Chapter Sixteen of 'The Dust of Water'- Starless Night
Chapter Fifteen.
Title: The Dust of Water (16/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Heavy angst, some violence, amnesia
Pairings: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, eventual Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Summary: As far as Harry’s concerned, he’s woken from a weirdly deep sleep the day after the Battle of Hogwarts. It’s his friends who tell him that it’s ten years later, that he’s an Auror who got cursed while chasing a Dark wizard-and that his memory isn’t going to come back.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a heavily angsty fic, as you can see from the summary and warnings. There isn’t going to be a cure for Harry’s amnesia, either. Keep that in mind before you read.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Sixteen-Starless Night
Harry got close enough to make out the face of the figure standing closer to him. It was definitely Old Harry, and he looked almost identical to the memory Harry had just seen in the Burrow. There were drifts of leaves around the graves, though, so probably this was autumn. A few months later.
“I don’t know why you wanted to meet here, Potter,” the other man muttered, scratching at the back of his neck.
He hadn’t pulled his hood back, but Harry could duck in the memory and look under it. His face was heavy, with jowls that looked as if he’d borrowed them from Dudley. He had scrubby dark hair and an even scrubbier beard. He darted his gaze around as if he saw something to be scared of behind every headstone. His eyes were ancient and bloodshot.
Harry had no idea who he was, but it was possible Ron could tell him, if he was one of the criminals Old Harry had been collaborating with. Harry promised himself to ask later.
“Because this is a place where we can be private.” Old Harry walked a few steps nearer, and the man put up his hand.
“That’s as close as you come,” he said. “Without letting me know how you found me and what you mean to do.”
Old Harry laughed. Harry winced at how dry it was, and more still when it cracked in the middle, like a split lip. “I found you by following clues from people who were eager to have me owe them a favor. And I want you for exactly what I told you in the letter.”
He was silent then. Harry sighed a little. He would have to go back and look at the memory of the letter, too, if he could.
“You want me to create a variation on the Enthrallment Potion?” The man pushed his cloak back a little and revealed a belt heavy with potions vials, one of which was transparent and filled with a red pulsing liquid. “Already done.”
Kelvin. I bet this is Kelvin.
Old Harry nodded and said, “That’s what I want. Something without a lot of obvious odor or taste.”
“This has none of either.” Kelvin twisted his head slowly to the side as if he was looking at something past Old Harry, but when Harry turned to see if this memory also included an ambush, there was nothing there. “It’ll cost you, of course.”
“We’ve already discussed the cost,” said Old Harry, and looked at Kelvin with eyes that seemed paler than they should. But Harry had almost given up on knowing what they should look like. Even this memory was playing out differently than he’d expected. “You give me the Enthrallment Potion, and I give you twenty Galleons and don’t reveal the secrets I hold on you.”
Harry didn’t think he had to have trained as an Auror to see the way that Kelvin’s hand tightened on his belt. “You pretend that you have discovered enough about me to make yourself a danger to me?” he whispered, and leaned forwards. “Do not tempt me, Potter. Do not flatter yourself.”
“I don’t need to pretend,” said Old Harry. “Not when I know.”
Yes, he looked almost as intense as he had in that memory of the Burrow when the Death Eaters had invaded. Harry shuddered a little. This was all going to go wrong in a moment. He wondered if it was conspiring with Kelvin that Old Harry regretted later, as Harry had assumed it was at first, or something else that happened here.
“Better men than you have tried to discover my secrets,” Kelvin said. He looked as if he’d recovered his poise, but his eyes still traveled uneasily back and forth between Old Harry’s face and hands. “Trained Aurors, and others who are skilled in tracking Dark wizards down. You can’t really think that you’re better than they are. They have years of experience.”
“Years don’t matter,” said Old Harry. “What matters is dedication. Oh, and a famous name helps, too.”
Kelvin wavered. Harry thought he was going to Apparate away for a second, the way he turned and backed towards a gravestone.
Old Harry didn’t move. He stood there with his creepy smile and his pale green eyes, and Harry wished he could show this memory to Ron and Hermione, although given the way Malfoy had said the potion worked, he didn’t know if that would be possible. Ron and Hermione would believe him about Old Harry going wrong if they saw this.
“And what makes you think that you’ve discovered enough of my secrets to be a threat to me?” Kelvin’s fingers were curled through his belt again. Harry saw him toying with a vial that had a lazy purple spiral inside it. It was probably some sort of nasty potion he could use as a weapon, and Kelvin was trying to decide if he needed it. “Give me some proof. An explanation of your method. Something I can believe.”
“It’s amazing how many people want to tell you things when you have a famous name,” said Old Harry. He sounded as though he was talking to himself now, and in fact he had turned around and was looking at a gravestone. Harry looked, too. Tom Riddle. He glanced away and tried not to feel sick. “The kinds of things they’ll volunteer to find for you just because you gave them an autograph or spent some time with them.” Old Harry turned around, and this smile was killing. “Isn’t that right, Evelyn?”
Kelvin’s face had gone green enough that Harry really thought he might faint. He didn’t sway, but he jammed his hands into his robe pockets as if he wanted to, and was making sure he didn’t. He stared at Old Harry, now, as if his eyes could scrape flesh from bone.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Old Harry breathed in the meantime, his eyes carefully on Kelvin. “Some proof that I am who I say I am? I am.”
“If I use a potion on you here,” Kelvin began.
“Then an owl flies tomorrow morning with all the gathered information to the Acting Minister.” Old Harry shrugged and reached out to trace the letters Tom Riddle on the gravestone with one finger. “That’s the only guarantee you have. I might be lying. But I think I’ve given you some idea of how stupid it is to underestimate me.”
Kelvin’s hand twitched towards his potions belt anyway. Old Harry went on gazing at him with vague blankness, and Kelvin made a disgusted sound and snatched his hand away from the belt. “Fine. What do you want of me?”
“The same thing I want of the people I’m going to use the Enthrallment Potion on.” Old Harry nodded at the potion Kelvin was still holding. “You can go on doing what you do, and even turn a profit on it. I’ll pay you for the potions you brew for me. But you’re going to serve the cause of the Light, too. You’re going to help me set up a network of informants.”
Kelvin seemed suddenly more interested, although Harry didn’t know how he could tell that. But he moved a step closer and said, “You’re going to use the Enthrallment Potion to get them to spy for you.”
“And find out secrets not as closely guarded as yours.” Old Harry met his gaze squarely. His hand finally dropped away from Tom Riddle’s gravestone. “Yes.”
Kelvin chuckled. “You think that you’re a Light wizard?”
“I think the wizarding world can’t afford to sit around and wait for me to decide what I am.” Old Harry straightened his shoulders. Maybe he thought it would make him look more like a soldier. Harry didn’t know. “Now.”
Kelvin spent some more time looking at Old Harry, and then he laughed and gestured with one arm. Harry thought Old Harry was going to jump in time to rescue the Enthrallment Potion, but he seemed to have decided to trust Kelvin at the last minute, since he leaned back and waited tensely.
“Why the hell not,” Kelvin said, still chuckling. “Why the hell not. I like you, Potter.” He stabbed one finger at Old Harry, who only looked at him with a blank expression. “Building a network of enthralled or blackmailed servants? It’s not everyone who would think of something like that, even if you’re going to do it mostly to play Robin Hood.”
Harry blinked once. I wonder if he’s Muggleborn, the way he makes that reference.
“As long as you remember that you’re the first one,” said Old Harry, with what Harry thought was real indifference, heavy and immovable as a piece of granite in the middle of a stream. “Then we can do business.”
“As long as you remember to pay me,” said Kelvin, calming down enough to speak from his laughter, “then it won’t be much different from being my own master.”
But his eyes were hot and narrow as he spoke. Harry couldn’t tell if Old Harry saw that dangerous expression and reckoned that Kelvin wasn’t speaking the truth. The only thing Harry knew for sure was that he did.
“Good,” said Old Harry, and held out a clinking bag of what Harry assumed were Galleons. “Tell me whether this potion is exactly the same as the one I ordered from you, or whether you had to modify it a bit.”
Kelvin took the bag from him and balanced it in his hand, tilting it back and forth and listening to the clink. Then he began to speak, his tone flat. He handed the potion to Old Harry and tucked the bag away in his belt in the same deft movement.
But his eyes remained narrow. Harry didn’t think his desire for revenge would ever really die.
And now he understood Kelvin’s notes better. He probably was trying to warn Harry that some of the people Old Harry had put under the Enthrallment Potion were waking up and getting ready to attack him. And Kelvin might be planning the same thing, now that Harry didn’t have any idea what his secrets were.
A tremble of motion in front of him made Harry whip around. Was there something else that would make this memory even more disgusting and wrong? Or had Malfoy found a way to enter it alongside him?
It was Malfoy’s face, but only his face, hovering in the air like a mask. He gasped out, “Only five minutes more remaining on the potion, Potter. You can’t enter the memories again. Seek out the ones you want.”
Shit. Harry wanted to run in circles as he watched Malfoy’s face fade. How was he supposed to know what the most important memories were? How was he supposed to choose which ones to bring out with him?
But then he shook his head and straightened his shoulders. No. He was going to handle this like a mature, responsible adult. That meant he was going to command the potion, which could apparently do extraordinary things, to take him to the best ones.
“I need to know what really made Old Harry the way he was,” he whispered, feeling strange for saying it aloud when the remembered argument between Old Harry and Kelvin was still going on next to him, but needing that to clear his head. “The one iconic memory out of everything. Was it just the letters? Or was it something else that made him so determined to take all the responsibility for the wizarding world on his shoulders?”
The potion rippled around him. Harry tried not to clench his teeth, or scream, as it seemed to make up its nonexistent mind. Malfoy’s warning was playing in the back of his head, but he couldn’t hurry the potion.
Maybe two minutes were left. Or one.
Whichever it was, the potion abruptly picked Harry up and flung him through time with stunning force.
*
Harry landed as though someone had flung him into a wall of stone. And that seemed to be where he was. He sat back and looked around. It wasn’t a room he recognized, but it had slick walls and dampness on them as though it was a cellar or a dungeon. The Malfoy cellars?
When he turned around, though, he saw Old Harry on the other side of the bars with Aurors next to him. So this must be some place in the Ministry.
“Leave us,” Old Harry said to the Aurors, and they nodded and bowed and left him. He waved his wand over a section of the bars, and they opened like a door. Old Harry glided inside and shut the door behind him.
Harry studied him carefully as he lit a candle on a table and held it up. He couldn’t tell exactly what time period this was supposed to take place in, of course, but he noted that Old Harry didn’t look that much older. Just pale, and apathetic, and broken by life. He didn’t even seem to have enough will to light his wand.
He held the candle up and asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”
For just one second, Harry had the panicked thought that Old Harry could somehow see through time and find him. But then a whining noise started up from the corner of the cell back in the shadows, shriller and shriller even as Harry flinched from it. Of course. There’s a prisoner here that he came to visit.
“I don’t know,” the prisoner whined, and crept closer to the bars. “I don’t know what I have to say. I just want to be let out. Please.” His fingers reached out, writhing and scratching at the bars. Harry found himself backing away, his skin crawling. He had no idea who the prisoner was. Maybe he deserved what had happened to him. But Harry didn’t think anyone could deserve something that made him look like this.
Old Harry moved the candle a bit more. The length of light fell across the prisoner’s face. Harry found that he could recognize it with some squinting.
Fenrir Greyback.
“You deserve to be here.” Old Harry’s voice was toneless, his eyes fixed on the wall above Greyback’s head. Harry found himself hoping that was the way Old Harry held back his human feelings, but he really had no idea if Old Harry was concealing true indifference or feigned indifference or what. “How many children did you bite?”
“I can’t remember.” That declaration wasn’t full of triumphant laughter, the way Harry had thought it would be for Fenrir Greyback, of all people. Instead, Greyback sounded incoherent, drifting. “You’ve kept me here without the sun or the moon. The transformations are destroying my mind. I don’t know!”
The last was a howl, and Harry flinched. Old Harry looked directly at him. “I wasn’t the one who made the decision to keep you here,” he said.
Harry nodded, a little relieved. If Greyback had been here that long, then it wouldn’t have been enough time for Old Harry to make his mind up to serve the wizarding world, or whatever he’d done. Someone else had probably imprisoned him, and then…
And what? Why didn’t he ask for him to be moved to a more comfortable cell, at least?
“But you can make the decision to let me out. They told me.” Greyback crept a little closer and lowered his head. Harry had no idea what he was doing until his tongue flicked out and curled around Old Harry’s boot. “Please. Please. I’ll be good.”
Harry flinched violently. For a second, Old Harry looked nauseated, too.
Then he raised his boot and cracked Greyback in the jaw.
Harry watched as he flew backwards, and glanced at Old Harry. There was more nausea in his face, but he took a long, slow breath and said, “Releasing you is impossible. It would create so much outrage…” He trailed off for a second, and then folded his arms and said, “And even you don’t remember how many children you bit. Why should I let you go?”
“Because I’m dying here,” Greyback said, and he raised his head. His eyes had some trace of the yellow glow left. Harry could see how grimy the nails on his hand were as he reached out and groped at Harry’s boot. “Because I thought you had some pity left.”
“I don’t,” Old Harry whispered, hunching his shoulders. “I can’t. There’s-so much to do. I can’t-”
He broke off, and his throat worked for a second. Then he nodded and stepped back. “I was informed you wanted to speak to me,” he said. “I came and spoke with you. I’m going to tell the Aurors that I found nothing redeemable in you.” He shrugged a little. “I imagine it’ll be a quick transfer to Azkaban after you get your trial, at least. Then you’ll be out of this cell.”
“I’ll go mad. I’ll die.”
Old Harry’s eyes went distant. Then he shook his head and said, “I understand what Dumbledore means by the greater good, now. You can’t help everyone, because then you don’t get the chance to ease other people’s suffering.” He looked at Greyback. “You can’t help people who made others suffer.”
He turned and walked out of the cell. Greyback built up to a long howl, and that was the sound, along with the clang of the barred door, that remained in Harry’s ears as the potion faded around him and he woke up with his hands in the stocks.
“You look awful.”
Malfoy’s voice was soft, almost neutral. Harry blinked and raised his head, just staring as Malfoy hastened forwards to unlock the bindings around his hands.
“I feel it,” Harry whispered. He thought he understood, now. Old Harry had started out with some notion of being noble. Then he’d started doing ignoble things to keep doing “good.” Then he’d tried other things-some noble, some not, some misguided like the way he had broken up with Rob to make his friends and Ginny and people who wanted a fairy-tale ending to the Savior’s love life happy-to keep the balance.
But if he really believed there was no forgiveness or redemption for people who made others suffer…
What would that have done to him, once he realized what he was doing, himself?
Harry was almost glad that he hadn’t seen that part of the memories.
“Sit down, Potter. Put your head between your knees.”
Harry didn’t feel like he was about to faint, but he was nonetheless grateful for the hands that shoved him down. He took long, blistering breaths, and shivered, and thought.
He had mistakes to make up for, even more than he’d thought. Blackmail plus an enslaving potion was worse than he’d thought. And he didn’t know if there was anything he could do for Greyback, now.
But he knew he would try. And he wasn’t going to give up and lie back and let the Ministry do whatever they wanted with him, either, because that would only be redemption for one mistake, or none. He had other things to do.
He reached up with one hand. Malfoy caught it before even a moment could pass in which Harry had time to wonder if he was so tainted Malfoy didn’t want to touch him.
I didn’t see that in the memories, either, why Malfoy was so eager to collect scraps of Old Harry. Or why he let him.
But there had been other things more important. And Malfoy was still alive, still in possession of his memories. Harry thought that perhaps they could figure it out.
Together.
Chapter Seventeen.
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