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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20634 -:- 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 Four—Dreams Built on Dust
            “Harry? We’re almost ready to leave for the Burrow, aren’t we?”
            Harry pulled a hasty hand back from the wall of their bedroom, and turned to smile over his shoulder at Ginny. “Of course we are,” he said. He was getting used to the sound of his own voice now, the way that it seemed deeper. It wouldn’t ever sound as confident as it had in some of those memories, he thought, but Ginny didn’t seem to mind. “I thought you were going to do your hair up with that hat, though?”
            Ginny’s hand flew to her hair, and she made a sharp noise. “You’re right. I’ll be back.” She disappeared into the bathroom again.
            Harry sighed and glanced uneasily at the wall. He had seen an outline there last night, but he’d ignored it. He had tried to concentrate, instead, on refamiliarizing himself with the bed, the touch of the sheets, Ginny’s casual hand on his shoulder, and the warmth of another body behind him.
            It had been difficult.
            But more difficult, he thought, was leaving the square outline alone. He touched the side of it, and leaned nearer to squint when it didn’t immediately open. He was probably being stupid. It was probably a private safe for papers or something, and Ginny knew all about it.
            But since the discovery of that locked drawer and that ledger, which made him feel faint and sick still, Harry wasn’t taking things for granted.
            “Open,” he tried hissing, although he couldn’t see any snake design on the wall this time. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have been as visible. Ginny would probably have objected.
            There was a click, and the door sagged a little. Harry swallowed and steered it open, glancing over his shoulder several times.
            Inside were more papers. Glancing through them, Harry sighed. They looked like ordinary letters, without the notations of money in the ledgers that had disturbed him so much.
            Then he saw the name “Rob” at the bottom or top of some of those letters, and tensed up again.
            Dear Rob, one of them said,
            Thank you for a wonderful evening. I think I’m learning what you wanted to teach me, but I might need more lessons. Can I see you for more of them soon?
            There was no doubt that was his own handwriting. Harry had forgotten a lot, but not what his writing looked like, and it seemed to be one of the parts of him that had changed the least.
            He shook his head and shuffled the papers around again. Letters, letters, more letters. Most of them were to Rob, and some of them were to people whose names he had written in the ledger. Harry winced and closed his dry-as-dust eyes, rubbing at them.
            There was a sharp noise in the bathroom that sounded like a drawer closing. Ginny liked to close them emphatically, and the same with doors. It was a thing Harry was slowly getting used to.
            Harry sighed, and put the letters back into the safe. At a glance, they weren’t going to tell him anything, what they were or why he’d hidden them, and he didn’t have time to read them in detail right now.
            He did see a looped-together bundle then, the shimmer of the spell that bound them almost invisible in the safe’s dusk. Harry scooped them up and noticed that they were addressed to Malfoy, and then to “Draco.”
            Malfoy was the only one of those people in the ledger he knew, or that he’d seen since the loss of his memories. Harry hesitated over the letters, and then he heard Ginny striding towards the door of the bathroom. Harry swept the bundled letters into his robe pocket in one smooth movement and shut the safe on the rest.
            “Ready now!” Ginny stepped out into the middle of the room, her pointed hat, in a bright grey color, bound over her long red hair. Her robes were the same shade of soft grey, and looked wonderful on her. Harry rose to his feet, smiling.
            “Are you nervous?” Ginny asked him softly. “Don’t worry, Harry. It’s my family. Remember, they love you.”
            Harry was about to say that he didn’t remember, but then he realized Ginny was referring to the memories he’d made with the Weasley family before he left Hogwarts. He relaxed. “Yeah,” he admitted, and reached one hand out. “But more afraid of not getting jokes and references than anything else.”
            “I’ll help you with that.” Ginny held his hand and stood for a moment looking into his eyes. Her eyes were still at the wrong height for what Harry remembered. “You believe me, don’t you, Harry? That I would help you with anything? That you could tell me anything, even if your memories don’t return?”
            Harry swallowed, but did manage to say, “Do you still think they will? You heard Hermione. It’s not going to happen.”
            He spoke more harshly than he wanted to, because the thought of Ginny collapsing in despair hurt him. Not the self-confident woman he had seen in those Pensieve memories. She could have anyone she wanted. Tying her to him forever, just because she might think that he’d get his memories back, seemed cruel.
            Ginny nodded. “I know that. I know about all the chances there are against it, and I told you. I’m prepared to wait until you can watch enough Pensieve memories to know what your life was like. Which is different from you getting your own memories back.” She drew a deep breath. “But I also think—that you’re Harry Potter. You’ve defied the odds so many times already. I thought you were gone forever after we broke up in our last year at Hogwarts, and then you came back to me. So I thought—well, maybe this will be another time when you can.”
            Harry turned his head gently into the side of her cheek, so he could touch her skin, and smell her, and feel the slight throbs of her pulse that shook her. He wondered if she should have so much faith in him, based on what he was discovering in those hidden nooks.
            But he had to admit, he wanted to earn that faith.
            “All right,” he whispered. “I want them to come back, too. Maybe if we both hope hard enough, it can happen.”
            Ginny’s smile was as slow and warming as the sunrise. “Stranger things have happened.”
            Like me resisting the Killing Curse again, Harry thought. And apparently writing willingly to Draco Malfoy.
            The bundled letters seemed to burn in his robe pocket. But Harry knew he would have to wait. The Weasleys were more important.
*
            Harry slipped out of the Burrow and stood in silence on the darkened grass, staring upwards. The children, the only reason he’d been able to slip out, were still making plenty of noise behind him. Harry didn’t think he’d be missed right now.
            The evening had been a disaster.
            And the heart-wrenching thing was, he knew the Weasleys hadn’t thought so. They were still overflowing with love and warmth for him. His shoulders ached with the strength of Mrs. Weasley’s hugs, and even Mr. Weasley’s and Bill’s and Charlie’s. Charlie had come all the way from Romania to be here. Ron and Hermione were part of it, too, their eyes shining with hope. Fleur had brought a strand of her hair twined around a slender silver chain for Harry, a Veela good luck charm that she said sometimes helped wizards hit with Memory Charms to recover.
            But Harry didn’t know them. He had stood there in shock when the door opened and he had seen Mrs. Weasley almost entirely grey, with wrinkles in her face as though someone had carved them there. He didn’t know the silver-haired girl named Victoire who’d just had her tenth birthday and who’d tried to tell him that she was a good Seeker because he’d taught her to be, or the slightly younger girl—Dominque—who expected him to be so good at chess, or the five-year-old boy, Louis, who held out his arms to Harry the minute he saw him.
            And Percy, Percy was there with his wife Audrey to whom Harry had apparently been close, since they’d been in Auror training at the same time, and his two daughters, laughing Lucy and shy Molly. And there was George, with a Fred who made Harry ache and wouldn’t look up from books, and his daughter, Roxane, who had sobbed when she made a joke and Harry didn’t know the punchline. Angelina, who would have been a more familiar face, was working.
            Ron and Hermione had—children. A daughter and son they hadn’t mentioned when he was in hospital, probably because they thought it might depress him further. Rose, who had tried to talk to him about a book they’d been reading together. Hugo, who had pestered him for tales of Hogwarts.
            Harry felt as disoriented as he would have if he’d traveled in time. Well, no, worse, he decided, as he reached up and put his hands on either side of his head, pressing his cheeks inwards. Because then, at least, no one would have expected him to know who all these children were and what his relationships to these people were.
            Ginny had insisted on pausing the conversation each time to explain the relevant memories to him. It was hell.
            Not that she wanted to explain, not that the Weasleys wanted to love him. Harry knew it was all his fault. Or the fault of the man he had been. If he hadn’t gone off chasing after a wizard who would fire a Killing Curse at him…
            No one had come after him yet. Harry looked over his shoulder and saw that Victoire was dancing with Fred in the middle of the room, and everyone was focused on them. He might have a few minutes more.
            Harry closed his eyes.
            It might also be hell because you’re wondering what sort of man the stranger really was, and if he could be as good as Ginny and the rest of them insisted.
            He drew out the letters and picked up the top one, listening intently for the sound of the door opening. His skin prickled with something that might have been sweat or guilt. He should go and show these to Ginny, along with the photographs and books he had found.
            On the other hand, did he have the right to poison her memories?
            Harry didn’t know. He told himself that he would let this top letter guide him. If it said something incriminating, then he would put it away and let things fade into the past. He had to ignore it, if he was going to become the man Ginny loved again.
            Malfoy,
            I’ve heard you brew rather particular potions. I’m in the market for an experimental one. A mutual friend of ours—you may know him by his very blue eyes—said that you concocted a potion that made the facet of his personality he despised the most disappear. I want you to do the same thing for me.
            Of course, I have a bigger problem than simply being late. I find myself compelled to listen to these Dark promptings that encourage me to hoard secrets, artifacts, and many other things that I don’t need to possess and would probably never use. When I say that I want a potion to become a better person, I really mean it.
            I’m prepared to pay whatever you desire in research costs, materials, and development fees…
            The door opened. Harry crumpled the letter up in his hand and held it there, staring at the stars, as Ginny walked up to him.
            “What’s wrong?” Ginny whispered into his ear, and then kissed him on his earlobe.
            Here’s your chance. Turn towards her. Tell her that the other you wanted a potion to make him a better person. Tell her that you’re afraid he was blackmailing people. Tell her that he wasn’t as good as she thought he was.
            Yes, tell her that, and then what?
            Harry turned slowly towards Ginny. There was no right choice here. Did he take away her hope, or her trust?
            Before he could say anything, Ginny looped her arm through his and looked up at the stars. “Did I tell you I have a favorite constellation?” she asked.
            It was on the tip of Harry’s tongue to say that she might have told him once and then he’d forgotten, but he decided to treat her words the way they seemed to be offered, as an olive branch. “I don’t think you did,” he said, and leaned his head against hers.
            Ginny turned her gaze back on him, smiled, and then took his hand and pointed it up into the sky. “There,” she whispered. “Sight along your finger. There it is.”
            Harry looked up obediently. Scraps of forgotten Astronomy lore came back to him, and he smiled. “You mean it’s not Leo?”
            Ginny dug a playful elbow into his side. “No. It’s Aquila. The Eagle. I looked at it when I felt as though something was dragging me down. When I looked at it, it was as though I could triumph and fly over anything.”
            She looked at him. And Harry had his answer.
            I have to find out the truth. At the moment, I can’t tell her anything because I don’t know it myself. I don’t know what would hurt her, what would help, or even really what the other me was doing and why he was hiding it.
            Then I’ll lay the truth before her, and we can decide what we want to do with it.
            Harry relaxed. It would be hard to do, but at least he had a course laid out for him. And it had to be less hard than hunting Horcruxes.
            “I like Leo,” he said. “Because I’m a real Gryffindor, not a Ravenclaw in disguise.”
            Ginny shoved him, and Harry went with it, grinning. Because it was all right again. He would make it be all right.
            And if he had been doing something wrong all these years, something the other him didn’t want to correct…
            Then it’s up to me to correct it. Because he’s gone now, and I’m what’s left.
*
            Harry slowly closed the last of the Daily Prophets that Hermione had brought him. He’d asked for them so he could study the events of the last ten years, and at least try to catch up on the politics that people who weren’t as understanding as his friends would expect him to remember.
            But he’d had another purpose, too. He looked down at the paper, and suffered a sudden flash of nostalgia. It was like being in the library with Ron and Hermione, hunting for Nicholas Flamel, except that this time, he couldn’t tell anyone what he was doing.
            And he wanted them with him.
            Harry sighed and pushed the paper away, telling himself again that searching for Flamel was sixteen years ago and not six, the way it seemed to him. The more he repeated those words to himself, he thought, the more they would sink in.
            He had found most of the names in his old self’s ledger somewhere in those papers. A few were Wizengamot members or prominent Aurors, but not many. More worked at the Ministry, or owned shops in Diagon Alley, or were Healers at St. Mungo’s sometimes quoted in articles about treating wide-spread diseases, or were even involved in the improvement of racing brooms. Harry didn’t know what, exactly, connected all of them, why his old self would have chosen to blackmail them.
            Or do something else with them. You don’t know it was blackmail.
            Harry gave a wry smile and stood up. He was supposed to get ready for dinner with Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, when Ginny got back from covering her latest Quidditch game. He reckoned he should start.
            Maybe he would have to leave what had happened in the past, after all, not because he wanted to but because his old self had never written any explanation down. Why should he when he couldn’t anticipate losing his memory this way?
            But there was a sudden sizzling noise behind him that made Harry spin around. His first thought was that the fire had somehow leapt out of the grate and started burning the carpet, and his second thought was a curse from a Death Eater.
            Except there were no Death Eaters anymore, and no fire leaping out, either. There was simply a message etched in ash and soot along the top of the fireplace, clearly visible against the stone.
            Come to the Manor at once. I’ve been patient enough. DM.
            Harry stared at the message. He wondered if he should scrub it out, but even as he watched, the dust fell apart and whirled back into the grate.
            He had only a few minutes, probably, to decide what to do.
            Malfoy would at least be able to tell him what had happened with the potion, what meetings he and the stranger had had that hadn’t been conducted by letter, and maybe what other connections Harry had to those seemingly inoffensive people in the papers. That made it Harry’s priority.
            He wrote out a note to Ginny and left it on the table next to the fireplace, telling her that a Potions master had contacted him claiming to know about a potion that would fix his memories. Sending an owl would probably only result in the bird chasing her around and then returning to the house.
            And Harry didn’t know their owl anyway, other than the fact that her name was Gloria and she liked Ginny better than him.
            So many things I don’t know.
            Harry wrapped his cloak around himself and prepared to Apparate to Malfoy Manor, a place he still remembered well enough despite the intervening years. His heart burned and twisted.
            But in an hour at most, there will be fewer of those.
*
starr: More of the details will be in the next chapter.
moodysavage: I have to admit, I laughed so hard reading the first line of your review!
The jury is still out, but you now have a bit more detail on what potion Harry wanted Draco to make for him. And yes, there is a lot to be explored under the surface.
moon: It’s mostly because Harry was so overwhelmed by the loss of his former life. If he hadn’t acted that way, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and the rest would be urging him to make more of a new life. But Ginny would always want him to come back to her, because she is deeply in love with him and has invested a lot of love in her relationship with him.
SP777: Not romantically close. But they did have a relationship of sorts.
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The Dust of Water