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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.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three—The Brass Serpent
            Harry stared at the photograph that Kingsley Shacklebolt had thrust in front of him, and then glanced away from it, blinking. “I don’t know him. Should I?” The wizard had a dark moustache and long beard, and some unusual silver decorations around the collar of his robe, but Harry knew he would have remembered him if he had ever seen him before.
            Shacklebolt—well, Harry was trying to remember to think of him as Kingsley—sighed and sat back on the chair placed for visitors, shaking his head. “I’d hoped you would remember him,” he muttered. “He’s the wizard who did this to you.”
            Harry turned back. “I thought I did it to me.” He had read all the books that Hermione had, the ones on the magical core and how it could respond to someone’s wishes to sacrifice magic or memory or other things and survive a curse.
            “He was the one who cast the Killing Curse, though.” Kingsley cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Harry. I thought confronting you with his picture suddenly like that would startle any memories to life that were still hiding.”
            Harry stiffened. Some of the Healers had treated him like that, too, Healers who weren’t Hermione. “I don’t have any memories left,” he said, as calmly as he could. “And I wouldn’t hide them on purpose. I want to go back to the man I was!”
            Kingsley eyed him after he screamed that, and Harry felt his cheeks flush dully with mortification. He must sound like a teenager screaming how unfair it was. That that was exactly the way he felt didn’t mean anyone else should have to deal with it.
            He opened his mouth to apologize, but Kingsley was already holding up one large hand and shaking his head. “No, Harry, it’s all right. I thought it worth a try, but Healer Granger told me about what happened to your magical core.” He leaned forwards with an earnest face. “You don’t remember anything? What’s the time of your last memory?”
            “Going up to Gryffindor Tower to take a nap right after the Battle of Hogwarts.” And people dying, but Harry wasn’t going to talk about that. Last night, it had been Fred he woke shuddering with grief for, because he had missed the funeral. Or couldn’t remember the funeral. Ron had offered to take him to see Fred’s grave, since he’d be cleared to leave hospital in a few days, but Harry knew it wouldn’t be the same.
            “I see.” Kingsley hesitated. “Then you must know that you can’t become an Auror again without repeating the Auror training program, if you really don’t remember a thing.”
            Harry ached with the desire to say so many things: Why would he remember it, when so much else was gone? He had more important things to remember than the Auror training program, things he would have given half his life to remember. Why did people seem to think he was deliberately hiding memories? What if he wanted some time to recover instead of plunging right back into the life that had been taken from him?
            But when he thought about it that way, confusion flooded him, because that last thought contradicted the first one. He couldn’t want to remember the old life and start building a new life at the same time.
            He swallowed. “Yes, sir, I realize that,” he said. “The only thing is—can the other instructors and trainees treat me fairly? Or will they always be expecting me to remember and act the way I did before?”
            Kingsley’s smile seemed to make his face glow from the inside out, and that made it easy for Harry to see why he must once have wanted to work with this man so much. “I wouldn’t offer you the option if I thought they couldn’t adapt, Harry,” he said warmly. “I’ll explain the situation to them, and it had better work. Or I’ll train you myself.”
            Harry nearly opened his mouth to say that was what he wanted. He wasn’t looking forward to being released from St. Mungo’s, honestly, as much as he wanted to see the home he shared with Ginny and all the people he hadn’t seen so far. St. Mungo’s had kept the number of visitors small so as not to overwhelm him, and when he saw the flood of people who wanted to gape at him and shout questions and expect him to remember all sorts of small interactions he didn’t…
            But he couldn’t want Kingsley to train him on his own. Not really. That would mean not doing what he’d done before, not going through the exact same steps that might, even if it was a small hope, give some sense of what it was to live the life he’d lost.
            “When does the next training program start, sir?” he asked.
            Kingsley’s smile was even more brilliant than before. “In August. I think you’ll have some time before then to get back on track?”
            Harry nodded, swallowing. Then he asked something that neither Ron nor Hermione had known the answer to, and which he hadn’t thought to ask Ginny. When he was with her, Harry was in the process of being overwhelmed by so much, and he wanted to ask other questions that were far more important. “Sir, do you know if I kept a journal or diary of some sort that would record my thoughts during Auror training? Whether I would still have it? My friends didn’t know.”
            Kingsley blinked, looking surprised. “Not to my knowledge. You said something once about not trusting journals not to write back.”
            Harry grimaced. At least he could understand that based on memories he still had.
            “But there are Auror training logs that all instructors are required to keep and hand in when their classes move on to become full Aurors.” Kingsley stood up looking happy. “I should have thought of that before. And of course some instructors who taught you are still around and would be pleased to contribute Pensieve memories. I know it’s not the same, but it would let you know who your classmates were, how you performed, who you got along with and who you didn’t. Would that be acceptable?”
            “More than acceptable,” said Harry, breathing out with a trembling sigh. He couldn’t believe how good Kingsley was to him. They didn’t need him to defeat Voldemort anymore—
            But, no, he had become Kingsley’s friend during the past ten years. That was what everyone said. Harry didn’t know why he had so much trouble believing them.
            “Harry?”
            Kingsley was still waiting. He still needed some more acknowledgement, apparently. Harry shook himself free of the clinging mists of doubt and smiled at him. “I would like to see how people reacted to me when I was still a new trainee, sir. It’s going to be like that again, really.”
            That brought yet another dazzling smile, and Kingsley patted Harry on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you getting ready to resume your old life,” he said softly. “I know a lot of people in your situation would have simply given up.”
            Harry bowed his head and said nothing. There were times he did feel like giving up, telling himself it was useless.
            But then guilt would consume him, because his old life had been so wonderful. How could he feel like he wanted to leave it behind even for an instant?
*
            “Auror Potter, over here! Just one question! How does it feel knowing that you can’t remember defeating any of the Dark wizards that you took care of after you defeated You-Know-Who?”
            “Auror Potter! Any news on how soon you’ll have your memories back?”
            “No, over here! This is the important question! How many of your previous political opinions will you continue to support?”
            Harry hunched his head and shoulders as he moved through the crowd of stares and clicking cameras and shouting voices. Hermione gave him several sympathetic glances as they walked, wrapping one arm around his shoulders so that he could shelter next to her if he needed to.
            He had known how to deal with the press. Ginny had shown him memories of that, too, of how he had dealt with the rudest and most unforgivable questions with a quip and a smile. People had come up to them when they were on their dates, and had gone away satisfied because the stranger Harry had become was so quick with his tongue.
            I had a knowledge of politics, and I knew—I knew how to be gracious.
            It was something Harry couldn’t remember ever having learned. It made a hollow ache fill the space inside him that felt as if it should have been filled with memories instead. It made him wonder how long it would be before his friends figured out he was an imposter and couldn’t ever be what they needed from him, what they had a right to expect from him.
            “I see that the great Harry Potter is as arrogant as ever about answering questions.”
            That voice attracted Harry’s attention because it was one he knew. His head jerked around, despite Hermione muttering something about “schoolboy rivalries” and trying to keep him moving forwards.
            Draco Malfoy hadn’t changed in ten years except to grow taller. Same voice, same sneer when he met Harry’s eyes. Harry felt a fierce, hot gladness spring up in him, burning for the first time since he’d lost his memories.
            “And I see the great Draco Malfoy hasn’t learned any manners or shame despite having gone through a war.”
            Malfoy recoiled, his eyes widening and his cheeks burning. Harry grinned. He knew it was a vicious grin they were snapping photographs of, and didn’t care. He felt—not like himself, because he didn’t remember being himself, but real.
            Malfoy was still staring at him when Hermione bundled Harry finally into the Apparition point and took his arm. Harry let her do it. He had only the glimpses of his home that he’d seen through the donated Pensieve memories, not nearly enough to Apparate to it with any degree of confidence.
            They arrived, staggering, in a large room that had photographs of all sorts hung on the walls. Harry blinked at them. He recognized some of the photos from the album Hagrid had made him of his parents’ pictures, but a lot of them were new. Him standing in Auror robes with his arm slung around Ron’s shoulders, probably when they got out of training. Him standing in a similar position with Hermione in what looked like brand-new Healer’s robes, both of them smiling and waving madly at the camera.
            And picture after picture of him with Ginny. The real one was standing near the couch that rang the length of one wall with a hopeful, tentative smile.
            “He looks like he’s been almost knocked down,” Ginny said, and blinked at Hermione. “What happened?”
            “I took him through the main entrance to hospital because I thought it would help him get used to large crowds of people again, and it was too much,” Hermione admitted with a small sigh. “We probably should have Flooed the way you said we should, Ginny.”
            “Yeah, that would have helped,” Harry muttered. He understood why they were talking about him like he wasn’t there, that he probably did look even more shocked than he was, but he resented it a little.
            Hermione turned towards him at once with a motherly smile. “Why don’t you go sit down in the study? You usually—used to spend a lot of time there, and I don’t think Ginny really got a chance to show it to you through the memories.”
            Harry nodded and walked dazedly off. He heard Hermione talking about a cup of tea and Ginny saying, “Let me make it.” They would probably leave him alone for a few minutes.
            The study was ridiculous. Harry could never picture himself becoming the sort of person who would want a large mahogany desk and a golden inkstand. But he had them. He would have to get used to it, he thought, sitting down behind the desk and staring at the pictures on top of it. Himself standing with other Aurors around a captured man who looked like Rabastan Lestrange. Ginny smiling at him from a beach in what might be France. The stranger again, clapping mugs with an equally unfamiliar dark-haired man in a pub that didn’t look like the Leaky Cauldron or the Hog’s Head.
            There were scrolls on the wall, all of them bearing large golden letters that Harry could make out said RECOMMENDATION or COMMENDED. Beside them were a few framed Orders of Merlin. Harry looked away.
            He had got lucky when he faced Voldemort. He doubted, with a sinking heart, that anyone would be willing to hear that now, because it seemed he had proven he was a hero in the years since.
            But how could he be a hero if he didn’t remember how?
            Sitting there, in the chair that fit his body but seemed to have been molded for someone taller and better than he was anyway, Harry shut his eyes. Then he sat up and turned around, something Ginny had said ringing in his mind.
            You told me once it had to do with a locked drawer in your desk. She had said that had something to do with the five years that Harry had waited before dating her.
            Harry reckoned that at least this particular secret, when he discovered it, wouldn’t have other people expecting him to remember it. It probably had to do with the Dursleys, he thought, or maybe how long it had taken him to come to terms with the war and murdering Voldemort. Maybe this was the resting place of the journal he’d asked Kingsley about.
            The drawer was the top one on the left, and it didn’t open when Harry tugged on it. Harry paused and studied the handle for a second, wondering if it needed a particular password or spell. If so, it was going to be as locked to him as anyone else.
            Then he noticed something that he shouldn’t have overlooked, and it made his heart beat a little harder, in shock. The handle of the drawer was shaped like a slender brass snake, coiled back on itself and waiting with its mouth slightly open to display fangs.
            Harry licked his lips. He knew, he knew, that his Parseltongue ability would have disappeared when Voldemort was destroyed. Ginny had told him that during one conversation, and Harry had reasoned it out because Dumbledore had told him that the ability came from the Horcrux.
            The drawer probably didn’t open with Parseltongue, either, Harry told himself. Maybe the drawer handle had been that way when he bought the desk. Maybe whoever had made the desk just liked snakes.
            When he checked the other handles on the drawers, he had to abandon that theory. This one was the only one that looked like a serpent.
            Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t need to see the snake to speak Parseltongue, if he was going to speak it. The image of the thing burned behind his eyelids.
            “Open.”
            The slight click of the drawer made Harry tremble as if he still had a fever. He reached out and slid the drawer open, flinching a little when his fingers didn’t fall where he expected them to. Living in a taller body was something he was still getting used to.
            Inside the drawer was a slender red-and-gold book. Harry lifted it out, and then started when some equally slender pieces of paper slid from inside it. He picked them up, and found himself looking at more pictures of himself and the dark-haired man he was clashing mugs with in the photo on his desk.
            Only this time, he was leaning on the man’s shoulder, and the man had his head turned backwards, kissing Harry. And they only went on doing it while Harry watched, frozen.
            There were other pictures there, which Harry scrambled through. Some of him and the man walking down a beach that didn’t look that different from the beach in the picture of Ginny on his desk. Some of the man dozing on rocks, or the edges of cliffs, or in flowery meadows next to deep blue lakes. A snapshot of Harry naked in bed with his hand curled open, his eyes lazily smiling at the camera.

            He looked different in that picture than in the memory Ginny had shown him of them asleep in bed together.
            Younger, for one thing.
            Harry felt as though he was suffocating in a sandstorm. He opened the book and flicked through it.
            It did appear to be a journal, full of excited entries about Auror training, Ron and Hermione, the end of the Battle of Hogwarts, the clean-up process, how he had testified at Death Eater trials. And then the name “Rob Haynes” started showing up more and more often. Harry slowed down to peer at one entry that was dated the second of April, 2000.
            I don’t understand why I’m feeling this way about Rob Haynes from my training classes. I mean, he’s more fun to spar against than even Ron, and that might be part of it. But I’m also thinking about his mouth and shoulders and the way he smiles at me when he sees me come into the room.
            I don’t want to be gay.
            Harry hastily slammed the book shut and stuffed it back into the drawer in his desk, along with the pictures. He thought he knew now why he had waited five years to date Ginny.
            Although not why he’d done it in the end, if he was gay. Or what had happened to this Rob.
            It sounded like the tea was done in the kitchen, and Hermione and Ginny would be coming in soon. Harry had to shut the drawer before then.
            There was something else in the back of it, though, besides the journal and the photographs. Harry reached for what looked like another journal, his blood thrumming. Maybe this would be the one that explained what the hell he had been thinking, or how he had moved on from Rob to Ginny.
            But it wasn’t. It was a list of names, like one of the ledgers Harry had sometimes seen George and Fred—
            Fred.
            Harry closed his eyes until he was past it, then opened them and looked again.
            And the names had prices beside them. Twenty Galleons, ten Galleons, sixteen Sickles. Harry flipped through the pages, noticing that a few of the prices had cryptic notes beside them on the other side. “Potions accident.” “Unfaithful to his wife.” “Dabbled in Dark Arts.”
            And then—
            Then there was the name “Draco Malfoy.” The price of twenty-four Galleons with a minus sign in front of it, while most of the others had pluses. And the note “Experimental potion. Didn’t work.”
            Harry stared with a cold feeling creeping up his spine. It looked like he’d paid Malfoy money, while most of the others he had been…collecting money from? Why? Were they his fans? Harry didn’t recognize the names except for Malfoy’s.
            “Harry?”
            Harry stuffed the ledger back in the drawer and slammed it shut. He heard a slight click that was probably the Parseltongue lock engaging, and stood up with a faint smile to meet Ginny. He had to be the person they remembered, he reminded himself. He wanted to be that man again.
            Maybe he should be grateful that this accident had happened. It was letting him forget things that looked like they weren’t worth remembering, and only retain the happy memories or the ones that had ended happily.
            But for the rest of that evening, the contents of the drawer danced feverishly in the back of his mind, new memories he had no idea of how to account for.
*
starr: Thanks! Although Harry is determined to take the same road. If nothing else, he did choose to be with Ginny, has been with her for five years, and wants to stay that way.
moon: Interesting! What makes you think that Ginny is impatient so far?
SP777: Well, if you can read the clues from the drawer correctly, it’s obvious that Harry wasn’t as squeaky-clean as Ginny thought he was.
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The Dust of Water