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
- 31
- 32
- 33
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Chapter Thirty-Two—The Miasma
            The haze touched Draco.
            He felt his mind swimming, his perceptions softening. It was similar to the way he had felt when Potter used Legilimency on him, but not as painful. This was—something else.
            Something that drifted into his mind, pushed in his soul, and told him, in the gentle but utterly certain voice his mother had used to discipline him when he was young, that he was going to do as Potter wanted. He would walk away. He would forget about the house. He would do something over in the corner until Potter wanted him. He would be gentle and obedient and courteous and everything that a pure-blood child should be.

            That hit something else, a chord that jangled and rang all through him. Draco gasped. It was as if he was a piano that someone had been playing perfectly up until that point, and then a second hand smashed down on the keys.
            I’m not a child.
            The rejection of that sentiment coursed through his body, and the haze began to retreat. Draco lifted his head and opened his eyes, although part of him thought it was the hardest thing he had ever done.
            Potter was staring at him, one hand held out as if he could stop Draco from coming closer. His whole body was shivering.
            “You can’t force me away like that.” Draco was a little astonished at how calm his voice sounded, but then, he had held back the change that Potter had wanted to force on him. He even took a step forwards, and Potter retreated while looking around as though he expected help from his friends. Only Weasley was in sight, and he was staring at them as though he didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want to intervene. A wise choice. “I told you the reasons I want to stay. Maybe they’re mental reasons, but they’re mine.”
            He felt his heart lift as he spoke, and had to smile a little. Sorry, mother. I know that you don’t want me to attract attention, but I’ve already done it. I probably did it the minute I followed Potter. Or, hell, the minute he inherited the house. Maybe he would always have sought me out.
            Potter stood in front of him for long enough that Granger emerged from the aisles, her arms loaded with books. “I didn’t just find Unknown Secrets of the Fiery Mountain, Ron,” she said proudly, looking up. “I found lots of other books that had ominous words in the title and I think they can—”
            She nearly let loose of her armful when she saw Draco standing there, but then she turned and carefully put it down on the table behind her. Of course she did, Draco thought, his heart pounding crazily. She would never deliberately hurt books. Then she turned around, planted her hands on her hips, and asked, “What’s going on?”
            Potter opened his mouth. Draco knew the next words that would emerge were a lie, and he tried to speak over the top of them.
            But Weasley got there before either of them could. “We’re trying to find descriptions of the Black family ordeal that it puts its heirs through in some of the fairy stories,” he told Draco. “I think a distorted version of it could be there. Want to help?”
            “Ron.”
            Potter’s voice was low and furious, and Draco thought he saw the black haze he carried with him curling visible in the air for a second, extending towards his friends. But Weasley watched him with his hands flat on the table, and the haze seemed to lose direction. It coiled and snapped back into Potter, who shook his head dazedly. He didn’t have complete control of it, Draco reckoned. It must make him dizzy.
            “Malfoy deserves the right to know and to help out if he wants,” Weasley said quietly. “I saw what you almost did to him, Harry. If he can resist that, he’s determined enough to have a part in this.”
            Potter stared at his friend with his mouth slightly open. Then he slammed it and turned his back, towards Draco again. His eyes were luminous now, and Draco wondered if Potter understood half the changes he was going through, what his mind was doing, or the decisions he made from one moment to the other.
            “You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” Potter whispered. “And you know that I want you, Draco, and that I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. Please stay away. Can you do it for me, if you can’t do it for yourself?”
            From the way Weasley started, Draco thought, there had been at least one person in the room who hadn’t been aware that Potter wanted Draco. But Potter might as well have forgotten his friends. He never looked away from Draco’s face, and his breath had stopped.
            Pity as much as anything else—and the desire for Potter to keep breathing, so that his death couldn’t be blamed on Draco—made Draco shake his head. “I don’t want to stay away,” he explained, when Potter still wouldn’t breathe, wouldn’t move, wouldn’t do anything but stare at him. “I was there at the beginning of this trouble, whether or not I wanted to be. I want to be there at the end. I want to make sure it stops. Think of it as wanting to be there when your enemy dies, so that you know he’s dead.”
            “Those aren’t the reasons you gave just a minute ago,” Potter said, with the frown deepening on his face.
            “I’m not allowed to have more than one set of reasons?” Draco raised his eyebrows. He almost enjoyed the frustrated glare Potter gave him. He knew that Potter’s confusion sprang much more from his own confusion and frustration, and the house taking over his brain, than from what he was like normally. Yes, Potter thought Draco should have only one set of motives, because the house thought he should.
            To become the Black heir’s consort.
            Draco shivered. He didn’t know if Potter had ever thought of it in those terms, but the house might have. The house might be responsible for the phrase suddenly springing to life in Draco’s brain, maybe.
            Well, Draco refused. If he was going to be anyone’s consort, it was the original Harry Potter’s, who had a fire Draco liked and who owed Draco some attention for rejecting him in the first place, damn it.
            Draco blinked. Well, that was a new thought.
            Not so new that he wanted to reject it right away, though. He wanted to play with it, and think about it some more, and then decide whether it was interesting or just weird.
            But he didn’t get the chance right now. Potter was pressing forwards again, and his hands were reaching out. Draco coughed, a cough with the word “vow” in the middle of it, and Potter stopped and backed away from him.
            “Fine,” he snapped suddenly, and turned towards the table where the books were laid out, practically flouncing over to sit down at it. “Help if you want to. Although we haven’t found anything yet and we probably won’t find anything, whether you’re here or not.”
            Potter’s friends both frowned at him for that. Feeling as though the sun had shaken loose from the sky—since when did Potter’s friends approve of him and disapprove of something Potter had done?—Draco sat down gingerly at the table and looked from one of them to the other.
            “Here,” Granger said, and pushed a fairy tale book across the table to him. Draco checked the cover. Black Stories and Others. He vaguely remembered his mother reading him a few of them, although he didn’t remember what they were about. “I figure this is the most promising title.”
            “And I should have the easiest one,” Draco murmured, flipping open the book. Granger’s haughty look told him she had heard, and wasn’t going to bother to refute the charge.
            Draco scanned the table of contents. The Black Magic. The Darkened Age. The Crown of Ashes.
            All nice, cheerful titles. Draco couldn’t remember why his mother had stopped reading them to him, whether it was for that or some other reason. But he didn’t think she would have been frightened of Dark magic being mentioned in the stories. Maybe Draco had mentioned something he shouldn’t, in front of one of Father’s more shaky allies.
            He felt a stare on him. He looked up, and found it was Potter. Weasley and Granger were both buried in their books, or making valiant attempts to pretend they were.
            Potter shook his head a little and mouthed, You should have gone while you had the chance.
            Draco raised his eyebrows. “I chose,” he said, aloud, but so softly that Weasley and Granger could go right on ignoring him.
            “You’ll be sorry,” Potter hissed, and turned towards his book again.
            Weasley’s ears turned red, but he didn’t look up. Granger sighed. Potter ignored both of them in turn.
            Draco went back to his reading. He knew that he felt right, now that he was back in the center of things again.
            And no one was going to control him. Which meant that Potter wasn’t going to influence his mind or decide to send Draco to his room until he got back from doing adult things.
            I’m not a child. I’m going to be what I want to be.
*
            delia cerrano: He reached out with the miasma and tried to use it to control Draco.
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Ancient and Noble Houses