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
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Chapter Forty-Seven—The Edge of the Blade
            Draco was aware that something was coming. The way Harry went stiff in his arms and then screamed was too obvious.
            But he didn’t expect whatever it was to actually bear him to the floor. He flailed with his arms, and hit something. But he also lost track of Harry, and although nothing clawed him apart or tore his throat out in the next few seconds, the way he had thought would happen from Harry’s description of his soul, he didn’t know where he was.
            Draco took a deep breath and fumbled for his wand. He should have thought to do that before. But to be fair, he had been occupied in comforting Harry and hadn’t thought about whether he could use magic at all. In the ordeal room, magic itself might prevent him.
            He tried to cast Lumos. The light blazed for a second, and then darkness ate it. That was enough time for Draco to see the enormous size of the room they stood in, and the faint lines between the heavy flagstones that made up the floor. But it didn’t do him any good otherwise, he thought, as he stood up and grimaced, rubbing the back of his head where it had collided with the floor.
            “Harry?” he whisper-called. He meant to make his voice louder, he really did, but the darkness ate the noise, too. Draco shook his head, told himself he was probably imagining that, and called again. “Harry!”
            No response. Then a quick shuffle off to the side, which made Draco spin in that direction and aim his wand. But the sound didn’t repeat, and he wondered if it had been the sound of Harry crawling away from him and he ought to go after it.
            Not easy to make himself move, once his feet had found a position they liked. Draco shivered and called, as boldly as he dared, “Harry!”
            Silence, and then a quick skitter off to the side. This time, Draco forced himself to spin around and aim his wand. Another Lumos Charm might at least show him whether it was Harry, or his soul, or just his imagination.
            This time, his wand wouldn’t light. Draco cursed and shook it, and the shuffle came again, off to the side, followed by a clink. Draco thought it might be the clink of the silver chain that Kreacher had wrapped around Harry’s neck, the chain that Draco still didn’t know the purpose of. He tried to hush his breathing and listen as hard as he could.
            A muffled whimper. Draco winced, picturing how terrified Harry would be, now that he thought Draco had left him. He cupped his hands around his mouth, this time determined to make his voice carry.
            “Harry? I’m all right. I just want to know where you are.” He thought he did well, combining compassion with gentle command. “I want you to come back and tell me how you are. Are you hurt? Is there some healing spell I need to cast?” He thought the ordeal’s magic might permit that, as long as Draco didn’t try to see. But that was okay. He could trace his hands and his wand all over Harry’s body to find the wound, if necessary.
            Even here, even now, he felt a responsive twitch in his groin at the thought, and had to fight back a smile.
            Another sound, off to the right—or what might be the right. It was so hard to tell in a dark room like this. Draco held his breath, then let it out again and began to breathe as loudly as he could. That might be a way of guiding Harry to him, if nothing else would work.
            “Harry?” he called. He began to repeat the name at five-second intervals, as carefully as he could, as cheerfully as he could, hoping that whatever Harry’s hyssop-addled brain might be seeing now, he would find his way back.
*
            His soul had vanished into the darkness. Draco had vanished.
            Harry wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. He was so cold. Of course, he was naked, so it was to be expected, but it still seemed strange that he had never noticed how cold he was before now.
            Unless something didn’t want me to notice it.
            Despair curled around Harry like the links of the chain around his neck. Draco had said that the bath had altered the way Harry saw things, that the house was warping his judgment. If that was the case, how could Harry know that anything he heard or saw was real? Not that he could see anything in the darkness, anyway.

            But he had been able to see his soul, until it rushed over him and Harry lost track of it—and Draco, which was more important.
            He twisted in the middle of the stone floor, and dared to raise his voice a few times. Each time, the sound faded. Harry swallowed. He wished he’d had more to drink, perhaps even drinking the stupid water in the cold bath. It wouldn’t have poisoned him, he was sure—Kreacher and the house wanted a living heir—and it might have benefited him now.
            Then he began to hear his name being called. The sound bounced from walls that had to be further away than they sounded like, at least if the ordeal was really taking place in the cavern that the book said it should, and the room had transformed.
            “Harry.”
            The voice was thick and low and loathsome, and Harry knew it at once. It was the voice of his soul. It sounded the way that that horrid beast would speak if it could, choking through shreds of rotten flesh in its throat.
            It repeated his name every five seconds or so. Harry swallowed slowly. Perhaps it held Draco captive under its paws, and that was why it wanted him to come to it.
            If he could find it, he might be able to kill it. And wasn’t that what he should do, anyway? Reject, kill, all the darkest parts of himself? The house might not want him anymore if he managed to do that.
            He might kill the part of himself that had tortured Kreacher. More to the point, he might kill the part that had thought it was funny to hurt Draco and bend him to his will.
            He stood up, holding the chain around his neck so it wouldn’t clink, and began to move slowly closer to the voice. He wondered for a moment what he could use to kill it; he thought Kreacher had taken his wand when he took the bath.
            And then, no, he found it, his hand groping at his side for a moment before he touched it. He wondered if the ordeal had given it back to him, if that had been what the house wanted him to do all along. Use magic in the ordeal. It had probably thought that he was going to kill something else, though, and not the dark parts of his soul. Maybe the light parts of it.
            Harry smiled, and knew that his lips were cracking and bleeding around the expression. Well, that didn’t matter. As long as he got to use his wand the way it should be used.
            The voice was still calling out. It hadn’t changed. The speaker didn’t sound as though it was moving from his place. Harry still edged forwards. He did wonder why he couldn’t see his soul, the way he had been able to before, but the realization didn’t bother him greatly. He was on the verge of killing his soul instead of falling into the house’s hypnosis of him. That had to change things.
            When he thought it was time, he turned to face the speaker, lofting his wand. The voice fell suddenly silent, but that didn’t matter. Harry knew where it was now, and he knew exactly the kind of spell he had to cast. The only spell that had no defense and no block.
            He wondered for a moment if he would tear his soul if he cast the Killing Curse, and then snorted. He was the only one on the planet who would worry about tearing his soul as he labored to kill part of it.
            He aimed his wand slowly forwards, hand shaking not with fear but with the intensity of making sure that he had it right. He would only get one shot, he thought. His soul had pounced at Draco and driven him away from Harry. If Harry only wounded the creature now, it would probably seek Draco out and kill him.
            That can’t happen.
            Harry shuddered, and the shudder traveled up his arm to his shoulder and made his arm vibrate. He bit his lip and forced his wand steady again. He wanted Draco. He didn’t want him dead. He had to have him with him. Any other option was unacceptable.
            But if I can’t have him with me right now, I can have his voice.
            And Draco had said that he couldn’t really trust his perceptions, that the cleansing had tried to strip away Harry’s sanity. That Harry’s soul didn’t really look like that, and they weren’t horrible, Harry or his soul.
            Which meant…
            How do I know that the person speaking my name is my soul? How do I know that its voice sounds like that?
            Harry stood there, shaking, in agony, and heard the thing or person in front of him, whichever it was, begin to move in his direction.
            And he wavered, because he wanted to protect Draco more than anything, which meant striking at his soul, but he also wanted to trust Draco, and Draco was the one who had reminded him that he could trust nothing here, no perception, no sensation, that the house would do anything to gain control of him.
            He wavered, and the moments passed, and the creature came closer, and he knew that he had moments, perhaps, to make a decision, one that could easily damn him either way.
*
delia cerrano: That’s perfectly fine.
SP777: Well, I’m afraid that you have to wait for a conclusion for a little while…
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Ancient and Noble Houses