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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 Twenty-Three--The Green Dolphin

            "Oh, Harry, I didn't realize what a lovely holiday spot you had in mind!" Draco gushed as they Apparated in beside an ocean.

            Harry glared at him, but Draco felt free to ignore him as he looked approvingly around. The beach wasn't the most beautiful one he had ever seen--not a patch on some of the Mediterranean beaches he'd been to--but it was a vast improvement over the swamp where the leopard had lived. A curve of delicate, grainy white sand, like scattered sugar, sloped down beneath a curl of headland towards a sea, blue-white and studded with foam.

            "This is nice," Draco declared, and breathed in deeply, rejoicing in the smells of salt and spray that traveled to his nostrils. "Which means you can stop trying to glare my head off," he added.

            Harry sighed and strode to the edge of the headland. There was a series of shallow steps carved into the stone, Draco saw now, invisible from most angles except right on top of them, leading down towards the ocean. "You haven't realized what it means yet? That you'll need to fight a creature that lives in the water? I doubt you'll be as good at that as you were at fighting beasts that live in the sky."

            Draco sneered and followed him. "I think that between us, we can come up with a way to fight the beast."

            Harry blinked and glanced over his shoulder at Draco. "Of course," he said a moment later. "Of course we can."

            Draco watched him thoughtfully. Harry was negotiating the sliding last part of the path, where the steps faded into sand. "Second thoughts?" Draco asked. "Or the chain ritual reasserting itself now and taking over your mind?"

            Harry jerked his head back towards him, slid on the path, and had to flail around indignantly with his arms for a moment. Draco caught up with him and balanced him with an arm around his waist and one around his shoulders. Harry tried to pull away as he stood back up, but Draco leaned in and kissed him soundly on the nose.

            "What are you doing?" Harry pulled back and shook his head. "You do realize that when we face the dolphin, we have to be serious?"

            "It is a dolphin that lives here?" Draco looked out over the ocean and nodded. He could see that, that this peaceful place was home to a beautiful and peaceful creature. "Well. We'll face it." He faced Harry again and smiled at him. "But for now, I'm reminding you that you do have a choice about what to do and how to do it. And that you can't be serious all the time. And that not even half an hour ago, you were kissing the back of my hand."

            It took a moment, a long, wavering moment during which Draco wasn't sure if Harry would listen to him or not, but then Harry bowed his head and his forming scowl melted into an easy smile. "All right," he said softly, taking Draco's hand and brushing another kiss in the same place he'd put the first one. "I can't demand that you change your tactics in the middle of the hunt." He faced down the slope and shivered. "But I'm nervous."

            "Because this is the hardest one?" Draco asked as he rested his hand on the small of Harry's back and guided him gently down the slope.

            "Because this is the last one," Harry said, and darted one glance at Draco before he returned all his attention to the path.

            Draco decided that paying attention to the path might benefit him, too, with the way all the sand slid underfoot, and they came down gently on the beach beside the water, after all. The water curled away in front of them, up and down, jade-colored now that Draco was closer. The noise it made on the beach wasn't a noise Draco would have expected from the sea, either, more like a whispering song than a simple hissing.

            "Where is the dolphin?" Draco asked, turning his head so he could survey the whole expanse of the ocean, out to the horizon. He knew better than to ask where they were. The other places either hadn't been real or had been a combination of reality and glamours that made it impossible to find them once they had killed the creature that inhabited it. "And do you know what its power is going to be?"

            Harry didn't answer. Draco glanced at him to find his hands fixed in front of him, his eyes fixed on the waves.

            "Hey," Draco said softly, and put his hand on Harry's rigid, tensed arm. "I'm not angry at you for having a bit of doubt."

            Harry took a deep breath. "I know you were right, now," he whispered. "A chain ritual that left me so open to my enemies is no defense." Draco nodded. He could live with that being Harry's sole acknowledgment for right now. He wanted more than that, wanted Harry to confess that he couldn't live without Draco, that the chain ritual had been wrong because it would have killed the fire inside him and made it impossible for him to be with Draco, but that could wait for the future. "But I still keep wondering what I'm going to do about Dark Lords after this. How to stop the rumors and the rituals and everything else."

            "Remember that the responsibility is shared," Draco said. "Speak to your friends. Speak to the other Aurors who helped you work those cases. Speak to me."

            Harry turned his head and stared at him, so astonished that Draco sniffed. "What?" he asked. "I told you that I would enjoy appearing alongside you, fighting, and then Apparating away again before anyone could stop me. And it's not like I'm interested in a paid position at the Ministry."

            "But fighting Dark Lords," Harry whispered. "It's a serious task. Are you sure that you would want it, even for my sake?"

            Draco smiled and laid a hand on Harry's cheek. Harry's eyes were so wide. Draco thought he could happily drown in them and never come out again.

            "I want it because it's for your sake," he told Harry honestly. "I wouldn't be interested in someone else offering me this position. I want to keep myself free from boredom, but this wouldn't appeal to me if you weren't at the center of it."

            Harry swallowed a few times before he could answer. "And does that mean that you wouldn't want to do this if not for the history between us?" he finally managed to ask.

            "What lies between us in the past is part of the reason you're so fascinating to me," Draco had to admit. "But, Harry, surely you know that I've come to appreciate you for other things? Your fire, your skill with spells, your courage?"

            Harry blinked hard at the last words, and reached up to clasp the hand Draco had laid on his cheek. Draco tensed, but Harry didn't try to fling off his touch, as Draco had been afraid would happen. "My courage? I don't know where that comes into it. You've been railing at me for my stupidity most of the time that you've been working to destroy the ritual."

            Draco clucked his tongue, but had to smile at the glare Harry gave him. He did enjoy baiting Harry like this, he had to admit. But it wasn't the only way they could interact, and Draco was glad of that. If it was, he probably would have had to part from Harry the minute the chain ritual was destroyed.

            "You were brave to do this, even knowing in hindsight that it wasn't the best ritual to choose," Draco said. "And you flung yourself into helping me destroy these creatures the moment you understood what made the ritual worthless, when you could have dragged your feet or just waited for me to kill them. And you confronted your feelings for me, and my feelings for you, and let me touch you. I call that courage."

            Harry lifted his lip in a gesture that Draco could only call a smile because he didn't have anything else to call it. "Do you think your own touch is so frightening, then?"

            Draco touched Harry's hair, his face, his neck, wondering why he felt as if his hands wanted to tremble. "Not that, but the consequences," he said. "You were courageous to talk to someone who told you you were wrong. I don't think you've had that happen, a lot."

            "Not since the war," Harry said, and the brightest smile Draco had seen from him yet came flashing onto his face. "Before that, they were quite eager to tell me so." He poked Draco gently in the chest. "And someone encouraged them to do it, if I remember who contacted Rita Skeeter."

            Draco said nothing to apologize for himself. If Harry hadn't already forgiven him for that, Draco thought they probably wouldn't be standing here. He turned his head to the side and fluttered his eyelashes instead. Harry smiled at him as if helplessly, and Draco kissed him on the nose again.

            "Now," Draco said. "Over your attack of nerves and ready to hunt?"

            Harry nodded with his eyes half-closed as he turned away and began to walk along the beach. "Thank you, Draco."

            I've never enjoyed someone speaking my name so much, Draco thought, and for a moment, he wanted to seize Harry and practice some of the activities that the beach was very much unsuited for.

            He settled for taking Harry's hand, squeezing, and saying, "You're welcome."

*

            They arrived at last at the place where Harry thought the dolphin was likely to be: a wide bay, filled with water so transparent that Draco could see the seafloor of white sand, and how it sloped out for a short distance and then dropped off even more steeply than the cliff above them did. Harry cast a spell Draco didn't know, and stood frowning into the water as it sparkled and then died on his wand.

            "The spell should have brought the dolphin close enough that we could see it," Harry muttered, peering around as if he thought it might have surfaced near him and he just hadn't realized where it broke water. "I don't know why it didn't."

            "I might," Draco said, and cast one of those spells that Veronique had taught him and he wasn't supposed to know. Not because it would bring disgrace or scandal on the Malfoy name, but because he had spied on her when she was using the spell to cheat on him, and she would have been humiliated if she knew. Now he watched as a trail of light formed on top of the water, like a reflection from a second sun, and nodded. "I thought so."

            "Well?"

            Draco grinned and glanced over his shoulder at Harry. Harry really was so much more interesting when he had some fire and snap in his voice, although Draco could imagine what Harry would say if he voiced the opinion.

            "The spell I used detects magic from a ritual," Draco said. He ignored Harry's mutter about how useless that would be when the whole place was infused with power from the chain ritual. "It can reveal when a ritual is closing back in on itself and getting ready to fight someone who wants to disrupt it, too. And the chain ritual's beasts have probably decided that you're their enemy, and won't obey a summons from you."

            "The wolf had decided that, yes." Harry stood back with his arms folded. "But I don't know what other spells to try. I doubt that you're as good at swimming as you are at flying, and we can hardly force the dolphin to come to us."

            Draco sighed. "Honestly, you've suppressed your imagination along with everything else. We do have something that can force the dolphin to respond." He took the silver rose out of his pocket.

            Harry glanced back and forth between the rose and the water, and then shook his head. Draco thought he would say something about the rose's inability to make the water obviously boil and bubble, but instead he murmured, "What would I do without you?"

            Draco grinned as he bent over the water. The rose was no weight at all, and he held it straight out in front of him, perhaps a meter above the waves. "Go back to being the self-sacrificial person who created the chain ritual?" he asked, in a little mutter he knew was obnoxious.

            Harry rolled his eyes, and probably would have said something else, but the water erupted just then.

            Draco jerked his hand away in time not to feel anything but the mere scrape of pointed teeth on the back of it, but that was quite enough. He watched in awe as the dolphin jackknifed in front of him, rolling over in the air like a Quidditch player, and then splashed back down and swam a distance away.

            It was as green as jade, a color that deepened to blue on its flippers, nose, and tail. When it rose again, lifting its head out of the water to glare at them, Draco was sure that the color was no illusion. It was more beautiful than the quartz wolf or the silver horse.

            I'm going to regret killing it, aren't I?

            If he could kill it. The dolphin was swimming back and forth, just above the part of the bay where the water would have been shallow enough to strand it, its tail lashing. It made sharp, angry chittering noises, and Draco could imagine all too well what would happen if he was foolish enough to step into the ocean now.

            "Any suggestions?" he asked Harry.

            Harry said nothing. Draco glanced at him and saw that he was grinning slightly at Draco, his head tilted to the side in a way that made Draco want to kiss him. But indulging that desire right now might get slightly complicated, with a magical beast nearby that wanted to kill them. Draco waited instead, and Harry finally shook his head and muttered, "I told you, I don't really know what to do. You're the expert here."

            Draco took a step back and watched the dolphin. It lifted its head and chittered at him again, a sound that was not ridiculous and which had all the right in the world to make him jump back. Harry didn't have to chuckle at him when that happened, either. Draco continued to watch the dolphin measuringly, and finally nodded and decided that he was ready to begin.

            "The silver rose is the weapon that's supposed to defeat it, somehow," he told Harry, raising his wand. "Bringing the rose closer to it can't be a bad thing."

            Harry opened his mouth, obviously about to ask how he planned to do that, but Draco cast the Chasing Charm--the Reverse Summoning Charm--before he could. The rose soared into the air and hung there like a much smaller version of the cloak in the swamp for a few seconds, glittering. Then it darted towards the dolphin.

            The dolphin dived, but the rose didn't need to breathe, and promptly sank under the surface, too. For a few seconds, Draco could see their chase, gliding and zooming all over the shallow part of the bay. Then they moved to deep water, and with one more flash of jade from the dolphin's tail, they were gone. The rose faded into the distance as effectively as a dolphin colored more like the sea did.

            "Well, well," Harry drawled, and made a show of dusting his hands. "A brilliant plan. What happens now?"

            Draco lifted his wand and shook his head. "You really have suppressed your imagination," he said. "Well, again, I assume that the Aurors have a regime that induces conformity." And he swished his wand down. "Accio rose."

            There was a disturbance in the ocean, and the rose dipped into sight, then dipped down again. Draco squinted, trying to make out what was keeping it. Despite the distance, the water was so clear that he thought he would have noticed something like a reef or an enormous tangle of seaweed by now.

            But the rose sagged into the waves once more, and then suddenly soared upwards, giving itself a little shake as if it had decided that it was going to return to the one who had called it no matter what.

            The dolphin's teeth were clenched on the fragile silver petals and stem, almost bending them out of shape, and the dolphin flew towards Draco, tail and flippers fluttering as though it still swam.

            Draco had about two seconds to conjure a net in front of him, and he did, but not before the dolphin slammed into him. The net wrapped around it seconds later. The dolphin thrashed on top of Draco, sleek, wet body strong enough to crush the breath out of Draco's lungs, and squealed into his face.

            The net's stopping it, but not for long, Draco thought, and seized the rose in one hand, determined to smash into the dolphin's face and find out whether that would work better.

            Then Harry cast a spell from the side, aimed straight at the dolphin, and the air was rent with lightning, clear and white and utterly blinding Draco.

            Trust him to get involved, when he does, Draco thought, dodging the teeth of a predator he could no longer see, with the wrong spell.

*

            Delia cerrano: But Harry cannot have children, and that is a big no-no to Lucius.

            Yes, I think it’s best to just do kissing in this story.

            SP777: Draco has no intention of bending—to the dolphin or what he meets in the next chapter.

            Seiren: Thanks! This Draco might be one of the smartest ones I’ve ever written, despite his daredevilry.
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box