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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Two—The Golden Chain

            “Draco. I must discuss something with you.”

            Draco looked up, his eyebrows arching. He had expected to see Harry and perhaps his mother at the breakfast table, but not Lucius. Still, he nodded a greeting and pulled the chair out so that his father could sit down. It didn’t do to ignore Lucius when he was in this kind of mood. It was the same mood he had used when he summoned Draco home. Draco folded his hands in front of him now, watching as his father worked his way through the cup of tea that the house-elves brought him. This was another piece of the ritual.

            “Mr. Potter is in the best suite of rooms in the house,” Lucius said, when he had apparently finished sipping enough tea to make his important point.

            “I’m surprised at you, Father,” Draco said, with a little shake of his head. Lucius looked up, too quickly to conceal the flash of hope in his eyes. Draco smiled faintly at him, tilted his head, and said, “It’s Auror Potter. He earned that title fairly, no matter what he might have done to irritate you in the past.”

            For a few seconds, his father sat still. Then he lifted his cup of tea in a salute, and said, “You remind me of important matters of etiquette every time you visit, Draco. I must not cease to be grateful to you.” He sipped, not taking his eyes from Draco’s face.

            Draco smiled modestly. Then he waited for his father to reach the real point. He should have known better than to try to begin a skirmish with a mere statement of fact. It wasn’t worthy of either one of them.

            But worthy, perhaps, of the soft opponent that Lucius had expected to find in his son. Draco trusted that he had showed him otherwise.

            Lucius cleared his throat once, gently. “What are your intentions towards Auror Potter?” he asked, leaning forwards.

            Draco saw no point in trying to disguise his slow, delighted smile. “Why, Father,” he said, pressing his hand against his chest. “I had no idea that you intended to play the part of Harry’s father in this little marriage drama.”

            Lucius would have banged his hand down into his hands if he was a lesser man, Draco thought. As it was, he retracted his lean across the table, sinking back in his chair instead and closing his eyes as if he were very tired. "Draco," he breathed. "You will oblige me by shutting up and listening for once in your life."

            "I don't see why," Draco said. "I already know what you would say, and it would be boring for you to recite and for me to listen to. Why shouldn't I save us both some unnecessary effort and summarize?"

            His father's eyes flickered open. He looked at Draco, and said nothing. Draco knew his mother would say that was a sign he had gone too far, and he should remember that he was still Lucius's heir, rather than Lord of the Manor himself.

            But Draco had long since passed the point where he could be intimidated by mere silence. If the silver horse and the quartz wolf hadn't managed it, the man who had merely brought him into the world and subsidized his lifestyle wouldn't, either. Draco began to tick off points on his fingers. "You'll say that I need to find someone proper to marry, so that I can stop scandalizing wizarding society with my multiple lovers."

            "I would not have said that," Lucius said, interrupting for no reason, Draco thought, except to prolong things, "because your mother and I have never told anyone in British wizarding society about your lovers."

            Draco smiled at him out of sheer pity. "Oh, Father," he said. "And you think none of my lovers have relatives in Britain who they write to often and drop my name to?"

            Lucius's hands briefly firmed on top of the table before he put them under it and out of sight. "I can think of no one who would spread the news," he said.

            Draco clucked his tongue. "The point is that they know, and you know, and they know you know, and you know that they know that you know. So it matters." He touched his second finger. "And you don't think Potter a proper match for me. He won't produce children, he fought on the other side of the war, and you don't like him."

            "That, I never said," Lucius said.

            Draco rolled his eyes at his father. He really must train him out of his habit of interrupting, he thought. It would become tiresome if it was allowed to continue. "Only because it would be suicidal to state openly in British wizarding society that you dislike the Boy-Who-Lived," he said. "But I saw the look in your eyes when you gazed at him the day before last. Yes, he is a visitor. He's also a guest, one I invited and who will stay as long as I want."

            Lucius had learned. He sipped his tea and said nothing.

            Draco smiled. "I can still have the ability to invite guests over as your heir, I suppose?"

            "Ah," Lucius said. "The important word in that sentence is heir."

            Draco felt his heartbeat speed up. He had expected his father to get to the threats when complaints failed to hold him, but not so soon.

            "Do tell," he breathed.

            Lucius's lips narrowed a little, as though he had expected Draco to be groveling in front of him at this point instead of resisting, but he nodded shortly and said, "If I declare that you are not my heir any longer, you lose that privilege of inviting guests."

            "Along with the Manor and my vaults, of course," Draco said, nodding. "Planning to keep me on a golden chain, Father?"

            Lucius's fingers tightened around his teacup. "You are the one who made this necessary, Draco. Your mother tells me you have no intention of giving Potter up."

            "Perhaps you could have asked me that?" Draco said.

            His father turned to him. "Then you do intend to give Potter up?"

            "Well, no," Draco conceded. "But you still could have asked me if I did."

            Lucius closed his eyes and shook his head. Draco recognized that he was settling in for a truly epic scolding, and he attempted to fold his hands and look penitent. Then he sighed and took his hands apart. Keeping them in that position hurt, and there was no chance that his father would ever believe him, anyway.

            "I have allowed your outrageous behavior to continue," his father began. Draco nodded a little, impressed; he had thought Lucius would begin with "unacceptable," and was surprised at the choice of a different adjective. "As you point out, it has been on the Continent, and so I could hardly accuse you of flaunting it in the face of proper wizarding society. But your mother and I called you home for a reason. It is high time that you learned the limits of what you can do. Young wizards may experiment. Everyone does."

            Except you, Draco thought, looking at Lucius's frozen face. Lucius had told him again and again that he was happy to become a "proper" wizard, happy to marry Narcissa and begin a family. The only reason he could express approval of experimentation with a straight face was that he had allies who might abandon him if he didn't.

            Your allies aren't here, Father. Draco was fond enough of Lucius, but he wished his father understood him better. He ought to know that there were certain things Draco would do cheerfully to oblige him and concentrate on those, instead of the things that Draco wouldn't do for a big pile of Galleons.

            "But your experimentation is at an end." Lucius looked as if he wanted to slap the table and make it shake, but in the end, he sniffed and settled for putting both hands on the edge and scowling at Draco. Even then, his "civilized" training wouldn't let him get away with putting his elbows on the tabletop, Draco noted. "I did not wish to have to threaten you. Now I see I must, since you will not abandon your outrages any other way."

            Draco mentally deducted the point he had awarded his father for using the unexpected "outrageous." Repeating "outrages" showed a lack of creativity that Draco had a hard time forgiving. Draco shook his head. "If you could tell me in any detail what my unacceptable behavior consisted of, Father, then perhaps I would have an easier time correcting it after I settle in England permanently."

            Lucius's breath caught. He still could look young and innocent and naive, Draco noted. He decided that was probably a political trick his father had practiced, but one that didn't serve him as well with his own family. "Then you will stay here?"

            Draco smiled. "I have incentive now."

            Lucius nodded, once as if to himself, and once that was almost a bow to Draco. "Well, good. I did not enjoy threatening you with disinheritance. I am glad that you think enough of family honor and tradition--"

            Draco rolled his eyes and interrupted. Perhaps it betrayed the spirit of what he had learned during his last few years, but he couldn't let his father persist in the farce any longer. "My incentive to stay here is Harry, Father. Not the threats that you'll hold over my head."

            Lucius paused, and then reached for his teacup again. Draco tried idly to decide if that was to give himself something to do with his hands, or to hide their shaking, but gave up. The decision was made much harder by the fact that it could have been either.

            "Your mother did tell me that you were committed to this absurd course of being with Potter," Lucius whispered. "May I ask why?"

            Draco eyed him musingly and then nodded. "Of course."

            He waited. Lucius waited. Only when Draco smiled at him did Lucius hiss and say, "I am asking," throwing every word at Draco as if it was a separate stone.

            "I got into what I did on the Continent because I was bored," Draco said. "Summoning me back to England doesn't stop that. Nothing can stop it except something to do. And, forgive me, Father, family business and the management of money doesn't excite me that way. Not that you made a single effort to bring me into the management of the Malfoy fortunes," Draco had to add, as he thought about it. It seemed Lucius, and perhaps his mother before she thought more about it, had assumed that Draco would be happy to settle into the role of an idle heir without doing anything that heirs traditionally did.

            "What can Potter offer to relieve your boredom?" Lucius whispered. The whisper disguised whether his voice was hoarse or not. A pity, Draco thought. He would have enjoyed knowing if he was affecting his father that way. "He is the most boring of the boring, the staid, conventional Gryffindor."

            Draco gaped at Lucius, and then began to laugh. He did try, in deference to the family and his mother if not Lucius, to keep the snickers down, but the higher-pitched giggles escaped despite himself.

            "What?" Lucius had drawn himself up into that immovable marble statue pose that he so favored.

            Draco choked and wiped some more tears away from the corners of his eyes. "You don't know much about him if you think that, Father," he said, and licked a little at the tears trickling down his face. "Did you--did you really think that the man who won the war and conducted the most arrests of any Auror in the British Ministry of Magic in the last four years couldn't keep me entertained?"

            "Your mother has hinted at the latest form of that entertainment, and it will not last forever." Lucius leaned forwards like a hawk about to stoop. "What will you do when it is done?"

            Draco wondered if his father and Harry would be flattered to know they had asked the same question, and decided that no, they wouldn't. Which might make it fun to tell Harry, anyway, later.

            "When the chain ritual is done and all the animals are defeated?" Draco smiled a little at Lucius's baffled expression, which only proved that his mother had not explained everything. He lounged back in his own chair and took a slice of orange from his plate, wondering idly where Harry was. Perhaps he had decided to eat a meal that the house-elves brought him in his own rooms. Draco hoped not. He didn't want Harry to show such signs of retreat when they were on the brink of concluding a brilliant agreement. "Then I'll join him in his Auror work. As an unpaid and dashingly exciting and random consultant, of course."

            Lucius's jaw firmed. "The Malfoy heir cannot make his living in such a manner."

            Draco gave his father another pleasant smile. Lucius had done him the favor of unsheathing his claws. Draco reckoned that he ought to do the same thing. "I had no intention of making my living at it. It is highly unlikely that the Auror Department will pay me for doing something they see as interfering in their investigations, anyway."

            Lucius's lips shaped the silent question. Draco leaned forwards. "You will continue to support me in the style to which I am accustomed." Then he paused and considered that. "Well, the money of the style to which I am accustomed. I will have to provide the danger and the daring and the love for myself."

            Lucius shook his head a little. He seemed to have regained some control of himself, maybe because Draco's rebellion had taken what he thought of as a familiar form. "What makes you think I would? I have told you the consequences of not obeying me, and this sounds as though you would not be obeying me."

            Draco leaned back further and rubbed two fingers together. "Tell me, Father," he said. "Rather, answer the question that I asked you the last time you threatened not to keep me as your heir. Do you have another one?"

            Lucius hissed at him. Draco shook his head. He had a lover--well, a soon-to-be lover--upstairs who could actually speak Parseltongue, and this effort was half-arsed at best.

            "You don't understand," he explained to Lucius as gently as he could. "You can't threaten me unless you have someone to back me up as heir."

            "It was meant--" Lucius shut his mouth.

            Draco nodded anyway, understanding. "Yes, it was meant to make me crumple and yield to you. I know that. But that only works as long as I actually fear that you'll disinherit me. I know that's not true. You don't have anyone else who could take over the fortune. Hence your tolerating me doing what I want for five years, and only calling me back when you decided that you needed my help with your slipping chance of gaining power in the Ministry."

            His father stared at him. Then he shut his mouth again--although his lips had only been parted a short distance, instead of gaping the way Draco had almost wanted to make him do--and he shook his head with a little snort. "You have a good brain," he said. "Why can't you use it in a way befitting the Malfoy heir?"

            Draco rolled his eyes. "You realize that you still haven't actually told me what I did that was so disgraceful?"

            "Not taking things seriously," Lucius snapped. "Not living up to the responsibilities that you should willingly have taken up years ago."

            "I would have taken them up if I'd had any indication that you wanted to share them," Draco said blandly, meeting his father's eyes. "I didn't, and you were willing enough to pay for me and not see me. Why should I have thought you were anxious to call me back home and share the power behind the throne?"

            Lucius shook his head. "Regardless of what decision you make, you should know that Potter is an utterly unacceptable consort for a Malfoy."

            Draco smiled. "Why, Father, I thought you were the one who said that Malfoys set the standard of what is and what is not acceptable. If I begin to say that he is, then others will have no choice but to follow along with me. Isn't that what you believed?"

            Lucius shoved his chair back and left the room without a word. Draco chuckled and watched him go.

            He saw a shadow of movement at the other end of the room, and turned his head back, wondering if Narcissa had come to congratulate him.

            Harry stood there, staring at him.

            Draco raised his eyebrows. If Harry had any questions about what had happened, about whether Draco would stick by his side for Harry's own sake or if he was only defying his father, Draco would be more than happy to explain. But he put his hand out, and Harry came and took it.

            "I didn't know you would defy him for me," Harry said, and kissed the back of his hand.

            Draco half-shut his eyes. This kiss burned more than the ones they had shared last night, more even than being allowed to touch Harry. Harry had touched him, and of his own free will.

            It was--important. It was something.

            But at the moment, Draco could come up with nothing more worthy to show his deep emotion than to stand up and kiss back.

*

            delia cerrano: He's been very successful at it so far.

            Seiren: Thanks! I think in this case, one reason I felt freer to be slow is that the story is rated PG-13, so at most it's just going to be kissing.

            SP777: We'll see! I am tempted to do more with this Draco, who is so fun.

            Thank you.

            alexkdp: Well, I'm afraid that you might be even angrier at me now, that I'm not following up on the steamy scene directly at all. ;)
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box