Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ancient and Noble Houses	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 29877 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fourteen—Manipulating the Manipulator
            Draco froze for so long a second that Potter’s tongue was almost in his mouth before he responded. And then he raised his hands and shoved Potter back, hard.
            Potter staggered, his tongue flicking up and down for a second, looking like a snake’s. He stared at Draco as if he couldn’t imagine why Draco would force him away from the kiss, and there was so much outrage there—Potter outrage, not Black outrage—that Draco thought he knew what would happen in a second. Potter would get angry.
            Not a good start for manipulating him by the strings of his desire.
            Draco had to decide what to do now more quickly than he had reacted. Luckily, he knew the way.
            He folded his arms and looked loftily off to the side. “Honestly, Potter,” he said. “Do you think I would kiss you, be with you, if there wasn’t something in it for me? So far, there’s nothing. You threatened me into helping you, and I saw what you did to Kreacher. How do I know that you wouldn’t just torture me if I did something that displeased you, like breathing in the wrong way?”
            “Not you. I would never hurt you.”
            Draco swung his head sharply around, the nape of his neck prickling. Potter was looking at him with eyes gone so liquid a deep green that Draco couldn’t tell what he was feeling from them. But the way Potter had come back towards him, and lifted a hand to stroke Draco’s hair, spoke his feelings all too well.
            Draco caught his breath, and struck Potter’s hand away.
            Potter’s eyes flashed, but, perhaps sensitive to the insinuation Draco had made, he halted and watched Draco carefully instead. Draco sneered back at him.
            “You wouldn’t have been able to imagine hurting a house-elf this time last month, either,” Draco said. “The changes you’re going through are the house, all the house. Hurting Kreacher. Desiring me. There’s no way that I can trust you.”
            “I can give you something to trust, something to hang onto,” Potter whispered, with a sheer ferocity of tone that might have melted Draco’s resolve in other contexts. “What do I have to do to convince you to trust me?”
            Draco straightened his back, slowly. He had thought he would have a long tussle with Potter before he got to this point. On the other hand, Potter was pretty new to manipulation himself, and the Black house couldn’t make him subtle, it seemed. Only angrier.
            Draco waited a few seconds, just to make sure this wasn’t some sort of sadistic trick played by Potter’s new Black nature, and then cleared his throat. “I want you to make a vow to me. One that you can’t alter.”
            “An Unbreakable Vow?” Potter’s eyes flickered off to the side.
            Draco grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t share the same bad memories of Unbreakable Vows that Potter did, but they had haunted his life for some of the same reasons. “No. A vow on your magic and hands.”
            Potter looked at him again, and there was fire in that gaze. Draco shivered a little, and wondered how much was naturally Potter’s and how much the house had given him. And how had anyone who was trying to evaluate Potter in the past not noticed? Bellatrix and the Dark Lord had seemed to think Potter was weak, through and through. But Draco didn’t think the house could change him that much.
            “What will that do?” Potter sounded fascinated for the vow’s own sake, not something Draco had expected.
            As it happened, though, Draco could tell the truth. “It will keep your magic from hurting me or restraining me, and it’ll yank your hands back if they go to places I don’t want them to go.”
            Potter paused, as if consulting with some voice in the back of his head. Why not? Draco thought. Bellatrix had done the same thing sometimes. It was probably part of being mad.
            Then Potter smiled. “Even the magic of the Black heir?” he whispered, reaching out and trialing a finger from Draco’s wrist up to his elbow.
            Draco ignored the finger even when it went under his sleeve, holding Potter’s gaze and not looking away. The most important thing he could do right now was get Potter to swear the vow. If that included standing still, he would. “Yes. If you phrase it the right way.”
            Potter half-closed his eyes and took his hand off. Draco waited, his heart kicking his ribs unmercifully. He wanted this to succeed, and not only because it would make it easier to help Potter get rid of the house’s influence—if they could—and free himself from the power of someone who could command Draco so unnervingly to obey him.
            He also wanted it because, if controlled and forced to smolder, Potter’s fire promised a more exciting year than Draco keeping his voice and eyes to himself did.
            If it can only be controlled.
*
            Did he want to give up the power to hold Draco Malfoy in place by his voice alone, to tell him to shut up and have him listen?
            When he thought about it that way, Harry had to curl his lip. Of course he did. He had never wanted that kind of power over anyone. It was all the house’s influence, trying to turn him into a Black and corrupt him.
            Really? You never wanted that?
            Fantasies Harry hadn’t thought of in years flooded his mind, fantasies in which he grew ten feet taller than Dudley and kicked him around, fantasies in which his rich parents showed up to claim him and totally humiliated Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. They didn’t mean anything, Harry had told himself after he found out he was a wizard. He had a better reality to compare them to, now.
            But they were there. And they proved that he could desire power.
            Now the question remained whether he desired power or Draco more.
            Harry balanced those notions in his head a bit, feeling as though he stood in the middle of a crashing wave. Memories of Malfoy fought recent memories of Draco and the way he had looked directly into Harry’s eyes when knocking his hands away and requesting the vow. Memories of how he used to act, the Harry Ron and Hermione knew, and the shame he’d felt over hurting Kreacher fought the memories of the recent past and how good it felt, and the memories of how Kreacher had betrayed Sirius.
            In the end, the answer wasn’t simple, but it was clear. He wanted Draco more.
            “All right,” he said, opening his eyes. “Teach me the vow. The wand movements and the incantations, and exactly what you want me to say.”
*
            Draco stared at Potter, so surprised he’d won that for a long moment he really couldn’t do anything.
            Then he clenched his hands into fists and fought back the wave of wonderment. He had come this far, thanks to his own plans and cleverness. So he would play on it, and use this moment to change things between him and Potter.
            “Hold up your wand,” he said. “Right in front of your lips. Speak the words as if you were whispering to it.”
            “Horizontally or vertically?” Potter took out the holly wand and held it up.
            “Vertically, like that,” Draco said, and ignored the way Potter’s eyes had gone liquid again. “Make sure that you’re holding it with both hands, your dominant hand on top.”
            “I like the sound of that,” Potter said, and smiled at him with enough heat to melt a sword.
            Draco held himself so still that he knew his mother would be proud, and said, “Say Spondeo magicum. Then wait a few heartbeats, and say Spondeo manus. Then a few more heartbeats, and say Spondeo Draconi parcere.”
            He thought Potter would need more instruction than that, but he spoke it smoothly, lightly, the deep voice intoning the syllables exactly the way Draco had told him to. And he even waited the exact same time between the first and second vow, and the second and the third, without having to count it aloud.
            All the time, his burning eyes watched Draco from beyond the slender barrier of the holly wand as though Draco had become the center of his existence.
            Draco had to swallow, and swallow again, to get rid of some of the painful clog in his throat. So. He had Potter sworn to hold back from holding him whenever he wanted, and not to command him. He had a little more freedom than before.
            But he was also bound closer to Potter, on a course of “help” that might not work because what they were seeking might not even exist, and he had to battle a foe that might be more powerful and persistent than Potter’s magic: his own desires.
            Because those green eyes, now that he saw them like this, really looked nothing like his aunt’s.
            It’s going to be a delicate dance.
*
            ChaosLady; Yes, he is. At least he knows it now.
            SP777: Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, he might be drifting in that direction.
            No, Narcissa is alive. She was the one who gave Draco the advice to keep his head down right before he left.
            Draco is going to try.
            moodysavage: Maybe it will now!
- 13
- 14
- 15
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ancient and Noble Houses