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Water from a Stone	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14851 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Five—Why You Should Not Barricade the Hogwarts Library

            “Oh, and Portman helped in it, too,” Hermione said, with a slightly brightening expression because she remembered someone else’s name, just before she slumped into gloom again. “Harry, do you really have to do this? I know that they were wrong, and they should be punished, but by teachers, not other students.”

            Harry ignored her and wrote down Portman’s name. Now that he thought about it, he remembered him—Gerald Portman, a quiet Gryffindor fifth-year who had always seemed like an escapee from Ravenclaw. It didn’t make much sense that he would block the library and stop other people from studying.

            But then, nothing about the bullying or the other parts of the end of the war made sense, Harry reminded himself, and stifled a yawn. “Is that all the names you can remember?” He looked over at Ron, who sat on the couch beside Hermione and watched Harry as if he thought he’d grow a new nose or swear a new oath any second.

            “Yes,” Ron said. “Mate, are you sure you want to do this?”

            “I see,” Harry said, with a slight nod. “Instead of finishing each other’s sentences like a normal couple, you just reword each other’s questions.”

            Hermione smiled in spite of herself. “We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Harry.”

            “Even if I didn’t want to, the oath would make me do it,” Harry pointed out, and the inevitability of that shut Hermione up, the way inevitability tended to do. Harry could imagine her having a philosophical discussion with gravity about its nature as she fell from a tower and accepting gravity’s opinion at the end. “I’m not going to kill them or even humiliate them that much. I just want to spread fear and terror throughout the school until people leave the Slytherins alone.”

            “I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s emotions without hurting people,” Hermione said wistfully, playing with the edge of the red-and-gold blanket sprawled across her lap. “I know that it’s wrong, what they’ve done, but their frustration and resentment against the Slytherins isn’t simply going to disappear. If you prevent them from taking it out one way, it’ll have to come out another.”

            “I don’t care if they take up basket-weaving or Muggle sports, just so long as they don’t bounce the balls off Slytherin heads,” Harry retorted, and stood up. “I’m for bed.”

            Ron nodded, and then turned to snog Hermione. Harry rolled his eyes as he walked up the stairs. There were other people in the Gryffindor common room, everyone in the immediate universe knew that Ron and Hermione were a couple by now, and yet they acted as if they couldn’t kiss when he was there.

            Harry wondered idly, as he undressed for bed, whether he envied them, and then decided that he didn’t really. From outside, what his best friends had looked ideal, warm and comfortable, and they did bicker less than they had. But Harry didn’t think he could stand someone who was that close all the time, or someone who scolded the way Hermione did, or someone who asked endless protective questions the way Ron did.

            I could use someone to fight with, he thought as he closed his eyes. Except that that’s the kind of thing you can’t do too much of, or you lose the other person. So I don’t know how to solve the difficulty.

            He tossed off before he went to bed, because he thought it would help him relax and deal with the summons out of bed some tone-deaf student was going to give him. As always, the fantasies in his head were faceless, and Harry snorted in amusement as he cast his Cleaning Charm.

            If I’m going to look for someone to date, it would help if I actually had a preference as to what they looked like.

*

            “You’re in a cheerful mood this morning,” Malfoy commented, without looking away from the cauldron hovering above the conjured fire.

            Harry closed the door behind him without answering and looked around. Malfoy had insisted on meeting in Snape’s private rooms, though right now they didn’t look much like Harry remembered; the walls had been stripped of everything but shelves, and the only furniture was the table and the chairs that Malfoy had brought with him. The fireplace was filled with long-dead ashes. Harry felt a shiver move up his spine anyway as he walked towards Malfoy. “You can’t know that,” he pointed out. “You haven’t looked at me yet.”

            “Tricky potion,” Malfoy explained, dipping a ladle into a jar of what looked like blood on the table and dumping it into the potion. Harry blinked with astonishment at getting an explanation, and then Malfoy glanced at him and nodded. “Besides, I was right. When you have that stupid grin on your face, your voice sounds even stupider than usual.”

            “I reckon you must be the expert on the voices of dim-witted people,” Harry retorted, and stepped to the side so that he could see into the cauldron. It didn’t look very interesting right now, like purple medicine with green leaves in it. “What’s that going to do?”

            “Nothing at the moment, except perhaps make you swell up like a blowfish.” Malfoy stepped back and cocked his head. Harry followed his line of sight, but all he could see was the side of the cauldron. Perhaps Malfoy could see through steel, Harry thought. That must be exciting for him. “But when I’m done with it, tomorrow, then we’ll have a potion that can affect non-material entities, exactly as you asked for.”

            Harry smirked despite himself, and Malfoy glanced up in time to catch the smirk and return it with one of his own. Harry relaxed. On the one hand, he liked a Malfoy he could plot and plan with better than one he had to watch his back around all the time (for relative values of like). On the other, a Malfoy who smiled constantly the way he’d seemed to do yesterday was weird.

            “And the other potions?” he asked.

            Malfoy waved a hand behind him. Harry turned and saw the vials lined up along the table, one green, one blue, two red.

            “That first one there enhances emotions,” Malfoy said. “The blue one helps make those emotions contagious, in effect giving everyone in a limited area a small amount of both telepathy and sympathetic magic. The red ones will, respectively, tell us what their worst nightmares are and suspend their disbelief, convincing them more easily that those worst nightmares are coming true.”

            “Wait.” Harry folded his arms and frowned at Malfoy. “We have to drink one of those? I thought the potions were only for our victims.”

            Malfoy gave him a sharp look from the corner of one eye. “What’s the matter, Potter?” he asked softly. “Don’t you trust me?”

            Harry frowned and examined him. A smile would have told him how he was supposed to react. Instead, Malfoy seemed to be serious and joking at the same time, which meant he wanted the situation both ways, which was unfair.

            Still, Harry knew that treating things completely seriously would make Malfoy mock him, so he rolled his eyes and said, “It’s one thing to trust you to help me in an effort to confuse and bewilder other students, and another thing to trust you not to give me the exploding shits because I swallowed a potion you brewed.”

            Malfoy blinked, and for a moment his face relaxed into an expression of pure confusion. Harry earnestly examined the cauldron so that he could hide his smile. Good. Welcome to my state of mind since I made that stupid oath.

            “I see,” Malfoy said. “Well, if you wish, only I need take that potion, and then I can tell you what the nightmares of the others are.” He paused, then added, “How many students are we going to be dealing with?”

            “I’ve got fifteen names,” Harry said, patting the list in his pocket and hearing the parchment crinkle. “And we’ll both take the potion, at the same time. If only to make sure that you aren’t cheating.”

            Malfoy released his breath in a long noise that made his lips flutter. Harry ducked the rain of spit he was sure was about to commence, and peered out suspiciously from behind the cauldron when he realized it hadn’t happened—yet.

            “I don’t understand you,” Malfoy said. “Cheating?”

            “If I didn’t take some kind of precaution, then you would sneer at me and hint darkly that I should,” Harry said. “And if I didn’t take the potion at all, then Merlin knows what would happen. I’m just learning to think like a Slytherin, you see. It saves time in the long run.”

            “What would you know about thinking like a Slytherin?” Malfoy suddenly seized what looked like a scrap of onion from the table and dropped it into the potion. The bubbles that had been creeping towards the rim of the cauldron retreated again, and Malfoy sighed, shaking his head and wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

            Harry thought about saying something about the near miss, but then again, he didn’t want to have to wait several days more for the potion to brew because Malfoy had dumped the whole cauldron over his head. “I’d know a bit about it,” he said. “The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin.”

            Malfoy’s hand jerked to the side, spraying a whole cluster of red flower petals on the floor and the table. Harry snickered and flicked his wand, picking up the petals and guiding them to hover above the potion. His only regret about his confession was that he hadn’t managed to do it when Malfoy was drinking something. “Do these need to go in all at once, or clumped, or scattered across the surface, or what?” he asked.

            “Scattered across the surface,” Malfoy said. He was staring at Harry, and his face was white, his lips clamped so hard that Harry thought they’d rupture in a minute. “You can’t have been considered for Slytherin.”

            “Well, I was,” said Harry, and swirled his wand so that the petals would spread out in the pattern Malfoy had dictated. “It wasn’t my idea, you understand. The Sorting Hat said I could be great there, and I begged it to put me anywhere else. I didn’t ask specifically for Gryffindor, because at that point I didn’t know much about it. But Gryffindor was the second choice, so that was where I went.” He shrugged elaborately with one shoulder and then turned to check on Malfoy.

            Malfoy was leaning back against the table, clutching it with both hands. “Why did you decide not to go into Slytherin?” he demanded.

            Harry swallowed, unexpectedly uncomfortable. He’d brought up the fact to tease Malfoy and to indicate that it might not be impossible for him to be as “brilliant” as a Slytherin. But he’d forgotten the other thing he’d have to admit.

            On the other hand, why should he be so uncomfortable? Of course the past had an impact on the present, or he would have helped the Slytherins a great deal more willingly than he had so far.

            “You,” he said. “The way you teased Ron and bragged about Slytherin put me right off it. Partially because you reminded me of my cousin,” he added, out of a sense of fairness.

            Malfoy’s mouth relaxed, but from a tight pout into a disgusted sneer. “I see,” he said, and turned his head to the side as if he wanted Harry to admire his profile. That was wasted effort, Harry thought, and leaned over to make sure the last of the flower petals were in the potion. “Even then, you made your decisions because of me.”

            Harry snapped his head up and whirled around. Of course that was the interpretation the git would put on it, but Harry wasn’t going to allow him to go on thinking it. “That’s not it! I told you, you reminded me of my cousin. You might just as well say that I made my decision because of him.” Then Harry realized how that sounded and trailed off, frowning fiercely.

            Malfoy glanced back at him. The whiteness had somewhat faded from his face, and he liked whatever he saw in Harry’s expression, from the way his eyes shone. “You say that,” he said, “but since when do you let anyone who isn’t Dumbledore have that much influence over you, Potter?”

            The tone dug holes in Harry’s self-control, the way it always had, and he replied before he thought about it. “You deal with someone who bullies you and beats you up every day for no reason, and see how you defer to him! I didn’t see you leaping to your feet to fight Matthieson off, did I?”

            Then he heard his own words, and could have slapped his own head far worse than Hermione or Snape would ever have done.

            Shit.

            He waited a minute, apprehensively, for the taunting to begin. Malfoy would ask questions. He would say that Harry was worth nothing for letting a Muggle beat him up. He would pry for more details about Dudley so that he could compare himself to him in other people’s hearing.

            But he didn’t say anything. Harry finally looked up, one hand on his wand, ready to cast a Memory Charm if he could get away with it.

            Malfoy was sorting among his ingredients again, moving the vials out of the way with a delicate frown. He picked up a crumpled leaf, studied it, and then put it down again.

            “I see,” he said, without looking up. “Much is now explained.”

            “Oh, no,” Harry said, and aimed his wand. Malfoy regarded it it if as it was a difficult Arithmancy equation. “Listen, Malfoy, you’re not going to use this revelation to—to bond with me, or anything like that.”

            “What a revolting suggestion, Potter,” Malfoy said, looking honestly disgusted. “Of course not. But I wanted an explanation for why you appeared to take the bullying of Slytherins so personally, and now I have one. That’s all.” He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug and then seemed to find the right crumpled leaf, since he dropped it into the potion with a snappy nod.

            Harry watched him some more. Malfoy never acted like he was conscious of the scrutiny, instead doing mysterious things with feathers and more leaves and more petals and that red liquid Harry really hoped wasn’t blood.

            “I don’t understand,” Harry said finally.

            “What do you need to understand?” Malfoy dried his hands on a towel and cast a charm that made a shimmering blue dome form over the cauldron. “There. That has to simmer for another day, and then I can cork it. We can use it at any time after that.” He gave Harry a small glance. “Thursday, still?”

            “Why you’re not taking advantage of the knowledge I told you,” Harry said. “Blackmailing me. Threatening to tell other people. Using it to make me give you Galleons or at least my broom. Something.”

            “You’re not the only one who’s changed in the past year,” Malfoy said, adopting an injured expression that was ruined by the way he looked at Harry with a quivering lip.

            “Like I believe that,” Harry said. “You haven’t changed towards me, at least. Tell me what you’re going to use it for.”

            “Not going to use it,” Malfoy said, with a lazy smile that Harry instinctively distrusted, the same way he would distrust a scorpion who had promised not to sting him. “If I use it, that diminishes the value.” He turned around and strolled towards the door of Snape’s rooms, hands in his robe pockets.

            “Malfoy,” Harry growled, following him.

            Malfoy turned around so suddenly that Harry didn’t have time to back away and found himself almost chest-to-chest with him. Malfoy looked into his eyes as though he was trying to hypnotize him. Harry folded his arms, then realized what he was doing and dropped them quickly back to his sides. If that gesture didn’t intimidate him, he didn’t think it would do much to Malfoy, either.

            “The value is in keeping your secrets to myself,” Malfoy murmured. “I like knowing things about you that no one else does.” Then he paused and seemed to think. “Well, your friends might know about your cousin, but I don’t think anyone else knows about Slytherin being the Hat’s first choice for you, do they?”

            “Dumbledore did,” Harry said, wishing that he could wipe the smugness from Malfoy’s face with his fist.

            “I don’t mind sharing my secrets with dead men.” Malfoy flicked his eyes back to Snape’s empty rooms, and then returned his gaze to Harry. “Or one living one, when that living one is you.” He reached out and encircled Harry’s wrist with two fingers.

            Harry stood there and let him do it, which was the bizarre thing. Then he whipped his hand free and made a big show of wiping it on his trouser leg. He hoped that would make Malfoy wince the way that his words and gestures the other day had seemed to make him do.

            Malfoy only offered him another smile and then departed. The further away he went, the more a chain or cord between them seemed to stretch. Harry carefully cast Finite Incantatem on every part of his body to make sure that the sensation wasn’t real, and spent the rest of the day sulking through his classes.

            He didn’t understand, and he hated not understanding things that were about him.

*

            “Not all of them are there,” Malfoy breathed into Harry’s ear, his voice ruffling the hair there. Harry moved his head aside in irritation and glanced down at the list in his hand, then at the vials in their soft satchel, slung over Malfoy’s shoulder.

            “I know,” Harry said. “But most of them are, and that’s all we need. The point is to create rumors that will terrify other people, after all, and leave everyone uncertain of what happened.” He glanced around the corner again. Yes, several of the Gryffindors on his list and one Hufflepuff were sitting near the entrance of the library, either in the alcoves to either side of it or at the first tables. Harry had already seen the threatening stares they gave to the Slytherins who passed by, and that was enough to make his blood stir.

            “We’ll have to be careful that none of the chaos gets into the library if we can help it,” Malfoy murmured. “I don’t think Madam Pince would forgive us if that happened.”

            “Madam Pince can sod off,” Harry muttered, picking up the red potions vial that Malfoy had said would give them the ability to see what their targets’ worst nightmares were. “What did she ever do to prevent you lot from being treated like shite?”

            “We’re not books, Potter,” Malfoy said. “Of course she doesn’t care about us. And that’s the wrong potion.” He grabbed the red vial from Harry’s hand and placed the other red vial into it instead.

            Harry studied him with narrowed eyes. Malfoy smiled innocently back and then gestured to the library, as if to remind Harry that they didn’t have all that much time before their targets would probably move.

            Harry uncorked the vial. The potion inside stared up at him like a bloodshot eye. He grimaced and drank the half the vial Malfoy had told him to take.

            His perceptions swung and swayed dizzily, and he felt as though he was standing up on his broom while hurtling through the air. He put out a hand, and Malfoy caught and held it. Harry tried not to feel bad about that while he sorted through his perceptions. In the meantime, Malfoy took the vial and swallowed the other half of the potion.

            Harry looked up and focused on the images that he could see glowing like scarlet coronas or auras around the heads of the people in front of him.

            The nearest boy, Portman, had a roaring nundu circling his shoulders like a scarf. Another girl had Dementors hovering above her, and there was one with a basilisk draped across his arm, and more than one had Voldemort. Harry smiled. He knew the smile was nasty. He didn’t much care. All the nightmares were, as he had hoped they would be, solid things, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with trying to conjure a vision of hunger or poverty or dying alone. He wasn’t sure that his glamours, much as he’d been practicing, were good enough for that.

            Of course, if Malfoy’s other potions worked the way they were supposed to, that might not matter. And they would have something to build the glamours on, rather than putting them across the air itself.

            “All right,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “What are we going to do about getting the potion into their systems?”

            Malfoy picked up the other red potion, the one he had prevented Harry from drinking, and the green potion. Then he winked at Harry and laid them on the floor, chanting some long and complex incantation as he swirled his wand over them.

            The liquids grew misty and slid out of the vials like vapor. Harry danced backwards nervously, but they never even came close to touching him. Instead, the fumes spun out, thinner and thinner, until there was no sign of them except a faint gleam here and there, and then danced around the corner in the direction of the library. Harry stuck his head out to watch again.

            If he concentrated, he could see those fumes sliding into the nostrils of their targets, Portman and the girl who was afraid of Dementors and the others. A slightly cloudy expression came over their faces, but otherwise, the potions seemed to have no visible effect. Harry had asked Malfoy for ones like that; there was no point in having people panic before they saw their worst nightmares running around in front of them.

            “That was bloody brilliant,” he told Malfoy, not wanting to mince words. The git blushed, which Harry didn’t expect, but he also couldn’t see that it mattered. “The blue potion? When are we going to use it?”

            “After this one.” Malfoy held up the potion that Harry thought had been purple and green the other day. “Can’t make their emotions contagious before they start feeling them.”

            “I knew that,” Harry muttered, while Malfoy smirked at him, and then cocked his head at the purple potion. “So we need to use that after we call them?”

            “Your attempts to act as though you know anything about potions are so cute, Potter,” Malfoy murmured, and closed his eyes, forehead wrinkling. “Expecto Patronum!”

            Harry called his at the same moment, and the silver stag stamped its hooves and whirled around, looking for the threat. When it could find none, it paused and turned its head to Harry as though asking why he had summoned it.

            Harry couldn’t answer it, though, since he was busy watching Malfoy’s Patronus. An enormous silvery bird crouched on the floor in front of him, wings spread as though it wanted to shield Malfoy from the sight of anyone who might pass the corner. Its beak was hooked, its eyes disturbingly intelligent.

            “What the fuck is that thing?” Harry whispered.

            “A condor,” Malfoy said. “The bird with the largest wingspan in the world except some albatrosses, and it can soar for hours on the currents and never tire.” He looked at Harry’s stag with a superior expression. “A good sight more elegant than your rutting beast, you have to admit.”

            “It figures that you would have a carrion-eater for your Patronus,” Harry said, and ignored the scowl that took over Malfoy’s face. “Use the potion.”

            Malfoy flicked the vial, and the purple-green potion dropped onto both their Patronuses. The condor looked resigned as it stretched its wings, and the stag startled, bobbing his antlers and snorting while he crossed his eyes. But the potion did what it was supposed to do, and made them both more solid, able to accept the glamours that Harry and Malfoy draped over them.

            “I’ll take the Dementors,” Malfoy said. “I have a reason to know what they look like. You do Voldemort first.”

            Harry opened his mouth to object that they could just as well reverse their choices, and then remembered what Malfoy had said about Dementors hanging around the Manor. He nodded and cast a spell that made his stag waver and blur, and then straighten and grow that face he knew so well.

            He hated doing it, in one way, as he hated to see Malfoy’s elegant (yes, he could admit that) condor become a floating Dementor. But it was for a good cause, and when the Dementor and Voldemort came around the corner, more than one person screamed.

            Malfoy was sending the blue potion into action now, and Harry saw it touch the ears and eyes and nostrils of more people than just the ones barricading the library. He didn’t mind that. The whole point was to create a situation so intense and confusing that no one would really know what was going on, and all sorts of stories would emerge from it and run madly around the school. There would be people who guessed what had really happened, but Harry didn’t think anyone would hit on the exact truth, given the complex combination of potions and Patronuses and illusions they’d chosen.

            Screams spread from throat to throat as a Dementor and Voldemort apparently attacked, followed by a nundu that Malfoy conjured out of thin air. It wouldn’t have been as convincing as the Patronuses, which had a solid base and moved in many different directions, a minute ago; all it did was stalk around in a mechanical circle and roar. The same problem applied to the basilisk that Harry created to follow the nundu. But with the panic in the air and spreading from person to person, that no longer mattered.

            Portman ran into a wall trying to get away. The girl who was afraid of Dementors tossed a book at Malfoy’s disguised condor, which made it hiss and fling back its “hood” to reveal the long mouth. She promptly ran off, howling fit to rival banshees all the way. Then two boys tried to climb a bookshelf, and Madam Pince stalked over, kicking them in the arse and yelling at them to be quiet, this was a library!

            Two boys with Gryffindor ties knocked heads. The Hufflepuff girl, the only one in that particular crowd at this point, moaned and said, “I’ll be a good girl, I promise, I will!” over and over, under the delusion that this would help. Harry’s Voldemort cornered another Gryffindor student against his table and motioned with his wand at him, and the boy’s eyes rolled up into his skull as he fainted.

            Malfoy laughed and laughed, clutching his stomach. Harry watched with more of a hard satisfaction that the plan had succeeded, so that others were likely to stop bullying the Slytherins. Sure, this combination of spells and potions was affecting most of the people in the library, but they would realize what it meant that it had started with the students who had barricaded the library.

            At least, Harry hoped they would. If it didn’t work, he would just have to try something else. He absently rubbed the scar on his chest and then made himself stop.

            Malfoy had said that the potions would last only ten minutes, and that was about as long as Harry felt comfortable keeping his Patronus active, so they slipped away after that and called their Patronuses back to them. Malfoy was staggering, holding his stomach and gasping and wheezing. Harry looked at him and shook his head. He didn’t think that Malfoy was very attractive in his glee, but on the other hand, he knew how good it could feel to get back at the people who had hurt you. It was harder with the Dursleys now, especially since he hadn’t seen them since the start of the war, but when he was young, he had liked nothing more than dreaming up ways to get Dudley in trouble.

            “That was good,” he said, when he thought they were far away enough from the library to stop for a minute. “You are bloody brilliant, Malfoy.”

            Malfoy’s laughter cut off as though he had been hit, and he sat up and stared at Harry. His face was bright pink, but Harry thought it was pinker than could be accounted for by simple laughter. Then he told himself that it was stupid to think he could grade Malfoy’s blushes, and turned away.

            “Thank you,” Malfoy said.

            Those words joined Malfoy’s words about trusting him from the other night and felt warm inside his chest. Harry scowled, and told them—and himself—and Malfoy—and the world in general—not to be stupid.

            He didn’t really have any hope that any of them would listen, though.

*

            Lady_of_Clunn: Thank you! Hoped you enjoyed the library liberation plan.

            delfina1987: Not a ferret, though I think you can disagree on how appropriate it is.

            polka dot: He could become a private tutor and probably make more.

            Madame de Coeur: Thank you!

            SP777: No, in that case I was talking about the Slytherins who can’t defend themselves literally being accompanied by someone who can.

            Hope you enjoyed both the humor and Draco’s Patronus.

            MewMew2: Thank you for reviewing.

            Nekoyoka: Thanks! At the moment, at least, Harry doesn’t think there’s a relationship to progress.
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Water from a Stone