment on which he’d written down other instructions, “to business for the rest of you.”
*
            “Does he know what he is doing?”
            Draco swallowed. He and his mother were alone, for the first time since she had arrived. His mother had taken one look at his father and become the perfect society hostess that Draco remembered from scattered evenings before the war, when he had been deemed old enough to sit up and join his parents’ guests. She had consoled Lucius, and listened to his plans without a change of expression, and touched Draco only rarely, even when he wanted to lean against her and close his eyes and say nothing.
            But now, his father, probably fully contented with the knowledge that his wife was on his side, had gone off to brew the potion Harry had requested, and Narcissa was pacing back and forth across Draco’s bedroom.
            “Answer me, Draco.”
            And that particular tone made Draco want to cower and whine that his bedroom was clean, honestly. He couldn’t help a glance around at the gloomy walls, although this manor would never be theirs. He shook his head and concentrated on his mother.
            “He knows what he hopes to do,” he said. “That’s all I can say for sure.”
            Narcissa cursed and turned to lean against the wall herself, her arms folded, scowling at the hem of her robes. Draco swallowed. He had thought having his mother with him would reassure him, and that part was somewhat working, but when she looked so tired and drained herself, it made his skin prickle with unease.
            “Then he intends to play the Dark Lord until—what?” His mother turned her hand, palm up, and Draco could imagine the time flying past her, faster and faster, until her skin was scrubbed clean. “What does he hope to accomplish?”
            “He hasn’t told me everything,” Draco hedged, and then winced when she looked at him, the stare that said she wasn’t any more impressed with his excuses than with Lucius’s excuses for taking on the promise sigil. “All right. What I know is that he wants to build a sort of Lightfinder that will reverse the irrational fear that the original one sprayed out all over people when Blaise blew it up.”
            “That was Blaise?” Narcissa began, and then shook her head. “I think we should stick to one topic for the moment. So Potter intends to save the wizarding world? I don’t know why that surprises me,” she added, with a sigh, and turned to Summon the small trunk she’d brought with her. Draco wasn’t surprised, either, when she took out a dusty bottle of wine and two crystal glasses. “He does realize that the Light wizards might reject him even if he does that?”
            “I don’t think he gives a shit about that anymore,” Draco began, thinking of the way that Potter was trying so hard to cling onto some sanity and force back the specter of turning into the Dark Lord for real.
            “Draco.”
            Draco blinked and stared at his mother, only to realize after a moment why she was staring at him primly. He ducked his head and shrugged. “Sorry, Mother. It—it’s an easy habit to fall into when I don’t think about it.”
            “Not a habit that you’re going to fall into when I’m about,” Narcissa said crisply, and poured some wine into the glasses. “And what do you think he wants, if not to have the Light accept him? Saving the wizarding world would seem a good way to accomplish that.” She judged the level of liquid in the glasses for a moment, and then sniffed and held out one of them to Draco. Draco accepted it and tried not to gulp it too fast. His mother wouldn’t care for that any more than she did for his language.
            Absurd as that focus on refinement was, in a way, he found himself glad that she was here to make him care about it.
            “I think he does want to save the world,” said Draco, and sipped carefully from the glass as his mother nodded in stiff approval at him. “But he doesn’t want to do it because he wants to be accepted by Light wizards. He wants to do it because it’s the right thing to do. To him,” he added, when he saw Narcissa’s eyes narrow a little.
            “I thought he might have carried you along with him.” Narcissa slowly paced to the side, and Draco saw her studying him the way she had studied Lucius when she knew that his wrist bore a promise sigil. “I am already dealing with one man I love who appears to have gone mad. I do not want to deal with two.”
            Draco turned calmly to face her, the way he would have someone pacing around him about to start a duel, and saw her eyebrows rise. “I know it’s hard to believe, Mother,” he said, and held her eyes and willed her to believe him. “But I do think that Harry is doing something that will allow all of us to survive. That is, him, and Pansy, and Astoria, and me. You, too, now that you’re here.”
            “The others?” Narcissa placed her glass down on a table of wood that had probably been beautiful when it was regularly polished and dusted and taken care of. “Your father?”
            Draco bit his lip, and didn’t answer.
            “How did he bring you along with him?” Narcissa whispered. “What happened to commit you to the Light?”
            “Not the Light,” Draco said at once, shaking his head. He knew it would be very hard to ask for her help if she thought that he had changed his allegiances to match those of the Ministry who had arrested Father and hunted him and her. “To Harry. He’s a Dark wizard, and he’s fighting for rights like mine. I reached out to him, and he committed himself to my cause.”
            Narcissa eyed him, and then picked up her glass again. “A strange way to go about it, pretending to be the Dark Lord.”
            “The Death Eaters showed up,” Draco said. “And, well, I’m afraid I’m the one partially to blame for that. It was the only way I could think of to stop them from attacking us. And Harry went along with it. He plays it brilliantly, don’t you think?”
            He couldn’t stop the note of pride creeping into his voice, despite the way he knew his mother would stare at him—and the way she did, before a faint, reluctant smile touched her mouth. “You have found someone to follow,” she breathed. “The way your father did.”
            “Not as blindly as Father did, I hope.” Draco inclined his head. “But yes. I do think he’ll save us.”
            “Afterwards? When you have to go back to a wizarding world that won’t be sympathetic to anyone who was playing the Dark Lord?” His mother’s fingertips were tapping rapidly against her glass now.
            Draco held her eyes and tried as hard as he could to radiate sincerity, though he wasn’t sure if she believed him. “I think that he’ll have a plan for that, too. He already has one to try and cure the irrational fear, I told you. And he’ll be able to tell the whole truth when the deception isn’t necessary anymore. I don’t think the Ministry and the Light will welcome him, but I think they’ll leave him alone.”
            “And the people who supported him and helped him,” Narcissa ended. “The ones who were with him before he began to play this part of a Dark Lord.”
            Draco nodded.
            Narcissa swallowed and looked away. Only when he watched his mother’s throat bob did Draco understand some of why she was acting as stern as she was. She was afraid. Desperately afraid. Draco reached out and caught her hand.
            “You may have saved our family,” Narcissa whispered. “You may have saved our reputation and our standing in the world after this.” She hesitated, then added, “But I’m afraid it’s too late for your father.”
            Draco shut his eyes. “Did you recognize the promise sigil? What is it? What did he promise, and who did he promise it to?”
            “The primal forces of magic,” said his mother, and her voice was dull. “It would be more appropriate to say that he promised himself to a what than a who.”
            “I still need to know what it was,” said Draco. “I thought…his sanity, the way he’s been slipping.”
            Narcissa turned slowly around, shaking his head. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that. I recognize that design of promise sigil, you see. From a portrait that once hung in Grimmauld Place, until it grew to frighten us too much and they took it away. One of my ancestors made the same promise, and killed himself when the time for the payment came due, sending his essence fleeing into the portrait to try and escape the bargain. But the bargain ended with what was promised anyway, and he faded from what he had been.” From the dull, flat tone of his mother’s voice, Draco doubted she was thinking about fading like a ghost, and his heart gave a single pound.
            “What did he promise?” he whispered.
            “Himself.”
            “How is that different from his sanity?” Draco almost barked out the words in his intensity, and only realized it when he saw his mother’s eyebrows rising. He sighed and swallowed some more of the wine. “I’m sorry, but I’ve worried and worried about this, and wondered if there’s something we can do to prevent his sanity from slipping away, and now you’re doling out the information so slowly…”
            “I was trying to cushion the blow,” said Narcissa, her voice softening. “I should have realized that it was impossible to do so. No, Draco. We cannot stop it. He has sacrificed his sense of being. I would say his soul, but he will not remain alive but without a soul if the sigil takes him, the way he would after a Dementor’s Kiss. There is nothing left of someone who has that sigil on his wrist.”
            Draco closed his eyes. “Why did he do it?” he whispered. “Did he think that he would be able to accomplish what he wanted before the magic took him?”
            “Probably.” His mother was watching him with a depthless gaze when Draco looked at her again. “Or perhaps he simply thought the goal worth it. What was the goal?”
            Draco swallowed. “He meant to restore the Malfoy name by turning the Death Eaters into the Ministry.”
            “And then your Potter interfered.” Narcissa shook her head. “I fear that he will try to destroy Potter as soon as he realizes how much he’s cost him.”
            “I know,” Draco said. “I told Potter to be careful, but he doesn’t seem to have much choice if Father openly antagonizes him. He already had to almost strangle him once. Well. He did strangle him.” He looked at his mother, feeling as though he was swaying on the edge of a cliff in a high wind. “What are we going to do, Mother? Can we do anything, if this promise sigil claims what you say it does?”
            “It does.” Narcissa touched the glass of wine as though she would find an answer in its crystal. “And I don’t know, Draco. I fear not.”
            They stood there in silence, and finished the wine only slowly. Draco felt the sickness building and brewing in his stomach, and when Narcissa excused herself with a murmur to go to Lucius, Draco knew where he had to go.
*
            Harry looked up with a start as someone knocked on his door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and he had badly needed this time to rest alone and recover some sense of himself instead of performing a part for the Death Eaters.
            But if he had to play that role, then he had to. He straightened up and called in his hissing voice, “Who dares to disturb the repose of the Dark Lord Voldemort?”
            “My Lord.”
            It was Draco’s voice, and it was dead. Harry opened the door at once and pulled him inside. Let anyone who was watching think that meant Harry was angry at him. No one else was there, when Harry had shut the door, to see him put his hands on Draco’s shoulders and straighten his robes.
            Draco’s eyes were so flat that Harry flinched when he looked into them. Draco said without preamble, “My mother recognizes the promise sigil. My father is giving up everything he is to primal forces of magic in order to restore our family name.”
            Harry felt his head and his heart ache with pity. He opened his arms without thinking, and Draco moved into them and leaned his head against Harry’s collarbone. He went on murmuring, his words feverish.
            “She said that she knew an ancestor of hers who made the same promise, and tried to go into a portrait where he thought the magic couldn’t follow. It came after him, and he was claimed. He just faded.” Draco’s hands were clutching at Harry’s back hard enough that Harry thought his nails would tear through the cloth of the thin shirt Harry wore. “What am I going to do? I thought I’d lost him when he was in Azkaban, but now—”
            “I’ll do something,” Harry told him. “Anything I can. Maybe the Lightfinder we’re going to build could even help.”
            “I don’t think so.” Draco gave a dry laugh. “No, I never thought I would lose him at all, even though I know of course he would die sometime.” He shuddered in Harry’s grasp. “But I never thought it would be like this.”
            Harry held him closer. He didn’t know what to say, but perhaps the closeness and the warmth was all the comfort Draco needed for right now. His gasps were at least slowing, his heartbeat no longer shuddering through him.
            He waited, and waited, and still Draco didn’t seem inclined to let go of him.
            Then he twisted his head to the side, and his eyes were large and liquid and pleading, and Harry closed his own eyes, because he knew that, if one more moment passed with him meeting Draco’s gaze, he would do something he would regret. Well, regret in that it wasn’t the right time for this. They were in the middle of a deadly game. He couldn’t afford to think about what he would do if they were free.
            Maybe not much different.
            They stood in silence, clinging together, and Harry did nothing but hold Draco, and the moment passed.
*
Ciara_D: You weren’t the only one!
Moon: Thank you!
Severus1snape: Thanks very much!
moodysavage: Harry is no fan of Fenrir, but I’m glad he comes across as at least understandable.
SP777: Yes, and the one who stands behind him.
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An Image of Lethe