Chapter Forty-Four of 'The Dust of Water'- Lucius's Choice
Chapter Forty-Three.
Title: The Dust of Water (44/?)
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 Forty-Four-Lucius’s Choice
The mirrors seemed to loom larger and larger the closer Harry got to them. He could see his own exhausted face reflected in them, and Draco stumbled at his side and reached out with one hand as though to prevent himself from looking at his own expression.
“It’ll be all right,” Harry murmured, and pulled Draco against his side. The surface of the mirrors didn’t seem to offer much in the way of clues, so he examined the carved and ornamented frames instead.
They looked like they were made of green stone. They had coiling serpents on them, and dancing dragons. Harry wondered if that was the symbolism of Draco’s name, or just a general continuation of the serpent theme, but had to admit they would probably never know. It was probably Lucius who had made them that way.
And Lucius wasn’t communicating with any of them right now.
“What kinds of choices did you make while I was gone?” Harry asked, walking slowly around the mirrors. They really did form a perfect triangle, running into each other with no gaps. When he reached out and touched the glass, it was perfectly cold, too, and unyielding. This wasn’t like the mist he and Ron had moved through. “Anything that you think would make your father less likely to come back?”
Draco choked a little, and Harry hugged him. He hated that choke, but he’d had to ask.
“I don’t know,” Draco whispered. “But I must have decided that I didn’t want him back. Mustn’t I? Otherwise he would have come out by now.”
“I don’t know for sure. There’s so little that anyone but Fleur knows about this.”
“Well, at least the mirrors didn’t break and hurt anyone else,” Ron interjected. “So maybe he’s in there and he dislikes you, Malfoy, but he doesn’t hate you enough to hurt you. Or maybe he’s thinking things over.”
Harry caught Ron’s eye, and smiled at him a little. Ron spread his arms in a silent shrug that Harry could read as though Ron had written the words on the air with his wand. I don’t like him, but I’m not going to hurt him.
“I need to be sure.”
“So you didn’t call out to him?” Harry asked. “Pound on the mirrors? Ask him what was going on?”
Draco gave him a startled look that quickly turned into one of those head-tilts where he apparently invited other people to see up his nostrils. “Of course I did. I wanted to know what was going on in there.”
Harry nodded. “Even that kind of thing is a choice. Leaving the mirrors and running away after me would have been one, too, but maybe you concerned him a bit. Especially if he woke up without his memory right away, or with his memories and the house-elf’s mixed.”
“I didn’t realize…” Draco let his voice trail off, and then said strongly, “If any decision we make like that can influence the outcome, then how are we supposed to dare to do anything? I could have condemned Father to death without knowing it!”
Harry actually thought that was less likely to happen, if only because this was the first time Draco had called Lucius “Father” in a week or more. But he nodded and said, “That’s the tricky part about the ritual. Remember? Fleur told us. It’s all about interacting decisions and some of the choices that we don’t even realize we’re making.”
“Why did I go to a magical theorist in the first place?”
Harry slipped his arm around Draco’s shoulders again and hugged him. “Because you wanted your father back. That’s not wrong. We just need to figure out how to make sure that you get him back.” He led Draco up to the mirrors and nodded. “Put your hand flat on that nearest one and tell me what you feel.”
Draco closed his eyes and traced his palm, then his fingers, slowly over the glass. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It doesn’t feel like anything. Flat. Cold. Even.” Draco turned and stared at Harry with the kind of upset that could turn into panic. “What else am I supposed to feel?”
“Nothing in particular,” Harry said soothingly, and wished with all his heart that Fleur’s particular decisions had let her be here in the center of the ritual. “Cold is something, though. Why would the mirrors have a reason to be cold?”
“It’s outside,” Draco said, in the kind of voice that suggested he didn’t have much respect for Harry’s brains. “And all that mist that’s been drifting around was bound to affect the glass somehow.”
“But you’re not cold, are you?” Harry waited until Draco actually shook his head and started concentrating on something other than the mirrors directly in front of him. “So the glass doesn’t have to be cold. What we need to do is figure out why that is, and maybe make the kind of decision that will warm it up.”
“How am I supposed to know that when I don’t know which of my choices made it cold in the first place?”
Harry held Draco lightly until he stopped trembling and the wail in his voice was past, and then said gently, “You don’t know it was you. It could have been Lucius, or me, or Kelvin. But it will be changing something inexplicable, and that means it’s a good place to begin. You see?”
“Not really.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be at your side while we figure this out.”
“And that’s what’s holding me up,” Draco whispered. His fingers curled for a second around the bone of Harry’s arm, so hard that Harry had to hide a wince. “I wouldn’t have been able to go through with this at all if not for you…”
Harry just leaned a warm shoulder against him in support. Draco moved a step or so forwards, his gaze fixed on the mirrors now. He was frowning the way Harry had seen him frown over a potion or a spell, and Harry relaxed. If he could take this as an intellectual puzzle to be solved, instead of something to personally blame himself for, then they’d overcome an important barrier already.
“I don’t think I said anything about not wanting to see my father again,” Draco whispered, and slid a hand over the mirrors, watching them intently. “Or even thought it. I don’t know where Father would have got an idea I did.” Then a spasm passed over his face, and he looked at Harry uncertainly. “Unless it was something I didn’t know I felt, like I hesitated all those years because of.”
“For now, we might as well think that it wasn’t,” Harry told him cheerfully. “Because we should deal with the easy possibilities first and only confront the ones that are harder later.”
Draco snorted a little. “If you use that philosophy to live your life, then some of your decisions make sense to me now that didn’t at the time.” He closed his eyes again, and moved one hand across the mirror as if feeling for imperfections in it. “Did you think anything about my father, Weasley?”
“Just that I wished he would change form from the house-elf already so we could stop this bloody ritual,” said Ron, and Harry suspected he’d been startled into being honest.
“But you didn’t make a decision because of it.”
“No. I went to fight at Harry’s side because I knew the ritual would pull people in who wanted to harm him, and he’s my bloody best mate. Nothing to do with your bloody father.”
Harry thought Draco might bristle at Ron’s tone, but he just nodded as if that all made perfect sense. Well, with the kind of detached mood he was in, maybe it did. Draco continued to move his hands across the mirrors in wide circles that reminded Harry of the motions he used to make when he scrubbed the Dursleys’ counters.
“Then perhaps it was something other Weasleys did,” Draco whispered. “Some force of character, complaint, decision…” He was quiet for a second, and then shook his head. “I can’t know that for sure, and I won’t waste my time worrying about it.”
Harry smiled, his heart bounding. Even for the sake of his father, he hadn’t been sure Draco would be able to put aside his enmity for Harry’s other friends.
Then Draco stretched out his free hand without opening his eyes or taking the other one off the mirrors, and Harry sensed that things might have got hard again. “Come here, Harry. I can’t do this without you.”
If Draco had decided that, then more than likely it was true. Harry slipped up beside him and stood patiently waiting, while Draco’s hand on the mirrors continued to move in those scrubbing circles. Harry stared at his reflection where Draco’s hand had passed, and thought it was a little strange that Draco left no marks at all, no streaks or imperfections.
“I need to think about him,” Draco whispered. “I need to draw him back towards me, and think of him the way he was.” He turned his head towards Harry, still without opening his eyes. “I need you to tell me what you think of him.”
“Why?” Harry swallowed, his mind flooded with memories of Lucius Malfoy that were decidedly not the kind a loving son needed. And they were all he had. If he had ever met Lucius after the war, he wouldn’t know about it. “I think this is something you need to do on your own.”
“But I’m choosing to have you involved. And if you refuse to help me, that’s also a choice.”
Damn Fleur and this magical theory anyway. It seemed to Harry to reach out and encompass so many different things that anything they did could affect the delicate pattern of the ritual, and that meant he could be as responsible as Draco if Lucius didn’t emerge from the house-elf correctly.
On the other hand, so could Fleur and Ron and Hermione and Bill and Kelvin and Lucius himself. A little calmer now that he thought this impossible burden didn’t rest on just his shoulders, Harry nodded and began.
“I think he’s horrible for passing on the diary to Ginny in her first year. It’s true that he might not have known what it would do, but he knew it was a Dark artifact. I saw him trying to get rid of it in Knockturn Alley. And he didn’t care about what a Dark artifact would do to a young girl.”
Draco winced and started to say something, but he changed it to a little indrawn breath and a nod. “Look,” he whispered.
There was a crack in the mirror in front of them, on one of the places where Draco had rubbed his hand without effect.
Draco turned back and finally removed both hands from the mirrors, catching Harry’s. “Say something else,” he whispered. “Say something else that’s honest and true and-” He seemed to struggle for a second. “Loudly expressed.”
Harry snorted, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of Draco’s words or because of what the mirrors seemed to consider worth changing for. “All right. I think he was stupid to become a Death Eater. He could have had a lot of prestige in wizarding society without that, and Voldemort probably wouldn’t have targeted him unless he actively joined the Order of the Phoenix. But he had to let his pride and his idiocy overpower his good judgment. Where did it get him? Being ordered around by someone else. What I thought he was trying to avoid.”
Draco caught his breath, pain shadowing his eyes, but the mirrors responded. With a roar like thunder, another crack split the one in front of them, from side to side. And Harry saw flakes of glass spinning in the air like snow, slicing past him without harming him and falling to the ground.
Harry found himself standing up without remembering how he’d got there. Then he felt Draco pulling on his arm, and snorted to himself. He would bet desperate strength had something to do with it.
“Look through the crack,” Draco was muttering into his ear, as though he had asked once already and Harry had refused. “Please look.”
Harry bent down and looked into the crack, which ripped across the whole surface of the mirror he could see but was at the height of his knees, which made it a little inconvenient. He couldn’t see much, honestly. A red darkness, and something bright green in it that pulsed. Harry started. It reminded him of the Killing Curse Voldemort had cast at him in the Forbidden Forest.
“Can you see it?” Draco was looking at him with appealing eyes.
“It?” Harry had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing, just that the thing he’d briefly glimpsed through the crack didn’t look like Lucius or the house-elf.
“The thing he’s turning into,” Draco said impatiently, and before Harry could stop him, he grabbed the edge of the crack and yanked, hard.
A piece of glass stabbed into his palm, making Harry grab his wrist and try to hold him back, but more than that, another long piece broke off. And the crack was spreading now, into the mirrors that stood on either side of the original one, forming the perfect triangle. Harry did think that maybe he could see a leg through the cracks, and one of a pair of hands.
But if he could, so far Lucius wasn’t doing much. Just standing there with his hands dangling down beside his legs, Harry thought.
“We have to get him out of there,” Draco whispered. “I think he’s human-shaped again. So why is he just standing there?”
“Maybe that’s one of the decisions he has to make for himself?” Ron offered from behind them. Harry actually leaped in surprise. He hadn’t realized Ron was there. Ron gave him a sheepish smile, but focused on Draco. “If he doesn’t want to come out, then you could cause harm if you try to force him.”
Draco glared at Ron. “But I already made the choice to break the mirrors,” he said. “And so did Harry. That means we can’t cause as much harm now. We made the decisions. We have to live with them.”
“And so does he.” Ron nodded at the unmoving person just barely visible through the cracks in the mirrors again. “Let him stay there until he’s decided if he’s coming out as a human or a house-elf, at least.”
“You think he might decide to stay an elf?”
Draco looked as though someone had launched lightning at him. Harry couldn’t blame him. He had assumed without thinking about it that of course Lucius would decide to separate from the elf, too.
But if he felt unsafe, or felt that he was being pulled and urged on in ways that weren’t of his choice…
“We can’t know that,” Harry said. “But I think I’ve done as much as I can. You’re the one who has to welcome him back. You’re his son. You’re the one who knows him the best, and the one who took all these risks for him.”
Draco started and stared at Harry as if he hated the reminder. “You shouldn’t say that,” he whispered. “I didn’t take enough risks, or I would have started this long ago.”
“Without a magical theorist to construct the ritual and reassure you that you could do it?” Harry kept his voice as quiet and as teasing as he could, even though he was also reaching for Draco’s hand and pulling him forwards. “Without me to help you along? Don’t be silly, Draco. But welcome your father now.”
Draco hovered for one moment more, staring at the mirrors as if he thought every shard would cut him. And then he nodded and pushed forwards. His voice was trembling a little when he called, “Father?”
Another large piece of the mirror fell away from the glass. Draco jumped, but kept his gaze on the indistinct figure he could just see through the cracks. Harry waited with him, wondering if he should back away-Lucius probably wouldn’t want to see him-but unable to abandon Draco.
“Father, come out. It’s your son, and I’m ready to welcome you back.”
Another piece of glass fell out of the mirrors. And then all of the panels cracked and crisped and seemed to freeze from the inside. Maybe they were, Harry thought wildly. He didn’t see how Lucius could have got a wand, but on the other hand, you could do all sorts of things with the wild magic of the ritual.
Lucius Malfoy stepped out.
He was naked, which Harry averted his eyes from at once, and he heard Ron muttering uncomfortably behind them. But Draco didn’t seem to be worried. He stepped towards his father as if mesmerized. Harry let go of his hand.
“Father,” Draco whispered.
Lucius stared at his son, and said nothing. Then he leaned forwards and reached out with one hand. Draco caught it. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d kissed it, although he didn’t. They stared at each other in silence. Harry was afraid even to swallow through the thick throbbing in his throat.
Then Lucius slapped Draco calmly-one cheek, the other, and on his mouth as Draco staggered. He turned and walked towards the far side of the meadow, ignoring the rest of them as cleanly as if they were invisible.
Draco stood in place, raising one hand to his right cheek. He didn’t act as though he’d noticed the other slaps. He just stood there.
Harry came up to him and put one arm around his shoulders. Draco accepted the support, his eyes still on Lucius as he walked away.
Harry was glad that he was close enough to hear the little mutter Draco made.
“Even that’s his choice.”
And then Draco closed his eyes in obvious weariness and sagged against him, and Harry led him gently away, towards the end of the meadow and the end of the ritual.
Chapter Forty-Five.
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