Harry Potter and the Unsettling Discovery

Harry Potter and the Unsettling Discovery

Ch. 8

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.--Elie Wiesel

Harry was flabbergasted. Not knowing what to do or say, he merely looked down at Draco. He tried to assimilate all he had heard with his already complicated thoughts about the Slytherin. He had forgotten Dumbledore was there until the man cleared his throat. Harry looked up to see the older wizard scrutinizing him.

"I don't think I did, sir. I mean, if it's not even possible... how could I do it without knowing it?"

"Harry, this isn't the first time you have confounded Voldemort in his proceedings; doing something that had never been done, no less. Have you forgotten that you are still the only person to ever survive a killing curse?"

"That wasn't me. If my mother hadn't..." Harry trailed off, lost in his own thoughts. The killing curse had failed because of his mother's love for him. It was a protection given to him, not a conscious act on his part to fight off the curse. Her love had merely acted as a shield. Shielding is a passive thing, very different that affecting changes in the environment or in others, which implies action, or at least thought.

Harry realized that he had been staring glassily at nothing in particular for some time. He looked up at Dumbledore, still not knowing what to say.

-- -- -- -- --

Draco woke panicked and confused. The room around him wasn't his dormitory, he could tell by the moonlight spilling through the window. That was the drawback to living in the dungeons, no windows. There was a torch on the wall, and along with the moon it illuminated the room just enough to clue Draco in on where he was.

When he recognized it as the hospital wing, his memory came flooding back to him. He had played quidditch with Harry. Harry had seen The Dark Mark. The look on Harry's face when he saw what it was would be permanently seared into Draco's mind. The fear, the hurt, the confusion; Draco understood it all too well.

He had tried to stop Harry from running away, even if he had no way to explain everything. When he tried to run after Harry, a pain in his chest brought him to his knees. The mark blazed on his arm as if he were being branded. His whole body burned, and then there was nothing.

Draco was so filled with shame he felt like he was drowning. He knew the marking was not his fault, but still he felt shame. He hated the fact that he had caused Harry more pain, Harry had had enough of that in his life, and now Draco knew all about it.

He had always wondered why everyone thought Harry was so special. He had never seen Harry as anything but the cocky Gryffindor mascot who pranced around enjoying everyone's admiration served to him on a silver platter. Whose life was easy because he was everyone's favourite 'hero' who could do whatever he wanted and no one would dare speak against him.

But now Draco had had the chance to see Harry through another person's eyes, and every myth and misconception he had entertained about the Gryffindor had shattered into pieces at Draco's feet. When you see Harry Potter through the eyes of Lord Voldemort, your whole world is likely to change.

-- -- -- -- --

After he had arrived at Malfoy Manor he had been informed that he was meeting with Voldemort to take on The Dark Mark and join the ranks of the Death Eaters. Though Draco was fiercely proud of his heritage and family history, he had never really personally subscribed to his father's ideals. Parroting his father's teachings about mudbloods was one thing, but actually killing someone...

When Draco tried to voice his objection to the marking, his father silenced him. That was when his mother had stepped in. Draco had heard of some of the things his father had supposedly done on Voldemort's orders, but an abstract notion of violence could not compare to the very physical manifestation he witnessed in response to his mother's attempts to protect Draco. The image of his mother magically healing her own broken jaw was the last thing Draco saw before his father grabbed him and apparated him away.

The reports of his father's activities as a death eater never quite fit in with his image of the man, so Draco had always dismissed them as exaggerations. Draco and Lucius had never been close. If describing their relationship honestly, Draco would have admit that Lucius had always felt more like an overseer or administrator than a father or role model. Still, the fact that he could so blatantly harm his own wife, the one person Draco loved, split Draco's world in two.

They arrived outside a worn castle, and Draco was too stunned to do anything but stand there. He felt his father place the imperious curse on him, but none of the light happiness he had experienced when the fake Moody had put them all under it in fourth year had clouded his mind. Even as his body gave in to his father's commands, his mind and soul felt nothing but pain, pain over his shattered image of his father, pain because of his empathy toward his mother, pain over the fact that his father would think so little of him as to give him blindly over to a Dark Wizard without a modicum of hesitation, almost joyfully.

His consciousness was brought along for the ride, but like a satellite orbiting the earth, he felt detached from everything that was going on. Playing the marionette to Lucius's puppet master, his body did as directed but his mind was lost in pain. He was vaguely aware of his body completing a chant, and drinking from a goblet full of blood, but he experienced these things as if looking down from above through a heavy fog, not as a participant.

He sensed that Voldemort was pointing a wand at his body, and then his awareness was filled with a flash of pure white light. He saw images and scenes, he felt emotions, he thought thoughts, none of which were his own. They belonged to Voldemort. As the light faded Draco had found himself bowing before Voldemort. He looked down and saw The Dark Mark on his arm. Was that what was supposed to happen? He looked up and saw that Voldemort was looking down at him, a satisfied expression on his face. Death eaters surrounded him, slapping him on the back and offering congratulations. He turned to go and made eye contact with his father, who nodded at him. He walked past the man without acknowledgement and left.

Once out of range of the shield charms, Draco apparated randomly with no real destination in mind. He was therefore surprised to find himself in Hogsmeade. He let his feet take him where they pleased, not stopping until he found himself inside Hogwarts castle, in front of the door to the headmaster's office.

He had hesitated for only a minute, not knowing what he was going to say. It was Dumbledore's parting words of only a few hours earlier, his offer that his door was always open, that had given Draco the nerve he needed to knock.

He had gone in and explained everything, shaking the whole time. Reliving it all, he had been surprised to find himself crying. Dumbledore's reaction had surprised him even more, as he rose from the big chair behind his desk and placed a comforting hand on Draco's shoulder.

The scenes and thoughts that had filled his mind during the marking reformulated, and Draco divulged all he had seen. He told of his servant, Severus Snape, bringing him information about a prophecy. He told of visiting a house in the middle of the night to kill the subject of the prophecy, but failing. He told of attempting to steal the stone, and the young boy's thwarting of his attempts. He told of the graveyard, and the way the boy had fought and escaped. He told of a trap to get the boy into the department of mysteries, and the fight that had ensued. He told of his latest attempt to take over the ministry, and how the boy had again fought, always frustrating his plans at every turn. All this he told as if from Voldemort's point of view, which did not seem to disturb Dumbledore as much as it did Draco. Finally, with the big picture put together as it was, Draco was filled with nothing but questions.

Though some of what he had seen seemed to coincide with reported accounts of certain events, he didn't really know what to think. After explaining everything he had seen to Dumbledore, he had to ask the question, "Do you think all of these things were real?"

"I believe you gained access to some of Lord Voldemort's memories."

"How," Draco asked, and before Dumbledore had a chance to put forth a hypothesis, Draco added, "and why did they all have to do with Potter?"

"THAT," Dumbledore said with authority, gazing over his spectacles at the Slytherin, "is an excellent question."

After repeated meetings with his head of house and the headmaster, they had come to the conclusion that Draco's Dark Mark was anything but typical. Unfortunately, though it did not perform its intended function of alerting him when Voldemort called, it did still resist any attempt to alter or remove it. Draco didn't feel like a death eater, but it was hard to ignore the Mark when Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape and Minerva McGonagall, three of the most powerful and talented witches and wizards of the age, could do nothing to remove it.

Draco was surprised that the most life altering effect of his meeting with the dark lord was not his coming away with a permanent mark of evil upon his body, but the incite he had received about Harry Potter. After that day, his whole life and everything he thought had undergone a frame-shift, and had to be re-evaluated. He had once thought Harry was a nuisance and an annoyance, but now he saw what made Harry so special in everyone's eyes, and so important to them all.

Dumbledore had refused to elaborate on the memory Draco had experienced about the prophecy, but from the fear he felt when reliving it, and the fear he felt in each of the subsequent encounters with Harry he was forced to relive, Draco could ascertain the gist of it.

Also from his forced reliving of Voldemort's fights with Harry, Draco finally got a full sense of Harry's power. Draco has always wondered why Voldemort seemed to take such priority in focusing on Harry when powerful wizards like Dumbledore were on his tail. Now Draco knew. When he relived the scene in the graveyard, and his wand connected with Harry's, he could feel that Harry was a singularly powerful wizard, and despite Dumbledore's obvious fondness of the boy, Draco suspected that only Voldemort and himself were privy to the true potential strength that Harry possessed. Again in his reliving of the events that occurred in the ministry at the end of sixth year, Draco felt Harry's strength. The Strength he had felt during his run-in with Harry in the hallway right before he had been given The Mark did not come close to revealing even a fraction of what Harry had inside.

Draco gained a new sense of respect for Harry, and once his misconceptions about the Gryffindor were out of the way, Draco came to appreciate other qualities the Gryffindor possessed. He had magical strength, of course, but there was more to it than that. The outwardly priggish "Gryffindor mentality" that Potter seemed to exude, when you knew how to see through your own false assumptions, could be properly identified as strength of character. If Draco had taken the time to seriously evaluate his changing feelings toward Harry, he would have noted his growing appreciation for Harry's sarcastic wit, charmingly good looks, and a certain charisma that had once annoyed the stuffing out of Draco, but now left him feeling warm and tingly whenever the Gryffindor was around.

Draco had shared some of his thoughts about his classmate with Dumbledore on many occasions, and though the head spoke rarely on the subject, and was careful not to give too much away, his receptiveness was helpful. More than that of Severus, who would bristle and become moody when the Gryffindor was mentioned. Draco found that Dumbledore acted as a good bouncing board when Draco felt confused about his changing feelings toward Harry. Mostly, he liked that Dumbledore didn't complain if he dwelled on the subject too often or too long. On the contrary, the headmaster simply seemed to be amused by Draco's penchant for the subject of Harry Potter.

On one occasion Draco had ended one of their conversations with the ambiguous declaration, "There's something about Harry."

"There is," Dumbledore replied, looking delightedly over his spectacles at Draco, "isn't there?"

-- -- -- -- --

Draco looked down at the mark on his arm. In the low light of the hospital wing at night, he could only see vague dark lines against his pale skin. If only he could live permanently in low light, people would never see that he was marked by evil. Draco only felt regret that Harry had already seen the mark.

End Chapter Eight