Chapter Nineteen of 'An Image of Lethe'- The Breaking Wave
Chapter Eighteen.
Title: An Image of Lethe (19/?)
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 Nineteen-The Breaking Wave
Draco breathed out slowly, the minute he was outside the house. He was sure that the Ministry’s watchdogs might have seen him come out; after all, Aster was working with forces that were part of the Ministry, no matter how hidden or influential they were. It made sense that Aster might have gone back to the Unseen and reported on Draco’s wavering willingness to do as he was told.
But no one had stopped or barked at him, and Draco nodded as he raised his wand to Apparate. He would just go to the Ministry and see what was taking Potter so long.
Someone Apparated in front of him before he could take off, and Draco froze until he saw who it was. Blaise darted his head and his eyes both from side to side, swearing under his breath. Draco reckoned he was looking for a way through the wards, and couldn’t find one.
And he might just have revealed that we’re working with him to whoever the Ministry assigns to watch this place, Draco thought in annoyance, before he stepped up next to Blaise and grabbed his arm, hard.
Blaise nearly fought against him, but paused when Draco pressed his fingers down in three swift jabs. That was a code they had once used, years ago, when they worked together on spells Vince and Greg were no good at and they didn’t want Theo to know about. They’d set up an alcove in the dungeons with a heavy, locked door and invented the code so the other would know who was knocking if one of them was inside the room.
Blaise muttered something wordless under his breath and Apparated, taking Draco with him. Draco could only hope that the Ministry watchdogs had more important things to do at the moment than immediately start investigating Blaise.
They appeared inside a comfortable cave lit with firelight from the flickering hearth in the corner, and with wooden tables, chairs, and rugs scattered about. Blaise stepped back, and Draco whipped the shawl from his head and looked around. This was probably another hiding place that belonged to Blaise’s mother. At least she didn’t mind Blaise using them.
“What’s that? Did you borrow Potter’s Invisibility Cloak?”
Draco turned around, shaking his head. “Something my ancestors owned.” Not even a lie, he thought, as Blaise’s eyes narrowed at him, looking for it. “What was urgent enough for you to Apparate to the house?”
Blaise swallowed, and at once turned as grim as Draco had ever seen him, reaching into his pocket as if he was going to take out a photograph or a report or something. He already had his wand gripped in one hand, or Draco would have thought it was that. As it was, Draco backed up one step, body relaxed but ready. If Blaise had betrayed him…
But Blaise looked into his eyes and shook his head. “I was near the Lightfinder, studying it for those weaknesses you told me to research,” he said. “And I saw them putting a body under a blanket in one of those ‘waiting rooms’ that they usually use to hold people they’re getting ready to test.” He took a deep breath. “It was Potter.”
No.
Draco wanted to fly at Blaise for a second, to viciously disagree that Potter would ever have let himself be captured like that, to tell him he was lying. He calmed himself with a little jerk of his head. He was an adult, and Blaise was his friend, and had no reason to lie to him. Just because Draco knew how crucial Potter was to their possible rebellion didn’t mean Potter couldn’t die.
“Alive?” he asked, voice stripped-down, brain humming, ready to act as fast as possible now.
“I couldn’t tell.” Blaise hesitated again, then added, “I did wonder if it was someone in a Potter glamour, that they were going to try to make some point with. I mean, they already tested him once. Why would they do it again?”
Draco moved one hand in an absent way, and Blaise shut up. Draco stared into space and studied the faint carved sigils on the wall in front of him, and closed his fists and released them in regular rhythm.
It was strange that they would bring Potter to the Lightfinder, but Draco couldn’t take the chance. He turned back to Blaise, who sucked in his breath and nodded as though he knew what Draco was going to say before he asked.
One could never be sure of things like that, though, so Draco asked anyway. “Are you ready to destroy the Lightfinder if you have to?”
“Yes.” Blaise’s voice was soft, but firm. “I would have liked-some more time to research. But that’s only my overcaution speaking. I can do it if I have to.”
“Then get ready,” Draco ordered him. “Or at least act as though you’re going to seriously threaten the thing. Use a glamour and distract them as much as you can. I’m going to go in and get Potter.”
Apart from one glance at the translucent shawl that still dangled from Draco’s hand, Blaise didn’t pause. “All right. Do you want me to actually destroy it? Or should I do that at all?”
“If I can’t get him out of there before they start dragging him towards it,” said Draco grimly. He didn’t know why he was so sure that Potter shouldn’t go into the Lightfinder again. After all, they had done it to him once and he had survived the experience, and the Lightfinder wasn’t the same as Lethe. But he was sure, nevertheless. And Blaise only inclined his head to Draco once, then straightened up.
“All right. When should I show up to threaten it?”
“In ten minutes.” Draco drew his wand. “Where did you say these waiting rooms are? Those little sheds they’ve built behind the stage?” He hadn’t been back to the Lightfinder since he watched Potter being tested on it, but he could look at pictures as well as anyone. The Prophet had published photograph after photograph of the “machine that would save the world,” and most of those had included a procession of little sheds behind the stage.
“Yes.” Blaise hesitated. “You know that he’ll have Aurors guarding him.”
“That’s what I’m counting on your distraction to take care of,” said Draco, and stepped out of the cave and drew the shawl over his head. He vanished in the face of Blaise’s nervous smile.
I’m coming, Potter. I promise.
The thought drummed in him. There was a small smidgen of delight that, for once, he would be the one to rescue Potter and pay back one of the thousand debts that it seemed like he owed the git.
But most of it was just sheer determination. Draco had taken a huge gamble and thrown in his lot with Potter when he hadn’t known whether Potter would even welcome them. He had tried to protect his friends, learned secrets about his ancestry, and spent time listening to Potter and trying to understand him.
All of that investment was not going to be wasted because the Ministry was full of idiots.
*
Once again, Harry came to and tried to keep his eyes closed while he listened for telltale voices around him, but this time, he knew from even a slight movement that escape was going to be pretty much impossible.
He was tangled in some sort of weighted net, thrown down over him and covered with small, tinkling circles that looked as if they were made of obsidian when he glanced at them from under lowered eyelids. And the points of the net were apparently stuck in the stone floor beneath him. There was no way to get out of here quietly, and probably not at all.
Even as he lay there thinking that, Splinter appeared and bent over him. He checked the sides of the net, and then he looked at Harry and shook his head.
“If you hadn’t asked certain questions, all of this could have been avoided,” he hissed.
Harry opened his mouth to speak his mind about that-he reckoned that he might as well, since Splinter was already going to kill him or use him for magical experiments anyway-but there was a sharp motion outside the door of the room, and a voice Harry didn’t know asked, “Ready, Nick?”
Splinter stepped back with a mask settling on his face. “Yes, sir,” he said, and waved his wand. A spell Harry didn’t know either unstuck the points of the net from the floor, and floated Harry to his feet. Harry found that his head was swimming when that happened and that he felt as if he was going to be sick. He resolved to at least try to be sick on Splinter if he could.
“You brought this on yourself,” Splinter kept muttering as he grabbed Harry’s shoulder and marched him out the door. “You could have engaged in any sort of investigation that would have been more productive than this, but no. You decided that you had to ask too many questions and demand to see Lethe early, and this is what happened.”
Harry bared his teeth, waited until they were out of the little shed and he could clearly see the Lightfinder, and kicked Splinter in the leg.
Splinter fell with a yell and a crash. Harry spun to the side, trying to shed the net. It was tangled around his arms, but surely-
“Petrificus Totalus,” said a voice that Harry knew too well, and Harry fell to the ground beside Splinter. He strained his muscles against the spell as hard as he could, trying to call up enough will to at least get a hand free, and then Kingsley bent down in front of him and gently removed the net from his face.
Kingsley’s eyes were so grieved that Harry found it hard to look at them. But he didn’t have much choice given the spell, and he reminded himself that Kingsley was the one who had made the stupid choices, anyway. He stared back until Kingsley shook his head and murmured, “If you had told us the truth about the Dark tempting you, Harry, we would have given you help and shelter a long time ago.”
Harry couldn’t answer anyway. He thought Kingsley ought to be grateful for that.
Kingsley sighed and went on, though, and Harry had other things to think about. “Nick was the one who first began to hint to me that something wasn’t right, that even being possessed by You-Know-Who couldn’t fully explain some of your actions. Either that, or the soul shard had taken over. And if you had only come to us when you first began to feel the press of the temptation…”
Kingsley shook his head and stood back. “Well, that’s over now,” he said, and floated Harry into the air and towards the Lightfinder.
Harry could hear the murmur of what sounded like a fairly large crowd. He wondered with detached rage if the Ministry had collected them to witness the trial of someone famous or if they were the people who always seemed to stand about here, waiting for someone else to be condemned as Dark or celebrated as Light. When Kingsley floated him up to the top of the stage and someone gasped, Harry thought it was probably the latter.
And this is a useless thing to think about.
I might as well think about it, though, Harry argued back against himself. Since nothing else is going to happen that I can participate in. Then he dismissed the whole mental argument with himself and turned back to Kingsley’s speech.
“It makes me sorrow,” Kingsley was telling the crowed earnestly, “when I think of how we depended on one teenager to fight our war for us. In doing so, we exposed him to temptations that wizards twice his age would have had trouble handling.” Kingsley gave that exasperating sigh again. “It is my belief that Harry Potter must have been using Dark Arts for years, trying to train for the upcoming battles with You-Know-Who, and only saved the world at the cost of his soul.”
Something moved off to the side. Harry tried instinctively to turn his eyes in that direction, and of course he couldn’t. But he knew he had seen something, some flickering dart of motion.
Not like it would be something that would save me, anyway, Harry thought grimly, and paid attention to Kingsley’s speech again. Maybe he could find something to twist there to his advantage, as unlikely as that would be.
“…and so it is the wizarding world’s fault that Mr. Potter is the way he is,” Kingsley concluded grimly. There were plenty of skeptical looks in the crowd, Harry saw. Kingsley either didn’t care about that, or thought he could convince them otherwise. “It is only right that the wizarding world help him heal.”
That got a few scattered, confused outbursts of applause. Kingsley turned Harry back towards the Lightfinder, still using the spell that helped him float above the stage. “Now,” he said, over his shoulder, “we will put him in the Lightfinder and see how Dark his aura has got and how much healing we need to do.”
Harry wanted to grit his teeth. He couldn’t even do that. He thought of Lethe, and wanted to scream. He couldn’t do that, either.
Now’s the time that I almost want Death Eaters to burst into the crowd and try something mental to rescue what they think is the last shard of Voldemort, he thought, despairing, as the Aurors dragged him towards the Lightfinder.
And then something did happen. Not Death Eaters, though. There was a shuddering, cracking sound, and the Lightfinder’s stage suddenly sagged to the side. Harry was the only one who kept upright for a moment, supported by magic, while the rest of the Aurors tumbled around and only caught their balance by scrambling and flailing.
Kingsley was standing near one end of the stage, his wand drawn. The crowd was shrieking. Harry tried again, instinctively, to look around, and found himself more furious than ever when he couldn’t.
There came that flicker of motion again, and then a figure leaped onto the stage. For a moment, Harry thought it was one of the Unseen, because the face was most definitely a glamour. But it was a face, not the same swirl of clouds and color that masked most of the Unseen. It was big and puffy and leering, like a caricature of a goblin, and Harry hadn’t any idea who it could be.
“Have at you, Light Eaters!” yelled the figure, and then turned and began throwing things at the Lightfinder. Harry saw the intense blue gleam of them, and for a moment wondered if the madman was throwing sapphires. Well, why not? It made as much sense as anything else happening around him at the moment.
But the “sapphires” stuck the Lightfinder and burst into glowing blue orbs of flame. They clung to the mirror and the stone that the person being tested by the Lightfinder had to put their hands on, and then they-
Exploded was too mild a word for it, Harry thought as he flung his arm over his eyes. Because, suddenly, the spell on him was gone, and he could do that. He had a moment’s realization that Kingsley had probably pulled all his magic back into his core at once to deal with this new threat, and that had ended the spell.
Then the wave of silent light and force boiled across the stage, and grabbed him so hard that Harry went flying off his feet. He was already wrapping his arms around his head as he tumbled through the air, trying to make the landing as soft as possible. Not Auror training, that, but sheer experience with Death Eaters and Dudley’s gang.
Never thought I’d be grateful to Dudders for beating me up, he thought, half-hysterical, and then he hit jarringly against a wall. From the pain, he’d probably cracked a rib. Harry rolled on the ground and scrambled to his feet, desperate to stand up and see what the hell was happening.
Arms grabbed him around the waist, and Malfoy’s unexpectedly harsh voice said into his ear, “Stop struggling, you idiot! I’m the one who’s got you. And your wand.” Something hard slipped into Harry’s back pocket. “I took it from one of the Aurors when he was a little distracted.”
“You were the one who did this?” Harry asked, in a tone it was impossible to prevent from being dazed and impressed, as he stared at the remains of the stage. It hadn’t actually exploded, the way he’d thought. There was still the blue-burning wreckage of the Lightfinder, and the stage intact beneath it, except for the tilt induced by the attacker’s first spell, whatever it was. But the flames had formed into hard little spheres around the stone and mirror and altar of the Lightfinder, and people in the crowd were screaming with terror.
“Arranged for it,” said Malfoy, and began to push him rapidly across the square towards the side where the crowd was thinnest. “And in the meantime, we should take advantage of this and get out of here. Now,” he added, when Harry hesitated and turned back towards the Ministry. “And I told you, I already have your wand.”
“Lethe has been stealing my magic,” said Harry. He had a flickering moment when he wondered if he should be confessing that sort of thing to Malfoy, who once would have used it against him or at least despised Harry for his weakness, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe either would happen now. “They’ve been collecting it. All those spells that they had me cast, that we couldn’t figure out the purpose of? That was what they were for.”
Malfoy stared at him. Harry could feel that without turning his head. Then Malfoy put an invisible hand on his arm and murmured, “Come on. There isn’t a thing we can do about it. We’ll have to go away and come back and try-”
“No,” said Harry, and gave Malfoy a piercing enough look that he recoiled a little and raised his hands as though he was going to prevent Harry from driving the gaze through his body. Harry could only see that because of the shadow where his hand emerged from the Invisibility Cloak-it had to be the Cloak he’d borrowed-but it was enough. “I need to go back there now. I want to reclaim my magic.”
“If they’re holding it in some kind of artifact, then I don’t know how you can,” said Malfoy, his voice snarling, and grabbed Harry’s arm again. “Come on. We have to get away and run. We’ve revealed that you’re not going to go along tamely with them anymore.”
“Then it can’t matter whether we linger one more moment or not,” Harry argued, and grabbed Malfoy and Apparated. He landed in front of the Ministry’s entrance, and marched towards it.
“At least hide,” said Malfoy, and then there was a motion of what felt like silk, and Harry found himself walking under an invisible thing that was most definitely not his Cloak. Malfoy, fully visible again to him here, gave him an exasperated look.
“None of the Ministry’s spells can detect this thing,” Malfoy added. “But they’ll be able to detect what you do to Lethe. So don’t push it.”
“Where did you get it?” Harry tilted his head back to admire the weave of the cloth, just visible from underneath.
“Aster brought it through a portrait.” Malfoy shrugged when Harry stared at him. “I don’t know how he did it, either. But his idea was that I could use it to hide from the Ministry when you staged a rebellion against them and lost.” He paused, then added, “I find myself tired of what Aster hides from us, and what the Unseen do.”
“Considering there was one of the Unseen there when I woke up, and I only got away by tearing up a map, I agree,” said Harry, as they ducked into a corridor that no one else seemed to be inhabiting at the moment. Malfoy still tugged down the shawl closer over his head and Harry’s and motioned for silence as they made for the stairs that would take them to the bottom of the Ministry.
“A map? What kind of map was it?” Malfoy had his head cocked, his eyes narrow in a way that made Harry think his brain was probably pouncing and leaping all over the information.
“I couldn’t make any sense of it. Random patterns. Maybe some of the same kind of thing they use to read the future.” Harry shrugged and opened the door at the top of the stairs, but did pause to look at Malfoy. “Thanks for-doing what you did. You don’t have to be here for this part, you know. It might be better if you went back to Number Twelve and got Parkinson and Astoria ready to move, anyway.”
Malfoy’s face didn’t shift, but his hand came up and squeezed Harry’s shoulder until Harry grunted with the pain.
“Down the steps,” said Malfoy softly. Harry obeyed, and tried to pretend that his heart wasn’t hammering and his mouth wasn’t wide in a grin.
*
Draco pressed his back against the wall when he saw Lethe. The magic eddying and swaying around it was familiar enough that he thought he would have known it as Potter’s even if he hadn’t been told it was. And the runes in the walls were powerful enough protections that he thought there was no way Potter could take the magic back.
“Potter,” he whispered.
Potter stalked towards Lethe, not looking at him. His wand rested lightly in his hand, and Draco grimaced. He knew that expression. He had seen it on Lucius’s face before, and his mother’s, and Bellatrix’s. And Fenrir Greyback’s, come to that.
They were going to do what they wanted no matter what Draco said. So Draco leaned back and watched. He knew Potter’s actions would probably bring the guards they had evaded running in seconds, but for right now, it did seem as if most of the people, like the Unseen, who might have been down here were involved in the crisis unfolding around the Lightfinder.
Potter panted in front of Lethe for so long that Draco began to wonder if he had changed his mind after all. And then he raised his wand arm and brought it down in a single slashing motion, combining it with a spell that definitely did not have that wand movement.
“Accio magic.”
There was a trembling mist rising around Lethe, and it was a color Draco had never seen before, a color he didn’t own a name for. He opened his mouth, ready to protest, and Potter repeated the motion with the wand.
The magic that clung around Lethe swayed towards Potter like a tree bending in the wind. Then it reversed itself, and then Potter spoke the Summoning Charm again.
And light, brighter than the fire Blaise had used to consume the Lightfinder, filled the room, and Draco heard a noise like chains ripping, and something seemed to suck his consciousness away from him as though it and not Potter’s magic had gone flying in response to a Summoning Charm.
The last thing he heard, oddly, was Potter laughing.
Chapter Twenty.
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