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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-Eight--Walking the Edge
            Harry slowly unfolded the note that Parkinson had slipped to him in front of the small Death Eater assembly that morning when she returned. She'd bowed her head in something like humility as she did it and then rose, but her gaze remained on him. Harry didn't need the raised eyebrow to tell him when someone was skeptical.
            His own skepticism was with him at all times, eating away at the confidence he needed to play Voldemort. He would be surprised by now if he recognized anything else.
            Which meant he waited a moment longer before reading the note, even though he was alone now and didn't intend to admit anyone who knocked on the door this time.
            Dear Harry,
            I don't know what you think you're doing. We'll trust you. We have to. And I think that you know what you're doing, but I'm afraid you might be running so much on instinct that you'll never notice the moment when your instincts fail you.
            Hermione's sharply slanted writing gave way a moment later to Ron's more rounded letters.
            I do trust you, mate. It's just hard to know what part we're supposed to play in this. Distractions? Allies? I hate to think of you all alone in the midst of the Death Eaters with only Malfoy and Parkinson to back you up.
            Harry almost muttered aloud that they were forgetting about Astoria, and then shook his head. Of course they were, and he was becoming too addicted to the dangerous habit of talking aloud to himself if he thought it a necessary thing to say.
            Hermione's hand took over again. But we'll do as you asked. Right now, it's pure chaos here. Everyone who was there when someone blew up the Lightfinder is crazy, shaking in fear. That includes Kingsley, and that means no one's really leading the Ministry right now. The Wizengamot is trying to get together and do something, maybe declare martial law, but it's failing. Some of their members were there the day the madness struck, too, and they can't do anything without a clear voting majority.
            Harry nodded slowly. So they had some time, and for the same reason he had thought they would. But it wasn't anything except a small window. He would have to do what he could with his reverse Lightfinder and Lethe in the meantime.
            So small a time.
            Harry felt like clawing at his temples, to try and let the chaos swirling inside his head out. But he wouldn't. He simply put the letter down, and sighed a little, and then burned it with a flick of his wand.
            As it flickered and disappeared into the flames, he locked his eyes on the last words, written in Ron's scrawl.
            We love you, mate. Don't trust Malfoy.
            Harry gave a dry chuckle. That advice would have been more useful with a first name attached to it.
*
            "You wanted to see me, Father."
            Draco did his best to keep his voice calm and blank, the way he had tried to sound when Lucius would call a much younger Draco to his study to discuss some minor transgression. Lucius glanced at him over his shoulder as if he was returning to and discounting those memories at the same time, then jerked his head towards an empty chair in front of him. His father had one of the best rooms in this disused house, Draco had discovered, with furniture that didn't look scrounged. "Sit."
            Draco sat down at once, bowing a little from the waist. Lucius still ignored him, staring at the wall that didn't have decorations on it, that was only a plain grey wall. His fingers rubbed the promise sigil on his wrist.
            Draco winced and waited. Lucius finally turned to face him, stared for one moment as though he had forgotten why he'd summoned Draco, and then demanded abruptly, "Were you the one who called Narcissa?"
            "Yes."
            Lucius's face shifted, but it was hard to trace what the movements were or meant. Draco was reminded of mud shifting in a bog. "I didn't want her here. I intended to present my triumph to her--our triumph--as something finished, something done. I don't need her interfering."
            Yes, his mind is going. Or his self. Whatever the difference between them is, I don't think that it matters that much. Draco took a deep breath, shivering. He would never have said something like that before.
            "Yes, but I needed her," Draco explained. "I'm not as strong as you, Father, not as independent." He felt a brief burn of resentment like bile down his throat. Lucius would never understand what Draco's strength really was, even if he came back from the promise sigil. "I still need my mother."
            Again, his father looked at him as if startled. "You're eighteen years old, Draco. You shouldn't."
            Draco clasped his hands in his lap and thought about the way Harry had held him the other day, and about the way his mother had explained things and how she didn't see much hope but still didn't intend to give up. Those were his sources of strength. They wouldn't falter, no matter how much he might grow weak and small and hurt. "Maybe I shouldn't, Father," he agreed. "But I do."
            Lucius examined him again with more interest than he'd shown since Draco arrived here. "Why? Didn't I raise you the way I should?"
            "I think you did a good job," Draco said. Not as good a job as you should. Did you never think about what pledging yourself and your family to the Dark Lord would mean? But those were hardly accusations Draco could pull out now. "But...I am scared about what's going to happen to our family."
            Lucius relaxed. "Ah. Concern about our family and our reputation, which is stained and scarred after the Dark Lord's work on it. That is different from mere concern about your own life." He gave Draco a savage glance. "Do not forget it."
            As if the Dark Lord is the only reason our family's reputation is ruined. But Draco calmed himself down through a warm memory of Harry's arms around him, and nodded. "Was that the question you wanted to ask me, Father?"
            "I have another." Lucius's voice lowered. "Have you noticed that Fenrir Greyback is following me?"
            "No," said Draco, startled. He hadn't seen Greyback close at hand since their meeting right after he'd sent the owl to his mother. "I haven't run into him."
            "He is." Lucius's voice dropped into a hiss. "I know what he's about. Trying to displace me from the Dark Lord's favor. Trying to pretend that I'm a disloyal Death Eater and I deserve to have my throat slit for it."
            Well, you are disloyal. Draco was a little surprised at himself for having such thoughts, and he feared that his expected response was late. "That's terrible, Father. But are you sure it's Greyback doing something on his own? It sounds like too subtle a plan for him."
            Lucius sniffed. "Who else would have told him to do it? The vast majority of them--before the Dark Lord appeared, I mean--were only working with Greyback because I forced them to do so. They would not make plans with him. They would not willingly admit him into their company or give him guidance and direction."
            Draco sighed. He felt as if the tension of being possibly discovered by the Death Eaters was pressing down on him with all sorts of sharp edges, but what his father demanded was simply a huge, flat, smooth burden crushing him down. "Father, I don't know. I don't know Greyback or what you were doing here well enough to talk about that." He put his hands on his knees and leaned earnestly forwards, staring into his father's eyes. "Have you tried talking to Mother about it? She spent more time around Greyback during the war than I did. Perhaps she could figure it out from her knowledge of him."
            Lucius's hands clenched until Draco thought they would crack something open. "I don't want her involved. I still hope to--to make her understand what I am trying to do."
            "What are you trying to do, Father?" Draco whispered. "You can't forward the same plan that you were going to do now that the Dark Lord's taken over. What can you do on your own, or just with me?" He felt he had to add that last because of the way Lucius's eyes were blazing. "Let her talk to you. Let her help."
            Lucius seemed to be wavering for a moment. He turned around and stared up the high wall at the window in it, which was gauzy with dirt. Draco held his breath for a moment.
            Then Lucius turned around and shook his head fiercely at Draco. "Your mother would think there are more important things to recover than our reputation."
            Like our lives? Draco thought, but he didn't get the chance to figure out a way to ask that wouldn't infuriate his father, because Lucius leaned in and plucked at his wrist with impatient fingers.
            "I have only one chance if I want to rescue our reputation and everything else important for our family that the Ministry now holds," Lucius breathed. "I must bring down the Dark Lord. Prove myself the new Harry Potter. Prove that he's a fake." He laughed, his voice wavering in and out of a breathless cadence that made sharp knives scrape up Draco's spine. "He isn't the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord is dead. Break his hold over the Death Eaters, and they can still do something stupid that delivers them into Ministry hands."
            Draco swallowed as hard as he could, and reached out to take his father's hands, squeezing when Lucius's attention started to drift away from him. "Can you do that before the price for your promise sigil falls due, Father?"
            "Oh, yes," said Lucius, and for a second he rubbed Draco's wrist and smiled at him. "So caring for me. You're so caring for your old father, Draco."
            He half-sounded as though he was on the verge of tears. Draco had never heard him sound like that, even during the war. He stiffened his shoulders and tried to respond as lightly as he could. "Well, you won't let Mother be. So I have to be."
            "She can care. She may not interfere." Lucius's voice descended into a growling harmonic strain. "I won't let her interfere, Draco."
            His hands were clutching Draco's back now, nearly hard enough to break his finger bones. Draco held in a gasp of pain and asked simply, "So you have a plan to take down the Dark Lord?" He let his voice fall without effort. He was fearful of what his father might do, and if it wasn't fear of the Dark Lord, well, he doubted Lucius would be able to tell the difference.
            "Yes." Lucius had finally let go of his hands, and got up now to pace feverishly back and forth across the room. Although the only larger room was the one Harry had taken for his own, Draco shrank back. It did rather feel as if the room was too small to contain both a pacing Lucius and himself. "If he is Potter, there are lures he will not be able to resist, actions he will commit that the Dark Lord never would."
            "Oh." Draco tried to put as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. "So you're going to try to capture one of the Weasleys and offer them up for torture?"
            He hated giving his father ideas, but at least that way, he'd be able to warn Harry.
            "No," said Lucius, and his mouth curved in a smug little smile. "Have you noticed that he hasn't killed anyone yet, Draco? Or summoned a snake to feed us to? I intend to get rid of my Greyback problem and my Potter problem in the same instant."
*
            "Yes. This could work."
            Astoria's voice was so soft that Harry had to lean towards her to hear. He sighed in relief. "Then you think that the ingredients I told the Death Eaters to fetch should be all we need?"
            Astoria looked up at him, nodding. Her eyes were soft, too, and serious, and she made a hard gesture at the books beside her, as if calling them to be witnesses to her words. "You'll still need to perform the spell that I told you about, the one that'll bind your magic to the new Lightfinder and make it possible for you to control the results that it produces."
            Harry nodded in silence. Astoria and Parkinson now thought the spells and Transfiguration that had produced the original Lightfinders needed to be controlled by the desires of a powerful wizard. What that wizard wanted the Lightfinder to discover was what it would discover. Because there hadn't been only a single powerful wizard at the creation of the last one, it had simply reached out and latched onto the general desires floating around it in the room. If those desires centered on the supposed difference between Light and Dark...
            "I wonder if we'll ever understand exactly what the last Lightfinder showed," he muttered.
            "Why would we?" Astoria's smile was faint, but there. "I don't think the people making it knew what they really believed the difference between Light and Dark was. Other than as a matter of magical affinity, it's always been incoherent."
            The books had certainly convinced Harry on that subject. There were certain kinds of spells that some wizards could cast better than others, but the constant shifting back and forth on the subject because of law and custom had destroyed his notion that there were really sharp differences between them that always stayed the same.
            The door of the library opened, and Draco came in.
            Harry tensed, aware too late that if it hadn't been Draco, his sitting this close to Astoria with a hand planted on the library table in front of her could be taken entirely the wrong way. But Draco didn't appear to notice it at all. He gave Astoria a swift smile, and Harry a different look as he stopped in front of him.
            I'm getting careless, Harry reprimanded himself as he settled back and waited for Draco to say what he'd obviously come to say. I shouldn't act like I'm safe, or that anyone else who's faithful to me is, either.
            "My father has noticed that you've set Greyback to spying on him," Draco murmured. "And he has also noticed that you haven't killed anyone yet, or severely tortured them. He thinks that he can convince the others you aren't the Dark Lord by exposing your unwillingness to do that."
            "And get rid of Greyback, too?" Harry didn't think Draco would have bothered mentioning Greyback unless he had something to do with Lucius's plan. He reached up and put a hand on Draco's shoulder as he sat down heavily in the chair next to Harry.
            "Yes." Draco rubbed his forehead with his hand, as if he, too, had a scar there that provided a direct link to Voldemort. "But he wouldn't tell me what it was. I don't know whether he suspects me of helping you, or simply wants this to be a surprise."
            Harry tightened his grip on Draco. He thought perhaps the worst thing about Draco's situation was that he did still have his father, not dead or Kissed or locked up in Azkaban, but it made no difference. He was still on the opposite side of a struggle from that father, still separated and distant from him.
            "Thank you for telling me," Harry said quietly. Astoria was gathering up the books and papers she spent most of her time with, and slipping out of the room. Harry knew he should tell her to stay, that she might be able to help them or at least comfort Draco in ways he couldn't, but the words wouldn't come to his tongue. "This has to be hard on you."
            Draco blinked as though listening to a distant music. "I suppose it is. It's--I mostly think about the promise sigil and what's going to happen when it claims my father. Or when the thing he made that promise to shows up demanding payment."
            He blinked again, but this time, his gaze had come back to the present, and was focused on Harry's face. He leaned forwards. "It hurts," he whispered. "More than the thought of him trying to turn against me, the thought of losing him hurts."
            His hands found the front of Harry's robe and tightened in it. "The pressure's worse than the pressure of performing for the Death Eaters. Because my father knows me better, and he's more likely to notice a slip-up."
            His hands were so tight now that the robe collar was twisted around Harry's throat, and he was having trouble breathing. But more than that, all he could think about was the lack of a plausible lie that would save Draco should someone else walk into the room and see them. There was no Death Eater who would accept that Draco somehow had the right to choke Lord Voldemort.
            Harry reached out and gently took Draco's left hand off his collar, then maneuvered him so they would look like Harry was in a more commanding posture if someone came through the door. "It is overwhelming," he agreed quietly. "But I think you need to tell your mother, and she can help us figure something out."
            Draco stared at him with startled, wide eyes. Harry blinked. "Didn't you already tell your mother?" He had assumed Draco would go to her before coming to him.
            "No," Draco mumbled. "I just--I don't think he would have told her, either. He said that he didn't want her to know what he was planning to do with the Death Eaters until it was accomplished and he could lay it at her feet. I was--I didn't know what to do except come to you."
            Harry's heartbeat was so hard that it made him wince. He thought they were sliding back towards a dangerous moment, the sort of thing that would be hard to recover from.
            "Well, he might not tell her, but she might still be able to help us," he said soothingly. "And it'll probably take him a while to prepare his plot. We have time to come up with something to counter it."
            Draco's hands tightened on his collar and Harry's own hand again. Harry winced, but met his gaze squarely. He was scared, too, but his fears had been somewhat put to sleep by the time he'd spent with Astoria, and by the fact that his friends still trusted him. Maybe he could pass some of that courage on to Draco, if he tried.
            "Don't deny me this," Draco whispered. "Not this time."
            Harry swallowed. He hadn't thought Draco had noticed the last...dangerous moment. "We don't--there's no deception that would protect us--have you even thought about what it is that we're denying?"
            Okay, so his voice was a little shrill on the last part. But he had to bring Draco back to his senses, because if Draco plunged and pulled Harry along with him, Harry didn't think he was strong enough to come back to the surface on his own.
            "Yes," Draco said, simply, devastatingly, and when he leaned in, it was to cover Harry's mouth with his own.
            Damn it. Harry had known it was coming, hadn't known it was coming, and he curled his fingers hungrily against Draco's back anyway. He dragged him closer, and Draco's hand finally let go of his robe collar to soothe and smooth up and around the nape of his neck, into his hair. That was how Harry figured out he liked having his hair tugged.
            And the tugging kept on, and Draco was leaning on him as if he would fall off the chair if Harry moved, and damn it.
            But Harry had been right. He was too exhausted to surface from the madness on his own. He dived into it, and Draco was right beside him, mouth open, following him down into something other than fear.
            And Harry was so tired of being afraid.
*
            Draco hadn't let himself think about this. For one thing, there might be some Death Eaters who had hidden Legilimency talent even from the Dark Lord himself. Professor Snape had managed it for years.
            For another, he wasn't sure it had happened, hadn't let what he had felt sometimes hovering between himself and Harry form into words. If it wasn't in words, then it wasn't happening. That was all there was to it.
            But now it was there, it was real, it was Harry answering him with a kiss as strong and starving as his own, and Draco's hands were clawing up Harry's back. Harry hissed and tossed his head to the side. Draco moved with him, though, not letting their mouths part.
            If we do, I might do something stupid.
            Draco poured it out, all the frustration and the fear and the anger and the spite and the hatred of his situation, into the kiss, and Harry was there, answering him. The only one who was equally matched with him in all of those emotions. The only one who understood.
            They broke the kiss at last, both gasping, and Draco thought they were both also gasping as hard as each other. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Harry, shaking his head a little when Harry opened his mouth to say something.
            "Think about what you say before you say it," he whispered. "If it's stupid, then I can't promise to make my reaction intelligent."
            Harry blinked, thought about it, visibly swallowed, and murmured, "All right. Aren't you afraid that this will make things--harder for us? After all, there's really no lie that would save us if someone walked in on us." He cast a glance at the door of the library as though remembering they hadn't put charms on it.
            Draco reached out and slid one finger down Harry's wrist. It was gratifying, how that made Harry's gaze snap to him at once.
            As if I was the most important thing in the universe. Just for a minute. Not the act for the Death Eaters, and not the Lightfinder, and not Lethe, and not finding his way back into the wizarding world and making sure his friends don't hate him. Me.
            "Listen," Draco said. "It's hard already. I think that I'll take my wand in hand and start cursing someone if I don't have a way to escape. And I thought I could escape by coming to you and letting you hold me, but I don't think that's going to be enough anymore. Do you?" He leaned forwards and stared into Harry's eyes, waiting.
            Harry half-closed his eyes and shook his head. Draco reached out and touched the side of his neck, sliding his fingers up onto Harry's cheek and into his hair, and Harry opened his eyes one more time.
            "But why--this? I thought--I thought it might be this, but I also thought it might be--just friendship, like you have with Parkinson."
            Harry's voice was breathless. Good. Draco leaned towards him.
            "Because we need something as intense as the pressure we're under," he murmured. "Because things between us were too intense for that kind of friendship, which needs people who've known each other for years."
            "We have--"
            "Known each other. Not just known of each other's existence."
            Harry wasn't stupid enough to protest that it was the same thing. He looked up and held Draco's gaze, then nodded silently. Draco smiled and cast some of the charms on the library door that they should have cast already.
            "Good," Draco said. "Now come here. I want to be able to go back to my father and present a perfect calm facade if I have to."
            Harry leaned forwards without protest. Draco sighed and opened his mouth and closed his eyes.
            I need this. I want this. I'm going to have it. And so will he.
            This'll be part of what keeps us both alive.
*
            Ciara_D: Thank you!
            Severus1snape: I really appreciate it!
            moon: Well, Draco is trying to make it both less tense and sweeter. For both their sakes.
            SP777: Harry doesn't think of most of the Death Eaters as allies or people he should be sympathetic to, so he would probably do his best to at least render them harmless. He's not an Auror, as this is taking place the summer after the war.
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An Image of Lethe