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.

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Chapter Thirty-One—Obdurate
            “What are you sighing about?”
            That was Ron, always forthright, even though Hermione was already leaning across the table to poke him in the arm and hiss at him to shut up. Harry sighed again and leaned back in his chair, wondering how he could possibly explain it. I tried to seduce Draco last night to get him out of this, and he wouldn’t listen to me?
            That had been what the dance had been, although he had only understood it afterwards. Make Draco even more scared of him, and Draco would back off. He wasn’t stupid. He had his safety to think of first, and that mattered more to him than any of the money Harry had promised him.
            It has to, when he lived through a war.
            But it hadn’t worked, and Harry had been aware of the way Draco stared at him in the Great Hall today. He hadn’t approached him during classes, or now that Harry and Ron and Hermione were in the library trying to do some research on the house, but it was only a matter of time. Draco was not going to be pushed out of this.
            That just meant Harry had to make matters less dangerous, before Draco could intervene again.
            “Realizing how hopeless this is,” Harry said, instead of confessing the truth. He flipped the book in front of him shut. It was yet another useless tome about the pure-blood lines, and he knew that he wouldn’t find anything about the Black house in it, because he’d already used the searching and copying spells Hermione had taught them to find any useful information in a book. “We don’t know what the house really wants, we don’t know what makes the house reject heirs, we don’t know what makes the numbers on my neck increase—”
            “Did they do it again? Let me see!” Hermione was up in instants, leaning across the table as though the numbers on his neck were a running sore that she was a Healer for.
            Harry fended her off irritably. Hermione took a long second to sit down, but at last she did. “Yeah, they did,” he said. “Last night. I was just—I was thinking about getting Draco out of things.” That was true enough. “They had no reason to increase. But they went up again.” He dragged his hands through his hair. “I don’t even know what this stupid ordeal is that the house wants its heirs to face.”
            “Ordeal? You didn’t say anything about one of those.”
            Ron’s voice was sharp. Harry lifted his head and frowned at him. “Yeah, I did. When I was explaining in the hospital wing.”
            “No, you didn’t.” Ron glared at him. “I would have remembered.”
            Harry held his hands up and shook his head. “Fine, fine. There is some kind of ordeal that the heirs to the house go through. Apparently it’s the final step before they become totally mental and really Black. But the goblin at the bank just hinted about it—I don’t think he would have told me even if he knew—and Draco didn’t know anything about it when I asked him, either.”
            “Draco this and Draco that.” Ron pulled a face. “Why would he?”
            “Because he and his mother are the only ones with the Black blood still alive?” Harry raised an eyebrow.
            “Wrong!” Ron pounced on that with more enjoyment than he should have showed, Harry thought, but at least he looked a little sheepish as he pointed a finger at Harry. “There’s Andromeda, too. And Teddy, but I can’t imagine you’d get much help from him. Andromeda might know more than anyone about it, though.”
            Harry swallowed slowly. Yes, that was true. On the other hand, she might know as little as Sirius apparently did, and for the same reason; she would have distanced herself from her crazy family as soon as she could, long before she married a Muggleborn.
            But that was no excuse for not asking her. Harry had to admit that. The sticky reluctance clinging along his limbs, the whisper in his ears that asked for more time and said that Draco should be the one to provide the solution instead, was what he had to ignore.
            “All right,” Harry said. “That’s an idea.”
            Ron nodded. “In the meantime, you would be best off looking in books of fairy stories than books like that.” He indicated the books in front of Harry, with what Harry thought was distaste. “If I’d known about the ordeal, I could have told you already.”
            Hermione pounced this time. Harry thought it had been driving her mad that Harry got to ask the questions in the last little while, before she got her mouth open. “What do you mean? What does that have to do with anything?”
            “There are some ordeals that have become fairy tales,” Ron said. “You know, someone ran away from their family and told their kids a scary story, and they told someone else, and then it became a story everyone knows. I don’t know if you can trace any story back to a Black family ritual, but at least the stories could give you an idea of what the ordeals are like.”
            “Ron, you’re brilliant,” Harry said.
            Ron leaned back in his seat and nodded soberly at him. “About time you recognized it. So few people ever do. I’m the unsung genius of Hogwarts.” He placed his hand over his heart and sighed.
            “Let’s find books of fairy stories, then,” Hermione said, standing up and turning to walk back into the shelves as though she had a new purpose in life. “I’ve only ever read The Tales of Beedle the Bard.”
            “The ones about ordeals wouldn’t be in there,” Ron said. “Too scary. Try Unknown Secrets of the Fiery Mountain. That was one my Mum used to threaten us with stories out of when we were a kid.”
            Hermione disappeared in one direction, and Harry was about to open his mouth and ask Ron what other titles he should look for when Draco walked into the library.
            Harry narrowed his eyes and stood up. “Ron, do you want to search with me?” If they were all gone searching, then there was no way that Draco could corner him and demand to know how the quest for information on the house was going. And if Ron hadn’t made the connection to the ordeal until Harry mentioned it, Draco was unlikely to know what they were doing just by watching them come back with books of fairy stories.
            “Harry.”
            The word poked Harry in the breastbone and curled like a hook through his heart. He turned around and stared at Draco. Draco looked a little embarrassed, but held his ground, extending his hands towards Harry.
            He had never, ever called Harry by his first name in that low voice. He had said it before at some point, surely, but the memory vanished behind what felt like a wall of fire in Harry’s head.
            “Harry,” Ron hissed in turn.
            “Just a minute,” Harry murmured, and walked towards Draco, feeling as though he floated on air. Draco watched him, one hand curled in front of his chest.
            “What do you want?” Harry asked when he came close enough. He knew his voice should have been a shout—it was the only effective way to drive Draco off when he couldn’t touch him or use magic on him—but it was soft instead. Harry shook his head and tried to focus. “Didn’t that dance convince you that I’m dangerous?”
            “Not the dance,” Draco said, dryly. “It was all the other things you did, like pinning my hand to the wall.”
            “You do think I’m dangerous?” Harry folded his arms. “Then why are you here?”
            Draco’s eyes were ablaze in a way that Harry hadn’t seen them in a long, long time. Maybe since fifth year, he thought, when Draco had been working with Umbridge. He folded his arms in turn and leaned in towards Harry.
            “Because I’ve had it with being driven away from something I want to do,” Draco whispered. “I was a coward and a liar, and fine, that helped me survive. But this is private. No one knows about this. You’re not going to taunt me, and your friends aren’t going to taunt me.”
            “All the more reason for you to back away,” Harry pointed out sweetly. Ron was watching them with a frown, he saw. Hermione hadn’t come back yet.
            “I would know about it,” Draco said simply. “And this time, there’s no Dark Lord. Sooner or later, I’ve got to stop running and do something, or I’ll live in fear for the rest of my life and it’ll control my actions. I’ve decided this is what I want to not run from.”
            Harry trembled a little. It was true, his deepest desire was to have Draco with him, to have his help in investigating the house, and that would mean he could also have him nearby when—
            But he cut that line of thought off. His desire was one of the dangers to Draco. Draco had to go.
            “Leave,” he said.
            “No.” Draco glared at him.
            Harry snarled. “You know,” he said, somewhere from beyond the haze of darkness that seemed to be floating across his brain, “you made me promise that I couldn’t touch you with hands or magic.”
            “Yes.” Draco was still.
            “You never said anything about the house’s influence,” Harry said, and reached out.
*
            SP777: At the moment, Harry is not very happy if that’s actually what he did.
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Ancient and Noble Houses