Chapter Seventeen of 'An Image of Lethe'- Aster's Plan
Chapter Sixteen.
Title: An Image of Lethe (17/?)
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 Seventeen-Aster’s Plan
“It’s certainly an intriguing idea,” said Splinter, and gave Harry the kind of smile that Harry knew meant he probably wouldn’t be doing anything because of the idea. “But I’m afraid that we have other things to concentrate on.”
Harry blinked guilelessly at him. “But I don’t understand. If it’s an intriguing idea, then why can’t we do it?”
Splinter sucked in a breath as if he was going to argue or complain, but in the end, he only shook his head and marked off something on the chart in his hands. Harry smiled at him charmingly. They were in a more comfortable room now that Harry had decided to “cooperate” by telling them his Darkness wasn’t his own, it was Voldemort’s. Harry hadn’t seen the bare little rooms where they used to work in days.
He had let a few days go by before he’d asked about the captured Death Eaters. He’d said that surely, they would show the influence of Voldemort when they went through the Lightfinder, too, and that way, Splinter and the rest of them could study the Death Eaters’ auras and compare them with Harry’s. Then they would know more about how Dark Harry was, and more about how to make Lethe work.
“Because we’re too close to finally making Lethe work,” said Splinter, and tried to smile at Harry. Harry beamed back like the witless Light lackey he was trying to act like. Splinter drummed a hand on the seat of his chair for a second. “We need to concentrate on that, not on putting Death Eaters through the Lightfinder.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Harry, and pouted at him. “Of course you can put someone through the Lightfinder. It’s not like it takes that long!” Splinter only looked at him some more as if he was being deliberately obstructionist, and Harry decided that he might as well go ahead and throw in something to sweeten the deal. “You could put me through it again, too. Maybe then you can know whether your efforts are helping me or not.”
Harry reckoned they might as well. It would show them that he was being “helpful,” and if they saw him as Darker, they would think they knew what to attribute that to.
Splinter blinked and straightened. “That’s an idea.”
Harry nodded enthusiastically. “Isn’t it? And that way, we can make sure that I’m not turning into a Death Eater. Like, like them,” he said, and swallowed noisily.
“No, just you,” said Splinter, shaking his head. “Not the Death Eater. Like I said, we don’t have time for that.”
Harry ducked his head and looked up under his eyelashes. “But I don’t understand. Why am I so much more important than they are? Don’t you want to understand them, too, so you can get more data on Dark wizards?”
Splinter hesitated as if agonized. Harry watched him in interest that he hoped was completely hidden behind his blank mask. Splinter acted like this more and more often lately, as if he was deeply interested in the “scientific” way that Lethe and the Lightfinder acted, and held back from exploring them at the same time.
Held back from it by who?
Harry thought that an answer to that question would clarify a lot of things for him, especially whether the Lightfinder was essentially a political ploy or not.
“It’s just not possible,” Splinter said, and then took a step back and adopted an encouraging smile. “Now. Can you hold up your wand and cast the Disarming Charm for me? It’s your signature spell, one that you used to end a war, so it’s significant. Make sure that you perform it nice and loud, and speak the incantation and exaggerate the wand movements a little…”
Harry did it, but absently, his mind on what Splinter had revealed without meaning to. There was absolutely no reason not to put a Death Eater through the Lightfinder unless someone had told him not to. Which meant Splinter wasn’t as powerful as Harry had assumed he was, and someone had to be in control of him, adapting him to the situation instead of the other way around.
Or else that Splinter was on a deadline of some sort. And that would mean everything he said about wanting to make sure Lethe was safe for Harry was so much bollocks.
Harry, although disappointed at the failure of his plan, settled back and decided he would observe Splinter for a while.
*
“Where’s Potter?”
Draco looked up from his lunch. He hadn’t even realized a portrait frame hung on the wall of the drawing room close enough to the door that someone could see it from the kitchen. He wouldn’t forget, now. He assumed a patient smile and said, “The Ministry.”
“Good,” said Aster, and spent a moment fumbling with something in front of the portrait frame. Draco saw no reason to get up yet, and sat still, watching. No need to tell Aster that he was important, when he most definitely wasn’t.
“There,” said Aster. He shook something out. For an instant, Draco thought he had gone into another portrait and retrieved a sheer white shawl, although what he wanted with it, Draco couldn’t imagine. Then Aster shook the thing again, and this time it dangled over the portrait frame and into the room itself.
Draco leaped up and grabbed the thing before it could touch the floor. It was real. It was alive, there, in his hands. Well, all right, not alive, but it was solid. Draco stared at it in wonder. He had never known something from a portrait could come out of the frame.
“What is this?” he asked, and looked up at Aster. Aster surveyed him critically for a moment, and then nodded.
“Good. I wanted to be sure that you weren’t wearing anything that would conflict with the magic in the shawl,” he added, when Draco stared at him. “And your wand magic appears to be compatible with it as well, or it would have been shredded by now. Excellent.”
“Tell me what it is.” Draco’s voice was low and threatening, and he didn’t think he was even trying that hard. At least it made Aster pause and stare at him, and then nod a little, in an impressed way.
“That show of force will convince others you mean business, when you use it.” Aster leaned back in the portrait. “This is a device similar to the amulet we wasted on Potter. It doesn’t encourage the use of deception, though. Merlin knows you’re already good enough at that, like the way you made me believe that you cared about restoring the honor of Dark wizards and the House of Black.” Draco ignored that bit, too absorbed in testing the sheer web of the shawl with his hands. It floated and spun around him like spiderwebs. “This, though, baffles the eye.”
Draco couldn’t resist saying what he said next, even though he knew it would probably make Aster angry. “So it’s a modified Invisibility Cloak?”
“Those are nothing more than demiguise hair appropriated for a particular purpose,” said Aster, looking disgusted. “Nothing magic about them, except the natural magic of beasts.”
Except for Potter’s, Draco thought, but this didn’t seem like the time to mention it.
“This will make those who see you ignore you completely.” Aster nodded to the shawl in a way that Draco thought was meant to make him impressed with it. He was already most impressed with the way it had come through a picture, though. “It doesn’t matter if you make noise, the way it would under a cloak. They won’t look at you or otherwise pay attention to you no matter what.”
“How did you get it through the pictures?” Draco asked.
Aster gave him a smug smile, and said nothing.
Draco sighed and sought a question he thought Aster might answer. “Why did you bring it to me, then?”
“Because I think the Aurors are going to get tired of Potter’s games soon,” said Aster, and he was serious again in a moment. He leaned out until Draco wouldn’t have been surprised to see his head stick beyond the edge of the frame, too. After all, he’d just seen the impossible happen with one object. “They’ll raid the house and take anyone they find here. They might also force Potter to tell them about the secret passages.”
“He wouldn’t,” said Draco at once. That was something he was certain of. And it had nothing to do with the Black blood he and Potter shared, or even the alliance they had built. Potter just wasn’t that way. The heart and center of him, anyway, although Draco knew it was possible Potter thought wistfully about doing something to make Draco shut up.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what kind of pressure the Ministry can bring to bear.” Aster was silent for a moment, but he didn’t move, and Draco could see the clenching, circling motion his fists made, just under the frame.
“There’s something else,” said Draco. Aster looked at him. Draco sneered. “If you’re so intent on seeing your precious Black legacy survive, then you’ll tell me. I don’t want to leave Potter behind, and I definitely won’t leave my friends behind.”
“The Unseen can see a great wave coming,” said Aster. “A shattering of some of the strands of power that we’re used to walking. We know that the power arrives, but we can’t see the moment when the wave hits.” He worked his mouth, and then his whole body went motionless, except for his lips. “That means we can’t predict whether anyone we’re trying to help will be safe.”
“And.” Draco made it less than a question.
“Potter is responsible for the wave’s arrival.” Aster gave him a single glance of searing intensity that Draco winced away from. “We don’t know what happens beyond it or at the moment of it, but we know what happens just in front of it. It’s Potter’s fault, and I won’t see you damaged or dead because he can’t control his temper.”
“What happens, then?” Draco demanded. “What can you do that would prevent things from getting to that point?” That seemed, to him, more important than hiding away from it the way the gift of the shawl suggested he should do.
“We know that they take Potter to Lethe,” said Aster, and his mouth thinned this time and he glanced away from Draco as though consulting with an invisible companion. “And to the Lightfinder, first. We don’t know why, because he’s already been tested. But then there comes a great burst of magic.”
“If he resists and causes that, that’s your fault,” Draco retorted. “He was going to go along and get into Lethe until your friend told him the price for the amulet was resisting.”
“This is not resistance,” said Aster determinedly. “We do not know what it is.”
“You don’t know what it is, right,” Draco muttered, a little disgusted. On the one hand, Aster had helped them, and the Unseen had more than helped by giving Potter that amulet. On the other, Aster’s cowardice disgusted Draco.
A second later, Draco froze. Since when was he concerned whether someone thought him a coward? He knew Snape hadn’t liked being called that, but Draco wasn’t Snape, and he had endured worse insults during the war, and since. Hell, if the Ministry had simply called him that, he would have long since accepted his fate and given thanks for escaping with no worse.
“Potter is influencing you, isn’t he?”
Draco carefully averted his eyes from Aster’s portrait. He didn’t think a portrait could use Legilimency, but Aster had enough knowledge to make him dangerous. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said simply. “Thank you for the gift of the shawl. I’ll be sure to put it to use.”
“We didn’t give it to you so you could go running to Potter’s rescue.” Aster punched the side of the portrait frame, attracting Draco’s unwilling attention. “Listen. The wizarding world will still need someone who knows the truth about Lethe and the Lightfinder even after this explosion. That task will fall to you. Keep the rebellion going. Make sure the Ministry knows the price for caging and exploiting Dark wizards.”
Draco shook his head. “I started this so that I could have a life. Yes, the group of Dark wizards includes me, but I don’t want power. I want a normal life and to be treated as the legal equal of a Light wizard.”
“This is the only way. Dominance.”
“No,” Draco said quietly. “That’s the opposite of equality.”
Aster threw up his hands. “From what you told me of your plight during the war, what you most wished for was safety. Now you intend to give that up for-what? Honor?” His sneer on the last word was the bitterest Draco had ever seen.
“I don’t know,” said Draco, and carefully folded up the shawl. It was so soft that it compressed into a tiny square and landed easily in his pocket. “Thank you for the shawl. I’ll consider what to do with it.”
Aster’s mouth was a thin slash in his face. “You know.”
“I know what you want me to do,” said Draco, and smiled sweetly at his ancestor, although he didn’t know where he dragged the smile up from. “Think about it, sir. Wouldn’t you be disappointed in a Black descendant that went tamely along with what you told them to do?”
Aster turned and strode out of the frame. Draco waited a long moment before he turned back to his interrupted breakfast.
His mind was racing, but he kept a calm face and a steady hand as he consumed the last of his porridge. He had learned such control when several dozen Death Eaters might be watching him torture someone at once, and it was more valuable now, because he stood more chance to affect-save-his own life.
Something great, something that involved a change so all-encompassing that the Unseen, who had been experienced in seeing the future for centuries, couldn’t trace the lines beyond that point.
Draco had to grin then. Sounds like Potter.
Potter had complained about the Unseen the other day, saying that he didn’t understand why they hadn’t intervened in the war. Oh, sure, they had an excuse, but it sounded weak to Potter, and to Draco when he explained it. Why were wars that had lasted years and could have destroyed many wizards physically of less significance than fear that had lasted a month and hadn’t yet killed anyone?
The “yet” was important, Draco realized. But he still didn’t want to accept and use Aster’s gifts with blind trust.
In the meantime, there was little he could do, even if Potter’s great and time-changing event was going to happen today. He had to sit back and wait for Potter to get home.
Draco grimaced. Aster hadn’t meant for his gift to be used this way, but Draco had to admit, he was tired of sitting around in Grimmauld Place. He might think of ways to get out of the house and act-if he could do it without running into Aurors that would immediately arrest him, or abandoning his friends.
Again his gaze fell on the pocket where he had stored the shawl, and again he turned back to his breakfast.
Not today. But soon.
*
“It’s time for you to see Lethe.”
That was all Splinter had said before leading Harry on a dizzying journey through corridors of the Ministry he knew he’d never seen before, although he’d been in and out of the building so many times during the Death Eater trials he’d thought he knew every inch. He emerged into a large room that looked as though someone had hollowed out a lot of the stone that supported the lowest floor of the Ministry.
The stone walls were laced with soft gold tracings glowing with light. Harry blinked and looked again. He couldn’t be sure, since he’d never taken Ancient Runes, but some of those patterns looked as though they could have meaning. He did his best to look at them as long as he could, because they might be able to put the memory in a Pensieve later and use it as a basis for interpretation. Malfoy would know what some of the runes meant, he was sure.
But then Splinter took his hand and shook it, and Harry knew he had delayed long enough. He turned around and stared at Lethe.
It sat on a stone platform in the center of the room. It was a collection of meaningless parts and angles, Harry thought at first. He saw wood in there, and metal, and gems, but his eyes couldn’t make them behave. He also didn’t know where the shimmer of magic around the whole thing came from, or how to place it. He shook his head the way Splinter had shaken his hand a minute ago, and rubbed at his eyes.
When he looked again, it was as if a whole pile of stones had been picked up and reassembled into a statue. Now he could see. There was a pattern there, a procedure that linked together the gems and the metal. Now it was a wall of wood, polished wood that looked a lot like cherry, with the gems forming a star-shaped pattern in the center of it. The chains framed the star and draped over it like a shimmering curtain. Harry didn’t understand how someone would go “through” it, the way that Splinter was telling him he would, but he could at least see what it would be.
And the shimmer of magic beamed up through the stone platform beneath Lethe. It was wilder than Harry had thought; sometimes it rippled and flowed in regular shapes that seemed to echo the star on Lethe, but other times it leaped and flickered like static electricity. Harry shuddered as he felt the power pour over his skin.
“See?” Splinter muttered, his voice low as though he didn’t want to wake up something that was sleeping. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
Harry turned and frankly gaped at him. No one could be that stupid, and frankly, he was a little insulted that Splinter insisted on treating Harry as though he was.
Splinter held Harry’s eyes for one moment, and then looked away quickly. “Well, there isn’t,” he said. “Not once it’s safe.”
“If it’s not safe, why bring me here?” Harry eyed Lethe again. No, there was still no sign of a door or even a place where he could stand while something looked at him the way it had in the Lightfinder. He didn’t want to get near it even so. That power crawling over his skin was sluggish, like a river of blood he had sometimes seen in his dreams.
“It’s all right!” said Splinter, as violently as though he had tried to shove Harry into Lethe and Harry had begun to struggle right there. “You’ll see. It only needs a few more tests, and then it’s ready.”
Harry grunted without taking his eyes from Lethe. So it was safe. Maybe. He didn’t need the encouragement of the Unseen to resist it, though. He would have resisted if Lethe was the only thing standing on the edge of a cliff between him and a long fall. He turned to face Splinter, and repeated, “If I can’t go into it yet, why bring me here?”
“I wanted you to see it,” said Splinter, and fixed a desperate gaze on him. “To see how intricate it is, how much work we’ve put into it.”
“And?” Harry asked. He tried not to sound aggressive, because that would blow the cover he was trying to maintain at once. He turned around to face Lethe again, but made sure to step backwards at the same time, as if casually. Now he was at least fifteen feet from the thing, and no one was going to make him go nearer. “What of it? I’ve agreed to go in.”
Splinter had his eyes shut when Harry looked at him again. His face was grey and his hands rubbing together.
“I’ve done this much,” Splinter whispered. “The contribution will be immense if I can only make it work the way it should. And yet…there’s still so much to be done.”
“Tell me what it is.” Harry barked the words, then winced. But Splinter was in a strange mood, and there were no Aurors in the room with them. If there was a time that he could get away with challenging Splinter for the information, it was now.
Splinter opened his eyes and gave Harry another odd, pleading glance. “It could do so much good,” he whispered. “But it takes powerful magic to affect the soul, you know.” He hesitated. “Or a ritual.”
Harry nodded, thinking of the rituals Voldemort had had to perform to make the Horcruxes. Harry didn’t know all the details, but what he had grasped was more than foul enough. “Fine, but you still haven’t told me what this has to do with me.”
“So much magic,” said Splinter simply, and gestured at the spiral of uneasy light around Lethe. “The spells you’ve cast in the past few weeks are collected in that. It’s so strong.” He looked longingly at Lethe, then at Harry. “But it’s still not enough.”
“To make Lethe safe?” Harry’s throat was constricted with something that was close enough to panic to make him cough. “Yeah, you told me that.”
“No, to bring it to life. To make it function the way it’s supposed to do.” Splinter raised haunted eyes to his face. “And there’s nothing else I can do to make it work. I’m so sorry, Harry.”
That was all the warning Harry got before something crashed into him from behind, bearing him to the floor, and then tightened on his throat. He thrashed, twisting, trying to get the chain of the amulet in between his skin and what felt like throttling claws.
It didn’t work. His consciousness flickered once, and then went black and red, and faded.
Chapter Eighteen.
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