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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
A Serious Talk
            “I really do need to talk to you, Harry.”
            Harry sighed and leaned back. He had spent most of the morning researching, through several books in Draco’s library, exactly what torturing magic and turning blood into crystals could do to someone. It sounded nasty, like the blood crystal would give his enemies a much better picture of his strengths and weaknesses than just observing him would do, but it was also hard for Harry to get a grip on.
And the politely determined expression on Draco’s face as he peered around the doorway of the library didn’t fool Harry. Draco wanted to talk to him about staying behind wards and letting people fight for him again. He didn’t seem to grasp that Harry would never do that, even for someone he loved. The one thing he couldn’t do was let people he loved take unnecessary risks.
“About what?” Harry asked, coming out of his reverie, as he noted that Draco was still standing in the doorway and hadn’t moved any closer.
            Draco took a deep breath and moved in. Harry saw he was carrying a small wooden box inlaid with silver, and even from this distance Harry could smell the soft scent that came off it. Cedar wood.
            What had those books about pure-blood customs said when they discussed cedar wood? Something important, Harry thought, his mind racing as he stared at the box, but at the moment, he couldn’t really remember what it was.
            “Harry,” said Draco, and his voice was deep and powerful. He came to a halt in front of Harry and bowed to him, which made Harry shift uncomfortably. “Will you do me the honor of accepting this gift?”
            Harry studied his face carefully. Then he opened his mouth.
            “No questions, please,” Draco said, and Harry saw his eyes flutter shut for a second while sweat crept down his forehead. The controlled façade was an illusion, Harry decided. Draco had probably had to work up his courage for a while to approach him.
            Of course he would choose a custom where no questions are part of it. But Harry trusted Draco not to do something that would trap him or require him to make some kind of disgusting response, so he reached over, took the cedar wood box, and opened it.
            Inside lay a key, a silver key on a thin chain so fine that it was hard for Harry to tell if it was made of gold or something else. Harry picked it up and turned it back and forth, watching the key spin and staring a little dumbly. He had thought there was some kind of weapon in there, or maybe another ring with a more serious purpose than the Portkey ring Draco had already given him, but he would never have thought of this.
            “This key symbolizes that you’ve been granted the sanctuary of Malfoy Manor,” said Draco, and his voice was deep enough that it sounded sad. He reached out, gently caught the key and stilled its spinning, and then laid it in Harry’s hand and folded his fingers over it. “You are welcome behind its wards. You are welcome within its protected places. You will always find a willing hand to serve you and fight beside you here.”
            “That’s good,” said Harry, the only thing he could say when he didn’t really know what the gesture meant or symbolized. The way Draco looked at him made it clear something more was required, and Harry continued hastily, “I appreciate that you’re inviting me into your home. I know that most pure-bloods don’t do that except when it’s family.”
            “Family,” Draco agreed. “As in born, blood family. Or as in an accepted spouse or lover.”
            Harry didn’t snap, because he still trusted Draco not to place him in a position where they wouldn’t have any choice except to get married. But it was hard to keep from snapping as he said, “I’m still going out to fight the Risen Cobras, you know.”
            Draco closed his eyes in what looked like pain. His voice stayed smooth, though, as he said, “You are welcome anywhere within the Manor. Within my chambers or those of my son. Within the potions lab or the libraries.”
            “I should bloody hope so, considering I spent most of the weekend here,” Harry said, and gestured at the shelves filled with books around him.
            Draco stared at him with his heart in his eyes, and Harry sighed and focused on the key for a minute. He blinked when he realized something. “This isn’t magical.” There was no aura around the key at all, and the only thing flashing from it was the light it caught as it turned on its delicate chain.
            “No,” Draco agreed. “It’s a symbol. A symbol of the welcome extended to you, and an invitation for you to stay as long as you like.”
            Harry swallowed. “I’m not doing this as, as some kind of fuck you to you or anything,” he said, and put the key down on the table, and stood up so that he and Draco were more on the same level. He was getting uncomfortable just sitting there. “I know there are risks. It’s just, I want to run those risks, too, and I want to make sure that you and Scorpius are safe. That’s one main reason I want to fight, so that you don’t have to run the risks.”
            “If I said the greatest risk of all is that I’ll get my heart broken, would you disregard it?”
            “No,” Harry whispered, and put his arms around Draco, and stood there for a minute holding him. Draco leaned forwards so his brow rested on Harry’s shoulder, and his breathing turned deep and slow. Harry swallowed and repeated, “No, of course not. But it does mean that I don’t want you running the risks, either.”
            “Let Weasley do it,” said Draco fiercely. “Weasley and the other Aurors. He wants to, and he’s trained.”
            “But what if the Risen Cobras come and hammer on the wards, and it turns out that they aren’t strong enough to hold them back? Then you and Scorpius are at risk again.” Harry shook his head. “I still think the best plan is for me to handle them myself.”
            “And I don’t.”
            Harry stepped back and forced himself to remain calm for a moment. He knew Draco had his reasons for disagreeing. Some of his friends--including Hermione, from the owl she’d sent him last night--agreed with Draco, for that matter. Harry had always promised himself that he would carefully check his impulses if his friends disagreed with them.
            But now, it was hard to bite back his frustration and impatience and talk in a rational manner. From the way Draco was staring at him, though, he would demand nothing else.
            “It’s touching that you want to protect me,” Harry began. He saw Draco’s expression alter, and added hastily, “No, it is. For the same reason that I love my friends for wanting to protect me. I know it means you care. I never had that when I was growing up. I try not to take it for granted now that I’m adult and do.”
            Draco’s expression wavered as though it was a pool of water broken by a thrown rock for a second, and Harry could imagine all the different things that he wanted to ask about. Instead, though, he took a deep breath and asked courageously, “And you think that you know better than three or four top-rate minds combined?”
            It might not have been hard for Draco to call Hermione top-rate, but Harry accepted the compliment to Ron the way it was meant, with a smile and a nod. “Yeah. Because how would your plan end? Where would it end? I can’t just sit behind the wards forever. I have a life to live. When would I be able to live it?”
            Draco looked at him as if he was mad. “When the Aurors have rounded up the Risen Cobras. Of course it’s not going to be forever. Only until they can manage it.”
            “And the next threat? And the one after that?”
            “There’s not going to be another threat as bad,” Draco said stubbornly, but already his expression had wavered again.
            “Yes, there is,” Harry said, very gently, and this time he wrapped an arm around Draco’s shoulders and leaned against him, chest to chest. “There will be, because that’s the way my life works. Or even if they aren’t as dangerous as the Risen Cobras are, you’ll think they are, because that’s the way you care about me. I love and value you for that. But I can’t give in to the impulse to hide all the time and listen to you all the time. Or I’ll never stop.”
            “Maybe your friends would speak differently about that one, because they’ve had a lot of people to care about and I’ve had few of them,” said Draco, voice hard as old wood. “If they do, then I’d listen to them and let you out from behind the wards.”
            “Let me,” said Harry, and he made his voice very delicate.
            Draco gestured wildly at him, face flushing. “You know what I mean! Of course I wouldn’t try to keep you forcibly behind the wards, but--”
            “It’s a distraction from the main topic, I know,” Harry said, and steered them back towards that one. “If they disagreed with you, then you would urge me to listen to them over you. Really? If you thought it was a real threat?”
            Draco opened his mouth, then flushed and shut it again, and didn’t answer.
            Harry nodded, and hoped his eyes were tender, the way he wanted them to be. “I can’t go on simply hiding from people, Draco. I understand the impulse to protect me, and like I said, I’m flattered and honored by it. But I can’t just let my enemies control my life. Or my friends, either. This is the way that I want to live. Fearlessly.”
            “You told me that you did feel fear, that you weren’t always charging headlong into things because of your courage--”
            “Yes,” Harry acknowledged. He wondered where the admissions were going to end. “But I want to live as though I’m a normal person, and this is the best way to go about it.”
            “You’re not a normal person,” said Draco, and his eyes and voice were both vicious in a way that shocked Harry. He would have drawn back, actually, but Draco held him and kept him there. “Normal people don’t forgive their enemies and move on with their lives and deny that a war hurt them.”
            “I’m not as badly off as my friends!”
            “That doesn’t mean you don’t hurt.” Draco again tightened his hold. “Don’t think that we’re not going to have that out someday, how much you got hurt because of the war. We are. But I want to talk about this right now. You’re denying the danger to your life, because? It’s not as though your friends are urging you to get out there and go on living the way you want to!”
            Harry shut his eyes. He wanted to retreat, he thought. He wanted George’s company. Except when it came to his friendship with Draco, George didn’t ask him uncomfortable questions. He just sometimes asked Harry to help him and hold him and talk to him about Fred and listen to him, and Harry could do that.
            This time, he didn’t know what the right answer was. He didn’t know how he could help.
            “Listen, Draco,” he said, as soothingly as he could. “I promise that I’m going to be careful when I’m out. I can’t promise more than that, can I?”
            “You can promise to stay where you’re safe,” Draco said again, and his hands had tightened to the point that Harry winced. Draco immediately loosened the hold again, but his demanding, irritating, delighting presence was still there when Harry opened his eyes.
            “I can’t agree to that,” Harry said. “What happens if Ron or one of the other Aurors gets hurt in the field and they need me to act as bait?”
            “You’re bait already for the Risen Cobras, just all by yourself,” Draco muttered, and then his expression sharpened. “Wait. You want to be ready in case they need you, but you don’t intend to accompany Weasley on every mission he makes in search of them?”
            “No,” Harry said slowly, wondering how Draco had thought he’d been implying that. “Ron’s trained, he can do the ordinary fact-finding and tracking better than I can. But I have some specialized battle skills that he doesn’t. And I’d always want to be there to protect his back.”
            “Then,” Draco said, with the air of someone pulling out a trump card, “why can’t you stay behind the wards until they need you, and come out and go to Weasley then?”
            Harry folded his arms, feeling perversely as though Draco had manhandled him into a corner, even though he knew Draco would probably point out that he’d simply been taking advantage of what Harry had handed him. “Because I have a shop to run. And other friends to see. And you to protect.”
            “You can protect me and Scorpius best if you’re in the same house with us, and not elsewhere. And I know that you work in the shop as a companion to Weasley’s brother, not because it’s a job you need to survive.”
            “Hermione wouldn’t want to visit here.”
            “I have no objections about you going from one warded house to another,” Draco responded instantly. “Not that I think Weasley’s house is as strongly guarded as the Manor, but I know that your friends wouldn’t play with your safety. I trust them to have adequate protection.”
            Harry stared at him. “You can’t just—just sneak around all my objections with your sneaky Slytherin ways.”
            “Your intellect is deserting you when you start repeating yourself, that I have noticed.”
            “Stop it,” said Harry, roughly enough that Draco blinked and shut up. “I knew when I started this conversation what I wanted and what was a good idea. And then you came in and twisted it all up.” He pulled back from Draco and paced around the library until he came to the table where he’d been reading about blood crystals. He turned the pages of the book with one hand, but he wasn’t reading it. Draco watched him quietly.
            “I know what I should do,” Harry said. “I’ve always known that. Protect and nurture and help my friends.”
            “We’ve talked before about you expanding the circle of your friends, and why that’s not a bad thing.”
            “Shut up, I’m rambling.”
            A small smile crossed Draco’s face, but he didn’t speak again, instead looking at Harry with an attentive expression that made Harry sigh and turn away. He already knew how this conversation would turn out, he admitted, but he needed to say it for himself.
            “I knew that, and then you and Scorpius dropped into my life and I had other things I wanted to do.” Harry clenched his hands. “But if I wouldn’t agree to stay behind wards all the time for my friends, why should I do it for you?”
            “Because I’m the only one who’s going to ask you and come up with arguments that you can’t talk your way around.”
            Harry closed his eyes. “I’m the only one who can actually convince myself, you know. Even if you talk and talk and talk at me, I’m the one who has to make the final decision.”
            “I know that,” said Draco, and waited some more.
            Harry sighed. Part of him wanted to stay behind the wards. He wanted to know he was protected, that his magic was safe, that it couldn’t be turned against him. He was tired of battle with the Risen Cobras, and he wanted to know that someone cared enough about him to want him safe.
            But that part of him was weak and selfish. What happened if one of his friends got hurt because he was hiding?
            He turned around to deliver that argument to Draco, and found him already there, eyes bright with compassion.
            “You can go if you need to,” Draco said. “And it’s not selfish to want to stay here, any more than it’s selfish to want people in your life besides the Weasleys, or get tired of their problems sometimes. I won’t hold you back if you really need to go. I’m only trying to talk you out of taking foolish risks.”
            Harry wanted to stay that Draco’s definition of foolish and his didn’t actually match, but he was too occupied with something else. “Were you in my head? Using Legilimency?”
            Draco gave him an innocent look.
            “Were you?”
            Draco snickered. “You ought to see your face.” Then his smile vanished, and he leaned gently into Harry, holding his gaze. “No. I just know the way you think. I’ve seen the way you stare at me as though you can’t believe that I care enough about you to prevent you from doing things like Flooing St. Mungo’s when that curse was still on your hands. I think you do want someone to shelter you and help you sometimes, but for understandable reasons, you haven’t had that in a long, long time. I’m here to make sure that, sometimes, it is about you. That’s all.”
            “And about you, too,” Harry muttered, but he knew Draco had won and he couldn’t even resent it.
            “I’m sure that I’ll find a way to help you make it up to me for my endless exertions,” Draco said, with an extremely satisfied look, as he slid his arms into place around Harry. “Somehow.”
*
            staar: I promise that I'm not going to kill Harry. That doesn't mean I can't make him suffer a bit, though!
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There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That