lomonaaeren

Chapter Four.

Title: An Image of Lethe (5/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Bill/Fleur
Warnings: Angst, violence, minor character death
Rating: R
Summary: The Ministry finally has a way to test people for Dark magic and separate the Dark wizards definitively from the rest. Harry Potter undergoes the test, produces an utterly unexpected result, and finds himself swept up in a political conflict that materialized out of nowhere yesterday, it seems: the fight over whether Dark wizards have a right to continue mingling with "normal" society. Updated every Sunday.
Author's Notes: This story idea has been brewing in my head for several months. This will probably be a long one, and very political. The title is from a poem, "The Coming of War: Actaeon," by Ezra Pound.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five—Searching for Answers

Harry was still shaking when he got home. The first thing he did was toss a handful of Floo powder into the fire.

A second later, he groaned as sparkling red bars sprang to life above the flames. He had forgotten that the Ministry had warded his Floo so that he couldn’t call just anyone. Harry had accepted it at the time. Why not? He had been stunned, disbelieving, still sunk in worrying about how Dark he really was and what sort of pain he had caused that he’d never noticed. What did he care if the Ministry cut him off from contact with normal people?

Now, with his eyes opened by Malfoy’s words, his gut burned. What if they did this to the children, too? Forbidden to send owls, shown the magical world and then promptly shoved back out? Or what if they used Memory Charms on them so they never remembered they’d seen anything wondrous at all?

Harry swore furiously to himself and began to pace. He could break the wards without much problem. But then they would know he’d broken them. Splinter had emphasized the alarms that would ring if Harry used the Floo without permission, if he was gone from the house more than half an hour or to any one of a number of suspicious places, or if he cast a Dark spell. Harry had only managed to slip out for the meeting with Malfoy because the Leaky Cauldron was on the small list of places he didn’t need permission to go.

People who frequent it already know you, and know to stay away from you, Splinter had told him when Harry asked about it a week ago.

Now, in the middle of his own home—a house he’d inherited from a man suspected for half his life of doing something horrible and Dark—that notion struck Harry like a blow to the face. They were going to stay away from him? For what? What kind of disease or taint did they think he’d pick up from them, that all the “normal” people had to huddle on one side of the room while Harry was on the other?

I was blind. I was stupid and blind. I was panicking, and I shouldn’t have been panicking.

Even that, Harry thought, wasn’t enough of an excuse. But the other half of it was the way he’d felt since the war. He’d been perfectly relaxed and happy to do what Kingsley asked of him when it came to the Lightfinder because he really did think it was all over, that he would never suffer anything as bad as the war again. That had made it hit him all the harder when he realized he was Dark.

I have an affinity for spells they don’t want me to practice. So bloody what? Did they even think about that, or do they think the Lightfinder measures something else?

Harry’s footsteps slowed at that thought. They did, didn’t they? Kingsley had told him that. They thought it measured the taint on the soul that came from casting certain spells. And he only had Malfoy’s word that Dark wizards really had an affinity for spells and not—not something else. Something evil.

Can I trust Malfoy?

He could trust him to want to save his own life. Even to save his friends, Harry thought. He could trust him not to come up with a silly lie that was easily disproven. Malfoy had changed from the boy in school who would have come up with a lie like that.

If Malfoy was right, though, some of the older people, not in Harry’s generation, ought to know what was going on. They would have been taught the same things Malfoy was claiming all wizards had once learned, that the Ministry had wanted them to learn as children in Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry still had a limited number of people he could owl without suspicion, especially if the owl seemed aimed at trying to make himself better and Light. And he immediately sat down and wrote a letter to Kingsley, struggling to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make Kingsley wonder who he had talked to and where he had gone.

Now, he was thinking about things like that as a practical matter of survival. A day ago, he would have been nodding gloomily and thinking that of course they couldn’t trust him. Harry couldn’t trust himself. He hadn’t known anything about the taint on his soul until the Lightfinder told him.

Now…

I should have known better. I should have realized that they were going to wheel around against me the instant I did something they didn’t like.

Harry’s hands were cold and shaking as he wrote. He was thinking of the Muggleborn children who might be turned back into the Muggle world, and the younger children who might be put in Slytherin and then promptly into the Lightfinder.

But he was thinking, too, of George, who Harry knew had gone out hunting Death Eaters a month ago, trying in vain to find the exact one who had made the stone wall fall on Fred. He had used Dark spells. He’d told Harry that.

He was thinking of Hermione, who no longer let rules stop her.

He was thinking of Ginny, who had hinted some things, before the Lightfinder and the cessation of contact between her and Harry, about what she’d done to survive the war in Hogwarts intact.

If I had to be a sacrifice so that my friends could go free, I could do that. But they have to go free.

And I’m not going to be a sacrifice to the wizarding world’s peace of mind anymore. I absolutely won’t do it. I was stupid to consider doing it in the first place.

*

“It really seemed to go well?”

Draco leaned back in the leather chair that Astoria’s ancestors had been kind enough to bequeath her and sighed, taking a long sip of his Firewhisky. He hadn’t been relaxed enough to drink it in front of Potter, but Merlin, he needed it now. “It seemed to. Of course, he only really listened when I started talking about children. And he was probably thinking of Muggleborns the whole time.” Draco rolled his eyes. “He’s going to be a trial to work with.”

But a trial was better than nothing, and he could see the thought echoed on Pansy’s face without him ever speaking the words.

“I wonder if he was thinking of himself, too,” said Pansy idly, sitting down in the chair next to Draco and folding her legs up the way she only did when she was relaxed. Draco hid a smile behind his glass. “I mean, he might have been, if the conversation went that way.”

“The only thing Potter thinks about in relation to himself is how he can martyr himself best,” Draco said darkly. The more he thought about it, the more it infuriated him, Potter plodding to the guillotine like a little blind lamb. “He’s powerful, he’s Dark, he shouldn’t be doing that.”

He looked up to see Pansy frowning at him. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that he was a child who was almost shut out of the wizarding world, too, so maybe he does think about it more.” Pansy waved her hand. “Whatever convinces him.”

“Oh, come on, Pansy. You didn’t really believe those rumors about his relatives?”

“Not the ones that said they were starving him to skin and bones every year and he had to escape by climbing down a rope from his window, no.” Pansy shook her head. “But the ones that said he was ignorant? Yeah. You only had to look at him our first year to see that.”

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it with a frown. It was true that Potter had been stunningly ignorant, and not only about what Dark and Light spells really were—an ignorance that was frustratingly widespread in Draco’s own generation. He didn’t know how to write with a quill, his own family history, that Sirius Black had been his godfather, that spells existed to correct his eyesight, that there was a difference between some wizarding families and others, anything.

“You really never noticed this before,” said Pansy, in the tone of someone making an interesting observation.

Draco held up one hand, and unusually for her, Pansy respected the demand for silence. Draco chewed his lip for a second, and then shrugged. “It changes nothing, except that I might understand why Potter makes some of the demands he does.”

“Yes, you might understand that,” said Pansy, and never hid that she was rolling her eyes.

Then again, there were lots of things that Draco had never hidden from her, either, and they still managed to support and help each other. He leaned further back in the leather chair, sipped again from his Firewhisky, and continued, “Now, let’s just hope that Potter doesn’t do anything stupid—”

Something hit the door of the room. Draco found his drink on the floor, his wand in his hand, and Pansy standing beside him before he’d even been aware that he was moving.

Then the door opened, and Astoria was there, pale and trembling, her face like porcelain. Draco opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but shut it again when two Aurors followed Astoria into the room.

Draco had a moment’s shaken conviction that Astoria had betrayed them, but when he looked at her, he knew the truth. Something else had. Maybe Daphne, who had never been as happy as Astoria about hiding them, or maybe Draco hadn’t taken enough precautions when he went to meet Potter.

“Surrender, and you won’t be harmed,” said the nearer Auror in a bored voice. Draco wasn’t fooled. He had heard boredom like that before from some of the Death Eaters, the ones who enjoyed hurting people. This woman had the same feral look in her eyes, and her hand on the wand was a little white, and her breathing was a little fast.

“What she says,” said the other Auror, one that looked familiar to Draco from his father’s arrest, although he didn’t know his name.

Draco raised his wand higher, and angled his body a little in front of Pansy, signals she would grasp at once. “I know that Parkinson is being sought because she wanted to turn Potter over to the Dark Lord, but what about me? I’ve already been sentenced. It wouldn’t make sense to take me into custody when I can’t be tried for anything else.”

“You wouldn’t have run if you weren’t guilty of something,” the female Auror retorted instantly.

If that’s the way you want to play it. Draco sighed and let his head hang. “I’m lowering my wand, all right?” he whispered. “I’m putting it down. Don’t curse me.”

They both followed him as he lowered his wand, but they weren’t fast enough. They didn’t have the training to cope with a Dark wizard, even if they were Dark themselves. Few people learned those spells anymore.

Or maybe it was that they simply didn’t have the speed and determination that desperation had given Draco.

When his wand was at the level of the table, Draco cast the spell, nonverbally, although the effort made sweat spring out on his forehead. Terror pone, he thought, as hard as he could.

The spell formed slowly behind the Aurors. Draco couldn’t see its form; only those the spell was cast on would know exactly what stood at their backs, always at their backs no matter which way they turned, and breathed coldly on their ears. The man’s face became waxen. The woman shut her eyes.

Draco grabbed Pansy’s hand, in the moment before their training would probably take over and they would manage to dispel the magic, and slipped out of the room behind the Aurors. He took Astoria’s arm, too, and she shook herself from the trance and ran with them, moving lightly, her slippers shuffling. Draco Transfigured them into sturdier shoes without stopping. She would have to come with them, and that meant she would need more practical footwear.

Astoria drew her wand and murmured Summoning Charms. Draco nodded as jewelry and coins came flying towards them, along with a few of the more useful books. At least fear didn’t paralyze Astoria the way Draco had thought it might. She was only sixteen, but she knew that, right now, worrying about the Trace on her wand was the last thing they needed to do.

She’ll have to have a new wand, though. Or else use ours.

Pansy was the one who woke Draco from his trance, shaking Draco’s arm hard. “Draco, where are we going to go?”

She wasn’t panicking, either, but Draco knew that steel ice surface could crack and let the fear through. He took her hand, smiled into her eyes, and murmured, “My owls could get to Potter even through the protections they had set up. It probably has to do with him being at a Black house and my mother being a Black. We’re going to take the chance and go there.”

Pansy shut her eyes and nodded. “I suppose you know where it is?”

“I know the name,” said Draco. “But I can do better than that.” He turned to Astoria as she dropped the wards on the house, and she knew. In a blink, Draco seized both their arms and spun in place, Apparating.

They appeared on the path that led from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts.

Pansy stared at him, panting, her hair moving in the little puffs from her breath. “Draco,” she whispered.

“There’s no one here yet,” Draco said, which was true. The work of rebuilding the school had gone more slowly than the Ministry had predicted, and with the Lightfinder distracting them, Draco didn’t know when they would get back to it. That benefited them, right now, since no one would think they would come here.

He Disillusioned them and walked briskly along the path. Astoria got it after a moment, and shook herself free to walk beside him. Her mouth was set and white. Pansy still trailed behind in a silence that grew thicker and heavier, and made Draco want to snap at her.

What other options do we have? Yes, they had hoped they could stay safe in Astoria’s home, but that hope was unfounded. Fine. Draco planned to adapt and survive, not sit somewhere and whimper.

And I’m glad that I went ahead and contacted Potter, so we at least have an option about where to go.

That didn’t mean Potter would let them stay with him. From the way Pansy caught up with him a second later and murmured, “If it would make it easier for me to stay behind, I can go somewhere else,” she understood that very well.

“No,” Draco told her. “He might reject us, but he’s going to reject us together, not one by one.”

Pansy closed her eyes. Draco shook her shoulder before he looked away. He knew that she didn’t want him witnessing her weakness, and he would have done the same for her.

They made their way through the gates and around the side of the castle. Draco knew better than to go inside. For one thing, the Ministry would have some protections set up; for another, sections of the school were still unstable.

But as he stepped over rubble and stopped, gazing up, he saw what he had hoped to. The Owlery still had birds soaring around it and ducking through the windows. This was among the sections of the school not as badly-damaged.

Draco whistled softly. One of the owls swooped down and towards him. Draco drew his wand and became visible, though he tasted his heart in his mouth as he did so. If they were going to be spotted and stopped, this was when it would probably happen.

But nothing happened, at least right then, except the owl settling on his shoulder and giving him an inquiring look. Draco plunged a hand into his pocket, and then groaned. He’d forgotten to bring any parchment or ink.

“Here.”

Astoria handed what he needed over, and Draco smiled at her. She didn’t seem to notice, since she was examining their surroundings with eyes that darted from wall to wall, from rubble to new-entwined growing plants and towards the Forest. Draco nodded. They needed someone who would keep watch for them.

He wrote, as quickly as he could while he braced the parchment against the wall, about what had happened, and then he attached the letter to the owl. It hooted at him in a way that sounded like gratitude—maybe it had been bored—and then swooped up and away. Draco Disillusioned them again and cast some Warming Charms. Astoria leaned close against him, and Pansy stood up as Draco sank down against the wall.

“What now?” Pansy whispered.

“Now?” Draco shrugged. “We wait.”

*

Harry sat back, shaking his head. Kingsley’s letter had come almost as soon as Harry contacted him, or at least it seemed that way. Harry knew about how long it took an owl to fly from Grimmauld Place to the Ministry, and the bird had returned awfully fast.

Harry,

I know the chaos you must be feeling in your soul. None of us thought you would test Dark. We should have been prepared for the possibility and prepared you for the possibility, but none of us did. I’m sorry.

As for what you say about Dark Arts, yes, it’s true that you probably have some power in casting the Unforgivables. But it’s not just about power, or the Lightfinder wouldn’t have told us anything new. There are already spells that can reveal the extent of a wizard’s magical strength. What the Lightfinder tells us is the likelihood of someone doing it again—the taint on the soul that we talked about.

Your aura was huge, and dark. The darkness is the important thing here, how it had indigo at the edges. If you were green with some blue, then I think we wouldn’t take it as seriously, but there was indigo in front of the entire wizarding world. We had to do something.

You used the Unforgivables. You cast them well. Forgive me for saying it, Harry, but you had the hatred and pain in your soul that enabled you to cast the Cruciatus, and the desire to have someone else under your control that let you cast the Imperius. So this is the way it has to be. You have to remain under custody until we could find a way to reverse it.

Splinter is confident he can reverse it. That’s what Lethe is for. And once we have it, then you can give up that affinity for the Dark Arts. That’s what Lethe will erase, your closeness to that kind of magic. After that, your aura should be red.

Kingsley.

Harry bowed his head a little. So Malfoy had been right that older wizards still knew about that closeness to a certain kind of spell that Dark wizards had. He was wrong about that making any difference to the Ministry.

Or maybe he had never said that he thought it would, and Harry was just the one who had hoped it would be different once he explained things to Kingsley. Harry’s head was whirling so much it was hard to be sure.

Harry sighed and put the letter down, and only then noticed another owl waiting. This one was brown and nondescript, but there was only a limited number of people it could have come from. Harry put his hand out. “Hey, what it is?”

The owl hopped onto his shoulder and insistently held out the letter. Harry opened it, and found Malfoy’s handwriting.

This day just got weirder and weirder.

I know you don’t have much reason to trust us, Potter, but we’ve been chased out of the place where we were staying by Aurors who found us. Do you have enough room in the old Black house to accommodate three guests? Can you get us through the wards without alerting anyone? We’re at Hogwarts.

There was no signature, as if Malfoy had been relying on Harry recognizing his writing. Then again, who else would communicate with Harry through mysterious unsigned letters at this point? And Harry didn’t think the wards would have allowed many other letters through.

He sighed and wondered for a long minute whether he should go get Malfoy and his “guests” or have them come to him. Either was risky, but Hogwarts wasn’t on the list of places that Harry could go—he hadn’t thought to ask for it—and that meant he would probably trigger an alarm the instant he left.

Come ahead, he wrote, along with the Apparition coordinates, and the owl grabbed the letter in its beak and took off through the window, feathers bristling with importance.

Harry sat still for a long second before he called to Kreacher to start cleaning out some of the bedrooms that had stayed silent and unoccupied for years.

*

Draco appeared next to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and spent a moment staring at the ugly old thing. He could see why his mother had never contested the inheritance that Sirius Black had left to Potter. It wasn’t worth claiming.

But it could be a sanctuary now, and while it wouldn’t be as luxurious as Astoria’s house, it looked more than big enough to hold them. Draco prodded Astoria, who was staring, gently forwards, and she blushed and started walking. Pansy followed behind Draco, still grumbling under her breath.

“—really sure we can trust him? What if we can’t? What if he remembers his Light roots and turns us over to the Aurors?”

Draco shrugged at her. “He would probably get in just as much trouble as we would, even if he didn’t do anything to cause it. They’re that suspicious of him now.”

He wanted to say, too, that Potter had never been a Light wizard and he was starting to understand that, but he didn’t want to get into an argument with Pansy about it. And she was in the mood to argue.

For a moment, Draco felt a tingle of wards, but they slid over him without reaction. His Black blood, he supposed.

A second later, Astoria and Pansy froze in place. Draco whirled around, hand on his wand. He had thought that having them accompany him would be enough to get them inside, but maybe not—

“Just a second.”

Potter’s tooth-gritted voice came from behind him. Draco forced himself to lift his hand off his wand and still, and watch as the wards wavered back and forth, seemingly caught between the need to defend the house and Potter’s uncertain control.

Draco heard a grunt of effort a second later, and the wards snapped back behind Pansy and Astoria, leaving them able to move. They hurried towards Draco and stood beside him, and Draco turned around.

Harry Potter leaned, panting, against the side of his doorframe. He shook his head when he met Draco’s eyes and pushed sweat-soaked hair away from his scar.

“I suppose that’s well and truly put me on the side of the Dark, now,” he muttered. “You can come in.”