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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 Thirty-Eight—Painted Figures
            “What do you want now, Potter?”
            “This is Draco’s idea,” Draco thought he heard Potter say, but if so, it was soft enough that it was hard to hear. He looked up at Professor Snape’s portrait and seemed to steel himself. Draco blinked. Did he still fear a man who was a portrait? “We wanted to see what you were like now, if you could see me the way I am or if you still want to kill me.”
            Draco paused. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to be so direct, but on the other hand, he supposed Snape might still have some interesting reactions now that he knew what they were doing.
            “You must forgive me, Potter,” Snape said sweetly, his voice dark enough that Draco wanted to take a step back. He didn’t, because he knew it was the best way to call Snape’s attention to him. “I was unaware that my afterlife was to be an object for your amusement.”
            “Yeah, well, I didn’t think you were eager to become a murderer again, either, but that’s what happened,” Potter snapped.
            For a moment, they watched each other. Professor Snape had been holding a book when they came around a corner into the isolated dungeon corridor, but he put it down now. His attention was wholly focused on Potter.
            Draco swallowed, his throat bobbing. Merely being on the fringes of that attention did that to him. In fact, it made him feel startlingly similar to how he had when Potter pinned his hand to the wall and tore into his mind.
            And maybe that got closer to some of his fantasies and the underpinnings of them than he was comfortable with. Draco shook his head and did his best to focus on what was happening in front of him.
            “Say it,” Snape whispered. “Call me a murderer again.”
            “I already did,” Potter said. “And what will you do if I say it a second time? Splash paint on me?”
            Snape turned away, and for a second Draco thought he was going to another picture and they would lose him. He reached out to lay a warning hand on Potter’s shoulder, but Potter shrugged it off. He was focused on Snape at least as intently as Snape was focused on him.
            Draco scowled. More disturbing than the thought that Snape might affect him the way Potter could was the impulse he had to scream when Potter withdrew his attention from him.
            “You should know how close you are to losing certain parts of your reputation, boy,” Snape finally whispered. “Portraits know certain tricks. Secrets. I may not be able to touch you, but I can speak. What would the Headmaster do if he knew that you were running around as the fully recognized heir of Black?”
            “Nothing, because he’s dead, too,” Potter said, with a calm that Draco thought was odd. “And I’m not fully recognized. You know that I still have to undergo the ordeal before I can be.”
            “He could spread the gossip.” Snape’s eyes flashed fire in a way that would have had Draco cowering and complying immediately. He really didn’t understand what was so different about Potter that he didn’t. “He could spread it to portraits outside the school, even. Or I could do so, and then we would see what the Ministry had to say.”
            “My guess is that they’d say very little,” Potter replied, quietly. “They don’t interfere with the heritage of most pure-blood families, and it sounds like having an ordeal and the house sculpt your heirs is practically normal for them. And combine it with the fact that I’m the Boy-Who-Lived and they don’t want negative publicity surrounding me anymore. No, they wouldn’t do anything.”
            Snape clenched his hands. Draco caught himself wondering what it felt like when a portrait did that, if all they would sense beneath their nails was paint and canvas, instead of flesh. “You know nothing about this, about what I could do. Nothing.”
            “You just told me pretty well.” Potter’s voice was cold. “Now, tell me. Do you still want to kill me? And what for?”
            Snape turned to face Potter with a snap of his robes that made Draco’s stomach sink in dread. This was the way he had looked before he told Draco some home truths in the Death Eater camps they’d stayed in before Snape thought it safe to approach the Dark Lord and make excuses for Draco not being the one to kill Dumbledore.
            “I always want to kill James’s hair, the bully’s face,” Snape said. “The only thing you have about you of your mother is her eyes. Never forget that.”
            “And her love sacrifice,” Potter said, not flinching, still. “She was really the one who saved the world. Not me.”
            Snape didn’t seem to know what to do with that, any more than Draco knew what to do with the references to Potter’s parents. His father had told him once that Snape hated James Potter, but he didn’t seem to know the details. Maybe he hadn’t cared about them, Draco thought. The knowledge made a useful tool to manipulate Snape with, and that was the only reason he had bothered to learn it.
            “I worked to protect you,” Snape said. “You saw my—my Patronus. You know what she meant to me.”
            “Yes, but you nearly murdered me a few days ago,” Harry said. “You would have if Draco hadn’t come by in time. I think the house’s influence made you do that. It makes sense, with what Draco told me and the fact that you never wanted to kill me before. But on the other hand, I survived the war and you didn’t, and it makes sense that you would be bitter about that. And you don’t need me to live to kill Voldemort anymore. You could have changed your mind. Did you?”
            Silence. Snape breathed in and out, but Draco couldn’t hear it. What a portrait did wasn’t breathing in the classic sense, of course.
            “I could have changed my mind about killing you since then,” Snape said. It didn’t sound like a question to Draco, but Potter chose to answer it as one.
            “Yes,” he said. “You could. I don’t know much about portraits and what happens to them after they wake up, but you have a lot of the same memories. Did you change enough that you were willing to kill me? Or did you want to all along, and you just had to wait until the world didn’t need me alive to fight Voldemort anymore?”
            There was a silence that vibrated, at least to Draco’s nerves, like a string holding the world up. Then Snape lunged against the side of the frame and clutched it like cage bars.
            “You dare to accuse me,” he whispered. “No, you do accuse me. You accuse me of wanting to kill the son Lily laid her life down for, the only thing that justified her sacrifice and was supposed to justify mine—”
            Potter laughed.
            The laughter froze Snape, and Draco too. It wasn’t mocking the way Draco would have expected. If anything, it sounded like Potter had just got the best news of his life. Draco eyed the back of Potter’s head and wondered if the house had unbalanced him after all, and it had just taken longer to make itself known this time.
            “That was what I wanted to hear,” Potter said, when he stopped laughing. “Thank you, Professor Snape.”
            “You will explain,” said Snape, with a voice that still could have pounded nails, but Draco could hear the slight tremble, the slight weakness, in it. Snape couldn’t believe that he was looking at someone who had come this far, and then said that.
            “The house has released you from its influence,” Potter said quietly. “It did me, too. I don’t feel nearly as conflicted and dark as I did before.”
            He nodded to himself, then went on, “I still want confusing things, but I think that has more to do with being under the house’s influence for a while and doing some things I regret than being under it right now. I think it’s withdrawn itself.”
            “What, like a disease?” Professor Snape asked, sneering.
            “No,” Potter said, and the smile dropped from his face. “Like a wave. When it comes back in, it’s going to be all the more devastating.” Then he smiled a little, again. “But I couldn’t be sure if it was mostly gone or not. It’s let you go, so I think it is. It’s waiting. Gathering its strength.”
            Draco shivered. Potter knows how to be creepy and Black even without the house’s help.
            Potter turned to Draco. “Can you arrange the meeting with your mum as soon as possible? I don’t think we have long before the house starts trying to gain control over me again.”
            Draco just nodded. Potter walked away, and left Draco and Professor Snape to look at each other.
            “I’m sorry,” Draco began feebly.
            Professor Snape waved a hand at him. “Do not bring him here again,” he said, and Draco understood. That would be apology enough for bringing Potter in the first place.
            Draco did pause, since he might never have another chance to ask, and said, “Sir, why is your portrait frame here? It seems so strange.”
            “A backup plan of Albus’s,” said Professor Snape, his face blank. “He hoped that I might be able to influence the course of events even if I died and someone burned my main portrait frame. The chances that anyone would find this one were remote, but the chances that it would be a student instead of a Death Eater were higher.”
            Draco slowly nodded. Then he said, “I really am sorry, sir,” and walked away.
            He was not sure that he wanted to hear what Professor Snape would say in response to that one, anyway.
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Ancient and Noble Houses