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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20632 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Eight—Waking
            “I didn’t feel you come back home.”
            Harry grunted a little at Malfoy and went back to flicking through the book in front of him. He’d found three libraries in Malfoy’s house so far, two of them exclusively devoted to Potions and Dark Arts. This one seemed to be more general, but there was no organization to the books as far as Harry could tell. He’d found this tome, about spells that affected sight, sitting right next to a history of the goblin rebellions.
            “Yes, you’re very mature to ignore me.”
            “I’m not trying to ignore you.” Harry leaned back and let his head sag on his neck for a second, trying to relax tense muscles. “I just—I cast a spell on Rob, and it was one of those damn ones that the Elder Wand suggested to me and I didn’t know before. I’m trying to find a reference to it.”
            “And you didn’t think to ask me?”
            Malfoy had glided up to him by now. Harry sighed, glanced at the offended look on his face, and said, “Okay. The incantation is Addo aspectum.” He thought he felt the Elder Wand shift around in his pocket when he said the words, and he frowned down at it.
            Malfoy didn’t seem to notice the frown, or at least he didn’t care much about it. He was shaking his head. “That doesn’t do anything.”
            “What? Then why would the Elder Wand tell me to cast it?”
            “I mean,” Malfoy said, with a martyred sigh, “it does something, but nothing bad. When you told me you’d cast a spell on your former toy, I thought it was a curse. That’s just the Clarifying Spell. It forces a person to share your perceptions of something for a moment. They mostly use it when they’re having problems with Translation Charms or an inventor needs someone else to share his vision of a complex machine he’s come up with. Especially inventors who can’t draw.”
            Harry blinked and sat back. “Then what…” He understood a second later. Presumably, the spell would have shown Rob the way Harry thought of himself now, and Malfoy, and Rob, and why he had decided to turn his back on making up for his crimes.
            “That actually sounds helpful. Why would the Elder Wand want me to cast a helpful spell?”
            “Probably for the same reason I would have wanted you to cast it, if I was there.” Malfoy reached out and took hold of Harry’s hand, holding it until Harry hissed in protest at what Malfoy was doing to his fingers. Even then, Malfoy didn’t back off, still staring at him, still breathing as though his breath was going to flay his lungs. Harry tugged on his hand, glaring. Malfoy finally let him go.
            “What’s that reason?”
            “To get him away from you. To convince him that you’ve changed and you’re never going to go back to being his precious lover.”
            Malfoy spoke the words as if they were poison he needed to spit from his mouth as soon as possible. Harry shook his head a little and turned away. “I don’t—Malfoy, what he likes about me is the fact that I’ve changed. He didn’t want to date the man I was. He hated Old Harry.”
            “No,” Malfoy said at once, savagely. “He thinks that you’ve changed back into something he could have had, someone he once liked, rather than into something new. And that’s why he should fuck off as soon as possible.” Malfoy had apparently regained a little of his control over himself, because he sat back and half-closed his eyes. “Because you haven’t gone back. You can never go back. You can only go forwards.”
            “What the Elder Wand wants me to go forwards to might not be great.”
            “It would be great. Just not good.”
            Harry shook his head at once. “I’m not getting involved in those debates where I wonder if I’m a good person the way that Old Harry did. You saw what it did to him.”
            “And what about what I want you to go towards?”
            Harry leaned slowly back. “I didn’t know that you wanted me to be anything but your lover,” he said.
            Malfoy curled his lip. “Count on me to have more ambition than that. Especially for someone I plan to be involved with.”
            “So that does come into it—”
            “Yes, but not exclusively,” Malfoy said, and leaned in again. “This is one difference between me and everyone else who might want you to do something, Potter. I promise you that I want you to be more than one thing. Not just my lover. Not just the friend that Weasley and Granger want for you—”
            “You don’t know Ron and Hermione well enough to say—”
            “And not just the shallow good person that your old lover wants you to be.” Malfoy raised his voice a little, and glared back at him. “I think you have a chance to do something other than mope around like he did and give in to the worries about your supposed Darker nature. Don’t forget that.”
            “I just said that I didn’t intend to, didn’t I? That I won’t get involved in the same debates about whether I’m good or not that Old Harry did.” Harry folded his arms and glared at Malfoy. “It’s like you never listen to me. I don’t think someone who never listens to me can actually be a good lover or friend for me.”
            “Have you thought about it?”
            “Thought about what?”
            “Staying with me.”
            “I thought that was what I was doing.”
            With a snort of disgust, Malfoy stood up. “I’ve done you the compliment of not treating you like you were stupid,” he snapped, and walked towards the library door. “Do the same for me. You know very well what I meant.”
            Harry sighed and closed his eyes. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, but treat me like I’m missing these memories of all the interactions I might have had with you in the past ten years. I genuinely don’t know what you mean.”
            He heard the soft shuffles of Malfoy’s feet as he came back into the library. “So you really don’t know, then.”
            “No. I know what you wanted from me when I was Old Harry. But now—your lover. Why do you want more than that?”
            “Because I think you could become great. And I know what it’s like to be you from the inside. That means I can’t be indifferent to you.” Malfoy gave a rusty laugh that sounded like the creaking of a gate hinge. “As much as I wish I could be, sometimes.”
            “I know,” Harry said. He had the feeling he was talking to himself. “I wish I could be indifferent about a lot of things. I wouldn’t be in this mess if Old Harry had just been a little more indifferent to the opinions of other people.”
            Malfoy was coming closer, by the sound. “What did Rob want to tell you?”
            “That Old Harry had developed a variant of the Imperius Curse he cast on several Aurors. They would tell him about cases and juicy leads.” Harry sighed and opened his eyes. “I remember Ron saying that at least Old Harry was a good Auror. It seems he wasn’t.”
            Malfoy stood as still as though Harry had struck him, staring. Then he shook his head a little. “He couldn’t have developed a spell like that.”
            Harry blinked. “Why not?”
            “Because,” Malfoy said, “I’m the one who did.”
            Harry stood up slowly. He had no idea what he was going to do when his brain caught up to his body. At the moment, he only knew that he wanted to be on his feet and over closer to Malfoy.
            He moved towards him. Malfoy didn’t retreat. Maybe he didn’t think he needed to. He simply stood there and stared up at Harry with an almost fearless expression.
            Almost.
            “Why would you do something like that?” Harry whispered. “I thought you were a Potions maker, not a spell creator—” He cut himself off. That he should say that first was disgusting. There were so many more important things to worry about. “Why would you give it to him? When you know that he was crazy?”
            “I wanted him to admire me.” Malfoy shook his head. “And to let me into his mind, and to let me do the experiments I wanted. He made it a condition of continuing the experiments that I give him the spell. I was happy enough to do that. The challenge was making it. After that, there was nothing to be done with it. There was no one I really wanted to use it on. Except him, and he was resistant to the Imperius Curse.”
            Harry closed his eyes and turned his head away. Malfoy said nothing. Harry was the one who had to find the words, by which time he had crossed the library again and was staring dully at the shelves.
            “You didn’t think to tell me this?”
            “Why would I want to prejudice my chances with you? So no, I didn’t tell you.”
            Harry’s hands curled further and further into claws. But Malfoy didn’t move or run away. He simply stood where he was, staring expectantly at Harry. Harry took a glance down at his own hands and forced them open.
            He wouldn’t attack Malfoy, and he knew they both knew it. He said instead, “So being my lover, or getting close to me, or doing experiments, or whatever, was more important to you than doing the right thing.”
            Malfoy snorted. It sounded as loud as a boom, and when Harry’s eyes shot to him, Malfoy was already speaking.
            “Don’t come the pretentious moralist with me. You knew from the time you saw that Horcrux portrait, if not before, that I wasn’t as good as you are. Or were trying to be. I knew some of what you were doing when you were Old Harry, and I didn’t stop it. I made illegal, dangerous potions for him. I never reported him to the Aurors. I made that spell and gave it to him, yes. It’s far, far from the worst thing I’ve done. The Horcrux portrait was probably worse, when it comes to pure Dark Arts.”
            Harry said nothing. He put his head in his hands. It was as if he had found out that Ron was the one helping him blackmail people, instead of Kelvin.
            “You knew I wasn’t a good person, whatever way you choose to define that.” Malfoy sneered at him out of the corner of his mouth when Harry looked up again. “Don’t act as though this is new and surprising information.”
            Harry cleared his throat. “It isn’t surprising. It’s just upsetting.”
            “Does that mean you’ll continue to stay here instead of running off like an idiot?”
            Harry shook his head and Summoned his things, trying to ignore the thrum of happiness that ran through the Elder Wand when he used it. “It means I’m going to take a room at the Leaky Cauldron and try to work out what I should do next, and then I’ll ask Kingsley what strides they’ve made in repairing the protections on Grimmauld Place.”
            “I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t remember it! I didn’t think it was a bigger deal than the other things I’ve done that you wouldn’t approve of.”
            Harry didn’t say anything. He simply gathered up the few clothes that he’d brought, and the trunk, and nodded at a few of the books that lay on the table. “Do you mind if I take these with me?”
            “Yes, I do mind!”
            Harry turned away and gathered up the trunk without answering. His shoulders and spine ached as if he’d spent the night on a hard floor.
            Malfoy seized him and spun him around again. He was looming right in front of Harry, breathing harshly, staring into his eyes.
            “I knew I should never have allowed you to go see your precious former lover,” he whispered. “He’s confused you again, and made you assume that anyone who doesn’t support your notions of good is wrong.”
            “I don’t know how much of this is him,” Harry said simply. “I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t told me about that spell, or if you hadn’t told me about developing it yourself. It just—” He wiped at his eyes. He felt really tired. “I need some time and space to think about it, okay?”
            “But you won’t leave me behind the way you did him.”
            Harry looked helplessly at Malfoy. He wanted to say that he would, because Malfoy needed to calm down and get over him, and this was the best way. But then he wondered what in the world that would do to Malfoy’s confidence and obsession with Harry himself.
            And the fact of the matter was, he just didn’t have many other friends right now.
            “Think of it this way.” Malfoy moved a sliding step towards him. “It’s another thing that happened long before you became yourself, before you lost your memories. You can’t remember it anyway. Why feel guiltier for this than for the blackmail or the working with Kelvin that you already decided you wouldn’t feel guilty for?”
            Harry shook his head. “Because I was clinging to the last hope that there was something Old Harry was good at,” he said, glad that he’d found the words for something that might seem nearly pointless to Malfoy, but did matter to Harry himself. “That he was really a good Auror, and he didn’t do things that would get in the way of that. But now I know even that was a lie. I—I wasn’t only a horrible person, I was an incompetent one!”
            Malfoy paused. Then he nodded and slowly leaned back. “I can see how that would be different. It’s the way I would feel if I lost my memories and found out that my former self had been relying on someone else to brew his potions.”
            “Good,” said Harry, and something soft and dark moved over him. “Then—you understand why I need to go to the Leaky Cauldron right now?”
            “I understand why you want to. Needing is a different thing.”
            Harry bit the inside of his cheek. “All right. But you understand.”
            “Yes.” Malfoy seemed to pull up a sigh from within the depths of himself. “And I think the last thing you need is someone questioning your decisions and pulling at you to do something else. The way they did.”
            Harry didn’t know who he was specifically referring to, and he decided he didn’t care. He nodded. “Thanks, Malfoy. You’re right. That—helps a lot.” He turned and walked more steadily towards the front door.
            The odd, grey-eyed house-elf was waiting to escort him out. Harry looked at him, then back at Malfoy, who had come into the entrance hall and was standing and watching Harry with that devouring way he had.
            “You’re free to come back whenever you want,” Malfoy said.
            “I know that.”
            “I’m not the one who thinks it would be a good idea if you went away.”
            “I know that, too.”
            Malfoy watched him for one more moment, then shook his head and spoke words that sounded as if they were ripped from him. “Is it just that I didn’t tell you? Or do you think there’s something especially evil about a spell that mimics the Imperius Curse that you don’t think is that evil about the other things you did?”
            “That you didn’t tell me.” Harry gave a ragged sigh when he saw the way Malfoy looked at him, and added, “I know other things were worse. But right now, they don’t feel that way. I think—I think this was the last scrap of hope I had for Old Harry. And I think I’ll probably come back soon,” he added, as he turned to the door. “Just, right now, I can’t stay here. You’ve given me a lot of support. But I need to stand on my own for a while and just think. I need private space and time in which to do that.”
            Malfoy crossed the distance to him. Harry stared him in the eye. Malfoy didn’t fling his arms around Harry and command him to stay the way Harry thought he must be longing to do.
            Instead, he simply held out a stiff arm, nodded a little, and then muttered, “Come back whenever you want. I won’t tell you what to think.”
            Harry nodded to his—friend, lover, comrade, none of them felt right—to Malfoy, and then stepped out the door. The house-elf bowed to him, and Harry looked from him to Malfoy.
            Their eyes really are the exact same shade of grey.
            Harry pushed any disquieting thoughts about that away and trudged to the outer grounds to Apparate. No matter what Malfoy had done to or with his house-elf, Harry suspected it wasn’t Old Harry’s fault, which at the moment made it rather low-priority.
            Other things were much higher priority. Like how the hell he would support himself now.
            And who he would stand with.
            I have to get my head in order.
*
moodysavage: Harry knows he can’t run forever, but he is doing a modified version of it because, as he says, he can’t think if he’s around either of them right now.
     SP777: No, not really. Draco wasn’t lying about the effect it has.
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The Dust of Water