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A Black Stone in a Glass Box	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10351 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Four—The Golden Bird

            “This is the most desolate place I could imagine.”

            Draco scanned the landscape in front of them, and had to agree. He didn’t actually know where they were, although he reckoned it was still in England. A series of small hills rose up in front of them, black as though charred by fire, with the short grass giving way to stone halfway up the sides. And in front of them was a tiny cave.

            “Where did you learn about this place?” he asked, sniffing as he followed Potter towards the cave. There was no trace of that rotting scent that the Dark Lord had carried with him, and Draco relaxed a little. He had never known where that scent came from, any more than he knew the real location of this cave, but he suspected it was a mingling of stale sweat and snake vomit.

            “One of my cases,” Potter said, which made Draco roll his eyes. Yes, Potter might have given him that uninformative an answer on purpose when he was himself, but he would have done it with a little sneer, or at least turned his head back over his shoulder to watch Draco’s reaction. This Potter kept his head aimed forwards, his expression not so much solemn as blank.

            I need to wake him back up for the sake of everyone. Not just me, but think of all the criminals he would otherwise chase who would feel that a real hero hadn’t caught them.

            The cave was even smaller than Draco had originally thought, a dark opening into darkness. Draco wrinkled his nose at the thought of crawling into it. At least Potter was with him, so Draco could make him crawl into it.

            Potter halted a few meters from the cave and swayed back and forth on his feet, blinking as he stared at the entrance. Draco reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, although he didn’t know why Potter would require his support now.

            The darkness at the cave entrance stirred.

            A moment later, shining so brightly that Draco wondered how he could possibly have missed it—although he supposed that was part of what came along with being a magical creature—a golden bird burst into the air from the cavern. It climbed rapidly, and then hovered on broad wings over their heads, shrieking at them, so it was a long minute before Draco could get a good look at it.

            It was about the size of a phoenix, but its feathers were metallic, the real color of burnished gold, instead of the bright scarlet and orange that a phoenix’s would flame. Neither was there any trace of blue or white. Draco could make out the fringes to its feathers, the crest like sunrays that flared around its head, the brilliant eyes like polished gems. It made sense that whatever object Potter had enchanted into this bird would make it look nothing like any earth bird.

            Not that he intended to let that stop him. Potter’s future and Draco’s future entertainment were still more important than any beauty.

            He could think of several people in Paris who would be shocked to hear him say that, and the memory warmed him as he turned back to Potter’s cold face.

            “How do we get it down?” he asked. “Or do we have to kill it?” The rituals and fairy stories he had heard of that resembled what Potter had done to himself had included killing at least a few guardians of the magical, hidden heart, he thought.

            Potter tilted his head back and watched the bird for long moments. Then he said, “You have to fight it and kill it.” But his voice trailed off into softness, and a second later he shook his head and brushed his wand against his thigh as though it was a quill. “I think. I don’t know. I don’t remember. The person I was before the ritual was—different.”

            “And you think there’s nothing wrong with what you did,” Draco muttered.

            Potter frowned at him. “I was a different person because I wasn’t shouldering the burdens that I should have,” he said, and if anything could give his voice conviction, Draco suspected it was this. “What did I think would happen after I defeated Voldemort? That the whole world would just fall neatly in line? That Death Eaters would go away?” He shook his head. “I didn’t think of the long-term consequences of my actions. I should have.”

            Draco just looked at him, and said nothing, because saying something would probably involve punching Potter, and Potter probably wouldn’t stand still for that. It was amazing what he had already stood still for, though. Draco reckoned that the dulling of his emotions had probably also dulled his sense of long-term consequences.

            Instead of punching me, he might moralize at me about what factors in my life caused me to do that.

            And the thought of that sent Draco turning around to look at the bird again. It still hovered above them, and screamed the minute Draco’s eyes fell on it, lifting its crest aggressively and shaking its head back and forth. The feathers spread out around it like flames.

            Draco nodded. “I can do this,” he said to no one in particular. “Just fight it and kill it.”

            He lifted his wand and sent up a Stunner. That would knock the bird to the ground, and that would make killing it much easier. Draco had no fancy to try and slaughter it on the wing.

            The bird swirled easily aside from the curse, and then flapped its wings hard. Draco wondered for a minute if it was going to fly away, and cursed himself for not bringing a broom so he could follow it.

            Then the bird startled him by flying down straight at him, slender claws outstretched and aiming for his eyes. Draco swore and ducked away, and felt the claws skim across his head, raking shallow furrows in his scalp, before the bird circled up and came around for another pass.

            “Oh, yes, it tries to defend itself,” Potter murmured. “I had forgotten that part.”

            Draco didn’t say anything to him, because the words didn’t exist that were eloquent enough. Instead, he clutched his wand in his hand and watched the way the bird turned and swerved. If he knew how it flew, the way it attacked, then he might be able to come up with ways to take it down.

            It flew like a hawk, faster than it should have with those long, tapered wings and claws that extended the way they did, and otherwise any way it wanted to, Draco thought. It was much closer to him than he had thought it would be by the time he straightened up, and once again he had to duck, although this time he at least raised a Shield Charm around himself.

            The bird’s claws hit the Shield Charm, and shattered it.

            Draco shouted and barely made it out of the way, again, but this time the bird’s claws would have damaged his eye if they had come a centimeter closer. He rose to his feet and watched it come back around again with his heart and his magic pounding in his chest.

            “You didn’t think to mention to me that it could break magic?” he murmured to Potter.

            Potter was watching him with a wrinkled brow. The bird hadn’t come near him, Draco noted bitterly, or given any sign that it had noticed him. “You didn’t ask,” Potter said.

            Draco shook his head in disgust. He thought he knew what had happened. The ritual had taken away Potter’s instincts for self-defense, or maybe simply self-preservation, and dulled his natural responses to Draco. But it had done the same for danger, and had made him depend too much on logic and facts. And it was a fact that Draco hadn’t asked him that about the bird.

            “Tell me what else it can do,” he said, and backed up in front of the bird’s next strike. It had been deliberately too short, Draco thought, as if the creature was testing his readiness. That made it a much more intelligent opponent than he had wanted to face. “I’m asking now,” he added, when Potter hesitated.

            “But I don’t think I should tell you now,” Potter said, shaking his head. “The ritual that you told me about might not be as good as this one after all.”

            Draco grimaced. A fine time for Potter to remember that he used to distrust me.

            He had other facts to deal with, though. Like the bird, and the fact that it could avoid most of his spells and break the rest.

            He felt something odd happen to his mouth, and reached his hand up, wondering if the bird had caused some kind of change with magic that he hadn’t seen. In some shock, he explored the shape of the smile that had appeared there with his fingers.

            I’m not bored.

            There was that, at least, and it was enough that Draco laughed, and looked up at the golden bird circling over him, and saw it hesitate and peer at him as if it distrusted him, along with Potter.

            “Well, you should,” Draco said aloud, jogging his wand in his hand as he thought of the spell that he would use to kill the bird. “I’m going to be the one that destroys you, when you thought no one could do that. Because you thought no one would make it this far and actually know what they had to do to free Potter, did you?”

            Just as it occurred to him that perhaps it was a bit mental to talk that way to a magical bird that had already struck at him twice, the bird began another dive, wings and feet both set wide apart. The claws on the ends of those wicked talons sparked and cast dazzling shadows around Draco’s face.

            Draco lifted his wand slowly. The spell he had thought of was effective, but it needed to be launched close at hand. Otherwise, the bird would only dodge, and the next time, it would be even warier about coming close to Draco.

            The bird screamed aloud when it saw the way Draco’s wand rose. Draco thought it probably hoped he was wounded and wouldn’t be in time to stop it. It did seem a vicious little thing, without the moral lessons Draco had learned in the last five years: namely, that wishing harm on your enemy was only boring, and less productive than going out and enjoying yourself.

            How much can it enjoy itself when it’s bound to Potter’s cave and guarding Potter’s heart, though?

            Draco didn’t have enough time to answer that. The bird was right in front of him now, and its wings had narrowed down to swoop in between his arms.

            Draco cast. “Tarantallegra!”

            He heard Potter snort behind him. Part of him must have recognized the silliness of Draco’s spell, and the bird seemed to, the way it shrieked in contempt and aimed its claws directly at Draco’s eyes.

            But the hex was on-target, and that meant more to Draco right now than anyone’s opinions about how sophisticated his spellwork was. It crashed into the bird, and the bird screamed and snapped its neck back and forth, beak working furiously, as it began to jerk in the air, legs and wings sticking out and waggling in different directions. It couldn’t fly anymore, and it fell to the ground, still kicking and clawing at the ground like a demented chicken after sideways insects.

            Draco stepped up to it. He would have enjoyed his triumph, maybe even made a little victory speech, but the bird’s beak nearly took a chunk out of his leg. Draco nodded, and cast another spell that he had seen some people in Spain use to stop a chicken’s heart painlessly. There was no reason it shouldn’t work on a magical creature, too.

            It did. The bird’s head drooped into the dirt, and its scarlet beak opened and then just lay there. The life left its eyes. Draco watched that, to make sure of it. The last thing he wanted was to have the bird revive and land on his back. Those claws looked like they could do some damage, to his clothes as well as his skin.

            The bird shimmered, and where it had been, there was nothing in the dirt but a nugget of gold. Draco blinked. Well, a nugget of gold wasn’t nothing, but it was less impressive than the free, proud creature that had attacked him.

            He nudged the nugget with his boot, and turned it over. There was something under it, perhaps the last remnant of the bird as a bird. He stooped and picked it up. A long, single golden feather, of the kind that a bird would probably have on the edges of its wings. A flight feather, Draco remembered it was called after a brief struggle. Well, he didn’t have much use for the words in his day-to-day life.

            If this is be my new and more exciting life, I might have some use for it.

            He turned around with the feather in his fingers, and paused when he saw Potter. The man was staring at him with an open mouth, perhaps because Draco had defeated the bird, perhaps because he hadn’t expected him to use such a simple spell to do it. Then he shut his mouth, but his eyes remained the same: wide and alive.

            Alive. There was a bit of passion to them now, which hadn’t been there for more than a second before.

            Draco smiled. “You set it up as a chain ritual, didn’t you, Potter?” he whispered, spinning the feather between his fingers. “Not a simple set of guardians, the way you first described it to me. Your salvation and your emotions don’t depend on just finding and smashing your heart. Instead, each creature I kill opens up a bit more of your heart.” He took in a breath he thought would come out as words, but it ended up as deep laughter instead. “This is going to be more fun than I thought,” he added, when he could get his breath back.

            Potter shook his head, slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Malfoy.”

            Draco clucked his tongue. “You might not know the technical term for the kind of ritual you used—which I can well believe since you were stupid enough to do it to yourself in the first place—but that’s what it is. And you’ve already told me enough to let me know this feather must be the first key.” He held it up.

            Potter watched him, blinking long and hard, as though he was struggling against the perception Draco was trying to force on him. Then he put a hand over his eyes, and wiped briskly up and down. “I don’t—I feel like part of me is buried in sludge,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Part of my brain.”

            Draco smiled and inclined his head. “That makes sense. I think the ritual has affected you in ways you can’t acknowledge to yourself yet. But I will follow the chain, and undo it link by link.” He studied Potter for a moment, the hair that bristled as he shook his head and the bewildered look in his eyes as he lowered his hand. “Yes, now you look more like yourself.”

            “Because I’m confused.” Potter struggled to say it as a perfectly factual statement, the way he would have before, and ended up scowling at Draco uncertainly.

            Draco nodded. “Because you have some emotion on your face. You don’t realize how much passion is part of someone’s life, and the way you think of them and comprehend them, until it’s gone.”

            “You’re not making sense,” Potter said, with a fragile dignity that Draco found infinitely more appealing than the more solid façade he’d been wearing an hour ago. “And I think that you should tell me about the ritual you promised could secure the wizarding world against Dark Lords.” He shook his head again a second later and touched his forehead where the scar lingered.

            Draco smiled. “Why would I do that? I don’t know yet how hard this chain ritual of yours is going to be to break, and I’ll have to do all the fighting, since you won’t help me. You don’t get your side of the bargain fulfilled until I have all of mine.”

            A statement like that wouldn’t have baffled the ordinary Potter for a second, but this one hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “That feather should tell you the way to the next part.” He peered at the feather as if there was writing on the barbs that he could read.

            Draco clucked his tongue again. “What, you don’t remember the steps along the road to your heart? How childish. I suppose I’ll have to do this on my own, and that means you’ll never know about the other ritual you could have used.” He turned his back and walked towards the point where Potter had Apparated them in.

            He counted five seconds before Potter called after him, “All right, Malfoy. The feather is what will let you defeat the next creature. I’ll take you there.”

            Draco walked back to him and held out his hand for Potter’s arm, saying sweetly, “How kind you are. How farseeing, to want to guard the wizarding world past your death.” He patted Potter’s shoulder. “If you take me to the next point, we’ll be a step closer to destroying a shield of paper and putting a shield of steel in its place.”

            Potter squinted at him, but apparently couldn’t make out whether Draco was actually joking or not. Of course not, Draco thought, meeting his eyes. He destroyed the part of him that could have comprehended it.

            As they vanished, Draco hoped the next battle would be harder, because that would mean the reward was greater: a bigger spark in Potter’s eyes, a harder smile or sneer or some other emotion beyond confusion.

            I never realized how much I would miss him until he was gone.

*

            delia cerrano: Well, Harry doesn’t realize the direction they’re going in yet, but yes, basically.

            SP777: And even that wouldn’t get a reaction!

            He will be. The next battles will be much harder.

            Seiren: Nope! Apparently what he really needs is people trying to kill him.

            Demonadine: No, I’ve never done a crossover, though I’ve been tempted sometimes.

            And Draco would be offended at the thought that he can’t solve this puzzle on his own! Of course he can.
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box