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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-Six—The Black Stone

            They came out in an underground chamber; Draco knew it must be that, from the dim light. The guardian in Harry’s body immediately tried to swing on him and cast a curse that, from the sound of it, would probably have disemboweled Draco and made him trip over his own intestines.

            Draco had a constitutional objection to that. He flipped away and down, and found that he was falling off a small ledge, or rise in the stone, into a sheltered alcove at the bottom. That, he had no objection to.

            On the other hand, the guardian seemed to know this cave better than he did, and a flying spell shattered the overhang above him, the lip of stone he had fallen over. Draco dived for new cover. There were sliding things beneath his hands that he didn’t think were stones, but he didn’t have the time to pause and investigate them to see what they were.

            He rolled down a pile of the loose and bouncing things, and ended up in another hollow. This cave was made of malleable stone, he thought, sitting up and trying to catch a glimpse of the larger cavern so that he would know where to go next.

            It was black and grey stone, streaked here and there with white, and the floor dipped crazily up and down, ledges climbing almost to the ceiling, the hollows sloping and arching, sometimes leading down to side tunnels that Draco thought it would be worth his while to explore. The only light came from a far-distant tunnel that probably led to the surface and the faint Lumos on the end of Harry’s wand. Draco promptly lit his own, and the shadows in the cave retreated and became a little more manageable.

            “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

            Draco looked up. The guardian stood above him, on the upper slope of the cave. Its head shook slowly from side to side, as though it was irritated by stinging flies, and it hadn’t taken its eyes off Draco yet.

            “You don’t know the kind of danger that you’re in because you’re trying to take Harry away from me,” Draco replied in kind, and forced himself back to his feet. His hands and knees stung from all the rolling and dodging, but he couldn’t pay attention to that right now. He had to look for the object that represented Harry’s heart, to find and destroy it, so that Harry’s emotions could go free once again.

            “You could leave,” said the guardian, making a single long stride towards him. The movement almost comforted Draco, because he knew it was the kind of step that Harry would never take. That proved that it wasn’t him looking through his eyes and talking to Draco at this moment. “No one need know about this. I’ll let you go free, the way that you wanted me to a few minutes ago.”

            Draco looked up at the guardian and sniffed. “Did you really believe that little ploy? It was just a ruse to get you to take me to your lair.”

            The light of his Lumos had spread enough by now to let him see all the corners. As he had thought, the litter that had tumbled away beneath him wasn’t stones. Nor was it bones, which Draco had been more than half-afraid of. It was coins, Galleons and Sickles and others that had crests Draco didn’t recognize, and thought were probably Muggle. Here and there, trunks lay with other treasures spilling out of them. Draco recognized a harp made of dragonbone in one corner, heavy and black.

            This is the thief’s hoard that he took that book with the chain ritual in it from.

            Draco didn’t know where his intuition came from, but he didn’t need to, either. He knew it was right, and that was enough for him.

            He flipped around and regarded the guardian. It had come down towards him while he was distracted, and Draco wasn’t fooled by the way it froze on the slope of the stone and tried to look innocent.

            For some reason, though, it still didn’t want to attack him outright and force him from the cave. Draco found that curious. What was it protecting?

            Its heart.

            Draco was sure that was it. The guardian was a clever last step in the chain ritual, but it was still the last one. If Draco slipped around it and destroyed the object, then that was the end of it, and Harry would be free to return to himself. It paid for the guardian to treat Draco cautiously, to get him out of here without him destroying anything if it could. And it had already seen how stubborn and skilled he was. Simply launching itself at his head and hoping to win the ensuing battle wouldn’t be a smart tactic.

            “You could leave,” repeated the guardian, its voice low and tempting. Draco wondered what had told it that this was a temptation that would work, though, because it certainly wouldn’t. “I wouldn’t pursue you.”

            Draco smiled at it. “Well…”

            The guardian let its eyes brighten. But once again, it wasn’t the way Harry’s eyes would brighten, and that was more than enough to keep Draco at his task and make him finish it.

            “No,” Draco said, and cast a spell at the coins. They rose in a shower and whirled around the guardian, striking it and making it yelp and shield its head.

            Draco scrambled to his feet and ran towards the back of the cave, towards one of the side tunnels. Nothing he had seen yet looked like a candidate for the object Harry had enchanted to be his heart. Yes, there was no reason that it couldn’t have been one Galleon among the others, thus making it harder to find, but Draco didn’t think Harry thought that way. All the objects he had enchanted into animals had been ordinary ones, with the possible exceptions of the silver spoon and the golden nugget, and even then, Draco thought he had mainly chosen those because he wanted all the animals to be of different colors.

            You’d still think he could have found something that wasn’t pink, though, Draco thought, as he dived out of the treasure chamber and into a side tunnel.

            This one had bones, human ones. Draco looked away from them and up to the sides and the ledges near the ceiling. One way or another, those bones couldn’t help or hurt him anymore, and that meant they weren’t his problem.

            One ledge held something long and flat. Draco squinted. Might that thing be a box or a trunk? Yes, he thought it highly likely that in fact it was. He reached out and lifted his wand, wondering what would happen if he Summoned it.

            A weight crashed into his back and bore him to the stone. Draco rolled away immediately, kicking, and heard a grunt as his foot landed somewhere soft and vital.

            Draco suppressed a wince as he stood. Sorry, Harry. But by the time you need that operational again, you’ll be back with me, and I’ll help you all you need with any injuries you have to repair.

            He stood and saw the guardian staring at him, bent over with one hand cupped to its groin. Draco shrugged, and waggled his wand. “Accio thing up there!” he yelled.

            The box on the ledge tilted over and began to fall, and Draco saw that it was bigger than he had thought, made of glass. It had something inside it, something smaller than most of the treasures in the cave, and round. It bounced wildly, indicating that it wasn’t secured.

            The guardian tried to knock Draco out of the way and take the box in its arms. Draco barked authoritatively, “Fool! You’ll break the glass, and then where will we be?”

            The tone made the guardian hesitate, and in the meantime, Draco cast another Summoning Charm and the box zipped over to him. Draco picked up a rock from beside him and smashed in straight into the box. The glass cracked and crazed, dropping and scattering at his feet. Draco leaped back and saw what was inside it for the first time. A black stone, glowing dully red but otherwise as ordinary as the object he had thought Harry might choose.

            He caught the guardian’s eyes as it stared back and forth between him and the glass. Draco shrugged a little. “Oops?” he offered, and then snatched the stone and sped further on into the tunnel. Trying to get back past the enraged guardian to the main chamber would be suicide right now.

            It might be suicide anyway, Draco realized, seeing the way the tunnel bent to the side up ahead. There were no footholds here, and it looked as though the cave either stopped completely or plunged down into a hole. There would be no ladder in the hole, of course.

            Draco drew a loose thread hanging on his shirt rapidly looser and waved his wand over it, chanting. In seconds, he’d Transfigured a rope. He turned around and swung it at the guardian’s feet, forcing it to leap back.

            It doesn’t often go for Harry’s wand, he noticed. Like the other animals who had guarded the next key of the quest, he thought, it was more used to fighting physically.

            And some time in the near future, Draco would need to steal back the glass key it still clutched in one pocket.

            Thought became action, and Draco lashed again with the rope, tangling up the guardian’s foot as it tried to rush at him again. This time, Draco yanked the rope tight, and the guardian crashed to the floor. Draco winced for a moment, but he believed the key was enchanted glass, and not likely to crack simply because of an impact. He held out his hand and barked authoritatively, “Accio key!”

            The guardian’s pocket swarmed and struggled as though he was keeping a mass of bees in there. Draco rolled back as a fist came dangerously near his own ankles. But he had his hand out and above that, and the key slammed into his palm so hard that it jarred his teeth. Draco smiled at it and cast another spell that tangled the rope around a stalactite, heaving the guardian off its feet to dangle in the air.

            Draco took his own key from his pocket and knelt down beside the stone. He hadn’t needed the keys for the box, which left the stone as the last possibility.

            Yes. There were tiny cracks in it, when he stared at it hard enough. Draco would have thought they were scratches if he had seen the stone in strong light and not known what it was. Now he knew, or thought he did, that they were keyholes.

            He thrust in with both keys at the same time, and missed. They jolted and scraped on the stone. Above him, the guardian roared and thrashed, and Draco heard the sound of cracking rock. The thing about being good at physical fights and not magical ones was that you might have the physical strength to escape magical traps.

            He forced himself to narrow his gaze on the cracks in the stone and nothing else. There was no one coming after him. There was no one who would force him to defend himself. He held out his keys and slid them into place, one above the center of the stone on the left side, one below that on the right.

            There was a ringing sound that made Draco’s heart leap into his throat for a single instant, because he thought he had broken off one of the delicate flutes or barrels on the glass. But then the keys slid home, and the stone twisted and wrenched open, delicately pulled, more delicately than Draco had thought was possible, by the gripping force of Draco’s hands on either side.

            The black stone unfolded like a flower, and in the center was something that shone red and gold, something so beautiful and delicate that Draco found it hard to look at it directly. He thrust out a hand blindly in its direction instead, and his hand curved around the warmth. That was all it was, mere warmth, no solidity, no substance, just heat that danced and blazed through his fingers.

            This was Harry’s heart.

            Draco cupped his other hand around it as he stood up, fearing that the warmth might be blown out like a candleflame. He had no idea if that was true, and no desire to test it. He simply cradled the beautiful thing against his chest instead, and hunched his shoulders protectively closer when he heard the roar behind him. He couldn’t turn and face the guardian for long moments. This was so glorious that he wanted to hold it forever.

            But he knew he couldn’t. What had to happen instead was the restoration of the heart to Harry—and what a fool he had been to give it up, Draco thought distractedly—and then Draco doing his damnedest to capture Harry’s heart for himself after that, in one way or another.

            He turned around and thrust his hands out. The guardian was right in front of him now, eyes open wide and crazed.

            Draco leaped at him. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he landed, only that he had to keep his hands out and make sure that he ended up putting the heart in the right place.

            Where the right place was, and whether he could actually let go of this brilliance when the time came, he couldn’t ask himself.

            The guardian danced back from him, and its eyes were a little less crazed. It glanced from Draco to the cracked halves of the black stone, and made a harsh whining sound, a noise of unmistakable loss.

            “You know it’s over,” Draco told it softly. “The object you were supposed to protect is gone, and what purpose do you have now? There’s no reason to think that I’ll let you continue as you are even if you flee. Why not help me and let something good come out of all this senseless death and destruction?”

            The guardian wavered in front of him, and took a step forwards. Its hands were still raised as if it would claw out Draco’s eyes, but Draco had no fear of it now. Not with all its resistance to magic, not with the resemblance it had to Harry without being him.

            He held Harry’s heart between his hands, and that was more than enough reward for him.

            The guardian opened its mouth. Draco didn’t know what it would have said, because suddenly he knew the right place to put the heart beating between his palms, if not what would happen as a consequence.

            He leaped up and crammed the heart down the guardian’s throat.

            The guardian choked and brought its hands up to knock him away. But Draco hadn’t engaged in all those athletic pursuits in the last few years, in and out of bed, without acquiring the ability to dodge. He did it, evading the blows, and continued to stuff his hands down until the red light leaking from between his fingers turned a different color.

            And until he met some warmth at the bottom of the guardian’s throat that mingled with what he held, and exploded in soundless golden and red flames, and pushed him back. Draco raised his head, shaking it, and stared at the guardian.

            The guardian had dropped to his knees, his hands rising to either side of his face, and he appeared to be silently screaming, although Draco only knew that by the movements of his mouth. And then he took a deep breath, and lifted eyes that were Harry’s again.

            Draco only had one chance to see them undimmed, before Harry began to weep. His tears poured down his face, unceasing, accompanied by gulping sobs. Laughter was breaking free of his throat in the same instant, laughter that Draco thought would sound mad to most people.

            But he knew what it was. There was still part of Harry’s heart that had been locked away in the stone until Draco freed it, and part of him, meanwhile, that had been dimmed and muted. With his heart back inside him, the tempest of his unexpressed emotions had burst in on him all at once. He was probably crying as he realized what a fool he had been and laughing because he remembered all the humorous things he had done, Draco thought wisely.

            Draco knelt and extended his hands towards Harry.

            Harry might have recoiled, remembering what Draco had done and seeing those actions for the first time with absolutely clear sight. He might have turned away, his attraction exposed as something else now that he had his emotions back, and Draco would have had to accept that.

            Instead, Harry hurled his body forwards and leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder as he settled against him. His hands came up, not to push Draco away but to draw Draco’s arms in around himself.

            The grip was desperate, fierce. And then he fell back to sobbing and laughing again, while Draco stroked his back and murmured nonsense words into his ear.

            After a moment, though, Draco retrieved his wand and conjured a handkerchief for Harry. There was fondness and pride and gratitude and relief that Harry had come out of his emotionless state at last, and then there was letting Harry get his shoulder all wet and snotty.

*

            Seiren: Thanks! There will be one more chapter after this, but I hope you’re satisfied with the ending.

            delia cerrano: This particular Harry is at least the heir of the Black and Potter vaults. But Lucius is not pleased with how nuts Harry has been acting.

            polka dot: Maybe he’ll be a little better after this.

            SP777: That Draco was too dependent on his parents. Learning to be his own person was very good for him.

            Maybe, but it would have to be a pretty profound change.
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box