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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.

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Tear-Bought
            “You aren’t going.”
            Harry bristled a little before he could stop himself. He could understand what Draco was saying, and he was glad that he hadn’t let the rogue Risen Cobra, or whoever he was, into his house. And he had never intended to go alone to the Jackal’s Head, whatever Draco might think of his caution. But to say that he wouldn’t go at all was a little presumptuous.
            “And why do you think that you know what the best course is?” Harry took back the scrap of paper the Risen Cobra had given him, which was lying on the dining room table in Malfoy Manor near Draco’s hand. He smoothed it out and studied it again, but it remained a simple sequence of words and a time. There was no clue to it that would give a hidden message. He had practiced spells on it that would have revealed anything like that. “You weren’t there.”
            “You aren’t going.”
            Harry whipped back around. He could understand and appreciate what Draco was doing and still argue with him, he thought, in a way that he hadn’t been able to argue with his friends in years. “I won’t be under a curse that keeps me from using magic this time. I won’t be taken by surprise.”
            “If you go, you will.” Draco’s jaw was pressed out as he rose to his feet, and Harry could hear the slight grinding of his teeth. It made him glad that Scorpius was taking a nap right now and couldn’t see them argue. Draco stalked around the table towards him. “There could be anything there, any kind of ambush—”
            “I wasn’t planning on going alone,” Harry snapped. “Any more than I was planning on performing that tracking spell alone. I thought I’d take Ron, since he has the full Auror training that I never got. And experience dealing with even more Risen Cobras than I do.” If barely. Ron had taken a lot of them to prison, but a lot of them had also come after Harry when he was alone, the way the one in the middle of Diagon Alley had.
            “You’re not going.” Draco was near enough to reach him by now, and he did it, wrapping one arm around Harry’s shoulders and pulling Harry forcefully against his side, as if that would keep Harry from running off in some kind of wild rebellion. “Because you could be killed.”
            “Is there some pure-blood custom that says you need to look after me in the most patronizing manner you can?” Harry rasped at him, and wriggled free. Draco was still tracking him with that intense look in his eyes that Harry didn’t understand. Why wasn’t even caution good enough for him? “Or do I need to give you a silver mirror with Back off written on it in crushed rubies?”
            “Nothing like that,” said Draco, and he looked damnably unruffled. “I just mean that you aren’t going.”
            “Tell me why.” Harry hadn’t even known that he could sound like that.
            Draco closed his eyes, and something of the reality beneath the mask came creeping through at last. He leaned in with his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and whispered, “Because I can’t lose you.”
            Harry stared at him for a second. He thought he was gaping. But he felt as though he had the emptiness in his mouth, not his head. He sighed and rested unsteady hands on Draco’s shoulders in return, holding him up. “You know that the Risen Cobras and other people hunt me all the time,” he whispered back. “That you could lose me just walking down the street. I’m sorry you feel this way, but I can’t stay indoors and with you all the time.”
            “You don’t understand everything I’m saying.” Draco’s eyes opened again, bright and tearless. “I’ve got attached to you like I haven’t with anyone since the war, except Scorpius. Astoria and I always knew that our connection was going to end someday.” His thumbs smoothed rapidly, raptly, over Harry’s collarbone. “I shouldn’t have become attached to someone who doesn’t even know the customs to court me properly.”
            Harry shifted restlessly. “I’m learning as fast as I can.”
            Draco shook his head. “You’re you. I think I would have got attached even if you threw all those books away and never showed any intention to learn about pure-blood customs ever again.” He leaned his forehead against Harry’s chest. “Please don’t go. Nothing you could learn from them could possibly be worth what you would risk in return.”
            Harry patted his back awkwardly. “I really do trust Ron to keep me safe.”
            “I don’t.”
            Shaken by the stark reply, Harry tugged at the hair on the nape of Draco’s neck. He finally lifted his head and met Harry’s gaze again. “My friends are really getting better,” Harry said. He hadn’t told Draco much of this, except snippets here and there that Draco hadn’t seemed interested in, but now he needed him to understand. “They aren’t as wrapped up in their pasts and leaning on me anymore. It frightened them when they realized that they were lost because they didn’t have me to lean on.”
            “But if it comes down to an attack,” Draco whispered, voice as soft as though he was speaking in a prayer, “I know that you would spring to defend Weasley, and bear the brunt of their spells yourself.”
            “I’m—” Harry cut off his attempt to say that he was better able to bear them. That wasn’t true. Ron’s Auror training was the reason that Harry had wanted to take him along in the first place. “I’m still able to hold them off and concentrate them on me. I’m the one they want. If they go after me and never think of Ron as a threat, then he can come in behind them and stab them in the back.”
            “Or they might go after you from the first, and never pay attention to him at all, and he might be a little slow.” Draco’s eyes never moved from Harry’s, as though he thought he could convince Harry by the sheer force of his stare. “I lie awake at night and shake when I think about how many risks you take on a daily basis.”
            Harry shifted restlessly. “There’s nothing I can do about that unless I stay penned up behind wards all the time. And I spend enough time doing that as it is.” The way I spent enough time resting in bed. He had known even when he bade Draco farewell and left that Draco would have preferred it if he’d stayed for another week. For another fortnight. For forever.
            Draco only shook his head once. “I told you, I never expected to get this attached to someone who doesn’t know the customs, and never to someone in such danger,” he breathed. “My father wasn’t in such danger, after either war.”
            “Your father wasn’t as central,” Harry began. He would push forwards his friends as his helpers whenever he could, but he thought Draco was being silly to ignore the fact that Harry was the target of a lot of people because he had been a target during the war.
            Draco sighed heavily at him, making Harry shut up for a second. “I know, Harry,” he whispered, reaching up so that he could slide his hand across his forehead, finger lingering for a second on the faded scar. “I know that you have to face dangers. What I’m saying is that this is a danger you don’t have to face. Don’t go. It’s most likely a trap, and if not, then they’ll lie and talk in circles and not tell you anything worth hearing.”
            “Ron can—”
            “I don’t trust him to protect you, either,” Draco interrupted, and then stood there, watching Harry in what looked like patient interest, as if he thought Harry could come up with another solution.
            “Then I’ll bring you,” Harry said. “If you really want to go.”
            Draco’s body flinched, and then was still a second later. Harry had already seen it, though, if Draco was struggling to hide it, and he hid a sigh as he said, “I wouldn’t want you to come if you aren’t comfortable. So you can stay here. But that means I’ll go with Ron, and you’ll just have to get used to the idea.”
            “I would love to go,” Draco said, his voice unsteady. “If you’re really ready to tell the world about us.”
            “Do you think that just appearing beside me and helping me possibly escape from a trap, if there is one, is going to tell other people everything?” Harry didn’t think that was possible, not least because he was so confused himself about what lay between him and Draco.
            “No,” said Draco, his eyes still wide and soft, and the lines of his face looked bony. “But there are some pure-bloods who would see the ring and the bracelet, and reach the conclusion that—we may be heading towards. And there are some people out there who might know me, and who might be in attendance at this meeting. They could see the way I looked at you, and know I don’t look at a lot of people like that.”
            Harry firmly took and squeezed Draco’s cold hand. “I don’t mind that. The only way I would is if you think it might put you and Scorpius in danger, to be associated with me.”
            “We already are. There are articles in the paper that implied as much.” Draco took a step back and studied Harry from that narrow distance as though much more separated them, his spine absurdly straight. “If you’ll be comfortable showing me off, I’ll be more than happy to be there.”
            “Good,” said Harry. “You and Ron can practice getting along.” He shook his head as Draco rolled his eyes. “He’s getting better.”

            “If he can’t stand to be in the same room as me, then how can he stand to be in the same pub?” Draco asked. He had at least been able to tell Harry that the Jackal’s Head was a pub, rather like the Hog’s Head, but in the middle of wizarding London rather than in Hogsmeade. It was a common meeting place for the sort of people who wouldn’t quite venture down Knockturn Alley, but might be tempted to.
            “Because he’s getting better,” Harry repeated stubbornly. “And he already told me that he would support whatever I wanted to do about this.”
            “You told them before you told me. I thought I was the first one.” Draco made a little motion as if he was going to pull a cloak closer about him, and then remembered that he wasn’t wearing one.
            Harry gave a moan of exasperation, and caught Draco around the waist, pulling him close. “Will you listen, you idiot? I mean that he promised to support me when it comes to the Risen Cobras, not that I showed him this piece of paper already.”
            “Oh.” Draco smoothed out his face and moved in to rest his hand on Harry’s cheek. “I suppose that’s all right, then.”
            Harry muttered, “It had better be, you gorgeous idiot,” and kissed Draco on the cheek hard enough to sting.
*
            Ron dealt with Draco by keeping his head turned away from him as they walked into the Jackal’s Head together. Harry could live with that.
            The Jackal’s Head wasn’t as big a pub as Harry had thought it would be, given that Draco had described it as a center of activity. It did seem to have more shadows and corners where extra tables could be placed than an ordinary pub, though. Harry made sure that his hand was casually by his wand, and a few people who had turned to look when they walked in turned away again.
            “Harry Potter?” The woman who stepped towards him was much taller and paler than Madam Rosmerta, but she still gave him that incredulous stare he was used to seeing.
            “Hi,” Harry said, with a faint nod that he hoped would convey the business-like nature of the reason they were here. “We’re supposed to meet someone at one. Do you have a table with someone waiting? Or shall we take a seat and wait for them?”
            “No one’s asked for you,” said the woman. She looked like a mantis, but she was folding her arms with a considering air that Harry reckoned came more from her adding up how much money she’d make from them. “Where do you want to sit?”
            “There,” Harry said, holding his hand out in a random way towards the right wall. There was a round table halfway along it with shadows hanging above it; this time, Harry could actually make out the sharp twitch of a suspended Shadow Charm. He smiled a little when the woman blinked at him. “Yes, I’m serious.”
            “All right,” said the woman. “Then you can pay first. For excess damage to tables and chairs that might be caused by dueling.”
            Harry shrugged and pulled out three Galleons. It was probably more than what the chairs at the table were worth. “Here, then.”
            The keeper took the money from him in a dream, as though she hadn’t expected him to pay any charge at all, much less an exorbitant one, and then she straightened up with a sniff and waved them on towards the table. “Go on and sit down, then. All of you. And tell me what you want to drink.”
            “Butterbeer,” said Harry, making sure that he took the chair that had a good view of the door. It wasn’t the one that sat with its back to the wall, but that didn’t matter, not when he had a trained Auror and a paranoid Slytherin watching out for him.
            “We don’t serve that here. We’re not a place for kids.”
            “Or for people with a wide variety of tastes, I see,” said Harry mildly, glancing at her and enjoying the flush of her cheeks. “I’ll have Firewhisky.”
            Ron ordered the same thing, while Draco rasped out the name of what was probably a wine Harry had never heard of and wouldn’t want to try and pronounce; it had way too many syllables. The woman gave them one more irritated look and disappeared into the deepest shadows behind the bar.
            “The more time we spend here, the less I like it,” said Draco. He was rolling his fingers slowly over and over on the table, as if he had an imaginary coin between them. “It’s changed from when I saw it just after the war. More people here who look as if they’d rob us if they could.”
            “But that’s true of everyone who always came here,” Ron said, seeming to have forgotten that he wasn’t speaking to Draco. He even leaned around Harry, sitting behind them, to frown at Draco. In a way, Harry thought, that was progress. “If anything, the ending of the war probably cleaned up a lot of the Death Eaters.”
            “If your only definition of criminal is a Death Eater, then I wonder how extensive that Auror training was,” Draco said sweetly.
            Ron flushed Gryffindor red and lurched to his feet as the woman set two mugs and one fluted crystal glass down on the bar. “I’m going to get those,” he told Harry, in an unnecessarily loud voice.
            Harry caught and held his eye. “Thank you for doing what you’ve done.”
            Ron hesitated, then reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder in a rushing way. “Sure, mate. I wouldn’t have let you come here alone.” Or alone with Malfoy, his expression now all too clearly said.

            Harry went back to watching the crowd. He had a feeling that they’d been watched as they came in, that whoever had “invited” them was here already, and simply hadn’t wanted to make himself conspicuous by asking for a table that would involve Harry Potter.
            Sure enough, the tall man he recognized from his front step a few days ago stalked up to the table a second later. “We didn’t agree that you could bring an escort,” he said, and for some reason, he was glaring at Draco more than he was watching Ron.
            Harry did chance a look at Draco, but there was no recognition on his face. “Surely you didn’t think I would come unprotected,” he said. “Not after encountering enemies who could punch a hole in my wards.”
            The gaze switched to him. The man looked as though he might draw his wand and curse someone, but Harry raised his eyebrows and shook his head a little. The man finally frowned and took the seat across from Harry, hunching in what might have been displeasure.
            “Your reputation said you would,” the man muttered.
            “Was that what you were counting on?” Draco asked softly, before Harry could say anything. “I hope that you weren’t, or I might have to revise my estimate of whether you’re a threat or not.” Harry was utterly sure that he had his hand on his own wand under the table, too.
            The man shut his eyes and spent a moment massaging his forehead. “It’s more complicated than you know,” he said, and he sounded tired. “More likely to explode. I didn’t want to involve other people.”
            “Just Harry,” said Draco, and there was a pure disgust in his tone that Harry hadn’t heard in a long time. He touched Draco’s wrist, just as Ron slid up behind the stranger and put a wand to the back of his neck.
            The man didn’t even look around. “I need to talk to you,” he told Harry. “You, alone. We need to do it without an audience present.”
            Harry didn’t hesitate. “No. You say it in front of my friends or you don’t say it.”
            The man seemed to weigh alternatives for a long moment, before his face tightened with exasperation and he said abruptly, “Fine. Then you should know that the Risen Cobras have found a way to turn your own magic against you, and that’s going to be their next tactic. I really think they’re going to kill you this time. I don’t see a way that you can survive.”
*
SP777: That he’s paying for it.
delia cerrano: You will eventually find out what the Risen Cobras’ problem with Harry is.
There’s no threesome planned for this story.
moon: Do you mean a fluffy story? Either way, thanks. I am having fun writing this.
BAFan: The hosts are just supposed to know, from observing them. Pure-bloods have this mystical observation ability, you know. ;)
But Harry and Draco have enough problems right now that they don’t really need another spanner to keep things interesting.
MoonlightVampiress: Yes, as you can see, he did even more than that. He has learned his lesson.
staar: Thank you!
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That