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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 Forty-Six—A Meeting With Lucius Malfoy

            “How can you tell me not to go by myself and then do it yourself?”

            Harry looked at Draco and then away again, with a little sigh. No one could sulk like a Malfoy on the verge of a temper tantrum, he thought, as he gathered up his hair in his hands and stared in the mirror.

            And nothing could look as disreputable as a Potter who was trying to fix his hair. Harry finally let it go and accepted that he would probably never be able to make himself fit Lucius Malfoy’s definition of “respectable.” The letter had said he should look respectable, but so what? He would arrive on time and with somewhat flattened hair and nice robes, and that would have to be the end of it.

            “Because I’m not in the same kind of danger from your father that you are.”

            “That’s rich, considering that he might blame both of us for his imprisonment in the house-elf.”

            “I meant emotional danger,” said Harry gently, and saw Draco freeze with his hand in the air and his mouth still open. Harry nodded and went back to examining his reflection in the mirror. “I won’t be blinded by ancient feelings for him to whether he’s going to attack me or not. I’ll reach for my wand before he can reach for his.”

            “You can’t know that. My father was very near being a professional duelist at one time.”

            “And he’s had years and years of being inside a house-elf, who doesn’t use a wand. I think that will slow his reflexes down.” Harry turned around, saw the way Draco trembled, and nearly broke.

            But in the end, all he did was go over and wrap his arms gently around Draco, murmuring into his hair, “The real reason for me to go alone is that the letter said to come alone. It might be the one chance we have to communicate honestly with your father, for you to know whether he’s ever going to forgive you or not. I don’t want to risk that just because I’m annoyed at being ordered around.”

            “You could resist,” Draco mumbled into his shoulder as he grabbed hold of Harry. “You could demand he come here and speak with you instead.”

            “And what would that accomplish? Nothing except to irritate his pride. In this case, I have less pride to lose, so I’ll go to him.”

            Draco sighed out, hard enough to ripple Harry’s hair back and forth. Harry spared a thought for how long he’d spent on it, then snorted a little to himself. He would have done far worse than that if he could spare Draco a sacrifice.

            “I do love you,” Draco whispered. “And I want to know what he’s planning, and I want to know badly enough to let you go on your own even after we said that we weren’t going to let that happen.” He lifted his head and poked Harry in the chest. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that. You’ll hear me on the subject later.”

            “The ultimate bad luck,” Harry joked. “To have two Malfoys talking at me in one day.”

            “I hope he does meet you with words instead of curses.”

            Since he hoped that, too, and knew he couldn’t be sure of it, Harry only hugged Draco again instead of responding. “Well, I’ll do anything as long as I get to hear the words of the one who lives with me.”

            Yes, all the uncertainty is worth it when he smiles.

*

            Even after so short a time living in Malfoy Manor, Harry had to admit it felt strange not to stride through the front gates after he Apparated. He waited for a house-elf to let him inside instead, waited for so long that he did wonder if Lucius had forgotten about the appointment or changed his mind.

            But at last, a different house-elf—it jolted Harry a little when he realized he would never see the grey-eyed one again—came to the door and bowed low in front of him. “Master Harry Potter is to be following me,” he said.

            Harry obediently did follow, thinking that the less he did to anger Lucius, the less likely he was to mess this up. He really had no idea why Lucius had called him there, and no idea if it would work out the way Draco wanted it to or not.

            He stopped when he got into the dining room where he and Draco had often eaten lunch. The huge table was still there, but not set with anything that suggested they were going to have a meal. Lucius was sitting all alone at the head.

            Harry nodded to him and then stood there, hands well away from his wand, waiting for Lucius to make the first move. Lucius wore casual dress robes—at least, Harry had learned to class them as casual after watching Draco. His face looked like frozen water. He stared at Harry as if he thought Harry would charge at him, firing curses.

            Since that wasn’t about to happen, Harry only waited. And waited. And waited.

            Finally Lucius whispered, “I read the newspaper articles. They said that you lost your memories of the past ten years.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “Yes. If I ever knew about you being trapped inside the house-elf before Draco told me, then I forgot.”

            “That’s not why I called you here!” Lucius hit the table with both hands, and Harry drew his wand before he thought about it. But a second after that savage outburst, Lucius sat back and tried to resume his frozen iron stare again.

            “That’s not why I called you here,” he repeated. “It was an entirely different reason.”

            “All right,” Harry said, and went back to standing. His legs ached a little now, but at least the sudden movement to draw his wand had provided some relief.

            “What is it like?”

            “What is what like?” Harry had to wonder if perhaps Lucius had lost his own memories or was sinking back into delusions based on the grey-eyed house-elf even after what Harry had just told him. “You’re the one who would know what it was like to be a house-elf. I don’t. I really don’t,” he added, when he saw Lucius opening his mouth again. “If you hoped I could tell you how to become human again, you were—”

            “I want to know how you coped with losing your memories.”

            Harry blinked hard. Oh.

            That made sense, when he thought about it. Lucius’s situation was unique, as far as Harry knew. He couldn’t exactly find a group of other humans who had all spent time in a house-elf’s mind, and he would probably spit at the notion of talking to someone like Hermione who simply spent a lot of time around elves.

            But if he wanted to know what it was like to wake up a different person than you went to bed, Harry must be the closest person he could name.

            Harry ran his hand through his hair, a little overwhelmed. “Look,” he said, glancing at a chair near him. “Can I sit down?”

            Lucius jerked his head in a sharp nod like he was a woodpecker hitting a dead tree. Harry sank down in the chair and tried to work his way through his options while Lucius went on staring.

            Would he betray Draco by talking to Lucius like this? But it was hard to see how he could, as long as he didn’t give away any secrets. And maybe Harry could even use the chance to put in a good word for Draco.

            He looked back up, folded his hands, and asked, “What do you want to know?”

            Lucius clenched his jaw so hard Harry winced in sympathy. Then he whispered, pacing his words, “I want to know what happened when you woke up and found that you weren’t the hero they’d spent the last ten years praising.”

            “At first I thought someone was playing a joke,” Harry said, silently accepting the implied question. “Hermione was right by my bedside because she’s a Healer, but I didn’t recognize her at first. And then trying to get me to accept it was—overwhelming. I thought I’d gone to sleep the day of the Battle of Hogwarts, right after I defeated Voldemort.”

            The name could still make Lucius leap like he’d been shot. Harry saw, and tried not to feel too amused over it. The man was still staring at him. “You lost that much?”

            Harry nodded. “Ten years. Not the same ten years as you did, but pretty bloody close.”

            “Then what happened?”

            “They told me the truth.” Harry looked away from Lucius’s trembling hands, the only courtesy he could afford him right now. “They started working with me to make me accept it. And I think because they didn’t quite believe what had happened themselves, and wanted to see how I reacted to people. They brought in Ginny Weasley, who I’d been living with as a lover, and Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was my boss but also my friend. And there was just—nothing. When they showed me memories, I wanted to be the man I saw in the memories, the strong Auror and the man who loved Ginny, but I couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling.”

            “How did you get your memories back?”

            “There was no ability to get all of them back,” Harry said quietly. “And the ones I did get back were courtesy of your son. A potion he brewed for me,” he added, because he didn’t think that counted as a secret. Lucius Malfoy, of all people, was not about to betray Draco to the Ministry for practicing Dark Arts.

            By now, Lucius had turned so he was looking at the wall and Harry couldn’t make out his expression. “What kind of man was he? What did he feel?”

            “A man who kept secrets. I started calling him Old Harry in my head because he was so different from me. He had all these papers lying around. People he knew that his friends didn’t realize he was communicating with. Business arrangements with Draco they didn’t know about. Secret battles, secret enemies…” Harry had to be careful now, he knew. He didn’t especially want to reveal that Old Harry had blackmailed people like Kelvin unless it was a trade that would get something better for Draco. “So it was a double challenge. Or maybe a triple one. Not only did I have to try and understand who I used to be, I had to find out these secrets before they ambushed me, and no one could tell me about them except Draco, and he only knew some of them. And I had to try and get my friends used to me being a different person.”

            “I have been reading the Daily Prophets of the last few months. They said you had broken up with Ginny Weasley on the cusp of your engagement.”

            Harry glared a little, since Lucius probably wouldn’t see it, mostly because it seemed impossible for a Malfoy to pronounce a Weasley’s name neutrally. “I did. I moved out and she returned to playing Quidditch. I couldn’t be the man she wanted. That man died.”

            “Or never existed.” Lucius turned a little so his profile faced Harry. “I have to wonder how much of what I remember is real.”

            “I don’t know that,” Harry said. “Unless you want to ask me about the visits I made to the Manor after I woke up as me. I can’t tell you about daily life here.”

            Lucius nodded and was silent. Harry almost wondered he was done with the questions, until Lucius murmured, “Would it be easier to think of myself as dead? But no, how could I do that? The man I was still exists.”

            Harry remained silent until Lucius made an impatient gesture at him, and Harry realized the question hadn’t been rhetorical. He had to shrug. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was easier for me. That’s all I know.”

            “Because that man stands no chance of coming back,” Lucius whispered.

            Harry cocked his head to watch Lucius. Did he think the house-elf who still existed—at least, Harry thought the elf still existed—would confront him about his old memories? Harry honestly had no idea how likely that was to happen. Most of what he knew about elves was from Dobby, and Dobby had been very different from the grey-eyed elf even when that one still had Lucius as part of him.

            “If you think he could come back and you could recover the memories clearly,” Harry said, “then yes, I wouldn’t think of that part of you as dead.”

            Lucius turned his head to stare at Harry full on again. “How can I forgive my son?”

            Harry breathed through the immediate anger and thought carefully. He didn’t think Lucius was asking a rhetorical question any more than the last one had been. This was just—confusion. Uncertainty. How a proud man could forgive the son who had condemned him to an unthinkable fate.

            Harry said the only thing he could. “I know Draco’s anxious for you to forgive him. The reason he never acted before this is because his feelings paralyzed him. He didn’t know if he loved or hated you more, and any ritual like this would have failed unless he really wanted to free you.”

            “That is hardly a recommendation.”

            “But the ritual worked this time. What does that tell you?”

            Lucius lowered his head and stared at his hands, which were probably clenched in his lap. Harry waited. He really had no idea what would happen next, although he did put a hand on his wand just in case it included Lucius leaping up to curse him.

            “It tells me he was desperate,” Lucius whispered. “And that he wants me to forgive him because he is homeless and without money otherwise.”

            “Well, no, he’s not. He’s living with me, and I do have enough money left to support both of us, even if my old self wasted some of it.”

            Lucius lifted his head. “He was obsessed with you. But you were never obsessed with him.”

            “It depended on the year,” Harry said wryly, thinking of their sixth year at Hogwarts. Those memories felt fresh and strong and real to him in a way that the ones Lucius was talking about never would. “But still, I owe him a lot now. He was the one who helped me begin walking down a new path. And that ritual helped clear up some problems I was having as well as the ones he was having.”

            Lucius stared at him blankly. “How can that be? It was meant to free me.”

            Harry nodded. “But because of how complex magical theory is, it had to pull me in, because my life is intertwined with Draco’s. And that meant that my friends and even some of my enemies got pulled in as well.”

            Lucius shook his head as though someone had flung cold water on him to wake him up. He looked closely at Harry and then said, “I have less motivation to forgive him if he is not desperate.”

            Harry sighed. “Unless you consent to speak with him yourself, I don’t think you can decide how much he wants your forgiveness. But you would despise him if he was desperate, and it sounds like you despise him for not crawling to your feet, too.”

            “I have the right to despise him. I am the one who was harmed.”

            “You were the one who was about to cast a horrible spell on him, and he fought back.”

            Lucius’s mouth trembled for an instant, and then firmed unexpectedly. He tilted his head back and looked at Harry from down a length of nose that Harry thought he hadn’t had five seconds earlier. “If you were going to take my son’s side without any reflection at all, then I should never have invited you here.”

            “I might take Draco’s side because I love him,” Harry said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be helpful to you. That’s the best hope of reconciling you and Draco. Which I want to do because I love him. If it was just you, you could twist in the wind for all I care. I came because I promised Draco I would find out what you wanted.”

            Lucius gaped at him with an unattractive depth of throat. Harry leaned back and waited for a second, then snorted and started to stand up.

            Lucius stretched out a shaking hand, and that was the only thing that made Harry pause. Lucius cleared his throat a few times, and finally managed to say, “I—do want to see my son again.”

            Harry nodded.

            “But I want it to be on my own terms.” Lucius was straightening his back as Harry watched, flowing back into the posture of a pure-blood Malfoy. “I want him to speak to me and listen, not assume that he has the right to dictate my responses.”

            “I’ll tell him that,” Harry promised. “I don’t think he wants to dictate your responses, either. He just wants to be close to you again and know what you think.”

            Lucius nodded slowly. “Who would have thought we would have to relate through the medium of a Potter?” he muttered.

            Harry shrugged. “No one. Old Harry wouldn’t have agreed, and Old Draco never thought he would get a chance to be with me, and Old Lucius hated any version of me.”

            Lucius’s face shook for a second. Then he said, “Very well. Carry the message to my son, and return to me soon with his answer.”

            It was more of a concession than Harry had thought they would get. He nodded at Lucius and turned to walk out of the Manor.

            He thought Lucius might make some sound to call him back. But he never did. Harry walked out of the Manor and Apparated when he was beyond the grounds, and found his arms full of Draco the moment he walked through the front door of Number Twelve.

            “What did he say? Why did he want you there? Do you think he’ll ever want to see me again? What should I do?”

            Harry had to hold Draco until he calmed down, and then answer the questions at length before Draco was satisfied. But at last Draco’s face was calming down, smoothing out, and Harry knew he had made an impression.

            Two Malfoys. And who could have thought I would mediate between them, indeed?

*

            AnonymousTigress: They did indeed!

            SickPuppy: Royal did indeed cause damage, but Lucius is not going to lower himself by alluding to it. ;)

            SP777: Hee!

            Severus1snape: A little stupid, maybe, but no, not a life-debt.
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The Dust of Water