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
- 41
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Chapter Forty-Two—Not Leaving
"Are you sure this is the ritual, Harry?" Hermione's voice was flat as she stared down at the book Harry had brought her, the one he and Draco had found the ordeal in.
Harry nodded. He thought he would have snapped at her last week, but the retreating of the house's influence, or maybe just the knowledge of what they actually needed to do and face, had brought him a great calm. Harry suspected that calm would only last until he was actually in the ordeal room and facing his soul, but he would take what he could get.
And right now, he thought Hermione was so upset not because he and Draco had found the ritual without her help, the way Draco's scowl seemed to suggest, but because she would have wanted anything for him but something as dark as this ordeal was.
"That's it," he said. "Some things Kreacher said made us think of it." It was as close as he could come to telling her the truth without confessing the secret meeting with Narcissa to her, but she looked as though she accepted that.
Hermione made a sound like Hew, and stepped back, smiling at Harry a little. They were back in the library, but in an isolated corner where people were less likely to hear them talking about the ritual. "Then we should start deciding which of us get to go with you. It sounds like the cleansing and the ordeal are both private. Will Kreacher let us in?"
"That doesn't matter," Draco broke in before Harry could comment on the likelihood of Kreacher's doing anything of the sort. "I'm going into the ordeal room with him, if not to the bathing room. You and Weasley are welcome to do what you want. I'll be there."
Harry stared at Draco. His eyes were squinted shut, his jaw set. Harry wondered whether it was care for Harry himself or determination not to be the next Black heir undergoing the ordeal that made him so worked up.
He had to admit, either way it made warmth like a candle start to life inside him.
"Of course we'll be there, Malfoy." Hermione didn't seem to consider Draco's claim to be worth more than a scowl before she was turning back to Harry. "Do you have any plans to try and make yourself more ready to face the ordeal?"
Harry shook his head. "Even though we know a lot about it, how much do we know? I'll face my soul. That's nice. What more than that do we know? Almost nothing. I don't know how to cast spells against my soul. Maybe it's immune to them. Maybe I'll face a double of myself that's exactly like me in every way, except this one wants to be the Black heir. I don't know."
"That's all very well. But being pessimistic isn't a plan." Hermione sat forwards, ignoring Harry's attempt to tell her that he wasn't being pessimistic. "I think you ought to try and bribe Kreacher to tell."
"With what?" Harry frowned at her. "He doesn't want freedom."
“With pretending that you do want to go through this ritual.” Hermione leaned towards him, her face so serious that Harry wanted to back off. “If you pretend to care about it and do exactly as he tells you, then he might tell you more, so that you know what to expect.”
Harry thought about that, but Draco interrupted before he could come to any sort of conclusion. “There’s nothing you could tell him to do that would be more dangerous,” he told Hermione flatly.
“I can think of lots of things,” Hermione retorted smartly. “Like walking back into the house without any preparation and deciding that he’s going to do the ritual.”
“That won’t happen,” Harry said quietly. “Now that we know it involves soul magic, I can read more books about that. It still won’t tell me precisely what happens,” he added, seeing Hermione open her mouth. “But I can try.”
“And you can try to bribe Kreacher,” Hermione countered. “If he sees that you’re serious about being the Black heir, wouldn’t he be pleased enough to tell you more information?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “At this point? When I’ve objected so much and fought it so much? He’s more likely to decide that I’m lying. Let’s do this my way, Hermione. You can be there and help me, as much as you can, but we won’t know exactly what we have to fight until we get there.”
Hermione sighed and closed her eyes. “Fine. I’ll look up more about rituals on the first night of the new moon, and you do what you can about soul magic.” She glanced a little warily at Draco, as though assuming he would blow up the minute she turned her back on him. “You’ll help him?”
Draco nodded. His eyes had a distant look to them. Harry suspected he was trying to recall everything he could about soul magic, or at least everything that would be of help to them.
“Good,” Hermione muttered, but she sounded as though nothing was good about it. Then she whipped back towards Harry. “You’ll let me know if you find anything that we can work on together?”
“Of course,” Harry said. “In fact, why don’t we start right now?” He made his way towards the shelves that loomed across from their table. Those books had something about soul magic in them, he knew. He and Ron had once looked at them while making up shit for Divination.
When he looked back, expecting Draco to accompany him, he saw Hermione urgently whispering to Draco instead. Harry snorted. If Hermione thought she was going to change Draco’s mind about accompanying him, she was mistaken. Harry might not understand all of Draco’s motives any more than he understood his own, but he knew Draco was serious about being there when he went into the ordeal room.
And that’s a large part of why I’m willing to do it at all.
*
“I have to tell you something, Malfoy.”
Draco schooled his expression. The temptation was to spit in Granger’s face and walk away, but he doubted that would help, either his future relationships with Harry’s friends or Harry himself. So he waited, and after a moment of muttering to herself as if she was practicing an incantation that she wanted to get right, Granger spoke.
“Do you think Harry isn’t acting like himself lately?”
Draco cocked his head slowly. “You think what he did before this ‘lately’ was more like him? Trying to force me to obey him? Obsessing over me? Acting at times like a proper Black heir and alternating that with worry?”
“I meant the last few days,” Granger said. She stood very straight, and it looked as though she had decided Draco’s tone would have no more effect on her. Draco wondered if he could rattle that resolve. “The time when he’s thought he was free from the house. The things he says make me wonder.”
Draco controlled the urge to roll his eyes. It seemed to him that Granger would find a way to worry about sand in the midst of a desert. “He seems normal to me. Determined to pass through the ordeal and get it over with, but you can hardly fault him for that.” He drawled the words, his eyelids lowered and gaze still fastened on Granger. “Can you?”
“Of course not.” Granger muttered something else to herself that Draco was sure was uncomplimentary and fastened her hands together. “I just—I just wonder, that’s all. I wonder.”
“Right,” Draco said, unimpressed. “Was that all you came to tell me? You should ask Weasley. I don’t know him as well as you lot.” He thought he kept the resentment and shouldn’t-be-there jealousy out of his voice.
Granger looked him in the eye. “No. I want you to stay with him.”
“I thought you looked a bit mental lately.”
“Listen.” Granger was urgent enough that Draco dropped his folded arms back to his sides. “I think you might have a better chance of actually getting into the ordeal room with him than we do, because you’re part Black. If Kreacher or something else makes us leave him, I want you to be with him.”
“You trust me to take care of him?” Draco couldn’t hide the way his eyebrows rose until they hurt.
“I trust you to bring him back.” Granger looked over her shoulder where Potter had disappeared among the shelves. “Hopefully the way he is, Harry, and not the Black heir.”
She only trusts me because she has no choice. Draco knew that, but—
He felt oddly honored all the same.
He found himself nodding. “I’ll do my best,” he said quietly, when Granger turned back to him with an almost desperate expression on her face.
Granger shut her eyes and nodded once, deliberately. “Thank you.”
Then she went to look for books, and Draco joined Potter. Potter kept his eyes on the tomes in front of him, but his shoulders tightened, revealing his fears, as he asked in a would-be casual tone, “What did Hermione want?”
“To make sure I would be with you,” Draco said.
Potter glanced over his shoulder, and Draco drank in the green eyes he could learn to like for their own sake—if they would stay clear and unglazed by the possessiveness that Draco had seen in them before.
“Thank you,” Potter said at last, and took down a large book.
Draco wasn’t sure if Potter meant to thank him for telling him the truth or for staying. It didn’t matter.
“Let me see that,” he said, and ignored the way that the air between them leaped when Potter handed him the book and their fingers brushed.
*
goldfish: I hope that delia cerrano’s computer gets fixed soon!
It is going to be a scary chapter.
CareLessLover: If the house and Kreacher don’t do something to shut him out.
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Ancient and Noble Houses