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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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Chapter Twenty-Eight—From the Mists
            “Draco.”
            It was Snape, Professor Snape, not as thin and drawn as Draco had seen him during the last year of his life, but close to it. This might be the Snape who had tried to help him during his sixth year, and ended up fleeing into the darkness with him from the Astronomy Tower. Draco licked his lips and discovered that it was hard to speak. Indeed, the portrait, the figure in it now fully formed, went on speaking before he could.
            “I wondered if I would see you here,” Professor Snape said, leaning one elbow on a bookshelf and studying Draco. “You wonder what I have done with the potion, of course, and why I would poison Potter.”
            “You poisoned him passively,” Draco said, swallowing and forcing away the dryness that wanted to invade his throat. So his throat was dry. What did that matter? It wouldn’t have inhibited an orator like his father, and Draco was determined not to let it affect him, either. “You didn’t tell him that the potion was wrong, and needed either more time to cool or more ingredients than just the crystal and the gillyweed.”
            Professor Snape’s smile was chill and faint. “Such uncertainty, Draco,” he murmured. “You do not know what it needed, either?”
            Draco stood taller. “I want to know why you did it,” he said. “That, most of all. I can learn what you did by talking with Potter, if necessary.”
            Professor Snape leaned forwards. “You ought to know the answer to both questions,” he said. “The same reason that you stand here in front of me instead of running far away and congratulating yourself on your escape from Potter.”
            Draco sneered at him. That was easier than he had thought it would be, too. On the other hand, it almost certainly helped that the professor was just paint and canvas and an enchantment, now. He could only hurt Draco if Draco was stupid enough to follow instructions and poison himself, the way Potter had been. “Somehow I doubt that Potter pinned you to a wall and forced his way into your mind.”
            “Considering reading a portrait’s mind has never been accomplished, even by the greatest of Legilimens, then I imagine that it would not be that,” Professor Snape interrupted, so serious that Draco found himself wincing a little. “But I was referring to the influence of the house.”
            Draco stared at him. “Why would it influence you? You’re not a Black by blood. And you’re a bloody portrait.”
            Snape folded his arms. “Do you truly understand nothing about how far some pure-blood families would go to ensure that each heir to the line is the same as the one before?” he hissed. “I would have thought you did, considering the desperation the Malfoys have sometimes showed to make half-blood spouses ‘acceptable’ and shape and condition them inside the walls of the Manor.”
            “We’ve never influenced portraits this way,” Draco said flatly. The comments about his heritage hurt, but he recognized them for what they were, distractions. “Say what you mean.”
            “The house grasped hold of me.” Snape looked half-revolted, but Draco thought he saw something dark and smug sparking deep at the bottom of his eyes. “It made it impossible to resist. I was carried away into offering advice that I would not otherwise have offered, giving instructions that were not the right ones. I would have been able to talk rationally with Potter about it if he did not carry that bloody influence around him with like a miasma. As it is, I can act normally, and recognize the depth of my actions, only when Potter is not around.”
            Draco spent some time blinking. Then he said, “I don’t believe that. His friends aren’t acting any different than they usually do.”
            “Perhaps it would not influence Granger, since she is—not pure-blood.” Snape’s face grew drawn for a second, before he continued briskly. “And Weasley is opposed by his very nature to Dark magic. But you, Draco.” His voice grew soft in a way that made Draco shudder, it sounded so reminiscent of both Bellatrix and Potter when he was under the house’s strongest influence. Snape leaned closer. “Have you considered whether you have acted of your own free will since you came into contact with Potter?”
            Draco shook his head. He knew it was too hard, given the buzzing in his ears. “I haven’t changed,” he said. “I know I haven’t. Potter has forced me to go with him to some places, and I’ve done things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. But all the time, I’ve complained to myself about it, and I’ve feared Potter, and I haven’t wanted to stay close to him.”
            “Yet you came and rescued him yesterday,” Snape whispered. “So the house could have both ends of its bargain, could punish him through me and yet still keep its heir alive by influencing you to do the rescuing.” He paused, staring at Draco. Draco became aware that he was breathing shallowly and clenching his hands in front of him. Snape’s voice dropped further, became so soft a whisper that Draco strained to hear it. “Have you considered that?”
            “And, what?” Draco’s voice croaked. He tried to clear his voice so that it wouldn’t, but from the rasp in his throat, that was probably a futile effort. “I j-just—I and you get influenced, and Potter’s friends don’t, because we’re Dark and they’re not?”
            Snape’s eyes glittered harder. “Exactly.”
            Draco took a step back, then another. “I never heard of a house that could spread its influence so widely,” he said.
            “Maybe most of the time, it did not have to.” Snape shrugged, but Draco knew that he wasn’t imagining the bitterness in his eyes. “Maybe most heirs did not struggle against the plan that the house laid down for them. Perhaps they wanted the wealth and the continuity with their ancestors.” His voice became a hiss like acid. “But Potter, of course, must be different.”
            “You can’t blame him for that,” Draco said, less because he wanted to than because he thought it might still the whirling in the middle of his head. “He wasn’t raised in any kind of family that he would want to have. Muggles move from house to house, my mother told me once, and not many of them live in the same place for generations. He wouldn’t understand…”
            He had to trail off, because Professor Snape was staring at him, and it was hard not to think that he should shut up when faced with that. “What?” he added, aware that he sounded defensive.
            “You are apologizing for Potter,” Snape whispered. “You are insisting that I should understand Potter.” He shook his head, looking a little dazed, except that Draco knew full well he was never that dazed. “And yet you would claim that the house has not influenced you.”
            “It’s possible to try and understand someone that you don’t feel much sympathy for,” Draco said, coldly, refusing to think about what Snape’s words implied. “I had to try and understand Potter in the past few days, or he might have murdered me. He got all possessive and angry when he thought Granger was touching me.”
            Snape paused again and looked at him. Draco lifted his head. No, he was not afraid of what Snape might see in the bottom of his eyes, he told the voice whispering in the back of his head. Snape was only a portrait, and Draco was still alive. That meant he was still doing better than Snape, no matter how you looked at it.
            “Now I begin to see,” Snape whispered. “I had wondered why you would put up with such treatment from Potter, even with the house’s influence. It had to struggle against your past history with him, and while it might have some help from your Black blood, no Malfoy should have put up so tamely with what Potter asked of him.”
            “And now you think you know the reason?” Draco heard his own lightly mocking voice from a distance, like the voice of a stranger in another world. “Do tell.”
            “There is part of you that desires him,” Snape said bluntly. “Another that rejoices in being desired, no matter the consequences.” His voice dropped. “Draco. No matter what the Dark Lord did to you, what he convinced you of, you are worth more than this.”
            Draco fell back a step, shaking his head, before he thought about it. Then he straightened his spine. He’d just finished thinking that he was better than Snape and had no reason to be afraid, hadn’t he?
            “It’s not like that,” he said. “Yes, I did find it exciting to think he desired me. But it has a lot more to do with him than the Dark Lord.”
            “Who convinced you that you were undesirable, and even attention from the twisted ones in power would be better than no attention at all?” Snape’s eyes were ancient and haunted, and Draco found he had to turn his head to the side. “It was not Potter. He could not have that kind of impact on you, not when you first met him as your father’s spoiled darling.”
            And Draco found air to breathe, room to move. That only proved that Snape hadn’t understood Draco as well as Draco always thought he had. He turned back and shook his head. “No,” he said. “You have no idea what having him turn on me, choose me over Weasley, did to me. I wanted his attention. I craved it. Maybe this is more than that, maybe this is influenced by the house, but it’s not the Dark Lord’s influence.”
            Snape blinked at him. “You will succumb to that influence if you remain near him,” he murmured. “I did myself, and it is like remembering through a veil of mist. Stay away from him, Draco.”
            Draco turned his back and began to walk down the corridor that led towards the more populated parts of the Slytherin dungeons without replying.
            “Draco?” Snape was raising his voice now, sounding as if he were dangerously close to shouting. “Can you hear me?”
            “I hear you,” Draco said, looking over his shoulder and holding the portrait’s eyes with his own. “I simply don’t choose to acknowledge you.”
            And he faded into the distance, leaving Snape to shout after him impotently.
*
            ChaosLady: Well, this is a little longer.
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Ancient and Noble Houses