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A Black Stone in a Glass Box	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10351 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Seventeen—The Red Room

            The drawing room Draco chose to lead Potter to was one of the more comfortable ones in the Manor, he considered, and certainly the right thing for someone like Potter, who was hardly used to luxuries. The walls were red, a deep, dusky color that made them seem to be sitting in the middle of roses when the fire glowed, the way it did now. Here and there were portrait frames, but Draco noticed they were all empty as he and Potter took their chairs. He was pleased for his ancestors’ courtesy, to leave Draco and Potter alone for what had to be a private conversation.

            Or, well, maybe it wasn’t exactly courtesy, Draco thought, remembering Potter’s blood status. He didn’t scowl because of a heavy effort, and managed to take his seat, and sip his drink, and smile at Potter.

            “Are you sure that you don’t want anything to drink?”

            Potter nearly fell out of his chair, even though it was a large and heavy armchair and Draco didn’t see how the arms would let him fall out. “Oh, no,” he muttered. “I don’t—I’m not a good judge of alcohol.”

            Draco laughed gently in spite of himself, feeling the drink burn warm in the center of his chest. “What you mean is that you never have anything stronger than butterbeer, and you don’t think we have anything like that here.”

            Potter bit his lip. “Yes, fine,” he said. “That is what I mean. But you don’t have butterbeer, do you?” He flung that out as a challenge, and this time, when he leaned forwards from the chair, Draco was pleased to see that it was of his own free will.

            “Niri, a butterbeer for our guest, if you will,” Draco called, snapping his fingers, and a bottle of butterbeer—unopened so Potter wouldn’t be paranoid—and a mug appeared on the table beside Potter.

            Potter stared at Draco, who lifted his own glass to his lips, and sipped, and shrugged, and smiled, and said, “Having house-elves means never having to say you’re out of anything.”

            After a long moment, Potter picked up the mug and opened the bottle with a twist of his hand that told Draco he was an expert, shaking his head. “It means never having to say that there’s anything you can’t get,” he muttered. “It means never having to acknowledge your limits.” He lifted his head and glared in a way Draco imagined was intended as a personal message to him.

            Draco clucked his tongue, doing it a moment later than he should, for maximum irritation efficiency. “I don’t understand why you dislike us so much if that’s what you think about pure-bloods, Potter, I really don’t.”

            “You don’t understand what it might be like to grow up in the Muggle world and resent the people who were in the wizarding world all along?” Potter took a single sip of butterbeer and then flattened his hands on his knees and stared at Draco. Draco thought—at least, he flattered himself—that it didn’t come from any distrust of the drink. Rather, Potter was too intrigued by Draco to focus on the butterbeer. “People who can have whatever they want at a snap of their fingers, and keep telling you that you won’t belong no matter what, because you have the wrong blood?”

            “I was referring more to the concept of having no limits,” Draco said gently. “Since there’s nothing you won’t sacrifice to keep your friends safe.”

            Potter smiled like someone who’d smelled blood. “And the wizarding world. You might as well go ahead and say it. I can practically hear you wanting to shout at me how stupid it is.”

            “Well,” Draco said, and gestured with an open, empty hand while he sipped his drink. “Now I don’t have to say it, since you said it for me.”

            Potter hissed at him, enough like a genuine snake that Draco was glad he was sitting already. “I did what I wanted to do, Malfoy. Maybe I could have done it better, but someone has to keep more Dark Lords from rising.”

            Draco put his chin on his fist and contemplated Potter. He looked like he was about a second from springing to his feet and pacing about the room. His eyes were so hectic, so vivid, that Draco licked his lips without quite meaning to. Potter narrowed his eyes.

            “Say what you’re thinking,” he ordered.

            Draco answered at once, wondering if Potter knew how dangerous he could be if he ever decided to compel obedience instead of asking for it. “I’m thinking that someone has to do it, but why does that someone have to be you? You’ve done more than enough on the Dark Lord-fighting front for one lifetime.”

            Potter shook his head. “But this ritual said that only someone who had already defeated a Dark Lord could do it.”

            “And we’ve already established that the ritual was a stupid idea, and you’re stupid if you continue to think it wasn’t.” Draco crossed his legs elegantly and smiled as he held Potter’s gaze. “So why would your previous status matter in that case?”

            “I can’t expect most people to understand how important this is.”

            “I expect that most wizards would agree more Dark Lords are not desirable, in the general scheme of things,” Draco said dryly. “How many people did you actually try to explain it to?”

            He sort of hoped that by leading up to it this way, he would get to hear about Potter’s conversation with his best friends, but Potter shook his head and shut his eyes. “Most people thought it was a problem that would pass on its own,” he muttered. “That people were inspired by Voldemort’s—example, and how far he got before he got stopped.”

            “Before you stopped him,” Draco corrected. Despite the way Potter had emphasized his little deed when talking about the ritual and the book, Draco didn’t think he took it seriously enough, or thought about it that often.

            Potter snapped his eyes open and looked hard at Draco. “But no one else thought about how to stop it, for good and all. They were just coping with each case as it arose, and not thinking about the connections between them.”

            Draco balanced his glass on his stomach. “You intrigue me, Potter. I read about some of these problems when I was abroad, but never that they were all connected. What kind of grand conspiracy did you discover?”

            Potter’s lips tightened, and his eyes darted away. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I just meant—you can’t deal with it one case at a time. You have to find a way to stop it all, or who knows how many innocent people will die?”

            “And who knows how many people trying to become Dark Lords will stop when they realize that they’ve drawn the attention of the Aurors, or when they see how much research they’ll have to do for small scraps of power?” Draco asked, shaking his head when Potter glared at him. “You don’t know that all of them are that serious. Were all the people you arrested for trying to conduct rituals of power insane?”

            “The majority,” Potter said, and flexed his fingers the way Draco had in the past to ease the pain of a Stinging Curse to the palm. “Why else would they even seek ultimate power in the first place?”

            “I don’t know,” Draco said, and trailed his fingers over his glass, noting the way Potter’s eyes followed his hand. “It doesn’t seem much madder to me than seeking to sacrifice your heart.”

            “I didn’t give up all emotions,” Potter said, and this time probably sprang to his feet in preference to falling out of his chair. “I still felt them. You saw that. I could be irritated with you and not think it was such a good idea to take you after the magical animals.”

            Draco tilted his head back, smiling. He wondered if Potter was trying to intimidate him by standing over him. If so, Potter ought to learn that it wasn’t going to work, the same way he ought to have known Draco wasn’t going to just give him the horsehair, and Draco was happy to be the one to teach him that lesson.

            I could go on teaching him all my life.

            Draco thought about that, and gave a little nod. Well, he could do that as long as Potter was freed from the bloody ritual. Draco wouldn’t fancy spending the rest of his life with a partner who could do nothing but gape at him foolishly when Draco made an amusing or witty remark. Or, worse, look at the wall and Draco with the same kind of gaze.

            “You gave up all that made life worth living,” Draco told him. “Passion. Strength of emotion. Rage. Love.” He saw the way Potter’s eyes were widening, and laughed aloud. “What, you never thought to hear someone like me saying that word? I assure you that I learned it when I was so young that I don’t remember not knowing it, the same as you did.”

            Potter shook his head. “But—you never acted like you valued it when we were younger.”

            Draco rolled his eyes. “And you never acted like you wanted to be an automaton. I’ve changed since the war, Potter. I’ve changed since I had my freedom to do what I wanted. You probably have, too, but I’ve seen precious little sign of it.” He paused, because Potter had made an aborted little movement, as if he was going to fold his arms in front of him, and then had done it behind his back instead.



            Draco stared at Potter’s locked fists as Potter turned his back on Draco and walked over to stare at a portrait frame on the wall. He didn’t know where the words came from. Sometimes he could do it, though, this silent, crystalline insight into someone else’s mind, the way he had sometimes known what people dueling him would cast before they did it.

            “You don’t have your freedom at all, do you?” he whispered. “The prophecy is over, but not your sense of duty. That’s why you didn’t hesitate or ask your friends about this ritual. You thought you had to sacrifice yourself.”

            “Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy, no one made me,” Potter said roughly, without turning around.

            “You made you,” Draco said. “Or, rather, the stupid part of your soul did.”

            Potter turned his head to give Draco a single-eyed look of disdain that would have been more impressive if Draco hadn’t just reminded both of them of what a fool Potter was. “Then no one but me did,” he said. “Which means I did it of my own free will.”

            Draco shook his head. “I really don’t think so,” he murmured, while his mind raced. He knew what he wanted to say; the only problem was convincing Potter, really. “What would have happened if you were never the Boy-Who-Lived?”

            Potter faced him fully now, staring hard at Draco’s face, as if that would enable him to figure out Draco’s tactics. Since Draco didn’t think it would, he kept his peace, and Potter folded his arms and looked away. “I would have grown up with my parents,” he muttered. “I would have been a lot happier. I would have known what magic was from the time I could walk, I reckon, and my godfather would have been there, and there would be no war, and Dumbledore would be okay…” His voice trailed off. “Well, maybe not, but someone else would have had to help kill him.”

            Draco blinked. “How did you help kill him?”

            “He was dying of poison when Snape killed him.” Potter’s eyes returned to Draco, but they had a sheen in them now that made Draco think he was seeing things very far away rather than in the room. “We had to go fight a trap that was guarding—something of Voldemort’s. Something important. ‘

            Something you still don’t want to mention even now, because you don’t trust me, Draco silently completed that little story.

            “I had to feed him the poison.”

            Despite all his own memories of that night and how they had reason to make him less sympathetic to Potter rather than more, Draco winced. Potter smiled grimly at him. “Yes, it’s not pleasant, is it? But someone else would have had to do that if I wasn’t the Boy-Who-Lived. I would have been happy and maybe still on a Quidditch team and maybe in Slytherin. I don’t know.”

            “You were a Gryffindor because that’s where the Hat put you,” Draco said carefully. “But you could have been in Slytherin? You acknowledge you have traits that would make you belong there?” Although he had trouble thinking of them at the moment, with Potter’s cleverness apparently in abeyance and his only visible ambition being to sacrifice himself.

            “It told me that it could put me in there even just as I was.” Potter gave himself a little shake and looked at the portrait frame again. “But I didn’t want to. I knew Voldemort had come from Slytherin, and you were going to end up there, and you had just insulted the first friend I ever had. I didn’t tell it where I really wanted to go, just where I didn’t want to.”

            Draco sighed mournfully. “And if you had been in Slytherin, I could have taught you better. Sacrifices don’t count unless you make them meaningful.”

            Potter glared at him again. It was losing its impact for Draco, unless he could be sure that he could bring back the fire to Potter’s eyes permanently. Then he might let himself relax and enjoy it. As it was, he glared flatly until Potter turned back and started pacing the room again, rubbing his elbows.

            “Anyway,” Potter said suddenly, spinning around and acting as though he might draw his wand. Draco, inside his house with elves everywhere, didn’t do more than smile. “You never did say why you asked me that. What would it matter if I was the Boy-Who-Lived or someone else was? Someone else would be here, in that case.”

            Draco nodded. “Right. And I think being the Boy-Who-Lived has affected you even now. You don’t know what to do with yourself when you’re not fighting Dark Lords. You think that you could have kept every one of them from rising, and it’s up to you to do it now, instead of making sure that other Aurors know about the threat. Instead of discussing your plans with anyone. Instead of making sure that the public takes them more seriously and does things like keep a close eye on the books they’re getting these Dark rituals from. No, instead what you do is run out and do something on your own.” Draco stood up, because he didn’t think he could stay sitting down with the flow of words welling up from inside him. “I know that you had to act on your own with the Dark Lord, because there was the prophecy. But there’s nothing here now that would make you do that. In fact, the more people that are involved, the more likely you are to catch all of them, because that way you have more people who know Dark wizards and can keep an eye on relatives and friends for you. Why did you do it all by yourself?”

            Potter shut his eyes. His breathing was irregular, and a flush mottled his cheeks. Draco cocked his head and walked towards him. Potter gave no sign that he’d heard. Draco snorted. So much for the ritual making Potter more aware and a better defender of the world.

            Potter opened his eyes and leaped back when he saw Draco so close. Draco stood there with his own eyes half-closed, waiting for Potter to recover. It was less fun when he wasn’t paying attention to Draco.

            “I had to do it,” Potter said. “It was the perfect solution, and I was the only one who could make it work, and Ron—”

            He clenched his mouth shut, but Draco now thought he knew part of what had happened when Potter talked with his friends. He smiled. “Yes? Weasley wouldn’t have wanted you to do that? I wonder why that was?” He paused, but Potter only stood there breathing and said nothing, so Draco added, “He didn’t like it, did he? I didn’t think he was that much smarter than you are, but I suppose living with Granger rubbed off on him.”

            Potter shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re saying,” he whispered. “Stop. He—he didn’t say that he would have been unwilling to help me.”

            “But he said that he would have found a different way,” Draco said. “Helped you find something less dangerous, something where you were less likely to spill your secrets to the first person who asked about them. Something that would have worked to guard the world instead of making you into the lonely little sacrifice who did it all by yourself, right?”

            Potter jumped forwards and pinned Draco against the wall with one hand around his throat, glaring at him. Draco shook his head and shrugged. “If it wasn’t that, it was something a lot like it,” he said. “And I bet Granger was even more emphatic, wasn’t she?”

            Potter broke from him and turned away, shaking his head. “If you’re so much more intelligent and experienced and brave and wise, why do you even care what I do?” he snapped over his shoulder. “Leave me like this and make me defeat the last two animals on my own.”

            “I don’t want to,” Draco said, coming up behind him. “I dislike leaving things half-done. And I dislike being bored.”

            “This is only a way to keep from being bored, then,” Potter said, sounding a little relieved. “I should have known it. You don’t really want me or care about me. You only want some excitement in your life.”

            “Let me show you where excitement can lead,” Draco murmured, and put his hands on Potter’s cheeks, and kissed him again.

            This time, it was an honest, passionate kiss, pouring what he felt into it, not simply trying to catch Potter’s attention and hold him back. Draco opened his mouth wider and wider, sticking his tongue out, lapping at Potter’s tongue, trying to coax him to respond somehow, so he could see that what Draco said was true.

            And this time, after a single long moment when Draco felt anything might happen and tingled from the feeling, Potter began to kiss him back.

*

            delia cerrano: Harry is getting it, but he doesn’t want to, hence the resistance in this chapter.

            SP777: The last time I tried to update my profile, it wouldn’t let me. Maybe it would work now.

            moodysavage: Thank you!
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box