Chapter Two of 'An Image of Lethe'- Lethe
Chapter One.
Title: An Image of Lethe (2/?)
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.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-Lethe
Harry sat with his head between his hands in the isolation room at St. Mungo’s. Now and then, someone yelled or yelped off in the distance, but their voices were immediately folded into the fierce murmur of arguments between Healers and Ministry flunkies and Unspeakables and Aurors and all the other people who had come flooding onto the stage a scant moment after the Lightfinder found-
My Darkness?
Harry shifted uneasily, not looking up. He supposed he should have remembered casting the Unforgivables, but he hadn’t thought it would taint him that much. Maybe enough to turn his aura green.
Not blue. Not fading out so close to other dark colors at the edges. He must be more tainted than he knew. Was this about having the kind of hatred that had let him cast the Cruciatus Curse? Or maybe it was because he had cast the Cruciatus Curse without thinking about it much, on someone who had spat at McGonagall.
He didn’t know, and as he shuddered and the door opened, he didn’t know if he would find out.
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry looked up. The voice sounded only a little familiar, and that was surprising. He had thought they would send Kingsley in to talk to him.
But instead, it was Nathaniel Splinter, the resentful wizard who had helped set up the Lightfinder. He came to a stop inside the door and stared at Harry with cold grey eyes, looking as uncomfortable as Harry felt. A second later, he edged to the side and used his wand to slide a chair forwards from against the wall, sitting down in it as if he wanted to spring up at any second.
“Listen, Potter,” he said. “You have to be wondering how Dark you are right now, and what the Lightfinder picked up on.”
Since that was exactly what Harry was wondering, he nodded a little, eyes fastened on Splinter as he shifted among several different positions, none of which seemed to affect the stick he had up his arse.
“The problem is, they’re not going to tell you,” said Splinter, jerking his head out the door. He seemed to realize it was open then, and spelled it shut. The loud voices got a little quieter. “They don’t know the exact limitations of the Lightfinder. They don’t know enough about it.” His voice was as sour now as some of Dumbledore’s lemon sweets. “But I do, and I know that you have a taint on your soul.” He peered at Harry. “Not the kind that comes from casting some Dark Arts, either.”
Harry stiffened, and from the faint smile Splinter gave him, he hadn’t missed it. But Harry didn’t know how he could possibly tell anyone about the Horcruxes, so he played as dumb as he could. “But what else is there? Besides murder and torture. And I only tortured people through spells.”
“Only,” said Splinter, in a mocking way. “Some of us managed to avoid that even during the war, you know.”
Harry folded his arms and stared him down. “You won’t convince me to cooperate with you if you keep picking at me like that.”
“Fuck, you’re right,” said Splinter, and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
Harry blinked and nodded, and waited. There had to be some reason Splinter had come to talk to him, and from the way he was acting, it wasn’t with the blessing of his superiors. Harry hoped that he wasn’t about to be caught up in some Ministry intrigue. He knew that the taint on his soul meant his actions were fairly straightforward: he had to atone, somehow. The Healers and the rest of them were arguing about the Lightfinder, whether it was right, and the impact on society, not what Harry had to do.
Splinter took a deep breath and spoke the words all at once. Harry thought at first he’d mistaken what Splinter said because he wanted it to be true so much. “I know a way to remove the Darkness from your magical core.”
Harry sat straight up. He could feel his lips tingling as though he’d bitten into a gooseberry. “You know that?” he demanded in a hushed tone. “Then why haven’t you told other people? Kingsley didn’t tell me. That would have been all over the papers the minute someone started talking about the Lightfinder!”
“Hush, okay?” Splinter darted a nervous glance over his shoulder at the door. “We haven’t told anyone because-well, we’re not sure that this is going to work. But I did most of the enchantments that make the Lightfinder function. Not that Tumnus wants to give me credit for my work, the bastard.”
So I was right. “Fine, but what is this thing? How does it work? What’s it called?”
“It’s called,” said Splinter, sitting up and pronouncing the words as carefully as though Harry might need to put them in a Pensieve to use in a trial someday, “Lethe.”
Harry blinked. “Like the river that makes you forget everything?”
Splinter nodded, seeming a bit annoyed. Perhaps he had wanted to explain the origin of the name to Harry himself. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
Harry thought about it. It wasn’t a very encouraging name. “What does it do?”
“It scrubs your magical core of the Darkness. Your soul of the taint.” Splinter gestured insistently with one hand, which fluttered down to land on his knee like a bird. “It’s really nothing more than the same principles that make the Lightfinder work, except they’ve been turned backwards in Lethe. It makes your core forget the Darkness that infected it.”
Harry hesitated. “Would I forget casting the Unforgivables and-and doing whatever else made my core that Dark?” It was probably best to let Splinter assume it was something Harry had done, rather than something done to him.
Splinter shook his head, eyes intense. “The memories remain to you. But memories have been proven to play no part in influencing your magical core. The taint is gone. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Of course, I can’t promise what will happen if you go out and commit those same acts all over again.”
“I have no intention of ever doing anything like that again,” Harry said fervently. “So. Can we go and do this?”
“That’s the hard part.” Splinter sat back and regarded him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Lethe hasn’t received as much testing as the Lightfinder, because they’re more interested in finding Dark wizards than curing them.” Harry had to smile a little. Yes, that sounded like the Ministry. “It needs some more testing before it’s safe, and some more publicity. Now that everyone’s seen you have a Dark core, they won’t understand if it just disappears. I was hoping you could help me tell people about it and promote it, because you want to undergo the testing.”
Harry hesitated once. It was the kind of work that he wasn’t very enthusiastic about doing, because he didn’t like to use the power of his name and because he didn’t like public attention.
On the other hand, he had gone along with Kingsley’s silly request to test the Lightfinder in public, and look where that had got him.
He nodded, his mind made up. “Do I have to contact you secretly? Or will the Ministry let us meet and talk about this?”
“They’ll let you speak to me in public if you’re confident enough,” said Splinter. “Right now, they don’t know what to do with you. I listened to their conversation out there.” He jerked his head at the door, his ragged hair flying. “They want this never to have happened, but they don’t know what to do.”
Harry snorted. And that also sounded like the Ministry. “Then I’ll go out there and tell them that I want to help you test Lethe.”
“Thank you,” said Splinter, standing up with his eyes glowing. “Thank you. I promise that we’ll make this safe before we test it on you, and then lots of other people will see that they can be cured of their Darkness, too, and the Lightfinder isn’t a death sentence.”
Harry nodded absently. He was starting to wonder about some of the things that the Daily Prophet had discussed. The reporters had babbled excitedly about how, now that the Ministry would know who was Dark and who was Light, Dark wizards could be given extra prison sentences, kept out of Hogwarts, put in a special isolation ward at St. Mungo’s, and so on.
Harry hadn’t thought about it much at the time because it seemed so distant, so unlikely to happen, so silly.
But now that it might be going to happen to him, he was thinking about it.
*
Draco sat in silence before the fireplace in his room for a long, long time, thinking about how to write a letter to Potter.
Two years ago, this wouldn’t have troubled him. He would have just scribbled down his demands, attached them to an owl, and sent the owl on its way. If he had even thought it worthwhile to appeal to Potter at all, that was.
But now, with the Manor taken from his family, with his father in prison, with the money he had counted on cut off, and the papers threatening consequences for testing Dark the way Draco knew he would…
Potter might be capable of turning public opinion around if he was going to appear as a Dark wizard. It would be a contest between the wizarding world’s frantic hatred of the Dark and their love of their Savior, but Draco thought it at least a better chance than any he’d seen so far of someday having a normal life again.
The door opened, and Draco started, gripping his wand. Pansy stepped inside and shut the door behind her, shaking her head.
“Astoria just got back from the Ministry,” she murmured. “They said they were willing to put her name at the bottom of the list since her family didn’t actually harm anyone during the war, but they were going to test her just the same.”
“Shit,” Draco whispered, appalled. He and Pansy had been hiding in this little house--a gift to Astoria years ago from a wealthy aunt--since Pansy had been sentenced in absentia for wanting to turn Potter over to the Dark Lord during the war and Draco had become homeless and penniless and his mother had vanished Merlin knew where. They had thought they’d be safe here, at least until they could scrape up enough money to leave the country. The Greengrasses had been Slytherins but not Death Eaters, and no one outside Draco’s small circle of friends knew that his parents had talked about him marrying Astoria someday.
But Astoria was still Dark, and if she went in front of the Lightfinder and the restrictions they were talking about actually happened…
They would lose even this modest sanctuary.
That decided Draco, as nothing else could have done. He felt himself sitting up in his chair, and Pansy, who always huddled lately as if to hide the height she had once been so proud of, eyed him curiously. Draco nodded to her.
“I think we have to do this,” Draco told her. “I know it’s humiliating, but it’s less humiliating than running from place to place for the rest of our lives.”
“That might not happen,” said Pansy, her face breaking out in the hectic flush that meant she was nervous. “The Daily Prophet always reports whatever it thinks makes a good story, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to strip everything away from Astoria.”
“I know,” said Draco. “But do you want to spend the rest of your life in some secret room in her house?”
Pansy closed her eyes. “No.”
Draco nodded. “I don’t either. Even if I married her.” And he thought marrying Astoria was probably out of the question now, since her family wouldn’t want her allied with such a political liability. He wondered if Astoria was relieved about that or not. He didn’t know her all that well.
“I just don’t think that writing to Potter is going to solve the problem,” Pansy said abruptly. “He hates you, he hates me, he hates everyone he might be able to help. He’ll probably just say that he’s not like all those other Dark wizards, and people will focus more on you and your escape from justice.”
Her voice was scathing on those last words, and Draco couldn’t help giving her a grateful look. He had complied with the regulations the Ministry had forced on him, since he’d had no choice, but evidently they wanted him to spend all his time hovering in Diagon Alley looking pathetic. The minute he had Apparated away from the Ministry, the Daily Prophet had started trumpeting that it was an “escape,” and that story had been front-page news every day until they started talking about the Lightfinder.
Draco had been willing to go into hiding at first, to escape the publicity. And Pansy was with him, and Blaise knew where he was, and while Draco hadn’t had time to tell his mother, he was confident she could figure it out. Astoria’s house didn’t have the luxury of the Manor, but it was dry and warm, with books and good food and house-elves.
But now…
When he thought of that blue-black aura shining around Potter’s body, Draco didn’t want to stay hidden. In a world where the Savior could look like that, Draco thought he ought to be able to demand more. They wouldn’t lock up Potter, would they? Or they could try, but with the insane way the public’s opinion swung back and forth on him, he was just as likely to be out tomorrow. Draco thought that talking to him was at least a plan with sense behind it.
Someone knocked on the door. Draco tensed up, and Pansy reached for her wand. But it was Astoria who flung it open and stepped inside a second later. She sounded winded when she talked.
“Draco. You have to see this.”
Draco exchanged a glance with Pansy when he realized that Astoria was carrying a newspaper in her hand, but Pansy only shook her head. Draco took the paper from her and held it so that Pansy could read over his shoulder.
It wasn’t the Daily Prophet after all, but the Daily Hunter, a paper started after the war, with a logo of a stalking nundu after prey. The photograph on the front page was the familiar one of Potter standing in front of the Lightfinder, his aura surrounding him, but the headline was news.
POTTER TO RID HIMSELF OF DARKNESS!
And there was an article beneath that that Draco skimmed fast, enough to read about Potter and Splinter and a machine called Lethe that would pare away the Darkness in someone’s core somehow. It made Draco’s chest cold to read about it.
He handed the newspaper to Pansy when he was done with it, since she always liked to read depressing things in more detail than he did, and leaned back with his hands over his face, taking deep breaths. He didn’t think for one moment that even if a cure for Dark wizards existed, he and Pansy would be allowed to take it. Either it would be expensive, or they would be arrested the minute they appeared.
And Draco wasn’t sure that he wanted to do it, anyway. He was a Dark wizard, and it was because of the affinity he had for Dark Arts, not what he had actually done. That was the way it was.
On the other hand, if Potter took the cure, there would be no way to convince him to fight for their rights. He wouldn’t be a Dark wizard if he could pop into some machine like the Lightfinder and get the Darkness cut or burned or whatever out of his magical core. One thing Draco had noticed was that the article was fairly vague on what exactly Lethe was.
“What are we going to do?”
Pansy’s voice was dull, and it roused Draco like few things could have. He turned around and took her hand, staring sternly into her eyes. “We’re going to write to Potter, and we’re going to show him that he has people to save and protect,” he said.
Pansy’s face spasmed, and she looked away. “He won’t want to save and protect me.”
“You know those newspaper stories about Potter going into the Forbidden Forest and dying? Well, surviving the Killing Curse a second time?” Draco still wasn’t sure why that had happened, but he was sure it had. Potter had given interviews about it, and the stories were remarkably consistent from source to source.
And more, Draco had an eyewitness in his mother, who had told him that she thought Potter had walked into the clearing where the Dark Lord stood not expecting to survive. An excellent observer, his mother.
“What about them?” Pansy gave him another look from eyes as flat as a doll’s.
“He did it for everyone,” said Draco. “Everyone in the school. Or the wizarding world, take your pick. That includes people like us that he doesn’t like a lot and people like his fans that he doesn’t know at all. We’d still have to persuade him to help us because he doesn’t like us and he wants to stop being a Dark wizard, but at least we know that he might do it because he did it once before.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Pansy, and Draco was glad to see some life return to her face even if it wasn’t with the tone of voice he would have preferred. “Potter is going to save us because he’s a hero.”
“Yes,” said Draco.
“The hero that all through school, you insisted he wasn’t.” Draco would have said something, but Pansy took a breath and went on. “And he’s going to do it through the special treatment that you insisted he didn’t deserve.”
Draco scowled at the floor.
“I can’t heeeeear you,” Pansy crooned, cupping one hand around her ear.
“I said that yes, those are exactly the reasons that I’m depending on him to save us,” Draco snapped, and turned back to composing his letter, ignoring her cackle. At least she was in a better mood now, and that was something to treasure.
Draco wanted to save himself. He wanted, if at all possible, his old life back, and to live freely in the wizarding world. He wasn’t going to crouch in a tiny room for the rest of his life. He could live hundreds of years, how could he do that?
But he also wanted Pansy safe. And Blaise, who was still in the public eye and living in his own house but receiving more and more attention from the agents of the Ministry every day. And Astoria, who had taken a great risk for them and lingered now by the door with her knuckles in her mouth, eyes watching his every move.
In the end, he thought that might be why Potter would help him, if he decided to. Maybe he would be less sympathetic to Draco’s love for his family since he’d never had parents and had been enemies with Draco’s father, but he would understand the desire to protect his friends.
Draco hoped so, anyway.
*
Harry sank wearily into a chair. After a moment, he managed to wave his wand and cast the spell that would start the fire. Then he leaned back and stared at the deep purples and reds of the overstuffed furniture swallowing all the light in this room of Grimmauld Place.
He had moved to Grimmauld Place the day after the debacle with the Lightfinder and the official proclamation that he was Dark. Harry knew Kingsley had made the proclamation reluctantly, but he had to. Anyone who went through the Lightfinder had to be designated Light or Dark, and there was no ignoring the way Harry’s aura had appeared around him.
Anyway, predictably, a couple of his neighbors had said that they felt uncomfortable with Harry living next to them. And Kingsley knew he had another house and suggested he go to that. And even Splinter had said that maybe Harry would feel better with Dark surroundings, in a house owned by a family who had practically reveled in the taint on their souls.
He’s trying to help, Harry reminded himself about Splinter as he shut his eyes. He’s just tactless sometimes.
It had been almost a week since Splinter had approached him to start working on Lethe, two days since they’d gone public outside the Ministry. Harry thought he must have answered every variation of the question, “But you’re Dark, why would you want to be Light?” under the sun.
He had been unwise enough to answer one version with, “Well, why wouldn’t I? Being Light is better, and I won’t get locked up that way.”
The reporter had been whisked away while Aurors and Unspeakables descended on the crowd, and Kingsley had explained tersely to Harry afterwards that he didn’t want Harry fueling the rumors about Dark wizards being locked up and having all their possessions taken away. They would simply be isolated for a time while the best course of action was decided on.
Right, Harry thought, and felt about three thousand years old in terms of cynicism.
He really shouldn’t. The Ministry had been a lot better to him since the war, hadn’t demanded much of him, and Kingsley was a friend. And if all went as well as Splinter said it should, now that they had donations pouring in for Lethe, Harry ought to be free of his Darkness in a few months’ time, anyway. The instant he was done in Lethe, Kingsley had promised, he could have another test in front of the Lightfinder. This time, Kingsley was sure he would blaze red.
But that’s what he thought the first time, too.
Harry sighed. His thoughts went round and round, blaming the Ministry, excusing them, blaming and excusing himself, wondering if he was evil, wondering if Voldemort had left such a taint on him that he would never be clean again, wanting to be free, wanting to leave everyone who said that he was evil far behind. He wouldn’t get much rest tonight if he let the whirl start up again.
He was just standing to go to bed when an owl hooted next to him. Harry started and turned around. He was sure that he had enchantments on the walls strong enough to hold back any owl who wanted to get through.
But this one hopped confidently up to him and presented the letter. Harry glared at it suspiciously, then cast the necessary detection spells on the letter. Nothing appeared dangerous, even the one he specifically cast for bubotuber pus.
Then he carefully opened the letter, and stared at it.
Potter.
I’m writing to ask you not to go into Lethe and cleanse yourself just yet. I know that you don’t want to hear it, but you could be a powerful fighter for Dark wizards’ rights if you spoke up and asked people to treat them well. I have friends in danger, along with myself, and I really want to meet with you.
Draco Malfoy.
The world, Harry abruptly decided, was utterly crazy, and he was going to go to bed and only deal with this in the morning.
No matter how much the owl hopped up and down next to him and hooted pathetically for attention.
Chapter Three.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/692979.html. Comment wherever you like.