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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 Four—Backfiring
            “An interesting choice of meeting place.”
            Draco let a few moments pass before he responded. He could use the time to make sure that his glamour was secure, and that the spells he’d raised around them to ensure silence and prevent magical eavesdropping worked.
            And to get used to the change in Harry Potter.
            Potter sat at the table in the Leaky Cauldron as if it was his one anchor to reality, his hand curled so hard around the side of the table that his knuckles looked blue instead of white. He had his eyes half-closed and his glasses off; Draco suspected he was using a charm of some kind to substitute for them. His hair was also a few shades lighter than normal, and a rakish curl stuck to the middle of his forehead, conveniently covering up the scar.
            Not that that was the greatest change. The carefree man Draco had seen ascending the Lightfinder’s stage a fortnight ago wouldn’t have recognized the man who sat here now.
            Potter opened his eyes fully, and Draco raised one more extra layer of protections. Potter was probably right that people wouldn’t recognize him without the iconic scar and glasses, but those eyes still seemed, at least to Draco, to bespeak only one person.
            “I thought you would have me come wherever you’re hiding,” Potter continued. Draco opened his mouth to excoriate him for that stupidity, but then Potter surprised him. “And then Obliviate me if I didn’t prove cooperative.”
Draco waved a hand for a drink instead of responding right away. He finally said, when he had a mug of butterbeer firmly in hand and it became obvious that Potter wouldn’t ask for anything other than the crumb-covered plate in front of him, “I’m surprised that you also agreed to meet with me. Someone you dislike, someone hunted by the majority of the wizarding world.” He paused, because he wanted to watch Potter’s face when he said this. “A Dark wizard.”
“Let’s say that I think about that a little differently than I did a few weeks ago.”
Draco took an abrupt sip of butterbeer. He would probably show too much glee if he didn’t, and the last thing he wanted was Potter walking away when he had done most of the work himself to get him into the perfect place to take the bait.
“Oh? Why?” Draco asked neutrally.
“You know why.” Potter rubbed his scar and continued speaking in a low, rambling murmur that sounded like the running of water. “I thought it was all my fault. That casting the Unforgivables and being connected to Voldemort the way I was, I sort of deserved it. That I was Dark, and that meant I had to be punished. How long would I have gone without knowing it if I’d just been walking around people and corrupting them? It was for the best. And if I could get rid of it, even better.”
Draco held his tongue. After all, Potter had used the past tense.
Potter turned around and stared at Draco. His eyes had a frantic glaze that told Draco all he needed to know about why Potter had accepted his invitation. “But then I realized that there was no way I could trust anyone else to have the answers, either. There are things they don’t know and I can’t tell them.” Draco made a mental note. “And there were these thoughts coming into my head. I thought they meant I was a Dark wizard, but it could mean anything. And Splinter hasn’t even been tested in the Lightfinder yet.” Potter laughed, and the sound crackled at the edges. “How do I know that he isn’t Dark himself?”
Draco nodded. So Potter was here for his own self-interest rather than because he wanted to help anyone else or thought there was something fundamentally wrong in the wizarding world, but that was okay. Draco could work with that.
“I’m not offering you some kind of cure,” Draco said carefully. “That’s the first thing you have to understand, Potter. Even if you work with me, there’s no way out of being a Dark wizard.”
“You must not think it’s a bad thing, or you would be trying to get rid of it.” Potter leaned forwards and stared at Draco. “What does it mean? Are you only Dark because you cast curses during the war, or what?”
Draco relaxed completely. Even with Potter desperate, he was behaving exactly as Draco had hoped he would, giving Draco openings to explain. That meant he could achieve some of what he wanted without having to use blackmail.
Draco would do it if he had to, of course. But he would prefer not to. Potter wouldn’t fight his best for them if he was being coerced to do it.
“It means that you have an affinity for certain kinds of spells,” Draco said. “People in our world have given those spells names. Light Arts, Dark Arts, Shadow Arts.” Potter’s mouth shaped a silent question, but he didn’t ask it, and Draco went on. “Or Healing Arts and Dream Arts and Defense, to name other categories. It all depends on what kind of magic one casts. Some spells from one category overlap into the others.”
“But the Unforgivables can’t be anything like Defense,” Potter protested.
“No,” Draco admitted easily. “But not that many spells are like the Unforgivables, either, Potter. They’re the most extreme examples of their type. Would you say that something like the Shield Charm could never be used for Dark purposes?”
Potter opened his mouth, then closed it again and tapped his fingers on the table. “I suppose you could use it to block healing spells from someone,” he muttered. “Or slam someone with it and knock them off a cliff.”
Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought of the first use. “Yes,” he said. “So a Shield Charm is Defense, but it’s also classified as Shadow Arts because it’s hard to be absolutely, completely sure. Most of the spells that the common wizard learns are Shadow Arts, really. They’re spells that might have neutral uses, or spells that could have multiple uses. Only spells that really don’t have many different kinds of uses go into Light Arts or Dark Arts.”
“I’ve never heard of any of this,” Potter said, and rubbed his head as if his scar ached. Draco froze for a second, but then realized that Potter’s hand was more on his temple, and relaxed. “Why haven’t I heard of this?”
“Because we didn’t have a Defense teacher worth shit except for Professor Snape?” Draco suggested dryly. “Dark Arts and Defense are supposed to be defined in that class. There aren’t specific classes on the Shadow Arts because the category of spells is too big. And Light Arts spells take a lot of power to cast, and many wizards can’t manage them at all. Like the Patronus, for example. No room for a class like that in Hogwarts when you would have few students and they’d spend months learning to cast a single spell.”
“Snape could have done something, then.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Blame the Ministry for that. There are rules for what’s supposed to be taught in a certain year. Professor Snape could bend them a little in our case, but not that much, especially when he was already being watched by people who thought he was a Death Eater.” Draco swallowed a rough lump in his throat. His feelings about Snape were…complicated. “I do believe that he was teaching some of the distinctions to the first-years, who were supposed to learn it. But he never got to stay long enough.”
Potter leaned back into the shadows. “I could manage a Patronus.”
“I’ll say whatever you want me to say about you being a wizard of rare power and talent,” Draco warned him, lifting a hand. “Because it’s true. But even you had to train for a while before you did it.”
“It’s not true.”
“You really did it the first time?” Draco couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. Potter had been so affected by the Dementors that Draco was sure he would have used the spell before he actually did if he was capable of it.
“No, about me being a wizard of rare power.” Potter leaned forwards enough that the light showed his face again, or at least the slightly altered features he had adopted for this meeting. He wore a stubborn look that Draco suspected he was soon to become familiar with. “I’m not. It wasn’t power that defeated Voldemort.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “And if we were in a normal situation where you could keep your delusions and I was just asking you to fight for me because it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t question that. But the Lightfinder revealed how extensive your aura was. If I didn’t know that you were powerful before, I’d know it now.”
Potter hunched down in misery. Draco tapped the table in front of him, making him start. “What makes you so upset about that? I’d be thrilled if it was me. It would mean I could defend myself better.”
“Every time I try and defend myself, someone takes it the wrong way,” Potter said, with enough suppressed violence to make Draco stare at him. “I don’t want this. I wish that no one had ever invented the Lightfinder.”
“But they did, and you went through it,” Draco said, folding his arms and looking away. He would give Potter a bit of privacy to recover himself, but he wasn’t about to put up with the reality-denying ways Gryffindors were famous for. “Listen. You’re a Dark wizard. You can cast Dark Arts. You’re more powerful if you cast them than if you cast Light magic. But your power let you manage the Light spells, too, and the Shadow spells with no trouble. Do you see?”
“I don’t want to be good at cruel magic.”
Draco slammed his hand down on the table this time instead of tapping his fingers, and was gratified by the way that Potter almost drew his wand. “You idiot. Who said that Dark Arts was all cruel magic? I already told you the way the Ministry classified them. There’s almost no ‘Light’ magic or ‘Light’ wizards because so few have the power. That doesn’t have anything to do with good or evil.” He folded his arms. “And they’re going to find almost no Light wizards, because they’re rare.”
“The Lightfinder is discovering some red people.” Potter folded his arms back, nearly nudging his plate off the table with his elbow. “Splinter told me so.”
Draco nodded, uncaring. “But those are mostly people who haven’t cast any spells except minor Shadow ones in their lives, because they can’t. He also told you that the red auras were small, right?”
Potter hesitated for the briefest moment. “Yes.”
Draco spread his hands. “They don’t have the power. When they find a wizard whose red aura flares out beyond his body, be impressed. That means they’ve found a wizard with an affinity for the Light Arts and the power to cast them.”
“But people with red auras do have an affinity for Light.”
“Yes, but the lack of power means they would never have known it if not for the Lightfinder.” Draco snorted in bitter amusement. “They could use the Lightfinder to good purpose if they could use it on children when they were still young enough that their training hadn’t started. That way, they would know who had an affinity for what and they could train them in different ways. You’d have some powerful natural Healers and people who would do well at Defense that way.” He leaned in and stared at Potter. “But you can’t find the good and evil ones.”
Potter shut his eyes tight. “I wonder if they did, with me.”
“They didn’t,” Draco said, and hoped that he could restrain his impatience enough so he wouldn’t murder Potter before they got where they needed to go. “Because it finds no such thing.”
“Right, you said.” Potter propped his chin on his fist, brooding. Draco was starting to wonder how his side had done so well in the war, when that was all he seemed to do. “But like I said, there are things that taint me that you can’t know anything about.”
Draco ignored that. “I know from the size of your aura that you’re powerful. I know from the color that you have an affinity for the Dark Arts. What that tells me is that you can be a political ally. If we’re going to fight this…”
He let his voice trail off delicately, but for once Potter was looking past him instead of at him and didn’t seem to notice. Draco was about to raise his voice and try again when Potter abruptly whipped around. His eyes were wide.
“I won’t participate in a battle against my friends.”
“Not that kind of battle,” Draco said. He thought he knew at least part of what Potter was afraid of, now. “Of course we aren’t going to take up arms against them. We’re only going to make sure we have the same rights as anyone else.”
Potter looked at his hands. The knuckles were at least white instead of blue, now. Draco decided to take that as an improvement.
Then Potter murmured, “Would you take up arms against them if that was the only way?”
“Define what you mean as ‘the only way,’ Potter,” Draco snapped back at once. “If we were fighting for our lives, yes. Of course. If they were trying to execute all Dark wizards, which is the point it could reach if we’re not careful? Of course.” He eased up on his posture and considered Potter carefully. “But there’s no sign yet that it’s going to reach that stage.”
Potter nodded. His breath was coming in shallow gasps. Draco sighed.
“You have questions you need to ask,” he said. “So ask them.”
Potter finally looked up, and Draco cocked his head. He had wondered for the past few minutes if this was such a good idea, if approaching Potter would just lead to a bloody panic attack and Potter striking out against Draco and the people Draco was trying to help.
But there was a fierce weight at the bottom of Potter’s eyes, like a stone sunk in a pool, that Draco couldn’t help approving of. Maybe this would work out, after all. At least if Potter behaved like a human being who wanted to defend his own life instead of just the martyr.
*
“I want to know what the Dark Arts are. If they’re not cruel magic and they’re not all the Unforgivables, what are they?”
Harry marveled at his own voice. It sounded like the voice of someone who had a plan and was calm and intelligent. He hadn’t known that he could still sound like that. He had thought he’d given up all hope of it when Splinter told him he was Dark.
He would still be checking what Malfoy told him with Hermione, of course. It was ridiculous, at least to Harry, that they’d got all this way into their lives and Harry had never heard of these divisions of magic, while wizards reared in Death Eater families conveniently knew all about them.
Malfoy considered him for a second with his face so clear and yet so closed that Harry couldn’t tell what he felt at all. Then Malfoy nodded slightly and picked up his mug. He sipped from it before putting it down and leaning intently forwards so that he could almost touch Harry’s chin with his hair.
Harry steeled himself against flinching away. They needed to be confederates, or at least maybe they did if Malfoy was telling the truth and the Lightfinder hadn’t discovered evil in Harry’s soul. So they needed to sit like them, too.
“They’re the spells that can have a destructive purpose,” Malfoy explained quietly. “The ones that can control someone’s will—they destroy the victim’s freedom. Curses like the Blasting Curse can be used to demolish walls, or people. And the ones that kill and torture are Dark Arts, of course.”
“But Aurors use the Blasting Curse.”
Malfoy raised an eyebrow that made him look a lot more cynical than he’d ever managed in school when he was trying to appear that way. “Of course they do. I told you that the distinction between the Dark Arts and the other kinds of magic is one the Ministry made up. That means they can also violate it when they want to and not emphasize that certain kinds of spells are crossing over.”
Harry pushed his hand through the hair on his forehead. He saw Malfoy’s eyes dart to the scar. Maybe Malfoy was wondering if Voldemort was back when Harry touched his scar.
Harry almost wished for it. It would probably be simpler than this.
“Don’t people get upset about that?” Harry tried.
Malfoy shrugged a little. “Some people don’t care. Our generation doesn’t have that many people who know.” He offered Harry a dark smile. “Other people think that it doesn’t matter as long it’s not Dark wizards using the spell. But you’ve got to understand, Potter.” And this time he actually reached out and took one of Harry’s hands. His own palm was damp and unpleasantly warm. Harry managed to refrain from jumping and flinching, but it was hard. “The Lightfinder can find the affinity for Dark Arts. It means that you could cast them well. It doesn’t mean you will.”
Harry’s stomach clenched painfully. There was the distinction the Ministry hadn’t bothered to make.
But he didn’t know if it was a distinction he could trust, either. Consider the source. Meanwhile, Harry trusted Kingsley, and at least Kingsley had told him that the Lightfinder worked the way the Ministry said it did, to find good and evil.
“Do you like to cast them?” he whispered, and didn’t care when his breath passed over Malfoy’s lips or Malfoy’s eyes widened.
“That’s a different question again, Potter.” Malfoy shook his head a minute later. “Am I close to them? Yes. Could I cast them with power? Yes. Did I receive an—education during the war from people who thought it would be a good idea if I cast them? Yes.” His eyes met Harry’s for a moment.
Harry stared back. He hadn’t thought that he would find that much empathy for what he had endured during the war in Draco Malfoy, of all people.
A second later, Malfoy broke that too-understanding gaze and stared at the table. “But I don’t really want to use most of them,” he whispered. “I saw too much of what they made people suffer during the war.”
“Then I don’t understand why you’re so set on fighting for the rights of Dark wizards,” Harry replied. “If you—”
He gasped, because Malfoy’s hand had shifted and was clasping his tightly enough to grind some important bones together. Malfoy grimaced at him a little. “They have a way that does detect affinities now. I could lie, but I wouldn’t be believed. And I would use those spells if my life was in danger.
“And I told you. It’s all about public perception.” Malfoy leaned back a little, but it didn’t lessen the charge of the small space between them. “How many people are going to be on your side, or listen to the explanation of you being closer to the Dark Arts but not evil, now that the Ministry has publically declared you someone to worry about? I could explain the technical distinctions until I was blue in the face, and no one would listen. Or at least, not enough people would listen to get me out of trouble.”
“But it’s technical details that you’re hoping to have me explain!” Harry flung his free hand up. “I don’t know how I can be much help. I don’t even understand them as well as you do!”
Malfoy caught his other hand and whispered, “Listen. I know that you have power in your name and your history. You just have to learn how to use it.”
Abruptly, Harry was sure he knew what this was about, and only the fact that Malfoy had hold of his hands prevented him from getting up and storming out of the Leaky. “So you’re going to feed me information and make me your political figurehead? Is that it?”
Malfoy gave a short, sharp laugh that Harry was sure would have attracted attention if not for the spells around their table. “Haven’t you got the message, Potter? That’s what you are already. I’m trying to give you some more ability to save yourself instead of mindlessly having to go along with whatever the Ministry tells you.”
Harry only gave his hand a shake in response. Malfoy still didn’t let it go. “I’m not the Ministry’s figurehead! If anything, I’m its scapegoat!”
“They’re making the same use of you either way.” Malfoy shook his hands again, and Harry grimaced. It was beginning to get painful. “They’re scaring people, making them run, making them mindless sheep. See what happened to the great Harry Potter? The same thing could happen to you if you’re not careful! If we need to imprison the great Harry Potter and shepherd him around to make sure that he doesn’t come into contact with normal people, then we need to do the same thing for anyone who tests Dark!”
“They’re paying more attention to me because of who I am! They wouldn’t bother you that much. Or anyone else who isn’t a Death Eater.”
Malfoy’s face turned a plum color, but his voice was stronger and steadier than ever. “You think so? They’ve already told As—a friend of mine who’s been helping me that she’ll have to get tested. And her family isn’t Death Eaters, they never had anything to do with them. She was in Slytherin, that’s all.” His smile turned nasty. “I suppose you haven’t heard that they’re going to be testing the Lightfinder on the first-years getting ready to go to Hogwarts? They’ll prevent children who test Dark from boarding the train.”
“That’s mad.” Harry’s head felt like it was spinning. His tongue was thick, dusty, dry.
Malfoy shrugged. “That’s the way things are right now. The whole world is going mad, and you could prevent it if you wanted to.” He let go of Harry’s hands and stared at him, challenging, right in the eye. “But I reckon that you don’t want to. You probably don’t care as long as it doesn’t happen to your friends.”
“It’s happening to me—”
“That doesn’t count, you bloody martyr.” Malfoy’s breath was hot on his cheek as he leaned in again. “You’re crumbling to the ground, whimpering that you deserve it because of all this unspecified evil in your past. You won’t stand up and fight.”
Harry stared at him, his mind full of children, like him, who had been raised in the Muggle world and needed Hogwarts as an escape. They needed it so badly.
And then they would walk into the Lightfinder, and turn out to have a magical affinity they never knew about, and they would have Hogwarts taken away from them.
“Those Dark children can’t be in the school with our normal children,” Malfoy murmured, seeming to read his mind. Maybe he knew Legilimency. “They can’t pollute our normal minds. Oh, no, what are we going to do if they ruin our normality?”
Harry snarled, his mind full of Muggleborns being sent back to homes where their relatives would tell them smugly that of course they were freaks, that even other freaks thought so. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I’ll do it.” Harry was the one to take Malfoy’s hand this time, and press down until he heard a warning noise. “But if you try to make me into a figurehead, you’ll find out why I have an affinity for the Dark Arts.”
He didn’t expect light, of all things, to come into Malfoy’s eyes, or the look that he gave Harry.
“Thank you,” Malfoy breathed. “Thank you.”
Harry shrugged, a little embarrassed, and moved his hair back into place over his scar. “So what exactly is your plan for this little rebellion?”
*
delia cerrano: Harry was trusting the Ministry because he trusted Kingsley and because he is worried about what taint the Horcrux might have left in him. But now he’s angry.
Kain: Precisely for that reason, Malfoy would prefer not to blackmail Harry. But just like cursing people if they try to kill people, he is desperate enough to try it.
And Harry is going to check all this out with Hermione and Ron both. It’s possible Ron has heard more about the distinctions between the different kinds of magic since he grew up in the wizarding world.
SP777: Harry hasn’t had much unsupervised time with his friends since this whole thing began. And he’s wondering if telling people about the Horcruxes is ever a smart thing to do, which is why he asked Hermione instead of just doing it.
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An Image of Lethe