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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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Chapter Thirty-Three—Machines of Desire
            Lucius opened his eyes with a start. Harry moved a little to the side. He wanted to make sure that the first person Lucius saw was Draco.
            Lucius lifted a trembling hand, and Draco came over and knelt beside him. He didn’t try to touch his father until Lucius put his hand on his forehead. Harry watched hopefully. He thought it was a good sign that Lucius had reached for Draco first instead of patting at his wrist and looking for the promise sigil.
            Thought it was a good sign. He had to admit he didn’t really know for sure.
            “Son?” Lucius whispered.
            “Yes,” said Draco steadily. “We cured you, Father. Brought you out of the contractual binding that you suffered to—the power you promised yourself to.” Behind him, Harry nodded. They both thought Ignis knew perfectly well what had happened, but it was still better not to attract its attention by speaking the name.
            Lucius shut his eyes and remained still. Harry carefully made sure that his wand was close to hand. He wasn’t going to hurt Lucius, not after all the effort he had put into healing him, but, well. Neither was he stupid.
            Surprisingly, Lucius spoke to him first, over Draco. “I know that you’re not the Dark Lord.”
            Harry leaned in. He had prepared for this, at least, since there had been no indication that the Lightfinder could remove memories. “And now you also owe me for not letting your sanity be consumed with your body. I’m claiming the debt. Keep quiet about this.”
            Lucius opened his eyes, and they were almost feverish. “Why? Why pretend to be him?”
            Draco snorted. Harry smiled at him. He knew Lucius Malfoy wasn’t stupid, but there seemed to be special, limited circumstances where he did have a lack of brains, and situations concerning Voldemort were one of them.
            “What?” Lucius demanded sullenly.
            “When a bunch of Death Eaters invaded my home and I’d already used the excuse that there was a shard of Voldemort’s soul influencing my actions, to explain why I looked ‘Dark’ to the Lightfinder?” Harry spread his hands, enjoying it, meanly, when Lucius flinched. “What else would I do?”
            “Plus I helped him set up the deception,” Draco added. “And after that, he had no choice but to go along with it.”
            Lucius touched his throat. Harry imagined him thinking of all the other choices he would have come up with. But what came out of Lucius’s mouth next wasn’t a lecture or even more of a demand for an explanation.
            “How are we to redeem our family name now?”
            Draco looked to Harry instead of immediately giving an explanation. Harry nodded once and said, “Well, I don’t know that you can make up for escaping Azkaban. You’ll probably have to go back. But if things work out as I hope, then the Death Eaters will either end up dispersed and harmless or actually arrested. Draco’s helping me with that. The Malfoy name might end up with some improvement from that, if not from your actions.”
            Lucius sat the rest of the way up, and the look in his eyes now made Harry all the more uneasy. “I will not return to Azkaban.”
            Draco caught Harry’s gaze and made a little flick of his fingers behind his back. It said so clearly not to argue about Lucius with this that Harry took the hint. But that didn’t mean he could simply give up handling Lucius in his own way, or leave him free to run around and cause trouble.
            He met Lucius’s eyes and smiled. Lucius seemed to snap back to reality, or at least away from whatever horrible visions of Azkaban haunted him, because he stared at Harry with narrowed eyes.
            “These,” said Harry softly, moving his arm in a sweep around his quarters, “are my private rooms. Where I managed to build a machine capable of defeating an elemental force of magic that you foolishly sold yourself to. All the while maintaining a pretense in front of the Death Eaters and bringing them under my control.” He leaned slowly forwards. “You would oppose me at your peril. Don’t you think.”
            Lucius blanched, blinked, then sneered at him. “I saw through your deception in part because you never practiced the torture that the Dark Lord did,” he said. “And would you torture the father of an ally?”
            Harry slowly rose to his feet and sauntered towards Lucius. Then he bent down towards him and tapped him on the nose. Draco simply watched, although Harry could see from the drawn lines around his mouth how much he hated this.
            “I don’t need to torture people now,” Harry told Lucius casually. “I have the reverse Lightfinder. Which can let me literally change a person’s mind and nature.”
            Lucius stilled. It was probably a small thing to someone who wasn’t that familiar with him, Harry thought, but he had learned some of the natural reactions of Lucius’s body in the three days he’d worked with him. He was breathing through his nose now, his eyes locked on Harry’s face as if he could find some secret lever to press. “You did not change mine.”
            “I freed you from the power you swore yourself to.” Harry supposed he should have known better than to expect any thanks for that. He moved in another step, until Lucius had to crane his neck back to meet him eye-to-eye. “That was the task I was concentrating on then.”
Draco moved a little, but not enough to attract Lucius’s attention, and Harry was glad. The last thing they needed to do right now was bring up technicalities.
“What do you think I could do,” Harry whispered, gently, “if I was concentrating on sculpting you into nothing but an obedient slave?”
            Lucius closed his eyes, breathing rapidly. Harry stepped back and sat down. Draco stood about halfway between Harry and his father, looking at both of them as if the mere act of looking would change something.
            “I will not tell the others that you are not the Dark Lord,” Lucius said at last, with obvious reluctance, opening his eyes. “But I will not go back to Azkaban.”
            “Are you going to oppose me in other ways?” At the moment, whether Lucius could be sent back to prison wasn’t the foremost threat on Harry’s mind. Lucius could still stir up trouble among the Death Eaters in ways not connected to telling them Harry’s secret.
            Lucius gave a few violent twitches. His fingers curled in his lap. Then he blinked and shook his head. “Not at the moment.” He looked at Harry with almost dead eyes. “But I am a pure-blood. We are skilled at noticing gaps in power. If I can see them, then I will seek to fill them, the same as any other pure-blood in the ranks of the Death Eaters will.”
            Draco stepped back towards Harry. Harry read the silent plea on his lips. He didn’t want his father tortured or crippled.
            Harry wouldn’t have done that anyway. He had another plan that should answer just as well, and which he had already used once before.
            “Very well,” he said. His wand cut down in the motion of the spell, familiar as never before now with all the creatures he’d conjured to test in the Lightfinder. “Serpensortia.”
            The creature that appeared was a slim viper this time, gleaming black with yellow eyes. Harry hissed, not bothering to look at Lucius as he did, “Take up a guard position at his ankle. Follow him at all times. Be ready to bite him if he ever attacks me.”
            The viper moved towards Lucius and curled up at his ankle. Lucius stared at it, then at Harry. His face was pale. Probably from hearing me speak Parseltongue.
            “That’s a particularly poisonous snake,” Harry told Lucius cheerily. “You won’t die if it bites you, but you’ll be in agony for a good few days. And it has orders to attack you if you ever attack me.” He paused, then added, “Keep in mind that I’m defining ‘attack’ pretty broadly.”
            Lucius looked as if he would snarl for a second, but either good sense or a pleading look from Draco kept him silent. He stood up unsteadily and put a hand over his stomach. “Nutrient potions, I assume?” he asked Draco.
            Draco nodded.
            “Then I will have a true meal, and seek out your mother.” Lucius paused to stare at Harry again. “You gave a snake to Arsinoe Rosier as well. The Death Eaters seeing me will think that you favor me.”
            “They’ll think that I kept you out of sight for three days because of particularly important information you had to impart to me,” Harry said, stressing the word just enough to make Lucius flinch. “And then I reinstated you. It’s up to you what lies you spin. Simply keep in mind that broad definition of ‘attack.’”
            Lucius looked at him for a moment longer. Harry had his hand on his wand, and he didn’t move. Then Lucius snorted and moved towards the door again. “Come, Draco.”
            Draco hesitated. Harry waved him on quickly. He didn’t want Draco to think he had to choose Harry over his family.
            Luckily, Lucius didn’t seem to notice. He just opened the door and walked out. Draco followed behind, giving Harry a quick, strained smile. Harry nodded back, and then turned to the jeweled dragon as they closed the door.
            “What can I do to get more like you?” he asked. “And what are you useful for?”
            The dragon rolled on its back.
*
            “You should not have done something so foolish,” said Draco’s mother, with a slow breath between the two halves of the sentence. Draco thought she was holding back some harsher words.
            His father stood there and said nothing. Draco couldn’t remember ever seeing him so silent. Lucius stood with his hands dangling at his sides and his head turned slightly, as though he was watching some kind of fascinating illusion on the wall.
            Narcissa closed her eyes. Her silence combated Lucius’s silence, Draco thought, until he turned his gaze back to her.
            “Perhaps in a short while,” said Narcissa, “you’ll be ready to tell me why you did it.” And she turned and swished away, disappearing out of the room into the next one.
            Draco cleared his throat awkwardly. It was the first time he had been alone with his father since Lucius had awakened, and he had no idea what to say to him. Especially with the secret of his true loyalty burning away inside him.
            He was grateful that Harry, with his help, had managed to reawaken his father, and more than grateful that Lucius wasn’t going to die by being burned alive by Ignis. But he had no idea what else to do. He wasn’t going to join his father in endless efforts to redeem the Malfoy name that might never work. He wouldn’t plot against Harry for him. He thought that particular promise sigil the height of stupidity.
            “Why did you join him? The truth, now.”
            Draco glanced back at Lucius and narrowed his eyes until he hoped that he looked as intimidating as Harry might, under the same circumstances. “Why do you assume that what we told you isn’t the truth?”
            “Because no Malfoy,” said Lucius, and he was spinning his wand in his fingers the way he had used to spin a watch chain when Draco was younger, “would be so subservient as that story implies.”
            Draco felt as though someone had set off a small explosion in his chest. He took a long, stiff step forwards. His father narrowed his eyes and raised his wand. But Draco’s was out faster, and he held it with as much rage as desire to use it.
            “You’re going to say that,” Draco said slowly. “Really? When you bowed and kissed that monster’s robes, and you’re the whole reason I have this embedded in my flesh?” He yanked up his robe sleeve to show the Dark Mark.
            Lucius’s mouth fell a little open, and he looked human and lost. Draco was viciously glad to see it. Someone besides him should.
            “What are you—Draco, you were the one who chose to become a Death Eater after I went to prison.” Lucius was looking at him searchingly. “And you know decisions had been made when I was much younger that would have aligned our family with the Dark Lord anyway. Your grandfather angered enough of the prominent families who followed Dumbledore that we wouldn’t have gained any political power allying with them.”
            Draco shook his head. At some point, he would have believed that. Hell, he had believed it for a long time. He had thought he was the one who had failed, who hadn’t saved his parents. Had spent his whole seventh year believing that. And since the Ministry had tried him, apparently let him go, and then started hunting for him again the minute he Apparated, he had felt even more like a failure. A true Malfoy would have made them pay.
            But now he was sick of taking the blame for mistakes his father had made. And he had new evidence on his side.
            “You swore yourself to the Dark Lord,” he said. “No matter what your father did.” Lucius jumped, as if he hated the reminder that Abraxas was his father as much as he was Draco’s grandfather. “And then you swore yourself to the force that got you out of prison. Is that all you can think of to do when something doesn’t go your way, Father? Swear yourself to someone else who’ll protect you? And tell yourself that it doesn’t really mean that you’re giving up your power and your freedom, that it just means you have no choice?” He imitated his father in a high, breathless voice.
            “Draco.” Lucius’s voice was tight, one arm drawn in towards his chest in pain. “I at least chose powerful patrons. You swore yourself to Potter.”
            Draco caught his breath. There was a notion in his mind that he should encourage his father to believe that, deceive him into thinking that Harry controlled Draco. It would certainly make him less dangerous, because he would be running around to counter plots that didn’t exist.
            But in the end, Draco couldn’t do it. He simply shook his head and murmured, “It says a lot about you that you think we’re master and servant instead of allies.”
            Lucius lifted one hand as though he wanted Draco to look at the promise sigil that was no longer there. “The man I saw in that room takes no allies. Not even servants. Only slaves.”
            Draco’s anger was gone, though, leaving the dust of its huge explosion in his chest. He sighed and put his wand away. Lucius’s words about Harry couldn’t trouble him. He simply knew too much of Harry, far more than his father did.
            “Like I said,” he whispered, “it says a lot about you. I took risks to rescue you, too, you know. But why did Harry save your life and bring you back? Did you think about that?”
            “Because he wanted to get rid of an enemy.” Lucius said it as though it was the simplest thing in the world.
            To him, it is. Draco slowly shook his head. “I had to participate in bringing you back. I never would have if I thought it was better for you to die. To die free, of a choice that you at least made yourself.”
            Lucius looked at him with blank eyes.
            “He did it because he knows you’re important to me,” said Draco. He turned around and walked out.
            He could hope his father would think on the words. If he couldn’t take them to heart and use them to turn his behavior around…
            Let him at least use them to stop acting so ridiculous.
*
            Harry sauntered into the Death Eater meeting the next day with the dragon strolling behind him. Lucius was already there, with his snake-guardian. Harry was relieved to see that Narcissa was also with him. She might do more to keep the snake from biting Lucius than Lucius would do.
            There was a low murmur of excitement and speculation at the sight of the dragon. Harry ignored it, and climbed onto his throne, then held out a commanding arm. The dragon spread its wings and leaped lightly into the air, settling on the throne’s arm beside Harry and putting its head on his shoulder. So far, it had shown a disinclination to fly, as if its wings were mostly there to be pretty decorations.
            But it was still a dragon, no matter how small it was. Harry could see a few of the Death Eaters trading glances, like the Lestrange brothers. Greyback seemed to be alternating between impressed and trying to figure out if the dragon was going to take his place as Voldemort’s pet.
            Parkinson was the one who had the courage to call out, “What is that, my lord?”
            At least the title didn’t sound forced this time, or as if she was trying to choke to death on her own spit when she said it. Harry smiled at her and stroked the dragon, marveling at the warmth that poured from it. It was like holding his hand over a fire all the time. Of course, the dragon might breathe fire. He didn’t know yet.
            “This is a product of the reverse Lightfinder,” he said, and sharpened his voice, turning to Draco. “Tell me, Mr. Malfoy. If you looked at this creature, what kind of magic would you say it had an affinity with, Dark or Light?”
            Draco’s eyes gleamed. He enjoyed the chance to play a part in this game, Harry knew, the game of tricking the Death Eaters into betraying themselves. He leaned forwards and pretended to study the dragon gravely.
            “I would say, my Lord,” he said, in the judicious tone that he had sometimes used to answer questions in Potions class, “that it was a creature of Light. Look at the bright colors. Like the rainbow that appeared around the original Lightfinder, which they certainly thought indicated someone was Light.” He smiled at Harry.
            Harry gave him a sharper smile, warning him silently that they couldn’t act too pleasant to each other in front of the Death Eaters, and turned to face their gaping audience. “Well? And the rest of you?”
            “Light, my Lord.” That was Greyback, cringingly eager as usual to make himself useful and approved. “The way it shines! And the way it’s acting. Tame, not all charging around the place like a usual dragon.”
            Harry thought he was the only one who noticed the dragon’s jeweled, transparent eyelids rise a little at that. The dragon didn’t appreciate being thought of as tame or a pet.
            It also meant the dragon could understand English, even better than Harry had anticipated. He sneered a little and stroked the dragon’s spine.
            “Yes. Certainly Light wizards have published tomes on how, if a dragon is ever tamed, it will be with Light magic and compassion and kindness.” He thought he did a good impression of making it sound like the word was etched in contempt on his brain. “They would never think that a Dark wizard could control one.
            “But watch!” he added, and held out his arm.
            The dragon gave him a long-suffering expression that Harry hoped he was the only one to be able to read, and hopped up on his arm. Then it rose to its hind legs, where it stood on one and raised its tail, canting its neck back at the same time so its nose touched its tail.
            More murmurs came out of the audience. Harry focused on letting only his smugness and triumph through, and looked around the room with a smarmy smile.
            Lucius had an expression that suggested his wife’s elbow was poised near his ribs. That was fine with Harry. Whatever she has to do to make sure that he keeps silent.
            “That’s wonderful, my Lord!” Greyback honestly looked as if he’d like to spring up on the throne alongside the dragon and give Harry big sloppy kisses. “Did you do that to make it show its obedience?”
Sometimes I don’t think I could make Greyback give better cues if he was collaborating with me. “I did indeed,” said Harry, and slowly lowered his arm until the dragon got the hint and took off with large flaps of its wings, heading up to the ceiling, where it clung to a rafter. A few people stared up at it, but most were focused on him. “I can make the reverse Lightfinder do what I want.”
With desire and help, I can. But part of the whole point was that they didn’t need to know that. Harry clasped his hands and stared down the Death Eaters.
“I intend to test the reverse Lightfinder in the field in a few days,” he said, with calmness that they could take as unthreatening if they wanted to. He hoped that most of them wouldn’t be that stupid. “I will change a large group of Light wizards into Dark ones. But we need a way to test them and make sure they are truly Light.” He smirked and leaned forwards. “Find me wizards who were in the crowd when their weakling Lightfinder exploded, the ones the Ministry had approved by testing them. Taunt them. Show yourselves as if you had a hideout nearby, lure the Aurors, create a distraction, do whatever you must. Bring them here.”
Greyback yipped in excitement, and other voices took up the shout. Harry smiled at them all and held up his arm for the dragon, which did look impressive flying down to him.
            Meanwhile, his heart was trembling hard enough that he thought it might threaten his façade by itself.
            But he had done what he wanted.
*
moon: That is not a cliffhanger!
The WiP you mean is Odysseus Bound. I do want to continue it, but haven’t found the time or the inspiration so far.
SP777: Hermione will be startled indeed to hear how Harry did it, and thanks!
I have other stories I haven’t finished. Not beta problems, just struggles with time and depression.
Original-Sin: Thank you!
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An Image of Lethe