Chapter Three of 'An Image of Lethe'- Writing Back
Chapter Two.
Title: An Image of Lethe (3/?)
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 Three-Writing Back
The problem with going to bed and trying to forget about Malfoy’s letter, Harry discovered, was that the letter was still there when he got up the next morning. And so was Malfoy’s owl, standing asleep on the perch in the corner that Harry would have got rid of if not for Pig.
Harry scowled and went to make toast and tea, his usual breakfast, shaking his head. He didn’t understand how Malfoy’s owl had got to him when his wards should have prevented it.
Then he remembered something, and nearly groaned aloud. Right. The house was still open to someone of Black blood, as they had discovered when they started repairing the wards after the war. They were just lucky that Bellatrix had never found her way to Grimmauld Place when she was still alive; she could have walked right in.
And it was the same thing with Malfoy’s owl, since he had the bad taste to have a Black mother. Harry scowled at the bird, and it opened its eyes and hooted at him.
“Yeah, yeah, you stupid bird,” Harry muttered, and he set the tea to boiling and went over to scribble a rough reply on the back of Malfoy’s letter. There was plenty of room, since the actual letter was so short, and he didn’t want to go and find more parchment and ink.
Malfoy,
I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t think I really want to know. What I know is that I tested Dark because I’ve done some reprehensible things, and they’re trying to cure me with the Lethe. If you don’t want to go through the test and the cure, don’t. But I want to be free of this taint that I inflicted on myself.
He didn’t bother signing it; surely Malfoy would know who it came from. And the owl swooped over and snatched it from his fingers and flew merrily through the open window before he could write more, anyway.
Harry watched it go, sighed massively, and turned back to his breakfast. He was due for another interview at eleven today; the testing Lethe was going through was in part a requirement for attuning it to his soul and magical core. But they needed the information about his past and memories and preferences and all the rest if they were going to attune it to him.
And what are you going to do about the fact that you refuse to talk about the Horcrux?
Harry hunched his shoulders. He was trying to gather up the courage to talk about it, honestly he was. The problem was that he didn’t know who might take that knowledge and think it was a great idea to make some more Horcruxes and try to become immortal. The Department of Mysteries, along with the Ministry in general, was full of the people who had come up with machines like the Lightfinder and Lethe, after all.
Harry paused a second later, shocked at himself. You mean, the people who came up with the machine that’s going to help you and the one that let you know you had a problem in the first place?
He swallowed a bit of toast that tasted ashy, his breath quick and shallow. Splinter had warned him that he might have thoughts like this, ones that told him there was nothing wrong with being Dark and resenting the very existence of the Lightfinder and Lethe. It was a little harder to resist them, Splinter had said. It must be much harder than Harry had thought. He nearly hadn’t noticed that one.
Apparently Dark wizards had intrusive thoughts telling them that things were okay or wrong all the time, things that ordinary people would see as evil or normal, and that was one reason they went ahead with their crimes.
Harry’s hands shook as he put away the breakfast dishes and went in to have a shower. He had thought of himself as an unfortunate victim up until this point, someone with a tainted magical core that really didn’t want to have it.
But what if part of him was the same as the wizards who had killed his parents and his godfather and Cedric and Fred and so many others? What if he became like them because he wasn’t taking the danger seriously enough?
Harry decided he wanted to go to the interview early. He had some questions of his own to ask, as well as answer.
*
Draco dipped his toast in a pool of melted butter and deliberately ate it, eyes fastened on the words that Potter had written back to him.
“Let me guess. He refused.”
Draco didn’t bother acknowledging Pansy verbally, but did hand her the letter. She picked it up and read it through, then began to bite one of her nails as she flung the letter on the table. A moment later, she was stalking back and forth in Astoria’s dining room, the biggest room in the house.
And the dimmest, Draco thought with a frown, and added more wood to the fire blazing directly behind him.
“What are we going to do?” Pansy moaned, burying her head in her hands.
“Not succumb to despair, for one thing,” said Draco, and hid a smile as she glared at him. Pansy angry was always easier to deal with than Pansy weak and curling up around her stomach and feeling sorry for herself.
“Yes, because that’s a plan,” said Pansy, and folded her arms. “What exactly do you think we should do, now that Potter refused your flattering invitation?”
Draco smiled at her. “The kind of thing he would expect Dark wizards to do. It’s not like we’re going to damage our reputation further with either him or the Ministry.”
Pansy stared at him mistrustfully. “And you think kidnapping him or killing him would accomplish-what, exactly?”
Draco had to laugh this time, and never mind the way she bristled up like a wet Kneazle. “Not that. What a limited view of Dark wizards you do have. No, we’re going to make sure that he knows some of the blackmail material we have on hand.”
“I must have another limited view of Dark wizards, because I don’t know that we have any blackmail material on Potter.” Pansy put her hands on her hips and regarded him expectantly.
“We have rumors at our disposal that we can spread,” Draco said. “The general public is set to go off like a whole forest full of dead tinder, you know that. All we have to do is start circulating rumors that Potter practices secret Dark rituals or something, and they’d flare up against him.”
“But that would ultimately hurt us,” said Pansy. “They would only start hunting Dark wizards even more strongly then.”
“That’s why I really don’t want to do it,” Draco admitted. “But I can hold the threat in reserve over Potter’s head.”
“What else?” Pansy looked fascinated when Draco reached down and laid a hand against his chest, over his heart.
“There’s also the secret Dark spell that Potter attacked me with in the bathroom at Hogwarts,” said Draco.
“Are they going to care about him cursing someone who’s a fugitive?”
“Oh, yes,” said Draco. He’d read the newspaper articles in more detail than Pansy, at least at the beginning of this whole stupidity; he skimmed them more often now because of how often they repeated each other. “Especially, like I said, if the rumors don’t seem to come from me, but from someone else who’s still in good standing. They’re rabid for any notion of wrongdoing, any of this taint on the soul business. Did you notice how much they’re digging up about the Unforgivable Curses that Potter used during the war? It doesn’t matter that he mostly used them on Death Eaters. And I think Potter himself is afraid.” Draco tapped the letter he’d got back. “Otherwise, he would have at least agreed to meet with me, if he was fighting for the Light or if he was curious or reacting normally. Or he would have reported the letter to someone else.”
“You think he didn’t?”
“I think the fact that no one tracked the owl back speaks for itself.”
Pansy sank against the wall, gnawing on her lip contemplatively. “You’re putting an awful lot of trust in inferences that you’re picking up from-what? The shape of the letters? Your knowledge of Potter’s psychology?”
“Hope,” Draco said softly. “And all of that.” He caught her eye. “If they can accuse him and bring him down, Pansy, then what chance do the rest of us have? I’m fighting a battle that might be doomed, but I can’t not fight it. And I think he’s still our best chance.”
“If he’s so vulnerable to blackmail, then I don’t see why.”
“If he would stand up and fight for once, if he had someone at his side who knows how to manipulate newspaper people, then he’d be doing a lot better.” Draco moved a hand impatiently. “He would swing people back to his side. He could make a difference in the Ministry just blindly using the Lightfinder and the rest of the sheep as blindly trusting them.”
“You hope.”
“Yes, all of that.” Draco clenched his hands on his lap to keep from shouting at her. “I think we might do this. Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” said Pansy, after a long minute of thinking.
Draco softened, and stood up to catch her hand and kiss it. “I know you would tell me if you did,” he whispered. “It’s-frustrating. I know that. But we have to do what we can to make it less frustrating. It won’t do any good if we give up and sit here waiting for them to capture us.”
It took a long moment, but Pansy finally nodded with her eyelids drooping over her eyes and made some soft, subtle noise that sounded like, “I know.”
*
“I don’t know, Harry.”
Harry looked in a little pity at Hermione, who was sitting bent over another list of interview questions. He’d spent almost an hour talking about his childhood and his favorite colors and his Sorting into Gryffindor-that had really interested the note-takers, who thought the Hat’s longing to Sort him into Slytherin could be an early sign of Dark tendencies-and his favorite clothes and his relationship with Ginny. Now he and Hermione had a brief thirty minutes for lunch, and to prepare for the next interview. And as a gesture of trust, the room they were in didn’t have any enchantments to prevent him from getting out, except a simple shield on the door that would warn them if anyone used Dark spells inside these four walls. And there were no listening spells, either.
That was why Harry had dared to ask Hermione if she thought he should tell people about Horcruxes.
But she looked up now, and her face was nearly as bleak and bare as the stone walls behind her, which bore no decorations of any kind that could be harmed or turned into weapons. “It’s such a risk,” she whispered. “But what they’re doing to you is horrendous, too. If they could understand the most likely reason that you have a tainted soul…wouldn’t it be worth it?”
Harry sighed and kicked a little, then poked at the cheese sandwich in front of him. Lunch was always cheese sandwiches, because Splinter was the only one who volunteered to come into contact with Harry on a regular basis, and he didn’t know how to cook much. “I was the one who volunteered for the Lightfinder, Hermione. I’m the one volunteering for Lethe. How can it be horrendous if I agreed to let them do it to me?”
Hermione’s mouth tightened. Then she said in an even tighter voice, “What if you agreed, but other people don’t?”
Harry blinked at her in surprise. “I don’t think they would want to put someone unwilling through Lethe. It would mess up their results, Splinter said.”
“What results do they have right now?” Hermione gestured violently enough to almost spill the glass of water on the tray they’d brought Harry. “They don’t have anything! And you’re going along with them and this thing that could be a horrible mistake!” She rose to her feet and circled around the table towards Harry, who stared at her. He hadn’t thought she would oppose his going into Lethe when she had gone along with it so far.
But now Hermione bent down in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders with tears in her eyes. “Harry, please don’t do this. You won’t know what it really does until they test it-and they can test it all they like on magical illusions and so on, but you know they don’t have souls. They’re going to make you the first one to do this again, the only one who should, the way they acted like you were the only one who should fight Voldemort!” She spat a piece of hair out of the corner of her mouth and went on. “They don’t know what will happen! They don’t know anything about what the Lightfinder really shows, either!”
“They know it shows the taint on the soul!” Harry snapped, and grabbed one of her hands and moved it off his shoulder. It was hurting him. “And you have better reason than almost anyone to know why I should have a taint there!”
Hermione closed her eyes and stood there for a second, panting. Then she opened them again, and Harry flinched back from her gaze.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “You were refusing some of their requests right after the war, even the ones Kingsley made. You were thinking for yourself. You weren’t just doing what they wanted. And then you went into the Lightfinder, and since then you’ve been more scared of yourself than they are. Why?”
Harry closed his eyes. “I think I’m-turning into a Darker wizard.”
“What?”
“Splinter told me I would get thoughts,” said Harry, looking away from her. “Thoughts about not trusting him, backing away from the Lightfinder and Lethe, and that they would get into my head and not let me rest. That started happening this morning.”
“Those thoughts are just the results of your good sense returning,” Hermione snapped.
Harry said nothing, in misery. He was scared, that was the thing. He knew Hermione might not understand why, she might think that he couldn’t be afraid just like so many people in the wizarding world did, but Harry knew better. He was afraid because he had done all those things, and so many of them were things he couldn’t control-like having the Horcrux attached to his soul-or had done on impulse, like casting the Cruciatus.
He had enough hatred and rage in his soul to cast the Unforgivables. He needed something to heal that.
“You’re afraid.”
Harry glanced up at Hermione with eyes that he knew were dull, and nodded. “Got it in one.”
Hermione folded her arms. “You can’t make decisions like this out of fear, Harry. Even if the person you’re afraid of is yourself. Otherwise, you’ll start running around and making bad choices just like the people who were afraid of Voldemort did.”
Someone knocked on the door of the bare little room. The second interview was due to begin in a few minutes. Harry sighed, gulped down most of what remained of the water and the sandwich-something hunger had made him an expert in-and hugged Hermione.
“I need to be free of the fear,” he whispered. “I need to at least try, okay?”
Hermione didn’t get the chance to respond before Harry walked out of the room. His heart pounded when he saw the grim look on Splinter’s face, and he nodded a little. “What is it?”
“We placed another construct in the Lightfinder,” said Splinter. “This one had Pensieve memories of your childhood in it, and was built like you. This time, the aura was even darker, indigo.” He gave Harry a long, slow look.
“It isn’t me, though,” Harry pointed out, and there was sweat behind his ears. “I haven’t done anything else since I was diagnosed!”
“I know,” said Splinter. “But it does mean that we have to look at your childhood more closely. There may be reasons for you to go Dark in there that we haven’t been thinking about.” He turned and gestured Harry imperiously after him. “Come on. We have to conduct some more tests on your memories.”
Harry closed his eyes in misery and followed Splinter. He didn’t know what he could do. He could rebel and run away, but then he would be hunted down as a Dark wizard and not have any kind of life. He could refuse to cooperate and just sit at home, but then he wouldn’t be accepted into the society that was his only home. He could ask for more tests, but they were already doing all sorts of tests before they used Lethe, to make sure that it was safe for him.
What could he do?
“Potter. Do look where you’re going.”
Harry started and opened his eyes. He had nearly bumped into Blaise Zabini, who stood in front of him wearing a disgruntled expression. He held up one hand and backed away a little, as though to keep a careful distance between him and Harry.
“Some of us aren’t Dark, no matter what other people think, and don’t want to be infected,” he muttered.
Harry stared at him unblinkingly for a long moment before he stepped past him and walked on, down the long, sloping corridor that led into the Depths of the Department of Mysteries-an alternate pathway Harry would never have found on his own. Splinter was talking about the Lightfinder and the tests that it had conducted on other people now. There were a worrying number of green auras, and not as many red ones as they’d hoped.
Harry said nothing, but listened. And now and then, his hand lingered on the edge of his cloak, where Blaise’s other hand had touched him while his extended hand was commanding all Splinter’s attention.
He didn’t get a chance to look at the crackling piece of paper there until hours later, when he was again at Grimmauld Place.
Malfoy’s threat to tell everyone about the Sectumsempra incident would either have made Harry laugh or panic a few hours ago. Now?
Now, he was wondering how soon until he could slip away from his intense regime of tests and counter-tests and meet with Malfoy.
He wasted no time in sending the owl.
This is something I can do.
Chapter Four.
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