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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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Chapter Thirty-Five—Perspectives

            Draco had chosen the most formal sitting room to have their discussion in. That didn’t reassure Harry any more than anything else had so far. He found himself sitting on the literal edge of his chair, tapping his foot so hard that the chair swayed beneath and behind him.

            Draco then busied himself with wine and food, despite the formal dinner they’d just had. Harry finally snapped, “So are you going to tell me about this horrible secret or not?”

            The chair Draco sat on snapped backwards and then forwards again. Draco swallowed and asked, “What makes you so certain it’s horrible?”

            “Oh, the way you’re avoiding my eyes and staring at the carpet and the way you didn’t tell me before was a clue.”

            Draco shut his eyes. “Yes, it’s bad. But I’m still thinking of the right words to tell you.” A beat of silence passed, while Harry scowled at him and Draco sat with a little sandwich in his hand that the cucumber was slipping out of. Harry almost wanted to see the slice of cucumber fall and splat his robes with butter.

            Then Draco opened his eyes and spoke in a voice as neutral as the clicking of a clock. “You haven’t asked me much about the last ten years.”

            “I know that you were brewing potions and working with Old Harry,” Harry said. “And helping him blackmail Aurors. I thought that was enough to be going on with.”

            Draco touched the back of his neck and his cheek with one hand. He was staring into the fire now. “And you think I spent all my time doing those things?”

            Harry paused. Then he shrugged. “I have no idea how much of your time they would take. And the way you’re still obsessed with me suggests they were pretty big concerns.”

            “I had my own life. I—it became horrible through no one’s fault but my own. But you could have asked where my friends are. Where my parents are. Why I dwell alone in this house and look at the walls.”

            “Do you look at the walls? I don’t know.” Harry tugged at his hair and thought of the tears shimmering in Teddy’s eyes. “I didn’t even think of my godson and what he must have lost until you suggested it. There are still too many things I need to sort through and survive, and every time I start to concentrate on one of them, five others pop out. I’m sorry I didn’t ask. But I’ll be upset if you hold it against me.”

            Draco finally nodded. “All right. The truth is, I had a horrendous argument with my father a year after the war.”

            “What kind of argument?” Harry couldn’t picture what would make Lucius Malfoy and Draco argue, unless Lucius had wanted Draco to get married and he didn’t want to.

            “The kind where you can’t forgive each other,” Draco whispered. “The words he spat at me, and the last spell he used…I didn’t know how far his obsession over my safety had gone.”

            “What was the spell meant to do?” Harry found himself shivering, although Draco had simply gone still, staring at the little sandwich he still held.

            “It would have turned me into a stone statue and the room we stood in into a maze. Then he would have been the only one who could find me and wake me up.” Draco swallowed and watched as if he was mesmerized while the cucumber slice finally slid free of the sandwich. “It would have kept me safe forever, or at least until he could find a wife to bind me to. That’s what he was shouting.”

            The cucumber slice did make a little splat of butter on Draco’s robes. Harry found that didn’t comfort him at all.

            “How could he think that would be for the best?”

            “Because he’d started to get paranoid.” Draco’s eyes shifted back to Harry. “He rarely left the Manor anymore. He kept telling me he didn’t understand why I left it either, when house-elves could go to the shops and bring us anything we wanted. Let’s stay here and wait out the siege. That was his mentality.”

            “Siege?”

            “Muggleborns. Anyone with ties to the Muggle world. Eventually, anyone without a Dark Mark on their arms.” Draco winced. “He started distrusting my mother because she’d never officially been branded. I heard them fighting. He said she couldn’t understand what we’d been through because she never became a Death Eater.”

            Harry tried to wrap his head around that. The woman who had lied to Voldemort to save her son and lived with him in the house for a year had somehow suffered less than the man who had been Marked?

            Yes, it sounded like Lucius had been paranoid.

            “What made him that way?” Harry asked. “I mean, was he paranoid right after the trials, too?” He wanted to say that was impossible, but he didn’t know, because he didn’t remember.

            Draco shook his head dismally. “As far as I know, it wasn’t until he started researching ways to keep us safe after the war. Which, to him, meant we had to get back our power and prestige, or the Ministry would find ways to take our money and even our house-elves.” He grimaced at Harry for a second. “Granger’s crusade didn’t help in that respect.”

            Harry shook his head in turn. “I wouldn’t know.”

            Draco paused, head tilting, and nodded. “Right. So. I struck back as hard as I could when he cast that spell. I was trying to shout Finite and another spell at the same time. One that would stop him, slow him down. The Crystalline Curse. It encloses the victim in a shell of crystal and keeps him suspended there like the Draught of Living Death.” Draco paused again.

            “What happened?” But Harry thought he could feel the shadow of the answer looming over them.

            Draco closed his eyes. “The spells overlapped. Plus, I think some of the incantation of the Finite got mixed in with the others. You know that spells have an effect on the world because of the sound of their words and the way they mix? And what can happen if several spells are all spoken at once, but none are complete before the others start to take effect?”

            “Maybe I knew once. I don’t know now.”

            “Then I’m going to have to explain more than I thought I was. Give me a minute.”

            Harry did. Draco was staring at his sandwich and the butter on his robes. He wiped at it, drew his wand, and cast a Cleaning Charm.

            Then he whispered, “The effects of spells crossing like that are never predictable. They turned my father into a mixture of stone and crystal, and they left him frozen there with his mouth open. But his head was still human. And all around him were stone walls that were closing in, ready to crush him to death.

            “I tried to save him. But I was still so angry that I couldn’t mean it enough to dissipate the spell effects. I wasn’t putting in enough power to protect him.”

            “What did you do?”

            Harry didn’t recognize his own voice, it was so small and so tight. Draco turned his head a little towards him, as if acknowledging the sound of that different voice, but didn’t open his eyes.

            “I cast a spell that would transport my father’s essence into the nearest living being. I thought that was me. I knew I could share my body with him for a while without going mad. I know Occlumency. That kind of shielding can protect a Legilimens from someone who’s followed him back into his own mind. It ought to have protected me from my father’s thoughts and spirit until I could free his body.”

            Harry thought it was something Draco had hoped would happen, rather than something that stood a good chance, but he kept silent.

            “But one of the house-elves had popped in to try and help while I was—distracted. And my father’s essence went into him.”

            Harry jerked. No wonder the house-elf’s eyes had looked so much like Draco’s, the same shape and size and color.

            “And then the moment of magic was done, and my chance to reverse the curse easily. My father’s body was both stone and crystal—a statue. I still have it in one of the upper rooms. I don’t know if I can disenchant it. I’ve talked to magical theory experts about it as a hypothetical case, and none of them have been encouraging. And the house-elf—I know my father’s essence has mingled with his, and they’re probably one being now. My mother fled when she found out what I’d done, and I don’t know if she would come back on the promise of trying.”

            Harry was silent. Then he asked, “Do you think that you could reverse the enchantment and get your father back into his body with outside help?”

            “Who would I trust enough to help?” Draco whispered. “And there’s something else—something I’m afraid of.”

            He kept silent in turn. Harry waited. And Draco finally looked at him and said it.

            “In that moment I was so angry—I hated him so much—I don’t know if even now I have enough good feeling for him to reverse the transformation. Or if it my magic would have no effect, or do something even worse, because I—”

            He bowed his head. After a moment that felt as though it lasted six times as long as any of the others, Harry reached out and took Draco’s hand.



            “Thank you,” Draco said, his voice hoarse, and Harry knew what he meant without having to ask.

            “I can’t promise that I would be able to help you, or someone else you asked might be able to help you,” Harry said, when they’d sat there a few more minutes in silence. “But I think you ought to try.”

            “What good would it do now?” Draco asked. “My father has probably been consumed by the house-elf, his body probably can’t be turned back, and if he was turned back, brought back, whatever, he would hate me.”

            “And you still don’t want to confront the hatred that you think you have for him,” Harry murmured.

            Draco looked away.

            “I think you should try because it’s troubling you,” Harry said. “Not because I think I owe him in particular a debt. Just that it would ease your sleep.” He hesitated, then continued slowly, “I don’t know how much help I would be. Would you consider consulting any of the magical theory experts again, if you could tell them in more detail about the situation and request their help?”

            Draco shook his head slowly. “Most of them would be bound to report me to the Ministry, because the Ministry employs them. Magical theorists can’t spend their time studying and doing nothing else unless they’re independently wealthy--like me--or someone supports them to buy books and conduct experiments.”

            “Why did you react so badly to the idea of him wanting you to marry?”

            Draco sighed. “Of course you go straight to the one question that I’d have liked to delay answering.”

            Harry couldn’t find it in him to really apologize for that, and so sat silent and waited. Draco stared out the window for a moment, at what looked like an enchanted vision of rain falling. Then he turned around.

            Harry recoiled a little before the sheer light in his eyes.

            “You’re it,” Draco whispered. “You’ve always been it for me, even when I realized that you—I mean Old Harry—would probably never ask me for anything except the potions he wanted me to brew. The feeling solidified after the trial. You were the only one who went out of your way to do something like that for me.”

            “But then Old Harry returned your wand the way he did,” Harry pointed out, feeling as if he had entered a dream.

            “He did. I told myself I should have broken free of my—concern for him after that.” Draco glanced down as if he could still see the butter spot on his robes. “I tried. But it only resulted in wondering what he was doing at any given moment, and eventually I responded to his letters about the potions.”

            Harry shook his head slowly. Draco sighed back at him and munched the pieces of dry bread left over from the sandwich, then reached for another one. Harry thought he was probably hungry. He certainly hadn’t eaten much at their meal.

            “I’m fucked in the head,” Draco said in a conversational tone. “I know that well enough. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so eager to talk to you and help you, especially when the news started coming out about what Old Harry was really like. You were fucked in the head, too, so I thought you wouldn’t disdain me.”

            “That’s—cold,” said Harry. But he couldn’t deny it was true.

            Draco gave him a twisted smile. “But true.”

            “All right, then.” Harry wrenched his mind back to the problem of Lucius Malfoy with an effort. He wanted to help Draco, but at the same time, he hoped it wasn’t going to end up in another problem with the both of them. “You said most magical theory experts were employed by the Ministry. What about the ones that aren’t?”

            “Several of them are among the victims that you blackmailed.”

            Harry closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m messing this up for you all over the place, aren’t I?” he muttered.

            “Yes, I absolutely think that you conspired to alienate the people I would have approached about this problem if I’d ever wanted to, and then got your memories destroyed so they would hate you,” Draco drawled. “This is the last remnant of the attitude Old Harry had that he was responsible and horrible if he didn’t live up to someone’s image of a hero, isn’t it? Well, get rid of it. I won’t tolerate it.”

            “All right,” Harry said, more than startled. He blinked at Draco, who gave him a single small smile. “But—fine. Any magical theorists you can think of who wouldn’t be outraged the moment you approached them?”

            “One, maybe.”

            “Who?”

            “Fleur Weasley.”

            Harry felt his jaw drop open. “I didn’t know she was a magical theorist.”

            “You haven’t asked that many questions about the Weasleys since you opened your eyes. I suppose you saw them as the one unchanging constant in a world of change.”

            “Oh, come off it,” Harry muttered, knowing he was blushing but not how to stop it. “You know I’m aware of how things have changed. Ginny let me know right away how much I’d loved her.”

            “Pretended to love her.” Draco sat up and glared for another reason.

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Fine. You don’t seem to have any doubts about Fleur’s skill, or you wouldn’t have suggested approaching her. What’s the problem?”

            “She might feel morally obliged to report me to the Ministry herself, once she learns what I’ve turned my father into.”

            “If I can frame it as a favor for me, probably not,” Harry muttered, thinking rapidly. “I can’t guarantee it, but at least she’ll hesitate. Do you know what kinds of magical theory she mostly investigates?”

            “Those having to do with magical creatures, which I suppose makes sense given her heritage.” Draco folded his arms with a sigh. “And with the involvement of a house-elf, she makes a better choice than some of the others anyway. She probably at least regards house-elves as deserving of basic consideration, if she wants to live in the same family as Granger.”

            “Probably,” Harry said. He knew his voice was absent, and Draco looked at him out of the corner of one eye for it, but he was still trying to consider what this meant. “Do you think you can master your hatred enough to go along with it?”

            “That’s the question I’ve asked and considered and not answered for years,” Draco whispered.

            “Well, you have to answer it now,” said Harry, as kindly as he could. “Or there’s no real reason for anyone to help you.”

            “I know.”

            Draco stared down at his clenched fists, and seemed to meditate. Harry didn’t hurry him. He wouldn’t have felt right about it even if he could. He just waited, looking now and then at the fire, and now and then at the butter spot he thought was still there on Draco’s robes.

            Finally, Draco looked up. “I can give details. I can brew any potions the process needs. And if it turns out that I can’t be neutral enough about my father to really help, then I’ll leave the room as soon as Weasley starts the ritual.”

            “Good,” Harry said softly.

            “I can’t believe you’re sitting there so calmly!” The words seemed to spring out of Draco like water from behind a dam. “I mean, instead of telling me how horrible I am for cursing my father that way.”

            “It was an accident, from the way you described it—”

            “Not doing anything about it in the years since wasn’t.”

            Harry shook his head. “What kind of position am I in to scold anyone for their mistakes and their stupid emotions, Draco? I think it says you’re a good enough person to be going on with, that you’re willing to correct it now after years of not trying. You’d be a better one if you’d done it right away,” he had to add. “But without me involved, there’s a good chance Fleur would have said no, anyway.”

            Draco nodded. “It still sounds like you’re making excuses for me.”

            “Then that’s the way it sounds,” Harry said roughly. “I want to help you do this, and that’s all that should matter right now.”

            From the searching glance Draco gave him, it wasn’t the only thing that mattered to Draco. But Harry kept his face still and stern, and Draco finally nodded, reluctant though it was. “Fine. Then let’s begin tomorrow.”

            Harry nodded back, and listened to the silence that fell between them.

*

            SP777: Thank you!

            Anon: I hope it wasn’t too awful.

            AnonymousTigress: Was it anything like you imagined?

            moodysavage: Yes, although making this request of Fleur will be a bit strange for him.
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The Dust of Water