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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.

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Chapter Three—History of the Blacks

            “All these?” Harry’s voice was faint as he surveyed the stack of books that Kreacher had brought him.

            “All these.” Kreacher bowed his head and gave Harry that sidelong glance again, the one so quick Harry kept thinking he hadn’t really seen it. “Master.”

            “Could you call me Harry?” Harry whined, picking up the first book and studying it. It said The Blacks and Their Heirs, and it didn’t seem to have an author. It was an enormous book, blue with golden letters stamped on the spine for the title. He grimaced and put it back on the pile. He was in the drawing room again, the place where he had seen the cobra-shadow, and Kreacher pulled some more tomes from the bookshelves and brought them over.

            “Master,” Kreacher said, and Harry didn’t know whether that was a response or a refusal. “Here are more books that Master be requesting.” He bowed his head in what at least looked like humility and tumbled the books onto the table in front of Harry.

            Then he bowed deeply again, and kept it like that until Harry waved a hand at him. “You can go now, Kreacher.”

            “Kreacher is happy to have served Master.” Kreacher stood up and gave Harry a look so deep that Harry flinched away from it. Then he turned and loped into the kitchen, and Harry heard pots banging and clanging again.

            Left alone, Harry stared at the books and decided that he might as well start with The Blacks and Their Heirs, even though it was no longer the one on the top of the pile. He flipped a page open and started to read.

            Once he thought he saw a shadow writhing next to him, settling near his feet, but nothing actually touched him, and he managed to grit his teeth and ignore it.

*

            Well, that was a load of bollocks that didn’t actually help much.

            Harry sat at the kitchen table eating the dinner Kreacher had prepared for him, which seemed heavy on tomatoes, and there was an enormous plate of treacle tart for afters. Harry had probably told Kreacher at some point that he liked those things, but he couldn’t remember when.

            The books had said that Black heirs were traditionally chosen for their blood. No help there. The books had said that Black heirs also learned the traditions of the house from their parents and that there was no reason for them to grow up anywhere but in the building that was the current head of the family’s home. So for a few generations back that had been Grimmauld Place—no mention as to why the Blacks had wanted to move into the middle of a Muggle city—and for a while before that it had been a place called Midnight Manor, and there had been houses further back that didn’t seem to have names. The names were “buried with their owners,” whatever the fuck that meant.

            Black heirs had honor and pride and tradition and pure blood and cunning and ambition. Since none of those seemed to apply to him, Harry had no idea why Kreacher was treating him the way he was.

            Black heirs shared the family traits of pale skin and grey eyes and dark hair, and the eldest son was normally the heir, followed by a younger son, and then an elder daughter. A few of the books seemed to imply that if there were three sons, an elder daughter was still preferred, but hadn’t explained why. It was only mildly interesting anyway.

            “The House makes the heir,” the second book had concluded. Harry rubbed his hand over his face and tried not to growl. So what? Yes, that would make sense if he was actually a member of the House of Black, but he wasn’t, and Sirius leaving him the property and vaults and Kreacher couldn’t actually make him one.

            “Is Master wanting to go into the garden?”

            Harry glanced up. “Huh?” He hadn’t got around to cleaning up the garden behind the house yet, for a number of reasons relating to the facts that there was plenty of work inside, that someone might see him there, and that he had no interest in the Potions ingredients the garden seemed mostly designed to grow.

            “Master is wanting to go into the garden,” Kreacher said, nodding wisely, and bustled along in front of Harry to gather up the plates. “The garden is often soothing the Black heirs. Master is wanting to go into the garden.” He looked so keenly at Harry that Harry stood up and turned around because it seemed like a good idea to be as far away as possible from someone who looked at him like that.

            “Yes, fine,” Harry said, and strolled outside. It was a stroll, he told himself, not a march. Or a run.



            It was actually a more pleasant evening in the garden than he’d thought it was, cool and grey but with a hint of blue peeking through the clouds, and the ground not as muddy as it should have been with all the rain. Harry wandered from one dim and overgrown flowerbed to another, and sometimes identified plants that he had learned about in Herbology, but mostly just thought to himself.

            His thoughts tumbled around each other chaotically, but at least he wasn’t brooding as much as he would have in the house.

            He was passing a thicket running wild with vines and trailing red flowers when a low growl startled him. Harry turned around with a hand on his wand, wondering what could be out here. The wards kept out most Muggle pests, and Kreacher rooted out the rare magical creatures who could make it past.

            A Kneazle stepped into view, or at least Harry thought it was one. He had never seen one that was white with silver stripes, or such ragged ears, as if it got into a lot of fights. It stared at Harry and pulled its lips back from its teeth for another long growl, rising into a wail.

            Harry frowned, and wondered who had a Kneazle like that near here, and how it would have got into the garden if it was feral. He knelt and held out a hand. “Here, here,” he said, and then paused, because he didn’t have a name to call it and it seemed stupid to use “kitty, kitty,” like it was a Muggle cat.

            The Kneazle’s lips pulled further back, and it spat so hard that Harry thought it would knock itself over. Then it flattened itself to the ground, spat one more time, and sprang at him.

            Harry rolled back the way he would from an offensive curse. The Kneazle missed, but Harry heard the way its paws slammed into the dirt, and looked back in time to see it lifting them. Long claws gleamed there, curved like hooks.

            Harry stood up, and the Kneazle sprang at him again. Harry kicked out with one leg. He managed to hit the animal in the side, and it flew into the same patch of flowers it had emerged from. Harry, panting, opened his mouth to call Kreacher for help.

            But it came flying out again, so quickly that Harry wondered for an absurd instant if it had a trampoline in there, and aimed for his throat.

            Harry raised his wand, but he hadn’t got the incantation for the Shield Charm fully out before the Kneazle knocked into him and bore him to the ground. It was a heavier blow than Harry had thought so small an animal could make. Its body seemed to be made of silver and compacted bone, iron and steel.

            And the claws that hooked into his throat, followed by the teeth, were certainly iron.

            Harry stuck his wand into its body and tried to fling it off him with the Blasting Curse, but nothing happened. He couldn’t get any breath behind the incantation, not with the Kneazle savaging his throat.

            I could die here, he thought, with a hard, painful clarity that hurt more than the claws digging into his skin. I could survive Voldemort and then die here because a stupid Kneazle killed me.

            The thought was so ridiculous that it flowed down his body in a furious wave of rejection. He pushed himself straight up into the air and stuck his wand deep into the cat’s body and bellowed a spell that rode the wave of his anger. “Cordis fulgor!”

            The Kneazle’s body arched, spasmed, and kicked. In a few seconds it slipped off his chest, and although Harry winced at its going because its claws dug into his skin and ripped it, it was clear the thing was dead.

            Harry swallowed and touched his throat. Only lacerations, he thought. He’d survive.

            He wondered why the house would attack him with a silvery Kneazle, or why the enemies sending the snake shadows would. And then he wondered where he had learned a spell that would send a bolt of lightning to a creature’s heart. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing that he would have found in his Defense books.

            Kreacher appeared silently. Harry stared at him, wondering if he had come to offer some sort of healing potion for Harry’s throat.

            Instead, Kreacher nodded to Harry, picked up the Kneazle by its tail, and slung it casually over his shoulder. “Kreacher is to be hanging Master’s first kill,” he announced. “Kreacher will be returning.”

            He vanished, leaving Harry kneeling in the midst of a small pool of his own blood, and a much larger pool of his own horror.

*

            delia cerrano: Well, maybe it’s not Harry’s house. Maybe he’s its.

            ChaosLady: Thank you! That’s the effect I’m going for.
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Ancient and Noble Houses