Chapter Five of 'Forgive Those Who Trespass'- Treacherous Memories

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five—Treacherous Memories

Harry forced himself to open his eyes and watch the continuation of the memory. Malfoy had deceived him, of course, and he would not forgive himself for falling for the trap. But at least he had become aware of the deception before it could advance far, and there might be more clues in the Pensieve as to why Malfoy would do such a thing.

Had he been betrayed? Maybe he had, but God knew what he had done in the meantime. If he had been responsible for helping to recruit others—if he had tortured and killed and harmed others in the name of getting the Dark Mark off his arm—

Harry licked his lips and calmed his fears by sheer force, the way he had compelled himself to study for exams during the Auror training. He would miss details of the memory, important nuances, if he continued to focus on himself. He watched as the strange man and Malfoy touched their wands together, and a spark of diamond light passed from one to the other. It wasn’t a spell Harry recognized, but he could describe it well enough; the spark flared like magnesium in water. He might be able to get an answer from Malfoy about it.

If I can trust anything he says.

Really, the yawning pit of betrayal in his stomach made no sense. He hadn’t had the time to form a friendship with Malfoy of the kind that would regard such concealment as a treachery. And he should have known, would have known, that Malfoy was capable of something like this if he had kept a clear head. It was only his horrified pity that had made him ignore his own memories of the past.

No longer, he thought, and then started as the memory spun around him and became another place, a smaller but brighter room with large enchanted windows lining the walls. Malfoy was leaning on the edge of a round wooden table, staring down at something in the middle of it. Harry sidled closer, reluctant to come into contact even with this memory Malfoy, but wanting to know what could make him look so grave. A chess game?

But no, he was toying with a series of red and blue counters that looked like fat marbles. Harry frowned.

“Ah, Draco,” said a familiar voice, and the bearded stranger moved into the room. He wore casual robes now instead of Unspeakable gray, but Harry was sure of his identification. “You haven’t yet decided which position those balls should go in?” He chuckled and took off his cloak, hanging it from a hook next to the door he’d entered by. Harry glanced at it quickly; there were wet stains on it, already diminishing, but recognizable when he saw a gleam of white next to one of them. Melting snowflakes. Had this scene taken place last winter?

“Not yet, Richard,” said Malfoy, and flung his head back. Harry controlled a sneer at the sight of his face, which was free of the shadows that haunted the face of the real Malfoy waiting in the room behind him. I suppose his actions haven’t come to recoil on him yet, so he’s been eating and sleeping perfectly well. “I do think I’m close, though. There are only so many orders that Sir Galen could have arranged those marbles in, and I’ve duplicated his invention more or less exactly.” He glanced at the wooden table again. “The more combinations I try and which prove nonsensical, the fewer I still have to try.”

Harry frowned. The name Sir Galen was familiar from his Auror training—some ancient wizard who had been working on learning the secret of immortality, but without the use of the Philosopher’s Stone—but he had to let it go for now, so he could keep up with the conversation.

“That’s the same thing you said last week, Draco,” Richard murmured. He had a goblet of some drink in his hand now; a glance sideways didn’t enable Harry to tell what it was. “And the week before that, and the week before that…”

And, just like that, the atmosphere in the room had changed. Before, Harry would have said that the two men were friends, or at least colleagues, the way he was with most of the other trainees in the Auror Department. Now Richard watched Malfoy with no trace of a smile, and his hand on the stem of the goblet was too tight. And Malfoy had folded his arms as if he were cold, his eyes narrowed and speculative, the way Harry had seem him look when he was trying to figure out a way to use Umbridge to his advantage.

“The more time passes, the larger my chances of breaking the code are,” Malfoy said quietly. He lifted his head and shook his hair back. Harry could see an added pallor to his skin now, and decided, reluctantly, that he hadn’t been completely unaffected by his stay with the Unspeakables. “If you had permitted me to try translation charms and rearranging charms from the beginning—“

“Absolutely not!” Richard snapped. His hand tightened again; Harry was vaguely surprised that he hadn’t crushed the goblet altogether. “Those parchments are too delicate for such advanced magic, which literally breaks apart and reforms the material the letters are written on. Even if they were yours in the beginning, I can’t let you simply manipulate them now.”

Harry glanced back at Malfoy, and saw him jerk a little, as if he had just figured out the answer to a problem that had been plaguing him. Other than that motion, though, no trace of surprise showed on his face. He simply nodded a little and hummed under his breath. “Just so. And then constructing this invention took me some time. But I will understand it. And, in fact—“ He faced the table and lifted his wand.

The red and blue balls began to roll together with a series of clacking sounds. Harry scanned them desperately, but he couldn’t make out what they were doing, other than sliding along grooves and channels and corners carved into the table. There were symbols he didn’t recognize cut in delicate flame-like patterns next to the grooves. It looked like the world’s most complicated game of billiards.

The balls spiraled around each other in a dizzy series of turns, which made Harry shake his head and squint; if something important happened in the next few moments, he wanted to be able to see it, not dozens of dancing spots across his eyesight. He did notice that there was a large, dimpled depression in the center of the table into which all the balls eventually settled, except for nine which halted in various places on the carved pattern and remained as if nailed there. Harry scanned those still balls, looking for a pattern. Seven were blue and two red; he couldn’t tell what that meant, if anything.

Finally every other ball was still, and Malfoy looked up expectantly at Richard, who was frowning and rapping his fingers on the tabletop.

“But we knew, already, that most of them must go to the center,” he said. “We knew that. The problem is—“

“The problem is the ones along the way,” Malfoy interrupted, his face shining with a scholar’s passion that made Harry think of Hermione, and then scold himself for the comparison. “Where should they go? Where do we put them so as to fracture the pattern appropriately and set up lines of magic that will help the walker to achieve true immortality?” He gestured at the maze in front of him. “I’ve placed them at last.”

With a soft exclamation, Richard bent over the table. Harry stared at the pattern again, relaxing his mind and letting the visual observation skills that Auror Gillyflower had tried to pound into his head take over. He was fairly sure that he could remember the position of the balls when he returned to the real world, though asking him to remember all the twists and turns of the maze was impossible.

Well, I’m sure Malfoy will be able to remember when he gets these images back, Harry thought viciously.

“Yes,” Richard murmured. “Yes, I see.” He tapped the third ball abruptly, one of the red ones. “Why is this here, though? Sir Galen’s notes seem to call for it to be on the fourth turn, not this straight path.”

“That’s one of the precautions he took, sir.” Malfoy’s voice was extremely smug, reminding Harry of the times that he’d got a potion right before the rest of the class. “Place the balls in the wrong order or the wrong settings, and the maze will become nothing more than a giant trap for everyone inside it.”

Harry cursed under his breath. Was that what had happened to the Department of Mysteries? Had they tried to enact this spell or build this maze, in order to create a pattern of sorts they could walk to achieve immortality, and been caught in it?

Except he still didn’t understand how they would bring a pattern carved on a table to life. It was one thing to decode a message; it was another to create corridors to imitate the twists and turns he saw splayed out before him. And what about the flame-like symbols next to it, and the balls themselves? What did they represent?

Neither Richard nor Malfoy seemed overly concerned about that, however. They were chattering happily to each other about increasingly abstruse magical theory. Harry stood with his arms folded across his chest, waiting for the memory to stop and release him from the Pensieve. He had a few things to say to the present-day Malfoy about playing with ancient magic and the consequences he deserved for doing so.

When the memory shifted, however, it plunged him into darkness, instead of releasing him. Harry came up abruptly on alert, his wand clutched in his hand, and stared in several directions, even though he knew nothing here could hurt him.

Maybe. After the discussion he’d watched Malfoy and the Unspeakable having, Harry wouldn’t have put it past them to trap a Pensieve in some way.

A moment later, light flared through the darkness. Harry turned and tracked it towards a small firepit in the center of a floor that might be wood or might be stone; the flames didn’t throw enough light to make it out. Malfoy stood not far from the fire, one hand over his mouth, his eyes large. Harry could hear his quick, unsteady breaths. A woman stood across from him, clad in the gray of the Unspeakables. Her hair was gray, too, though more the color of iron than ashes, and her eyes were large and dark. Harry winced. Her face was distorted with the same unhealthiness that plagued Malfoy’s now. Was he watching the point at which Malfoy had tortured the first of his victims?

But the woman had a wand in her hand, and she was speaking softly but urgently to Malfoy. Harry edged nearer.

“You know this has to be done, Draco,” she said. “I am never one to argue for unnecessary sacrifices. This is needed. You know it.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t—“ Malfoy shut his eyes and shook his head. In that moment, he looked very young, as he had in the memories Harry had seen where Voldemort was ordering him to torture someone else. Harry squashed the sympathy that thought stirred up. Malfoy had had no choice in that situation. Here, he had, and had got himself into water deeper than his head. Harry didn’t have to feel sorry for him now.

“This is only the first step on a long road,” the woman said. “But think of what we gain at the end! True immortality, without the price paid by those who try to drink unicorns’ blood! Common immortality, not dependent on the rare Philosophers’ Stones that miserly alchemists clutch to themselves! Immortality that leaves the mind and soul intact along with the flesh, unlike what we have found in the transformations! Isn’t this worth a few broken limbs and lost lives along the way? Besides, they were only criminals, Draco. And we didn’t promise any of them they would survive, only that they would be free from Azkaban during the time we were using them.”

“My father was thrown in Azkaban once,” said Malfoy, so lowly that Harry was surprised his companion heard him. She reached across the fire, though, and clasped his hands between hers.

“And you are a different breed of man than he was, Draco,” she said, her voice soaring, rich and warm. It reminded Harry, a very little, of the way that Hermione got when she was trying to persuade him and Ron to care about house-elf rights. “You are a better fit for this new world we are constructing. Your father thought only in terms of petty power, ambition fit to control people but not benefit them. Am I right? From what you told me about him, he couldn’t even foresee the consequences of his own actions, or he wouldn’t have begun to serve under a madman.”

“That’s true,” Malfoy said. “But, Pearl—“ Harry started, until he realized it must be the woman’s name “—I can’t see things like that happen and not question. It’s not possible. When Richard first brought me here, I thought what we did would be—theory. Not, not this.” He made a little gesture at the fire.

Harry glanced at the fire, wondering for a moment if Malfoy was seeing images in it. And then he gagged, and put a hand over his mouth, since he wasn’t sure what would happen if he vomited in a Pensieve. The fire’s kindling wasn’t wood. Harry could make out a gaping mouth and eyes under the flames, and ears, and sockets where limbs should have been. The compact, folded human body, which might have been female, was sprouting fire from every possible orifice, and Harry thought she was still alive.

“It’s rather shocking at first, yes,” Pearl said soothingly. “But, don’t you see, each time we do this, we move a bit further towards final knowledge, Draco!” Her hands stroked his, soothingly, caressingly. “We see what the human body can endure. We can detach limbs now, and make them live. We can take immortality from magical creatures, and we’re beginning to be able to apply their magic to ourselves. We show that someone can burn, and burn, and not die. And when we give that knowledge to people who deserve it, they’ll be able to walk alive out of burning buildings. No longer will parents fear having their children incinerate themselves with accidental magic or tumble headlong into fires.”

Harry shivered, hating this Pearl woman already. He wouldn’t have been convinced by the arguments, he thought, not with the atrocities happening right in front of him, and if Malfoy was, then he had already been looking for an excuse in the first place. At least he didn’t look at the burning woman as he held his inner debate. Harry supposed that was a sign of compassion.

Or squeamishness. Or not being able to face the consequences of one’s actions.

“I can’t say you’re right,” Malfoy whispered. “Not completely. But I’ll stay a little while longer. Richard has promised that we can get away from this kind of research soon, and start actually changing the state of our own bodies.” His right hand rose and brushed over his left arm, and Harry knew what he was thinking of. “I hope so.”

“Of course we will.” Pearl took his arm and started walking him away from the fire, into the depths of the dim room. “And just think what we’ll be able to accomplish soon. You can look as young and handsome as this forever. You’ve told me you don’t want to age. And of course no one wants to die. We’ll be able to—“

The memory dissolved there, and Harry found himself rising to the surface of the Pensieve again. He stood there for long moments, gasping, his hands locked on his wand and the empty air. Slowly, he leaned back from the Pensieve, and his empty hand clenched into a fist.

He turned to find Malfoy waiting not far away, his eyes wide and inquiring. Harry wasn’t sure what the expression on his own face looked like, but Malfoy flinched as if he’d been struck a blow.

“These are your memories,” Harry said. How he managed to keep back the impulse to shout and scream and curse, he’d never know. Maybe he just didn’t want to warn Malfoy of what would happen when he gave the memories back. His voice was empty and polite. “And I think it’s important that you see them.”

He dipped his wand into the bowl and cast the spell that would attach the memories as sticky silver strands to the end of it. Then he stalked towards Malfoy, who looked at him with a nervous fluttering of his eyelashes and tilting of his head, but made no attempt to run away. Harry was grimly glad. He would get some of what he deserved, when he saw what he’d done. And maybe then he’d drop the innocent act that had made Harry almost feel sorry for him.

Another whispered word, and the strands of memory uncurled and whipped back into Malfoy’s temple. He stood there with wide eyes for a moment, blinking, as if he had expected the transfer to hurt more.

And then he made a little jerking motion, like a rabbit caught in a trap, and buried his head in his hands. His fingers were so short, however, that he could barely hide his cheeks, never mind his eyes. Harry hadn’t anticipated that effect of his mutilated hands.

He stood with his arms folded, waiting, wondering what excuses Malfoy would come up with to keep him around. Heat and cold pulsed over his body in alternating waves. He debated whether he should cast a spell that hid him from sight and simply walk away from Malfoy. God knew the prat, weakened from torture and his own bodily “modifications,” would never be able to catch him up.

Or maybe Harry should look him in the eye and say, “You disgust me,” first. Malfoy might shatter at those words. Harry didn’t think it likely, but if he could just see guilt in those gray eyes, then maybe—

Malfoy screamed.

Harry only knew it because he was watching him, waiting for the moment when the excuses would start. Malfoy’s mouth was open, his eyes shut so tightly it looked as if they hurt, and he was clawing at his cheeks with the ineffective stubs of his fingers.

Harry had taken a step forwards before he thought about it, before he knew what possessed him. He hesitated a moment. Did he really want to stop Malfoy? Shouldn’t he let the bastard inflict pain on himself, to make reparations for all the pain he’d caused, and stood around and watched without stopping?

He clenched his own fingers into his palms as he watched Malfoy fall to his knees and curl up into a ball, whimpering. He recalled the image of the burning woman and tried to paste it on the inside of his eyelids, so that he could remember Malfoy deserved every bit of guilt and horror from the newly reacquired memories he could stand—

And then he cursed helplessly and knelt down, wrapping his arms around Malfoy. He didn’t deserve comfort, or he probably didn’t deserve it, but Harry couldn’t stand to watch someone suffering like that in front of him and do nothing. The burning woman was in the past; he couldn’t help her. But Malfoy was quivering like the spider that the Barty Crouch had put under the Cruciatus Curse all those years ago, and Harry wasn’t made of stern enough stuff to stand there and let it continue.

Malfoy flinched away from him at first, probably assuming Harry was Richard, or at least that Harry wanted to hurt him, and Harry had to call him “Draco” three times and soothingly stroke his hair before he would unfold and let Harry close. Then his arms wrapped around Harry hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs. Harry gasped a little and kept up the stroking and murmuring, calling himself ten kinds of fool as he did it. This is what lets criminals win, because the actual Aurors are too compassionate, he thought, recalling a lesson that Auror Peabody, the most scarred person Harry had ever met except for Mad-Eye Moody, had told him. Peabody had tried to be kind to an old woman who had committed murders out of rage over the death of her only child, and lost two of his limbs, three of his fingers, and one of his ears as a consequence.

But his traitorous body ignored him and went on holding Malfoy. Malfoy shook in a way that made Harry think he’d be heaving sobs if he could make a sound, and went on doing it for far longer than seemed healthy. But Harry wasn’t Hermione, who would have known the perfect spell for the occasion, and he wasn’t Ron, who would have had better sense than to try and comfort a torturer. He was just stupid Harry Potter, himself, and more alone than he’d ever been, since he couldn’t trust his only companion anymore.

How long they knelt there, he didn’t know; long enough for his knees to ache, anyway. Finally, Malfoy gave a little whuff of air, felt and not heard, and then collapsed against Harry. Harry rose awkwardly to his feet and stood there with him, in turn, until Malfoy pulled himself back and stared up at Harry.

He stretched out a hand, beckoning. It took Harry a moment to realize he wanted the glass globe. He shrugged and fetched it with a wave of his wand. His compassion was retreating, his caution asserting itself full force. But the only way Malfoy could make the sphere into a weapon would be to hurl it at him, and Harry was the one with the magic to catch and turn a missile like that.

Malfoy touched the sphere, and then stopped and closed his eyes. Harry blinked when he realized that apparently the words Malfoy wanted to say were nowhere in the immense list of phrases they’d compiled.

When the prat turned to him with desperate, drowning eyes, though, Harry thought he knew what they were.

“You’re sorry,” he said, as flatly as he could.

A frantic nod. Malfoy crossed the ground between them so fast that Harry had no time to blink, and then he was burrowing uncomfortably into Harry’s chest, the globe trapped between them, getting his wrists and palms all tangled up in Harry’s robes. Harry rolled his eyes to the ceiling and permitted that for a moment before he spoke up with his plan.

“I’ll take you back to the staircase upwards. There has to be a way to get past that room full of flesh and the shadow-wolf. You can go to safety, and I’ll—“

Malfoy was a few inches away from him in moments, his eyes glittering with outrage and his hands firmly poised on the glass. A few taps, and he had found the facet that meant No and touched it.

“You have to,” Harry hissed at him, exasperated. “I don’t care how sorry you are.” Malfoy flinched from his tone. “I can’t trust you anymore. And I can’t have someone at my back in these situations whom I don’t trust.”

Malfoy lowered his eyelids and appeared to be deep in thought for a moment. Then he looked up and mouthed at Harry, again using the exaggerations of his lips so Harry could be sure to understand the words, This is a maze.

“I get that now,” Harry said coolly. “And I think I know who’s responsible for it being that way, too.”

Another flinch, but Malfoy didn’t back off. I know the way through.

And Harry cursed himself for not putting that memory of the grooves on the table into his own head when he had a chance.

“You won’t tell me, will you?” he asked.

Malfoy shook his head.

“I don’t understand why you even want to stay with me,” said Harry, crossly, uncomfortable and hating the feeling that he didn’t know exactly what the right thing to do was. Heroes always should. “You’ve got to know it’s immensely dangerous. And up above, you might be able to find someone to heal you.”

Malfoy tapped the globe and chose the facet that meant Revenge, then went to the sarcastic phrases facet and chose You idiot Gryffindor.

“Apparently,” Harry muttered, and raked a hand through his hair. He wanted Ron and Hermione back with him so badly it was a physical ache, spreading through his chest and down towards his toes.

And if he wanted them back with him, he had to follow the only guide he had. He could always arrest Malfoy later, when everyone was safely out of the Department of Mysteries.

And he had the wand.

“Fine,” he said, gesturing with his head beyond the Pensieve. “Come on, then.”

Malfoy smiled triumphantly, but then chose the facet of the globe that meant Thank you.

“Don’t thank me,” Harry muttered as they began to walk again. His back prickled, and he shifted until Malfoy was where he could see him. “We’ll both end up dead in some horrid way, and then you’ll be sorry that you didn’t take an out when I offered you one.”

Headshake, and another triumphant smile. Harry quietly tightened his grip on his wand. From now on, he would be watching, and he would not let compassion get the better of him in the end.

Chapter 6.

Comments

[shukuun.livejournal.com]

Oh Harry. I don't know if he could let go of his compassion--and I hope he doesn't, for Draco's sake.

Looking forward to the next chapter! Cant' wait to see what happens next. =)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

He probably can't. But it's another of those times when he's gloomily convinced that anyone else acting in his place would do a better job.

And thank you!