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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.

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Chapter Sixteen—Home of Darkness
            Harry kept his hands from visibly trembling by sticking them into his pockets. He had the intuition that it wouldn’t be a good idea to show too much of their trembling to Draco, who was nervous enough already.
            And he honestly wasn’t sure whether they were shaking with excitement because he had seen that the book was Bellatrix’s journal of when she had almost become the house’s heir, or with fear because the scar on his neck had turned to a 2…
            Or out of sheer and savage desire.
            Draco was coming with him to the house. Draco was coming with him to the house.
            Harry hadn’t set foot in it since the day he killed the Kneazle. He hadn’t wanted to, and not just because of the hold it had on him. He didn’t want to go back into those grimy corners, still grimy no matter what he did. He hadn’t wanted to see Kreacher. He hadn’t wanted to try and find an answer there, because the cost of the answers would end up being too high.
            But with someone else beside him, he almost looked forward to showing the house off, grimy corners and all. If Kreacher was there, well, Draco had grown up in a family that had its own house-elves. He would know how to deal with Kreacher and his demands in ways that didn’t involve injuring him.
            Really, Draco was the best companion Harry could have on a trip to the house, even excluding Ron and Hermione.
            Who I don’t really want around anyway.
*
            Potter’s idea of a “perfect” time to go to the house turned out to be after dinner, only a few hours before curfew.
            Draco grimaced and thought about objecting, but in the end, he couldn’t. What would he say? The solution he had in mind, although vague and tentative, really did depend on going to the house, and especially on seeing the Black family tapestry. And if he told Potter about it and left him to execute it on his own, he would get it all wrong. Potter just didn’t know enough about pure-blood houses and the way that pure-blood families worked.
            Hell, Draco couldn’t say that he knew much more. The way Malfoy Manor chose and adapted its heirs was just so different. Even most of the tales of other houses he’d heard didn’t involve things like this. The Blacks were the only ones who had wanted all the different good qualities an heir might bring to the family molded and changed so that they became the same personality, generation after generation.
            Draco had long suspected that the Blacks married cousins and had the same looks out of the same rule of similarity. They had to have used some spells on themselves to keep everyone looking identical, dark hair and dark eyes and heavy faces, generation after generation, when they were intermarrying with other pure-blood families who had their own distinctive, and famous, looks. Draco was just grateful that the blood, or the magic, had failed with his own mother, and with him.
            In the house, therefore, was still the best way to figure out what was magic and what was coincidence, and the solution to their problems.
*
            Harry Apparated from outside of Hogwarts with Draco clinging to his arm. No one kept as close a watch on the eighth-year students as they did on the younger years, and it wasn’t hard to come and go as they pleased.
            No, for Harry the hard thing was to remember the vow he had sworn, and not simply touch more than Draco’s hand. If he did that, then Draco would probably distrust him, and coming to the house with him, off school grounds, was already a show of greater trust than Harry had expected.
            But they got through the Apparition without incident, and appeared across the street from Grimmauld Place. Draco started beside him, and when Harry looked over at him, he found Draco wrinkling his nose and looking around at the walking, hurrying Muggles.
            “This house is in the middle of a Muggle city?” Draco asked.
            Harry shrugged and led the way across the road, between the darting cars. “I assume that the Blacks cared more about staying in the same place they always had than about being surrounded with Muggles.”
            Draco sneered as he caught up with Harry on the doorstep. “Yes, that sounds like them. They could probably pretend they were more persecuted than ever because they’d chosen to exist with enemies surrounding them.”
            “Don’t denigrate them.”
            Harry turned around to see who was speaking before he realized that voice had come out of his own throat. He closed his eyes and touched his mouth. It was long moments before he dared to look at Draco.
            Draco was pale around the lips, but he met Harry’s eyes with more of a sardonic smile than Harry had imagined he would dare. “Yeah, Potter. That kind of thing? Is why we need to break you free of this house as soon as possible.”
            Harry didn’t argue, only turned and touched the door. It opened without need of a key, just as the wards had spread back like curtains the minute he approached. The house knew its master, whether or not he wanted to be it.
            They stepped into the entrance hall, and Draco shivered. Harry raised his wand and cast a Warming Charm. He felt perfectly comfortable in the house, but then, he had already accepted that his responses to it weren’t rational.
            “What did you need to see?” he asked, after a moment when he waited for Draco to admire the house, and Draco stared at him, and Harry realized that neither of them were getting what they wanted.
            “The family tapestry,” Draco said, and craned his neck around as though he expected it to be hanging on one of the ground floor walls.
            Harry nodded briskly. “This way.” At least, when Draco was following him with quick steps, Harry could imagine he had come into the house for shelter and protection, not for a purely utilitarian purpose.
            And did he want to imagine that?
            Yes, I do. And he wouldn’t question his motives for it. You couldn’t question your motives about everything.
*
            Draco had known before what the Blacks were doing, but not how. How the house shaped their heirs. Why there was so much difference between what they did and what a house like Malfoy Manor did to Draco once he had become the heir.
            Now he knew. There was shadow in every inch of this place, breathing behind every door. Draco wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were Dark artifacts embedded in the walls of the house, not to be used but to increase the general Darkness of the magic that the heirs came into contact with from the time they were children. The house was cold, comfortless, cheerless, oppressive. Draco would be glad when they could get back out into the clean sunshine again.
            In the meantime, he amused himself idly with watching Potter move along in front of him and wondering if the other boy even noticed the way that the house bore down on him. If he was that at home here already, Draco’s idea might not work no matter how good it was.
            But he shook it off as they stepped into the room that held the family tapestry. It was still beautiful, despite the spots of mold on it and the many burned patches where various children had been struck off. Draco dropped down in front of it and traced his finger down the silver line that recorded his mother’s marriage and his own birth.
            “Look at this, Potter,” he said a moment later, turning his head.
            Potter did. There was a silver line blossoming beneath Draco’s finger, growing brighter as he watched it. It led from Dorea Black down through James Potter to Harry Potter, and shone like quicksilver.
            “There,” Draco said, sitting back. “That was what I wanted to know. Whether you were on the tapestry as an heir, and what it would mean if you weren’t.”
            “What was your idea?” Potter was so close now that his warm breath traveled in puffs over Draco’s ear. Draco had to cant his head to the side to get away from it.
            “Three of us are on the tapestry as living descendants of the family,” Draco said, nodding at the wall again. “Not my cousin Teddy Lupin, I know, because my aunt Andromeda was blasted off it for marrying a Muggleborn, and so her descendants don’t count either. But if I’m right, Potter, the main reason that you’re reacting the way you are is that you’re sole heir, sole owner of the house and the money and the rest of it.”
            Potter had gone still. “Go on,” he said, softly.
            “My mother and I still count as descendants of Black,” Draco said. “Not everything relates to direct blood descent, or my cousin Sirius couldn’t have made you the heir of Black even if he wanted to. It should have come to my mother or Bellatrix instead when he died.” He thought he saw Potter touch the book inside his pocket as he spoke, but he ignored it for the moment. “If you could try and transfer some of the money to me and my mother, even if you can’t transfer the house, that would mean you’re not sole heir anymore. It might lessen the influence of the house on you.”
            Potter seemed to be struggling for breath and words for a second. Then he said, “If that’s possible, why did no other Black heir ever try it before?”
            Draco snorted. “Because, if they were raised here and stayed here for a solid period of time after they were of age, then they wouldn’t want to release anything. They would enjoy being the Black heir, a lot more than you do. It’s the same reason that the process of disinheriting yourself won’t work. It’s a long process, and by the end, you would be Black enough to decide you’d rather stay the way you were.” He turned to Potter. “But if you can start to give away some of your money now, while you still have will enough to resist, then it might achieve the same result as a formal disinheritance of you without taking as long.”
            Potter was silent, his head bowed. Draco frowned. He hadn’t thought Potter was Black enough yet to resent the idea of giving up his money. “Potter?”
            Potter raised his head. His eyes were glazed and deep, and he smiled once before he said, “No,” and drew his wand.
            As he lifted it, a moment before the vow went into effect, Draco noticed that the silver scars on his throat had changed to a 3.
            Oh, bloody wonderful.

*
            ChaosLady: Of a sort, anyway.
            moodysavage: No one quite knows what the numbers show, although Draco has some theories.
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Ancient and Noble Houses