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 Forty-Five—Darkness
            “Master Harry is going to the ordeal.”
            For once, Kreacher’s way of phrasing things didn’t sound silly or squeaky. It sounded ominous. Harry shivered a little and wondered if it was from his nakedness, the thought of the ordeal, or the growing possibility, from the way Kreacher stood in front of the door to the little room with his arms spread across it, that he wouldn’t allow Draco to accompany Harry inside.
            “Master Harry is going to be becoming a true Black.” Kreacher eyed Harry, as if searching for something in the shape of his ears or nose that would prevent him from achieving his goal. He seemed to see positive things instead, because he grunted and continued, “Master Harry is not receiving any help from outside the room once he is inside.”
            Harry nodded, although his throat felt full of satin. He felt Draco lean close behind him, one arm falling across his shoulders as if that would help him survive this. Well, it might. Harry managed not to snuggle into the arm, and only nodded again when Kreacher watched him as though waiting for a more detailed response.
            Kreacher sighed and turned to remove the green ward he had put on the door. Draco leaned even closer and breathed into Harry’s ear, “Follow my lead. Don’t act surprised by anything I do. We have to do this as quickly as we can.”
            Harry blinked at him, then nodded once when Draco gave him a warning look. Draco turned to Kreacher and smiled at him. Kreacher smiled back against, it seemed, his better judgment. “Master Draco Malfoy cannot be accompanying Master Harry,” he said, holding up his hand. “His consort is being staying outside with the rest.”
            “The rest” made Harry wonder if he knew about the Invisibility Cloak and Ron and Hermione after all, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Either way, Harry highly suspected his friends wouldn’t be coming into the ordeal room with him. Draco stood there, though, his arm as tight as a chin, and nodded and murmured and lied well enough to fool Kreacher, who stopped watching them a moment later. He turned back to the ordeal room door and stretched his arms so wide that it seemed as if he would gather everything that was in the room, or might be, into them.
            “The ordeal is opening,” he whispered.
            The last gleams of the green ward faded. The small wooden door creaked open. Harry took a step forwards, but Draco’s arm on his shoulders restrained him. Harry managed to keep his impatient huff to himself as he turned around. Yes, Draco knew what he was doing. Harry would keep that in mind.
            Draco leaned forwards and kissed him.
            This kiss was even more impatient and forceful than the one they had shared in the corridor, and made Harry’s skin prickle and speed with tingles. He shook, he shivered, he wrapped his hands around Draco’s shoulders in turn and almost bit his lower lip off as he sucked on it. Draco chuckled at him, and Harry could see from the corner of his eye that Kreacher was watching them indulgently.
            Then Draco spun him to the side as if they were dancing, and past Kreacher, and into the ordeal room.
            The door slammed shut behind them.
            There was a shriek, and Harry heard what sounded like a rat trying to get through the door. He spun around, his throat tight, and then realized it was Kreacher, scrabbling at the door from the other side.
            Harry expected him to shout something, at least Harry’s name, but instead, there was silence. And Harry couldn’t see the line of light under the door or around the edges, he realized, although it had been an ill-fitting door and he should have been able to see something against the absolute darkness of the ordeal room, whether the outside corridor was dim or not.
            And there was something about the room…
            Harry turned around, straining his eyes instinctively, although he already knew that he would see nothing but the absolute darkness required for the ritual. There was a little sound, though. The sound of echoes bouncing back from walls that had to be a little bigger than the door to the room had indicated.
            Or a lot bigger.
            Harry reached down, crouched down, and touched the rough stone of the floor. It felt completely unworked, not as if it had been made to fit a house. He was shaking as he stood back up, and felt the cold currents moving around him.
            “Draco?” he whispered, and flinched at the echoes.
            “I’m here.” Draco embraced him from behind, but even his skin felt colder than it should have. Harry tried to tell himself that it was just the dark unhinging him, making him jump. He should be used to this. He had spent a lot of time in his dark cupboard when he was a child, after all.
            But this was deeper. This was worse. This was absolute silence outside their little circle of breathing and moving, while at Privet Drive he had always been able to hear the Dursleys shouting and watching telly and eating and thumping up and down the stairs. They might have shut out the world when they had come into this cavern.
            Or stepped into a different one, Harry thought, and slowly slid Draco’s arms from around his waist, reaching out into the dark with one hand. Nothing met him except coolness and darkness.
            And one other thing, distant, far away.
            Harry listened intently to the slow, regular sounds. At first he thought they sounded like rain falling on a roof, and then stones dropping, and then, when they were very close, he recognized them. The noises of clawed feet busily clicking along. They moved faster as they neared him, too.
            Harry drew back against Draco. Draco cradled him close, shivering—or trembling. The footsteps never stopped until they were possibly a few inches away. Then the cessation of sound made Harry shake again.
            Foul breath stroked his face.
            And he could see. The darkness had not lessened, but outlines formed from it, fainting, fleet silver lines that stroked together a picture, and Harry made out what stood on all fours in front of him.
            He knew at once it was an image of his soul. And an uglier thing, he’d never imagined. It resembled Remus’s werewolf form, but its fur stuck out in every direction, or clumped and fell out of its skin, afflicted with what looked like mange and itch both at once. Its teeth projected wildly from its jaws, and it couldn’t close them, so a constant stream of drool worked its way over its muzzle. The eyes were huge, and staring, and mad. The nails that Harry had heard tapping over the floor were the only well-shaped things about the beast, and even then, they were so huge and black and sharp, crusted with blood and filth, that Harry flinched back from it.
            The worst part was, he recognized it.
            The way it hunched and rocked was the way his envy of Ron’s family and the way that Hermione always knew the right thing to do moved. He’d felt those emotions creeping through his heart when he thought about his best friends, sometimes, and he flinched miserably from the knowledge of how it had affected his soul.
            Its teeth were made of hatred, the gnawing hatred that had swallowed him up when he thought about Voldemort and the Death Eaters, especially Bellatrix Lestrange. Maybe at the very end of the war, he’d gone to his death for noble motives, but he’d wanted to defeat them. He’d wanted to use an Unforgivable on Bellatrix. He’d fallen asleep after Sirius’s death to dreams of her being torn apart, and him laughing.
            The eyes were the staring madness that had sometimes overcome him at the Dursleys’. He’d lain in his cupboard, with thoughts of what he had done that made them not love him, and the presents Dudley got, and the attention Dudley got, and the fact that he’d done nothing and they just hated him, and the unfairness of it all, swirling around inside him until he felt as if he would fling himself off a cliff if one was there, just to stop the chaos. There was no escape, and there was no rest. That was what the eyes of the beast were like.
            And the filth on the creature’s nails was the filth he’d dipped his hands in. Murder, the corrupt ritual Voldemort had used to bring himself back to life, witnessing death, the Elder Wand, basilisk venom, Parseltongue, and most of all, the Horcrux. He had thought himself purged of the darkness, but it was lying in wait inside him. It was no wonder the Black house had been able to bring it so effortlessly to life. It was there, tarnishing his soul, dipping it in slime.
            The beast came closer—the beast that was him, made of all the worst parts of him—and opened its mouth, unhinging its jaws like a snake, the better to swallow him.
            Harry began to scream, and he could not stop screaming.
*
SP777: Draco has been so close to Harry lately that he hasn’t really noticed his looking changing. He had noticed at first because he hadn’t seen Harry for months.
CareLessLover: Yes. And as you can see, it’s not going to be easy.
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Ancient and Noble Houses