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A Black Stone in a Glass Box	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10352 -:- 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 Eighteen—Bright Flares of Temper

            Draco stood there for long seconds, his hands buried in Harry’s hair, enjoying the way that Harry twisted against him as though he wanted to touch Draco further but was forcing himself to keep his hands above Draco’s hips. Draco would have pulled back and encouraged Harry not to hesitate on his account, but he was too involved in the deep, pulling kisses Harry had finally decided to give him.

            Harry was the one who pulled back first, as always. He was flushed, panting so hard that Draco could see sweat forming on his chin. He leaned in to lick it off. Harry let him, and then abruptly pushed him out to the length of his arm, his hand planted right in the middle of Draco’s chest.

            Draco went with the motion, although he swayed a little, his eyes locked on Harry’s face. Harry looked wide-eyed, dazed, wonderful.

            “I don’t know how you can do this,” Harry whispered. His voice was hoarse, too, delightfully. “Say that you’re right and my chain ritual was stupid. What are you going to do now that I’ve learned better? What are you going to do when the ritual is done?”

            “Teach you other things,” Draco said. “I find that people like you need a lot of instructing.”

            “People like me,” Harry said, and glared at him. Draco was a little impressed. The wolf hadn’t managed that particular look. Draco didn’t think even his father in the depths of a cold rage could have. “What does that mean?”

            Draco waved a lazy hand at him. “Stop it. I just meant there are people who think they have to carry all the burdens of the world on their shoulders, and no one else is ever going to do something to stop evil if they don’t.”

            “No one will.” Harry gave an aggressive little hop towards him, as though he thought Draco would run. Draco only stood and smiled at him, and Harry was the one who ended up turning his back and walking over to study the empty portrait frame that had fascinated him before again. “It’s—it’s ridiculous, what you’re asking of me. What you want. You want me to stop being myself.”

            “No,” Draco said. “I don’t think the central core of you is a hero. You did what you did under protest and under a prophecy. I’m interested in seeing how you could grow beyond that, what would happen if you did.”

            Harry twitched his head back and glared at him. “You would try to stop me.”

            “Stop you from what? Using chain rituals, yes. Acting alone, yes.” Harry stared at him, and Draco clucked his tongue. “This is what I keep trying to tell you, and which you keep ignoring. Most people don’t fight evil by being under a prophecy, like you were, and the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord. Most people have help.”

            “Ron and Hermione helped me.”

            “Then why didn’t you go to them with help about these cases and the rituals you’re stopping?” Draco asked. He had once thought he would never find anything that concerned Harry’s little friends fascinating, but, well, life did surprise him sometimes. “I would have thought that would be your first instinct, to discuss how to stop the rise of Dark Lords with them, not obsess over it alone.”

            Harry glanced away.

            “Come on,” Draco said, and made a beckoning gesture with his hand at Harry that got him another glare. Draco ignored it. He would have been satisfied with that tribute that said he was annoying once, but Harry’s glares were nothing compared to Harry’s kisses. “You’ve admitted using the chain ritual was stupid and it needs to be ended. It even sounds as though you admit fighting the Dark Lord under a prophecy wasn’t ideal. Come a step further and you can have the delicious nuggets of wisdom I’ve kept for you.”

            “I hate you sometimes,” Harry said, clearly and distinctly.

            “I notice you haven’t retreated yet,” Draco said. “Or told me I’m horrible to my face.”

            “I told you that enough in the past that I didn’t think you needed to hear it again,” Harry muttered.

            “Oh, I always need to hear it, if you want me to leave you alone,” Draco said, smiling at him, and sucked in a delighted breath when Harry did some more glaring. “You don’t, do you? It’s lonely at the back of the crowd.”

            “Oh, shut up,” Harry said, and came to sit down in his chair and drink the butterbeer he’d abandoned. Draco took his own chair, rubbing at his lips. Harry pointed his mug at him.

            “If my kisses disgust you, I don’t know why you want them,” he said.

            “I was savoring the taste, not trying to rub it off,” Draco said, and grinned at Harry’s befuddled expression. “Sometimes the world is pleasant to you. Sometimes you run into someone who admires the fire you bring to life—well, your real life—and wants to see it continue. And sometimes that person is you, and sometimes that person is me.”

            “Who admires and chases you, then?” Harry leaned forwards.

            “I hope you, eventually,” Draco said, and picked up his own drink, for the pleasure of letting the taste roll over his tongue. Well, for that and for the different kind of pleasure that lighted him at the sharp glance Harry darted him, as if he wondered what the drink tasted like. He may have curiosities that butterbeer cannot assuage.

            “You’re serious about us staying together after the chain ritual is broken, then?” Harry looked Draco up from his feet, down from his head. “Even though I wouldn’t have much more to interest you once I turned back into a regular Auror?”

            Draco pointed a finger at him. “I’m going to answer that question, but only if you tell me why you didn’t involve your friends in the chain ritual.”

            “It’s like a Slytherin to bargain,” Harry said, his hands doing damage to the upholstery on his armchair.

            “And it’s like a Gryffindor to be honest and open, keeping his word and trusting everything to his friends, but you didn’t,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “Think of what I’m doing as an attempt to inject a little Hogwarts normality back into the conversation.”

            Harry snorted despite himself, Draco thought, and then sighed. “All right. Fine. I didn’t go to them because I knew Hermione would try to talk me out of it. And I’m so tired of the thought that someone might succeed in making themselves a Dark Lord and undoing all the work I did. I wanted it to stop.”

            Draco hesitated. He didn’t know if he was in the right place to say these words to Harry and have them be believed.

            Then again, he probably hadn’t been in the right place to start shattering the chain ritual, either, or kissing Harry. So he went on. “Nothing they do can undo what you did. I know you gave your life for us, and that’s enough. No one can ask for a greater gift.”

            Harry turned so red that Draco blinked. Surely he must have heard people praising him for that before? In fact, he was probably sick of it. Draco had wondered if he would get up and storm out of the room when Draco said those words, despite the fact that they had to be said.

            Instead, Harry lowered his eyes, and swallowed. “I don’t—I’m not sure I understand why you admire it.”

            “I didn’t want to be a slave,” Draco said. “Is that enough?”

            “Yeah, but I mean,” Harry said, and gestured in the air. Draco thought he looked adorably uncertain of himself. It would be a pleasure to take him in hand and teach him the pleasures of certainty, too, of course. “I thought you wouldn’t admire me for sacrificing my life. You didn’t admire me for sacrificing my heart.”

            Draco pressed his lips together, thinking hard. His immediate instinct was to be contemptuous of Harry for not knowing the difference, but he couldn’t blame him for that, really. Draco didn’t know he would have known the difference, either, from the outside.

            “You considered all the consequences of what you were giving up in the Forbidden Forest, and did it anyway,” Draco said, shaking his head. “But you didn’t think about it this time, and that was stupid.”

            “As we’ve established.” Harry flipped it away. “That’s enough?”

            “Yes,” Draco said.

            Harry sighed and nodded. “Anyway. I thought Ron and Hermione would talk me out of it and tell me to work with them, and that would have been better, but it would have taken so long. I thought this was a quick solution.” He grimaced a little. “Hermione tells me that I’m fonder of quick solutions than I should be. Maybe she’s right.”

            Draco nodded, but found himself pinned to the back of his chair by the look Harry gave him next. “Now, explain to me why you think we would stay together.”

            “Because,” Draco said, “I know you’re going to make other mistakes once you awaken from the full effects of this one. And your friends already didn’t manage to prevent you from making this one. Who’s going to take care of you if I’m not around?”

            “I don’t believe that,” Harry said, and folded his arms, nearly hitting the mug of butterbeer with his elbow and knocking it to the floor. He snapped his arms open, moved the mug like it had personally insulted him, and crossed them again.

            “I can assure you, your past record with mistakes is clear,” Draco said, in the deepest voice he could muster, purely because he knew it would annoy Harry.

            “I mean that it can’t be much fun for you,” Harry snapped at him. “You get to fight magical animals while you break the chain ritual, but what happens when that’s gone? Is it going to be enough to keep you from boredom if you stay around me after that and correct all these mistakes you think I’ll make?”

            Draco watched him in silence for a bit, as Harry huffed and glared and in other words did everything he could to make himself look unattractive. Draco would have told him to stop that, but this time, he had the strong feeling that Harry was doing it on purpose.

            “I think it could be enough,” Draco said at last. “I stayed with one lover on the Continent for more than two years, doing very little but having sex and arguing and learning mountain-skimming and drinking fine wines. I would have stayed with him longer than that if he hadn’t kicked me out.”

            “What a blow for you,” Harry said.

            It was all too clear that he meant the words to slice, but he wasn’t used to speaking like that, and Draco grinned back at him. “It was. But I think he was getting bored with me. He was terribly domestic, and he wanted me to stay home and be with him for days at a time where we did nothing. Not even talked or had sex, just sat there. I couldn’t stand it.”

            “I like being quiet, too,” Harry said. “It’s been a hard life. I don’t think I’d suit you.”

            Draco shrugged again. “Maybe not, and then I would leave. But considering what brought us here, sorry, you’ll forgive me for saying that I don’t entirely believe you.”

            Harry huffed and folded his arms tighter. Apparently it just went to his heart not to be believed, Draco thought, and grinned. “This is an exception. You can ask Ron. He would tell you. I’ve been quiet more than usual these past few years.”

            Draco nodded. “Of course. You’ve just been hunting down people who use rituals to make themselves into Dark Lords, and people who steal Dark artifacts, and people who are insane. That isn’t exciting at all.”

            “You couldn’t come along and help with that,” Harry said, leaning forwards, in such a prim and horrified voice that Draco couldn’t help laughing. Harry shook his head. Draco thought he would have liked to leap up and shake Draco, but he held back, thank God. It would be silly if he’d come further. “You’re not a trained Auror. And I don’t think listening to me talk about it secondhand would be exciting enough for you.”

            Draco smiled lazily at him. “Why not? I have a lot of the skills of a trained Auror. I haven’t done badly in the battles against your creatures, who are probably harder to fight than most of your enemies, thanks to their resistance to magic. And you should see your face,” he said, the laughter overcoming him again. Harry looked a second away from clasping his hands to his heart.

            “They wouldn’t let you into Auror training,” Harry said, trying to make his voice even lower, and more precise this time, as if hearing the exact truth would somehow stop Draco from wanting this. “There’s no—there’s no way that someone would ever accept you here. Your name’s still smeared.”

            “You hesitated before you said that,” Draco said, pointing at him. “Why did you hesitate before you said that? You should just announce it right out if that’s what you believe, not hesitate and fumble around like you did.”

            “I was trying not to be mean.” Harry spat the words out like pebbles he had been chewing.

            Draco nodded. “You care enough about me to worry about that. You should just speak unpalatable truths and tell me to cope with it, if you’re the kind of mindless Gryffindor that you’re trying to portray yourself as.”

            Harry shook his head furiously. “I really don’t understand you. Did you think I would give in and join your side as soon as I tasted your tongue?”

            His eyes dropped to Draco’s lips. Draco smiled and stretched his arms out along the back of his chair. “Why not? I have seduced someone who was about to kill me with my mouth, you know.” He plunged on before Harry could ask him about that, because technically it involved promises to the French Minister that Draco wasn’t supposed to break. “And what do you mean, my side? You can’t simultaneously believe me when I told you that I was doing this to cure my boredom and also think it’s some sort of complicated evil plot.”

            Harry glared at him. His face was red enough to boil an egg, probably. Draco gave him another gentle smile. Harry knew the truth, that Draco might be able to join him and fight beside him, and he didn’t want to admit it. So he was reduced to spewing stupid lies when they weren’t the point.

            “Anyway,” Harry muttered sulkily. “It still wouldn’t matter. They still wouldn’t accept you into Auror training.”

            “Of course,” Draco said with a brisk nod. “I wasn’t planning on becoming an Auror. Just an unofficial helper who drops in from time to time.”

            Harry stared at him and then turned his head away, blinking his eyes almost shut. Draco stared, then grinned in delight. The look in those eyes had been hard to decipher, but he knew it wasn’t envy or hatred.

            “Was that—yearning?” he asked, making his voice as dramatic as he could. “Do you want some kind of helper after all? Have you wanted one in the past? Someone who’s not bound by the rules of the Auror Department, someone who could help you without having to appear in the official reports?”

            Harry turned back towards him. He said nothing. Draco wasn’t sure he could. He folded his arms instead, a little defensive gesture.

            They sat there like that for a few minutes, Harry’s head half-bowed, Draco watching him, until Harry looked up and whispered, “It’s not fair that you can read me so easily. Why is that? Why can you know all these things I want? Why can you see right into my heart?”

            Draco stood up and crossed over to him. Harry looked up at him, not hiding, not flinching away. Just looking, and aching.

            Draco bent down to rest his cheek gently against Harry’s. Harry turned towards him and kissed Draco’s cheek, although Draco thought that was partially coincidence, just the way Harry had turned his head.

            “It’s okay to want,” Draco whispered. “Even to want someone to help you other than your friends, who you hid this from. It’s okay to want a savior.” He squeezed Harry’s shoulder once more and stepped back from him. When he snapped his fingers, Niri, the house-elf who had brought their drinks, appeared again.

            “She’ll guide you to a room for the night,” Draco told Harry quietly. “I hope you enjoy your rest.”

            He walked towards the door, and then Harry said from behind him, “What, no good-night kiss?”

            Draco glanced back. Harry sat with his arms still folded, but his gaze fixed on Draco as though he was the only light in a dark room.

            “It’s fine to want things,” Draco said. “But I think it’s good to ask, too.”

            He waited. But although Harry opened his mouth again, no sound came out.

            Draco nodded, and left. Harry needed to figure out what else he wanted. Draco had taken him as far as he could towards it.

*

            polka dot: Maybe, but it would be interfering commentary, which Draco doesn’t like very much.

            delia cerrano: He really has, but now Harry worries that he won’t stick around all that long afterwards.

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