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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 41050 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Goggle Eyes
            “I’d like to go through those books on pure-blood customs in the library again, if you don’t mind.”
            Harry waited. Then he waited some more. Then he sighed and waved his hand in front of Neville’s staring eyes, snapping his fingers at the same time.
            Neville finally stopped goggling at the bracelet on Draco’s wrist and swung around to face Harry. “You can use them, of course you can,” he said, and Harry thought he was talking fast in an effort to keep himself from staring at Draco’s bracelet and Harry’s ring. He hadn’t seemed all that surprised when Draco and Harry showed up at Hogwarts together, but that was before he’d noticed their jewelry. “I think you really need to.”
            “Well, I am,” said Harry, not understanding. Was there yet something else about the bracelet and the ring and the combination thereof that no one had told him?
            But Neville abruptly turned to Draco instead of going on with his interrogation of Harry. “Are you treating him right?” he demanded. “You haven’t lied to him or tried to cast the Imperius Curse on him or anything?”
            Draco looked at Neville with a kind of patience Harry wouldn’t have credited him with only a month ago. “No,” he said. “I actually was going to refuse the bracelet at first, when I saw how similar it looked to the ring. But he bought the gift for me on his own, because he thought it would look nice, and because he thought it would suit my taste since I bought a ring for him that looked like it. You should know Harry by now,” he added, when Neville did nothing to relax his suspicious stance. “This is the sort of luck he stumbles into all the time.”
            Luckily, at least, that made Neville snort and turn back to look at Harry again. “Mate, I don’t know how you keep doing this.”
            “I don’t have a set of pure-blood reference books at home,” Harry replied promptly. “Can we go to the library now?”
            “I still want to know a little more about this.” Neville shook his head in wonder and leaned back against the desk. “You bought the bracelet knowing nothing about it except that it would look good with the ring?”
            “Well, at first I was looking at silver ones. But Daphne saw me in there where she was buying something for Astoria’s birthday and told me that Draco liked the platinum ones.”
            Draco turned neatly on one heel and looked Harry in the face, in a way that might have been peaceful if not for the furious burning of his eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”
            “It slipped my mind,” said Harry, with a shrug. “I assumed you would have known that Daphne and I used to date anyway, because she’s Astoria’s sister.”
            “Used to, then.”
            “Stop being jealous,” Harry said. “I don’t like the way it distorts your face.”
            Draco blinked at him, left his jaw open for a second, and closed it only when Neville snickered. “Harry Potter, yes indeed,” said Neville, and continued before Harry or Draco could say anything. “Daphne could have known about what kind of statement that bracelet would make, wouldn’t she, Harry? She’s pure-blood.”
            Harry shrugged. “Sure, she could have, I suppose. But if she was really intent on having me back, the way I can see Draco thinks she was, she would have told me about a bracelet that would give entirely the wrong message. Instead, she told me that Draco likes platinum, and I don’t think she was wrong about that, was she?” He threw Draco a significant look.
            “No,” Draco admitted, slowly, as if someone was pulling the words out of him with hooks. “I just want to know why she was in that shop. Especially since Astoria’s birthday isn’t until April.”
            “Maybe she does her shopping early,” Harry offered, but sighed at the withering look that Draco threw him. “Seriously, Draco, she accepted the breakup gracefully, and that was more than five years ago. I think she would have done something about it before now if she wanted to date me again.”
            “Maybe she was content as long as you didn’t date anyone else.”
            “No,” Harry said, after thinking about it for a moment. “That’s not Daphne. She would be straightforward in her actions if she wanted me to do something. She knows that it’s the only way to get me to do it.”
            “Then she was acting as Astoria’s spy.”
            “Spying on me because I went into a jewelry shop?” Harry blinked a little at Draco. “You must think that everyone in the world is interested in dating the people you’re interested in dating.”
            Neville was looking back and forth between them as if watching a particularly entertaining Quidditch match. Harry thought that was what made Draco flush and close a hard hand on his wrist. “Excuse us,” he said to Neville. “We do have some books to study, in hopes that this same mistake doesn’t happen again.”
            “Maybe it wasn’t a mistake,” said Neville, thoughtfully enough to make Draco stare at him.
            “Not a bad mistake, is what he means,” Harry explained to Draco, and towed him out of the room before Draco could hold his wand to Neville’s throat or something.
            On their way to the library, Harry tried and failed to wrestle with the problem of Draco’s jealousy. He had never thought about someone reacting that way, really. Ginny had been a spectacularly un-jealous person, and Daphne a spectacularly self-confident one. Ginny would never have thought that Harry was cheating on her unless she saw the proof with her own eyes, and Daphne had believed she, herself, was too awesome ever to worry seriously about it.
            So this was new.
            Harry had to smile. Wasn’t that what he had wanted, a new way to live with people, a new set of challenges?
            Of course he wasn’t going to get them only in the aspects that had to do with the pain and the terror of the past.
            “What are you grinning about?”
            Draco’s voice was sulky. Harry nudged Draco’s shoulder with his and moved his hand upwards for a second, so he could see both his ring and Draco’s bracelet at the same time. “Tell you later,” he muttered. “In the meantime, why don’t we see what we can find in those books?”
*
            “Why does it matter if the bracelet is set with garnets instead of rubies?” Harry asked thin air. “Could someone even tell the difference between rubies and garnets at a glance?”
            Draco looked up from the book that was spread out in front of him, a tome that Harry didn’t think he himself had consulted last time. At least Draco was in good humor again; his eyes glinted as he pushed the book aside and leaned forwards to study Harry. “Any pure-blood with a trained eye could,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself, not to have that eye? I thought Aurors got some training in recognizing gems because they might have to deal with valuable stolen property that has them.”
            “I’m not an Auror,” Harry said, and pushed his own book aside. He had started flipping through the pages and wandered into territory that didn’t matter when it came to the gifts he and Draco had already exchanged. He definitely wasn’t going to go find another bracelet set with garnets and give it to Draco. “I only had a little bit of training from them.”
“Enough that you think you can protect yourself all the time, and you don’t even need someone to help you or save your life.”
“It’s not that I think I don’t need any help.” Harry picked up the next book, warily. It wasn’t about gifts, at least not going by the title, and the pages were of such thick parchment that they looked as if they would cut his fingers all over. “I would take help if it was there. It would be nice. But most of the time, the Risen Cobras or whoever’s attacking me this week doesn’t do the favor of calling ahead.”
“Did someone ever call you and say that he was going to do you the favor?” Draco still hadn’t opened his book again.
“Once,” Harry admitted. The firecall had come in when he was about to leave to go to Ron and Hermione’s, and he had thought it was a joke, but just in case, he had contacted the Aurors. The man had been waiting at Ron and Hermione’s house after all. The Aurors had taken him handily away, and Harry had been able to have a peaceful dinner with his friends.
“You live the strangest life,” Draco breathed, but he sounded intrigued instead of upset.
            “One that I still hope to fit you into,” Harry said, and returned to his book, basking a little in Draco’s contented smile.
            They went on looking for almost half an hour, and then Draco said, “This is the shortest and clearest explanation that we’re going to find, I shouldn’t wonder.” Carefully, he turned the book he held around and pushed it towards Harry.
            Harry bent over eagerly to read it. There was a picture of a bracelet, paired with a ring. Neither looked like the one he had given Draco or received from him, but they did look alike, with a weird braided structure. Harry reached out and traced a finger down their ink lines before he turned back to the explanation.
            A ring given to a friend with the intention of an exclusive friendship need not be returned with jewelry. (For the consequences of not returning the gift, see page 771). But when the ring is returned with the gift of a bracelet that looks alike, it means the commitment, the deepening and softening, of that relationship. There are only so many ways that a friendship can deepen, and most of them require life-saving and intense experiences of the sort that cannot be manufactured.
            Harry thought immediately of his friendships with Ron and Hermione.
            The relationship created by the paired bracelet and ring will be an exclusive one, in the sense that both participants will reveal secrets to each other that they will reveal to no one else, and they will not make large decisions, of the kind that change their lives, without consulting each other.
            The relationship so created will be a deep one, in that it implies an absolute trust and a delight in each other’s company, so that they would rather spend time with each other than do anything else.

            The relationship will be a soft one, in that pain is not invited to be part of it.
            Harry raised his eyebrows at the last line and looked at Draco. “I don’t know about that last one. Pain might come along whether or not it’s invited.”
            Draco sniffed at him and laid a hand on his book. “But neither of us makes an effort to seek it out. These kinds of gifts would be inappropriate to commemorate or begin a relationship that included a great deal of mutual anger.” He lowered his voice. “You can see now why I reacted the way you did when you gave me the bracelet.”
            “Yes,” said Harry. “You thought I meant all those things.”
            He waited. Draco waited. Finally, he nodded. “Yes, I did,” he said.
            “But you also wanted all those things,” Harry said, finally realizing what Draco must have been waiting for. “With me.”
            “I wanted you to offer them,” Draco said, and his lips moved a little in what looked like a snarl. “I would never have asked you for them.”
            That puzzled Harry. Draco had been the one to insist that he deserved a “reward” for helping Draco and Scorpius in Diagon Alley; he had been the one who pushed things along when Harry would have been just as happy for him to go away again. “You—didn’t want them unless they were freely offered?”
            “Yes,” said Draco. “And then I realized that it was going to be another mistake, like the one with the silver mirror, and I was miserable. Both because I wanted them for real and because I realized there was no way that you would understand it without some kind of explanation.” He reached out and took Harry’s wrist.
            “Even with explanations, I don’t feel them in the blood and the bone, like you do,” said Harry, and took his hand. “That’s the thing you have to remember, if we’re going to use these customs. I can learn them. It would take me a long time to learn how to feel them.”
            “I can wait,” said Draco. “We’re both young, and we’re not making each other very unhappy yet. I can hope that we have the time.”
            Harry smiled back at him, and then looked down at the book Draco had given him again. “But this doesn’t say anything about dating or courtship.”
            “Well, it does say that there’s only so many ways a friendship can deepen.” Draco took back his hand and began playing with the edge of the page. “It doesn’t—it’s not restrictive in what kind of relationship gets developed, because sometimes people like each other but don’t want to marry each other. They just date. Instead of court.”
            Harry sat there, thinking about that. On the one hand, he really did want to make Draco happy and soothe his distress. He would want to do the same thing if he had got Ron or Hermione or George a gift that was a kind of mistake and hurt them. They were his friends. He always wanted his friends to be happy.
            On the other hand, he didn’t want to marry a friend merely to make them happy. So he leaned forwards and asked, “You want courting? You want marriage?”
            Draco didn’t seem able to look at him as he nodded.
            “Even with someone who doesn’t feel those customs the way you do? And someone whose life is constantly threatened?”
            “We already had this conversation when you first presented me with the bracelet.” Draco turned back towards Harry as if someone had pushed him. “Yes. I value you, and I would want that.”
            “I’m not sure that I want to marry anyone,” said Harry. “That’s the main problem with this. If I go along with it just to give it a chance, or to make you happy, there’s no saying that I’ll absolutely want marriage at the end of it.”
            “Don’t go along with it just to make me happy.” This time, Draco caught his hand harshly enough to make Harry’s fingers sting. “That’s not something I want, either.”
            “I’m saying that I feel the impulse to,” said Harry, and folded Draco’s fingers back away from his wrist. “Not that I absolutely would.”
            Draco stared at him, apparently measuring what Harry meant from his eyes, and then snorted and leaned back. “Don’t scare me like that.”
            Harry smiled at him. “So. You still didn’t answer my question. Could you really be happy with someone who doesn’t feel the customs the way you do?”
            “I did.”
            “Not by itself,” Harry said. “I know that you can value me even though I’m different from you, because I can value you the same way. But this is different. The customs are pretty important to you. They’re what you chose to start our whole interactions with, and maybe structure them around. Can you continue being with me knowing that I’ll never love the customs the way you do?”
            Draco hesitated, and Harry held his breath. No, he didn’t intend to marry anyone right now. No, he didn’t know if he wanted to be with a man. It wasn’t a possibility that had occurred to him before now, because he dated so few people. Maybe he would reject it, maybe not.
            Draco was still the one who would have to make the most important decision.
            Draco finally swallowed, and looked into his eyes. “Would you be willing to buy some of these books, or ones like them, and study them so that you can try not to make the same kinds of mistakes that you have so far?”
            Harry nodded.
            Draco nodded back. “You being you, and being so willing to do something for me, is more than enough.”
            This is different from anyone else in my life, Harry thought, reaching out and tapping Draco’s bracelet with one finger, so that it spun and glittered. I’m glad to know that I’m the same for him.
*
moodysavage: Yes, he was.
delia cerrano: Harry would certainly argue with his friends about dumping Draco, but he wouldn’t date Draco just to spite them.
MoonlightVampiress: Both, really.
SP777: Yes, but a pretty slow and non-traditional one.
Courtney: Thank you for reviewing!
Queen of the Darkness: I will say that George doesn’t have romantic feelings for Harry, but he does feel upset that he can’t help him more, and think that he should be doing more in return for what Harry has done for him.
Jupi: Thanks!
Jester: Harry didn’t think that this particular gift would have any special meaning. After all, cooking bacon for Scorpius didn’t; some things don’t have to.
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That