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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 Thirty-One—Lucius’s Move
            Harry moved a slow step back from the reverse Lightfinder and spent a moment eyeing it. He wondered if that was what it was supposed to look like.
            Then he snorted. As far as he knew, there had never been something like this in the world before, which meant no one would know how to use it or what it should look like. The others had been built with no real understanding of their purpose, that or they had been influenced by many wizards at once rather than a single powerful one.
            He wondered for a second if he should call it the Darkfinder, and then dismissed that notion. What he called it wasn’t important right now.
            Harry paced around to the side. There was a wooden “doorway” of sorts, which looked normal from the front and back, but had a strange shimmery air to it from the sides. Harry waved a hand through it and felt a sharp inrush of power that disappeared when it touched his skin. He supposed that, since it was made of his own magic, that only made sense.
            How would it react to someone else, though? Harry stepped back around in front and stared at the dark glass orb fastened to the podium of sorts that stood there. The podium was made of wood, connected to a single gleaming metal bar that in turn ran back and connected with the doorway. Technically, it was meant to stand on a dais, but Harry only intended to do that when he presented it ceremoniously to the Death Eaters, or if it was practical. This was different.
            Harry tapped his finger against his teeth. He needed to test this on someone, and he wished it could be a human. But an animal would have to do for now, at least until he had some proof it was working the way it was supposed to. He held out his wand and called in a guttural tone, “Serpensortia!”
            This time, the snake that came forth was a gleaming ball python, an almost-white snake Harry remembered from the zoo where it had freed the boa constrictor. It swayed from side to side, glancing around, apparently because it assumed it would find a threat, and coiled up instead to look at him when it didn’t find one.
            “Into the thing there,” Harry hissed, and pointed to the foot of the podium. He wasn’t sure that Parseltongue even had a word for “machine,” and he wasn’t interested in finding out now.
            The snake coiled around the metal bar, and Harry spent a moment shrinking the podium down until the glass globe was right in front of the snake. He realized his breath was coming short and his muscles tingled the way they had when he was running away from the Death Eaters through the Department of Mysteries. He shook his head and tried to relax.
            But this was still the first testing, the real one, without illusions. He would know in a minute whether he had more work to do or not.
            “Look at the egg,” he said. That was the closest word for globe or sphere, and the snake willingly lifted its head and gazed into the globe.
            Harry clenched his fist and waved his wand. The instructions he had worked out had said that any words could be a trigger for the Lightfinder; it didn’t have to be an incantation. Harry had chosen ones that he was sure he would never speak carelessly. “Mouse in your teeth,” he said, in Parseltongue.
            The globe flashed from within, a dark radiance that seemed to open up a vision of him falling down a long tunnel. Harry jerked his head back without thinking about it, and then the light flooded over the snake.
            Harry wondered for a second if he had been wise to try a transformation first, instead of something like making the snake’s magical affinity appear. It would be Dark, of course, since a Dark wizard had conjured it.
            But before he could complete the usual doubt and decide it would be better off to wait until later, the radiance receded like running water, and left Harry gaping at what it had left behind.
            The snake was now a gleaming, rainbow-hued creature, the shimmer of blue and indigo and red so deep that it seemed to extend into the scales rather than simply lie on them, and the small purple plume that rose from the head folded back down against it a second later. Feathered wings extended from the snake’s sides, and the serpent rose with a soft beat of them as it looked around the room with eyes that shone almost the color of Harry’s. Or the color people were always telling him his were, anyway. Like emeralds.
            Harry just watched it, uncertain. He had hoped the snake would turn into a unicorn foal, the way he had done with his illusion. He didn’t know what this meant at all, except that he probably needed to do more with the reverse Lightfinder.
            The serpent flew once around the room, and then landed on the desk and stared at him. Harry thought he knew what it wanted. It was no longer just a conjured creature, and no longer a Dark one, either. It was a fully sentient magical being, and it wanted to leave. He didn’t even have to talk to it in Parseltongue, which might not work now anyway, to know that.
            He opened a window and let it go. The serpent’s wings seemed to be growing stronger. It flew out of sight without a glance behind.
            Harry turned and stared at the reverse Lightfinder again. So it could do something impressive, and if the Death Eaters demanded another demonstration, he could show them this. But the lack of control wouldn’t impress them.
            And worse, he had no idea why this had been the result. It wasn’t going to help him if he couldn’t make the reverse Lightfinder do what he wanted it to do.
            A shrill noise, like Aunt Petunia’s voice, sounded off to the side. Harry glanced over and realized that it was an alarm he had set to warn him when someone was approaching his rooms who wasn’t Draco, Parkinson, or Astoria. He flicked his wand to silence it and stepped wearily up to the door. He didn’t like having to put on his Voldemort mask outside full meetings with the Death Eaters.
            On the other hand, few of them had had courage to seek him out so far other than Fenrir Greyback, and it might be Narcissa Malfoy. Harry therefore hissed through the door in what was a tolerant tone for his impersonation, “What do you seek? The Dark Lord Voldemort is busy and must not be disturbed!”
            “That is because you are not the Dark Lord Voldemort,” said Lucius’s cool voice. “My Lord would never speak like that.”
            Harry reacted, whipping his wand down and pointing at the hinges, where there was a small gap. He had already warded it so no one could peer in from the outside, but there was nothing there to act as a barrier to the passing of his own spells. The Stunner slithered through, and a second later, Harry heard the thump of Lucius’s body falling to the floor.
            He opened the door and floated Lucius inside using magic. Someone might already think he was suspicious, but a display of power could calm their suspicions.
            No one else stood in the corridor, and the automatic seeking spell Harry cast for Disillusionment Charms revealed nothing. Harry still Disillusioned himself and stood listening and looking for long moments before he was convinced that Lucius had come alone. Of course, that would make sense, with as few allies as he had among the Death Eaters.
            Harry stepped back inside, shut the door behind him, and stooped over the unconscious Lucius. It had already occurred to him that this was the best chance to try and make sure that Lucius could be changed by the Lightfinder, or affected by it. How else was Harry going to study him?
            Lucius was already stirring. Harry snorted and Stunned him again, then stood up and floated him over to the reverse Lightfinder. He couldn’t exactly have Lucius look into the globe and record his reactions that way when he was unconscious, but he could see whether Lucius’s magic interacted with the Lightfinder in different ways than his did.
            Yes, it did. The minute Lucius came close, the power around the reverse Lightfinder reared up and spat at him. Harry paused, startled, and then noticed that the magic seemed to be coalescing around the outside of Lucius’s wrist.
            Didn’t Draco say that’s where the promise sigil is?
            Harry used his wand to push back Lucius’s sleeve. He winced at what he saw. There was a ring of skin around Lucius’s wrist like tarnished silver, but more than that, there was an enormous patch that reminded Harry of a burn and a bruise combined. It seemed to swell and pulse as he watched, as though something was living beneath the skin. Watching him.
            And Draco also said that he swore himself to an elemental force of magic, an elemental force of burning.
            Harry hesitated one more time. Then he conjured a small stretcher above the metal pole that bound the podium to the doorway and tried to float Lucius onto it.
            The spasm of sparks that flew out of the reverse Lightfinder, and the sound of rending wood and metal, made Harry worry he had broken it for a moment. Luckily, it settled down a second later, and while the constant humming that began to come out of it wasn’t a sound Harry had ever heard before, at least it was calm.
            The magic that surrounded the Lightfinder had rejected Lucius, utterly. Harry saw a number of small burns on him, probably left by the sparks, and winced. How was he going to explain this to Draco, even if he’d had to do something so Lucius wasn’t able to reveal his suspicions to anyone else?
            Then, even as Harry watched, the burns vanished as though someone had simply taken a cloth and scrubbed it across Lucius, erasing them. And the promise sigil began to gleam, while the swollen part of it grew a small, lizard-like head and opened long, slitted eyes to stare at Harry. The head and eyes were the same blue-black color as that part of Lucius’s skin.
            Harry held still. He doubted trying to talk to it in Parseltongue would help. Besides, that was mostly for snakes and not lizards, as far as he knew.
            He wanted to laugh at his thoughts a second later. He was confronting a representative of an elemental magical force that could probably burn him to death where he stood, and he was worried about whether he could communicate with it and the intricacies of Parseltongue. Hermione would probably be proud of him, if he managed to live past this.
            The lizard’s head began to hiss. Fire flew out of its mouth, but even as Harry started to dodge, the fire formed into letters that hovered in the air. My name is Ignis. This is my prize.
            “I don’t intend to challenge you for your prize,” Harry said. He wondered for a second if cringing and pretending to be respectful would change things, but he doubted it. Even if this thing didn’t help Lucius, it probably wouldn’t let Harry Obliviate him or anything like that. “I intend to eliminate the threat he presents to me.”
            And that way would be through the reverse Lightfinder unless there was absolutely no way to get Lucius’s sanity back, but Harry didn’t think Ignis could read thoughts. Otherwise, it would probably have told Lucius about Draco, and about Harry, the minute they walked into the manor house.
            He will present no further threat. The letters picked up, orange and blue and white, from the tip of the lizard’s snout. Harry winced from the press of the heat on his skin. I will remove him from here.
            “I know that he’s your prize and you’re already taking him elsewhere,” said Harry cautiously, while he felt as if he might suffocate from anxiety. Saying the wrong thing to Ignis could result in Lucius vanishing altogether, because it had decided to consume him early. “But will you leave him here for a time?”
            Why? This one had a particularly violent scroll of red fire at the end.
            “Because I wish to study his response to my device.” Harry nodded towards the reverse Lightfinder. It was even the truth. He just wasn’t going to tell Ignis about the part where he wanted to find out about the response so he could use the reverse Lightfinder to rescue Lucius.
            The lizard’s head lashed towards the machine. Harry waited. He still had trouble breathing, but he felt a little better than he had.
            The biggest part of the danger was that Ignis was so powerful and had been around so long, of course. But along with that came certain limitations. Ignis probably hadn’t paid enough attention to human politics to know about reverse Lightfinders or anything like them. Harry thought the very newness of the machine might let it slip past Ignis’s knowledge.
            The lizard’s head turned slowly back towards Harry. Lucius hadn’t stirred from this latest Stunner, Harry noticed, despite the fact that he’d begun shedding the other one much earlier. It probably was the force of magic and the promise sigil in his body that had made him start reacting early last time, rather than his innate strength.
            You will have three days to study him, said the lizard, with a snap of something that might have been a tail from beneath the skin on the back of Lucius’s hand.
            Harry bowed. “You are fair and generous, great one. I will hand him to you when that time is done, at—” He cast a Tempus Charm, worried for a moment that it might make him look weak, and then decided that Ignis would probably be content with that. “At noon three days hence?”
            Ignis inclined its head one more time, and then the lizard sank into the inflamed promise sigil and disappeared.
            Harry stood there breathing for long enough that he had begun to realize he couldn’t keep Lucius here. If nothing else, someone might go looking for him, or come to ask Harry a question, and there were few ways that Harry could explain the presence of Lucius in his quarters.
            Someone did knock on his door then, but given the way the alarms had kept silent, Harry knew it was one of the few people he trusted.
            “A moment,” he called back, and he was amazed that his voice sounded calm and sane.
            He floated Lucius to the side, near the reverse Lightfinder but not in it; given the way the magic flexed and snapped in warning, he knew that would be stupid if he tried it. Then he concealed Lucius under a Disillusionment Charm, stepped back, closed his eyes for a moment, and gave himself the breathing space that he required.
            Yes, he was facing a nearly impossible task, to discover how to use the reverse Lightfinder to heal Lucius in three days. But he had done worse and harder before. He could manage this now.
            When he opened his eyes, Harry was as calm as he could be. He flicked his wand, and the door opened. Harry took his place in front of it, keeping his stance loose and relaxed. He supposed, depending on who it was, he might still have to fight, but he would do even that better from a relaxed state.
*
            “I just want some proof that Potter is treating you right and doing something that doesn’t involve hurting you,” Pansy had said when Draco, after talking with her for part of the afternoon, had announced that he was going to see Harry.
            And nothing Draco could say would convince her otherwise. He tried to slip away, but the corridors weren’t shadowy enough around his room, and Astoria had only lifted her book in front of her face and sniffed audibly when Draco silently appealed to her for help. Of course she would decide that she could stand up to people when it came to the least convenient time for Draco, he thought in despair.
            Pansy at least looked startled when she heard Harry’s voice and saw the way his door opened. Perhaps she had thought he would begin by firing the Cruciatus at Draco.
            Draco rolled his eyes at her and walked through the door firmly in front of her. Harry nodded once at him, then raised his eyebrows as Pansy slipped in. He cocked his head and looked her up and down, then shrugged and turned to Draco.
            “You should know that your father came to me and accused me of not really being Voldemort,” he said.
            Draco felt as though he’d stepped abruptly on a staircase that had changed into a sliding ramp. His hand shot out, instinctively seeking for the railing. Harry caught it once and squeezed it before letting him go.
            “What did you do?” Draco whispered. He didn’t think Harry was good enough with Legilimency to manipulate things in his father’s mind so Lucius wouldn’t suspect anything more. And if he tried a Memory Charm, the force protecting him might do something about it.
            Harry gave him a soft half-smile. “Right now, he’s still here. I Stunned him and tried to put him into the Lightfinder to test it, but his magic reacted to it.” He glanced at Pansy for a fleeting second, then met Draco’s eyes.
            “She knows she has to keep the secrets she sees in here,” Draco said, and turned around and stared at her. “Since it would be pretty bad for me if this got out.”
            Pansy put her hands on her hips and stared at him for a second.
            “I have to keep them if I’m convinced—successfully—that Potter isn’t hurting you,” she said, and turned a challenging glare on Harry. “If you’re hurting him—and it sounds like imprisoning his father is doing it—then you’re going to die even if I have to make sure that I sacrifice my own soul in the process.”
            Draco closed his eyes, shaken. He hadn’t known Pansy was going to make that promise, and he tried to give Harry a pleading look, to tell him silently that he didn’t need to kill her, that Draco would make her understand the consequences somehow.
            But Harry was watching Pansy with a glint in his eyes that wasn’t antagonistic. In fact, he smiled as Draco watched, and not even the most suspicious Slytherin could have taken it for an insincere smile or one that promised danger instead of admiration.
            “You’d die to protect him,” Harry said quietly. “Yes, I can respect that. What I’m doing here is honestly pretty simple. I’m trying to make sure that I can learn enough to use the reverse Lightfinder easily, and Lucius has magic protecting him that might give me an insight. The magic comes from a promise sigil.”
            Pansy’s hands dropped off her hips, and she stared at Harry as if he was mad. Then she glanced wildly around.
            Harry waved his wand calmly, and the Disillusionment Charm Draco had half-noticed from the corner of his eye, and which he had assumed hid some of Harry’s secret ingredients for the Lightfinder, in case Death Eaters should intrude, melted. Into view came Lucius’s quietly breathing body.
            “He let you overpower him? When he has the magic being he made the promise to watching over him?” Pansy breathed the words, and then let her eyes dart over to Harry as though she wanted to see what his reaction to her insult would be.
            But Harry only shrugged as if he didn’t even notice the insult. He looked at Draco instead, apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I’ll need to perform some magical tests on him. Basically use him as an—experimental subject for a while. I don’t want to, but I think it’s the only way I’m going to learn what I need to do.”
            He hesitated. Then he added, “Ignis manifested from the promise sigil on his wrist.”
            Draco wanted to hiss at him not to say the name, but he realized, as Pansy gasped aloud, that this was good in at least one way. And then his brain caught up with his ears, and he relaxed. If Ignis had already manifested and Harry knew about him, then it was going to be all right.
            And, of course, Harry had to tell some things to Pansy because Draco was still under the spell his father had cast that would prevent him from telling Pansy some things unless she, too, tortured him. That wasn’t an experience Draco was particularly eager to repeat.
            “Lucius made a promise for help to escape Azkaban,” Harry told Pansy directly. He was keeping one eye on Draco all the time, and Draco nodded back. He understood the measured way Harry had to speak, and that was only partially because of Pansy. Ignis might be watching them, and might take offense to some of what Harry said. “I don’t know exactly what it entailed because I’ve never heard of promise sigils before.”
            “I have,” said Pansy, and her face was pale. “I know about them. I wondered why Mr—Mr. Malfoy was acting so strange. I think I know now.”
            Harry nodded, and Draco could see him relaxing. “Good. Well, it’s possible I may be able to use the reverse Lightfinder to learn some things from him. I need to work out some problems with it and the transformations it causes.” For some reason, he looked at the window, but he looked back before Draco could ask what the matter was.
            “I have three days.”
            Draco closed his eyes.
            He knew what Harry meant, although Harry couldn’t speak the truth aloud out of fear that Ignis was listening. He knew Harry meant that he had three days to fix Father’s mind. And that would be it.
            “But you’ll keep either of them from hurting Draco?” Pansy asked. “This Ignis or his father?”
            Draco blinked at her rapidly. He hadn’t realized she was that committed to protection of him.
            “Yes,” Harry said, and his voice was quiet and calm and very gentle.
            “Good,” said Pansy. She was standing straight again. She looked once at Draco, nodded, and said, “I believe him now.” Then she stepped out of the room.
            Draco held Harry’s eyes. “Three days, huh?”
            “Yes.”
            Draco nodded. “Then let’s get started.”
*
   Moon: Yes, writing this story is nerve-wracking sometimes.
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An Image of Lethe