Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ancient and Noble Houses	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 29877 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Five—Leading the Dance
            “You were able to fool Granger?”
            “Would I be here if I hadn’t?” Harry retorted, dumping the books that he’d taken from the library onto a table he had Transfigured from one of the broken desks in the nearby classroom. “She would have come with me and insisted on boring you by telling you that she always knew you were a hero.”
            Snape shuddered, then peered at Harry as though he wanted to get revenge on him for making him do that. “You have grown a sense of humor since the war,” he said.
            “I’ve always had it, I just couldn’t show it to you without getting detention,” Harry said flatly. He thought maybe the darkness of his humor had changed since the house started influencing him, but not the humor itself. He’d always had thoughts about the people around him that he didn’t share with others. First the Dursleys, and then the wizarding public and Snape and Malfoy, now his friends.
            His breath started to come short when he thought of Draco. Harry shook his head in irritation and forced it back under control. It didn’t matter whether he wanted Draco here with him or not. He couldn’t have him, and that was that.
            “Perhaps that is true,” Snape said, and went on peering at him. Harry loudly cleared his throat and pointed down at the potions books.
            “You said you were going to show me how to brew the Clear Heart Potion?” Harry thought it was a stupid name for a potion, but he still knew better than to show his sense of humor in front of Snape by making fun of something Snape cared about.
            Snape nodded and leaned back against the bookshelf in his painting. “You know that you had to gather gillyweed and a piece of pure crystal.”
            “Already done,” Harry said coolly, and laid them down on the table next to the books.
            This time, Snape’s eyebrows rose to the top of his forehead and stayed there. “You have ordered them from Diagon Alley and had them arrive already?” Before Harry could reply, he flipped his hand and sneered. “Of course, anyone there would do anything for the Chosen One, including depriving legitimate customers of their products.”
            Harry stayed quiet. Actually, he’d got the ingredients by raiding Slughorn’s supply cupboard, but if Snape wasn’t going to ask that, Harry didn’t see why he needed to bring it up.
            “Well.” Snape paced from side to side as if considering the books, then said, “You will also need a cauldron of pure pewter, in which nothing has been brewed before.”
            Harry unshrunk the cauldron from its position in his pocket, and shifted over to the side so that it could sit comfortably on the table.
            Snape looked hard at him, but Harry looked back blandly, determined not to give anything away. He knew that Snape’s help came with conditions. Staying silent was one of them. If Harry offended Snape, he didn’t think he’d get a second chance.
            “Very well,” Snape said. “You need to dice the gillyweed into pieces not longer than a sixteenth of an inch.”
            Harry took his potions knife out of his satchel and began to dice the gillyweed without speaking. Snape watched him, apparently waiting for the moment when his stare could make Harry look up in sheer self-defense. The moment never came, and Harry went on working. Only when Snape cleared his throat did Harry look up at him and nod a little.
            “You should measure them,” Snape said.
            Harry wordlessly cast a spell that would make a measure hover next to him, in the form of a little metal stick notched at sixteenths of an inch. It was such a useful spell that Harry had already used it several times in Potions this term, although he had to admit this was the first time that he had performed it nonverbally.
            Snape stared again. Harry didn’t look up, because then he would say something and the chance would go away. He worked, instead, hands so steady that after a while he became lost in the rhythm of the work for its own sake, and started when Snape spoke again. He bet the bastard was smiling at that, although he didn’t look up to check.
            “Now gather up the pieces and place them in the cauldron. Gently. If you get the oil of your hands on them, it will ruin their effectiveness.”
            Harry rolled his eyes and used his wand to levitate them into the cauldron instead, which seemed to be a more practical solution to him. Snape grunted once, as if impressed despite himself that Harry had figured that out—or maybe he was upset that Harry hadn’t ruined the gillyweed and had to start all over again.
            After Harry added water, the potion in the cauldron began to swirl, slowly, like the flushing of a toilet. Harry kept his eyes on it, and didn’t need Snape’s sharp words when the clarity turned to deep blue that he needed to move. He picked up the piece of crystal, a rough hunk—Snape had said that what it was shaped like wasn’t important, only its clarity—and dropped it into the potion.
            The potion swallowed it; Harry didn’t know if it dissolved or not, and supposed he would have to be a Potions master himself to know. He just watched, and large bubbles came to the surface of the potion, popping and swelling open. There was a faint, foul smell, and the liquid became absolutely transparent.
            “Good,” Snape breathed. “Now, you must drink it.”
            Harry’s shoulders tightened for a long moment. That wasn’t what the books he’d retrieved from the library had said. They said the Clear Heart potion needed to sit for at least several minutes before it was consumed, and preferably for an hour. You couldn’t wait too long, but you also had to wait for any particular particles or grit in it to dissolve.
            Harry licked his lips and looked up at the portrait. Snape was leaning forwards against the frame, peering down at the cauldron. Then he looked up at Harry, and his eyes glittered.
            “Do you want to be free of the house or not?” Snape whispered. “I remember how persistent it was, from what Black told me—Regulus, not the other one. His parents couldn’t escape its taint once it was on them. Not that they wanted to, so they didn’t try very hard. But you, Potter. I thought you would do anything to be free, or at least to spare Draco the suffering of being touched by someone who has the taint.”
            Harry licked his lips again and picked up the vial he had brought along, which he’d thought would contain the potion for long enough to let him take it to the Gryffindor common room, or wherever else he could go on such short notice. Now he used it to scoop some of the potion out of the cauldron, and stared at it.
            Snape had tried to protect him. He’d died in the pursuit of the war, and then got the memories to Harry to ensure that he would defeat Voldemort on time. Why would he lie now?
            Harry’s gaze darted to another book he’d taken out of the library and carried down here with the potions ones as soon as he could get away from Hermione. The book was sprawled beneath the others that he’d taken, and he didn’t think Snape had seen it. Portraits and Their Ways.
            Harry hadn’t had time to look at it much, but the first line said, Portraits are not the people they were made in memory of.
            Just because the real Snape had protected and fought for Harry, it didn’t mean that the Snape in the painting would. And maybe he considered that any debt he owed for betraying Harry’s parents had ended the moment he died.
            “Drink it!” Snape hissed, his voice as low as the crackling of flames. “Or do you want your best chance to pass and perish?”
            It was probably okay, Harry judged. The few minutes that the books had talked about passing before you drank it had passed while Harry hesitated and Snape pressured him. He tilted the vial back and let the potion, thick and slow as quicksilver, seep down the side of the glass and into his mouth.
            The first sip was like biting into a mass of icicles. Harry staggered and clutched at his chest. The feeling went home to his heart; he thought he could feel it slow and stop.
            Snape laughed.
            Harry opened his eyes, or tried. All he could see in front of him was a blurring, wavery clarity, and all he could feel, besides the coldness in his chest, was the harsh pain on his throat, as though his scars had opened again.
            He slumped to the floor, flailing hand reaching for the cauldron and the books and finding nothing, nothing, but cold stone beneath him and cold laughter above him.
*
            moodysavage: Draco hasn’t been close enough to check (or has had other things on his mind), but it’s probably still a 2.
            delia cerrano: Well, Harry does think Draco would rather be free of him since Harry coerced him into helping in the first place.
            ChaosLady: Thanks!
            SP777: Don’t worry, what the house is doing isn’t meant to be good!
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Ancient and Noble Houses