Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 41
- 42
- 43
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Two—The First Winding

            “We cannot compel the will of any being to enter this ritual,” said Fleur, and turned and studied Harry and the others, who stood on the edge of the meadow. Harry shivered as he felt her eyes pass over him. It was like being poked directly with large needles. “If there is anyone here who would rather not be here, leave now.”

            Silence. Harry glanced at Draco, and Ron and Hermione, and Bill, and the house-elf. The house-elf was the only one that looked violently unhappy, but a second later, that expression passed out of his eyes and left them blank. His gaze was fixed on the meadow with its strings of copper bells, though, and he looked as though he was tracing those strings up and down, trying to understand the pattern.

            “Good,” said Fleur softly, and stepped back. She had a pinch of dust in her hand, Harry thought at first. Then he realized it was the powdered obsidian Draco had located for her in an obscure apothecary.

            She tossed it into the air.

            The powdered obsidian drifted back and forth, tugged by winds that Harry didn’t feel in his eyes or hair until several seconds afterwards. Then it settled on the bells and vines, and made them give a single, muffled chime. The house-elf jumped in place, and stared and shook his head as though the ring had been words the rest of them couldn’t hear.

            “Now that this has begun, it must not be stopped,” Fleur said, with a ragged edge to her voice. Harry wondered, suddenly, how much strain she must be under, knowing that she was responsible for a ritual that could easily kill or injure someone. “Into the maze, Harry.” She turned and gave him a single smile. “Good luck.”

            Harry closed his eyes. That actually helped him remember what he was supposed to do better than just reciting the words in his head, because he’d spent so much time staring at a list of written instructions that the words floated on paper in his mind.

            Around the corner that Ron and I strung with the heaviest bells. Around those other two curves that look like a Muggle road you would die driving on. And to the center with the heaviest steps I can.

            He felt like he was tromping as he passed through the strings of bells, but he didn’t make them ring, and that was important. He finally ended up in the center and faced Fleur and the others again.

            Ron and Hermione had dispersed to opposite sides of the meadow, ready to enter the pattern at different points. Draco and the house-elf were standing where they’d been when Harry last looked, though, and so was Fleur. Draco had a hand on the house-elf’s shoulder.

            Into the maze, Harry mouthed. He didn’t know if Draco could read his lips from this distance, but it was the next thing they were supposed to do, and Draco knew it as well as he did.

            Draco bobbed his head and licked his lips as though calming down his nervousness, then led the house-elf forwards.

            Harry watched them wend a different path than Harry had, although they still turned three corners before they paused in the middle of a little X where two different paths of bells crossed on either side of them. Draco turned his head, obviously seeking reassurance, before he nodded and settled back. Harry thought he was relaxing as much as he could.

            In fact, he bowed his head and whispered to the house-elf, and that was a good thing, Harry thought. It meant Harry could stop watching and turn to Fleur for the next step.

            Fleur had her head bowed over a tiny object cupped in her hands. Harry knew it would be a mirror, exactly the size of Fleur’s right palm. It had taken a lot of chipping and charms to make it the right size.

            Then again, they wouldn’t be performing this ritual at all if they didn’t have the magic that would help them arrive at the right conclusion.

            Fleur looked up, gave Harry a wan smile, and threw her hand suddenly forwards. The mirror gleamed like a falling star as it streaked across the strings of bells, and there was a glitter of light and power behind that it couldn’t have come from any charm Harry knew of.

            Then he felt the heavy gathering of weight on his shoulders and pressure in his ears, like he’d suddenly flown to a high mountaintop. He shivered in awe. Yes, this was the moment when the ritual began to work.

            The mirror circled around Harry’s head for a second, as if examining him and determining that he wasn’t the most important person in the ritual. Harry was relieved when it flew on to Draco. Even though he’d seen no eye peering out of the glass, the way he had when he suddenly saw Aberforth Dumbledore in Sirius’s broken mirror, it was unnerving to have a piece of metal staring at him.

            The mirror turned a slower circle around Draco’s head. Harry kept his eyes on him and the house-elf, even though he heard Ron and Hermione entering the maze of strings now. He knew Ron and Hermione would do what they’d agreed to, and play their parts well.

            Besides, right now nothing they were about to do was as dramatic as Draco’s confrontation with the mirror. Depending on the judgment the mirror made, the ritual would need to turn in a certain direction. Harry knew what one they hoped for—it was the one they’d practiced most—but Fleur had warned them all that there was an element of chance or luck to it.

            And truth. If Draco hadn’t been able to bring himself to free his father after all, if he thought that was what he wanted but it turned out not to be the truth…

            But Draco faced the mirror unflinchingly. And after a moment, it settled to his shoulder like a bright bird.

            Harry shivered, ignoring the way that Fleur’s eyes went to him. He hadn’t known how much he was counting on the truth of Draco’s feelings being reflected back until it had worked.

            The house-elf moved slowly forwards, holding out his wrist as though he wanted the green band off it. Draco whispered something to him Harry couldn’t hear. Fleur had warned him there were parts of the ritual he wouldn’t be able to hear. They were only for Draco and his father, or the entity that they hoped still slept inside the house-elf as part of Lucius Malfoy.

            Harry watched as the band on the house-elf’s wrist began to sparkle and brighten like there were diamonds hidden among the soft folds. The mirror left Draco’s shoulder and floated along above the elf. But he didn’t look back at it. His stare was fixed on the bells.

            Which had started to sway and chime, even though there was still no breeze to move them.

            The bells rose and clanged hard enough, as they swung back and forth and the elf neared them, that Harry thought the vines would surely tear. But either the magic of the ritual or the magic he and Ron had performed the other day held. The elf was soon among the bells, all of which somehow rang without touching him. The mirror had turned and come down slowly in front of him.

            Harry wondered what was going through his brain—half-elf and half-human—as he looked at that single bright square of glass. Harry supposed he would never know.

            The elf abruptly shrieked and flung up an arm in front of his eyes. Harry saw Fleur’s hand fly out, and reckoned she was holding back Bill and maybe other people whose time to enter the ritual hadn’t come yet. There was nothing they could do for the elf now.

            He had to have his own confrontation with the magic that ran wild inside this ritual and the bells, and survive.

            Trembling, the elf finally looked again. The mirror hadn’t moved and nothing had changed, as far as Harry could tell. The bells still rang, after all, and the glow of light from the square of glass was exactly the same.

            In fact, the elf now seemed fascinated instead of afraid. He moved closer and closer, peering up, and the mirror floated down in front of him. Now his face was right against it, nose pressed to the glass.

            And the moment came—Harry felt it in the subtle, sudden prodding of the magic at him—for things to change, for Harry to perform another part in this magnificent interplay.

            He turned and walked down a corridor of bells that had opened up in front of him. He knew it was part of the ritual, because these bells were silver instead of copper. Hermione had been gathering silver ones, but he hadn’t seen her put them up anywhere.

            Now he thought he understood what Fleur had meant when she’d told him—rather vaguely, he’d thought then—that all the ingredients for the ritual would find their proper place and time.

            The silver bells trembled and murmured to themselves, but their pure, sweet tones were subdued compared to the loud music still ringing out behind Harry. He raised a hand, but nothing changed. He relaxed a little. Fleur had told him that he couldn’t do much to affect the ritual except actually snap the strings or try to put Lucius back inside the house-elf’s body.

            It was still nice to be sure little gestures wouldn’t disrupt it, though.

            The silver bells ended, and in the middle of a clearing of light, as though someone overhead was shining down a spotlight on a stage, stood Hermione.

            Harry smiled at her. The air around them flickered and familiar images began to appear: Hermione standing in the girls’ bathroom in front of the troll, Hermione taking his Firebolt to be examined for curses and jinxes, Hermione running with him in the search for the Deathly Hallows, Hermione conjuring birds to send at Ron.

            And there was more than that, always more. Hermione in tall Healer’s robes laughing with him in an unknown room. Hermione leaning over his bed in hospital, face tight and worried. Hermione bouncing Rose on her knee and talking with a man that must be Old Harry; he was the only unfamiliar thing in that particular scene.

            Fleur had told him that the ritual would smooth out the tangled webs and ways that ran between him and his friends, in one fashion or the other. Because his friends were part of Harry’s life, and Harry was part of Draco’s, and just as Harry needed his enemies gone so Lucius could be freed—in a way—Draco needed Harry to have more tranquil relationships with his friends.

            Hermione took his hands and kissed his cheek. Her smile was misty, and Harry suddenly doubted she was seeing the same memories he did. Maybe more from the ten years that were gone. “You’re still a wonderful person, Harry,” she whispered. “And bravery is still more important than books and cleverness.”

            Harry hugged her hard, and for a moment felt as if she was the most real thing he had ever touched, her frizzy hair crisping against his chin and her arms clasping his ribs so hard it was as if she was trying to hold broken ones together.

            Then she dissolved in front of him, and there was another corridor to traverse.

            This one was made entirely of mirrors. They sprouted from the ground, which had turned misty and soft and silvery. Harry didn’t bother looking around for the meadow, the copper bells, or the others. He knew he wouldn’t find them.

            What he saw in every glass, when he moved close enough to be sure of the reflections, was the house-elf staring at him with big grey eyes.

            Harry paused, disconcerted. He had thought the next part of the ritual would be his reconciliation with Ron, but it seemed not. Instead, he had to confront his feelings for Lucius Malfoy, and decide what they were.

            If he hated him too much, the bastard might remain trapped in the house-elf’s body forever. Because Harry and Draco were linked, and their emotions ricocheted back and forth between each other’s bodies now, leaping and touching so many bonds that Harry felt a little dizzy and sick at the thought of all the interconnections.

            The mirrors began to change even as Harry thought that, and he was back in Flourish and Blotts, watching Lucius slip a diary into Ginny Weasley’s cauldron.

            Harry had to clench his teeth. He might not be in love with Ginny anymore, but he remembered the way she had hurt from being possessed by Tom Riddle, and it wasn’t easy to decide that Lucius had suffered enough for that. He really hadn’t suffered at all, except that he’d had to let Dobby go.

            The scene changed again, and Harry was watching himself dig Dobby’s grave in another mirror. He paused, uncertain. Lucius hadn’t really had anything to do with that…

            Except that they’d been escaping from Malfoy Manor, and if Lucius hadn’t been a Death Eater and utterly unable to stand up to Voldemort, then Dobby might have lived.

            Harry shook his head a little, and touched his brow. It was as though someone sat on the nape of his neck and whispered thoughts in his ear. His head ached and scorched with those thoughts, and he didn’t know if he would have had all these bad memories of Lucius without them.

            He marched on to another mirror. Lucius was firing curses at Harry’s friends in the Department of Mysteries, and not everyone dodged.

            Lucius was laughing at Arthur Weasley.

            Lucius was turning his head away from Draco—not a memory Harry had, but the way he imagined the confrontation between Lucius and Draco turning out.

            Harry struggled to breathe, and thought he might have managed to calm his breathing down when he turned another corner and found the largest mirror of all waiting for him. It was shaped like the one that had hovered above the house-elf, but it covered one enormous “wall” of this place, and it held yet another memory.

            Lucius Malfoy standing in the graveyard as Voldemort resurrected himself with Wormtail’s help. His mask was off, which maybe had been true in the original ritual; Harry didn’t remember. He was staring at the writhing, bleeding fourteen-year-old Harry with haughty disdain that curled his lip.

            For Harry, it was only four years ago, not fourteen. His breathing was hard enough to rattle his teeth, he thought. He had to close his eyes and try to recover himself.

            He really didn’t think any of the Death Eaters had had their masks off. And he knew, after the war, that Lucius hadn’t really wanted to serve Voldemort. He didn’t even know that because someone had told him; he knew it because he had his own memories of the Malfoys sitting huddled together in the Great Hall, and Lucius asking where Draco was during the Battle of Hogwarts.

            Even if Lucius had sneered at him years ago, it was as likely to be a survival tactic as anything else. And Harry didn’t think he had the right to assume anything unless he actually had the memory.

            Which he wasn’t sure he did.

            He turned his back on the mirror and walked to the far edge of the room. Well, the edge that had just appeared. He didn’t think it had been there before.

            The mist parted before him as he reached out and shoved it away. And Harry was standing again in a maze of copper bells, blinking at the vines and the air swirling around him, turning his head even as he knew what he would see.

            The house-elf still stared into the mirror hovering in front of him, and Draco was just crossing through one of the circles and curves and crisscrosses of bells to come to a halt behind him.

            For a moment, Harry thought—without being able to see whether it was so—that the mirror would reflect both of them. Father and son, or house-elf and master, or both, or neither, shimmering in the glass.

            Draco put his hand on the house-elf’s shoulder again. The green band on the elf’s arm flashed again as if with tiny diamonds placed there, and for a second lightning seemed to leap between the ground and the mirror and the band.

            When Harry could see again, there was a triangle of gigantic mirrors standing in the center of the maze, surrounded by ringing bells that never touched them. The elf had vanished behind them. Draco stepped back from them, swallowing and looking shaken.

And Harry heard the sharp, unmistakable cracks of Apparition off to the side.

            He turned his head and surged to his feet, making sure he had the Elder Wand close at hand. Fleur had warned him that before the house-elf could make a final choice, or change, he had to confront his enemies. Once again, the pattern of Draco’s life and the elf’s choice was bound up with Harry’s life.

            There were three wizards walking towards him, with Kelvin leading them. Harry raised his wand, and turned into a corridor clear of bells to begin the next exercise of free will.

*

            SP777: I think it will. And also a long process lasting several chapters.

            Severus1snape: Maybe, or else he just doesn’t know what will happen and doesn’t understand this.
- 41
- 42
- 43
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Dust of Water