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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Five—The Brown Dog

            This time, they came out in a forest so humid Draco had to sit down on a rock and cast a spell to clear his lungs. He blinked at the trees around them, for once convinced that they weren’t in England anymore and intercontinental Apparition might be possible. Well, for someone like Potter, anyway.

            I should have had him with me during all those tiresome Floo journeys in France.

            But as he stared, he saw the telltale wavering of the tree trunks, and the way some of the bright green leaves trembled a little, and smiled. This was illusion, probably from spells cast by Potter to protect this particular guardian. Good job on the humidity and the wetness of a jungle, though, Draco thought, watching one particular fat drop of moisture slide down the slender branch in front of him.

            “Malfoy?”

            Draco blinked and looked up. Potter stood in front of him with his hands on his hips, staring down. There was a sound of his teeth grinding which Draco blinked at again, and then he smiled and lounged back on the rock.

            “What?” he asked. “I was recovering from the Apparition. You don’t know how strong you are, Potter.” He used the purring inflection on “strong” that he would have used with Aoife back in Germany, and had the satisfaction of watching Potter’s face flush. “I might stay here for a while. I haven’t felt a seat this comfortable in—”

            “You said you wanted to find the next link in the chain,” Potter said, no, snapped, and reached for Draco’s wrist. “That means you have to come on.”

            Draco let himself be hauled to his feet, and swayed a little before he could focus. “I thought the ritual took your heart,” he said.

            Potter dropped his wrist as though Draco had cast a Stinging Hex at his fingers and stared at his hand. Draco smiled. Yes, it’s all the hand’s fault, isn’t it? If you can blame your heart and your magic and the rest of you for acting independently of you, then you might be able to excuse yourself.

            Then Potter turned and glared at him as if he had heard the thought, and Draco reminded himself to tread carefully. He couldn’t help the way his heart beat at the evidence of Potter’s returning emotion, but that meant the Potter who hated him was coming back, too. “I don’t know what’s happening,” Potter said. “But I know why I’m doing this. You promised me a better ritual to safeguard the wizarding world.”

            Draco sighed and spread his hands. “And that’s the only thing you care about it, isn’t it? Not your own life. Nor your job as an Auror. Not even your friends.”

            “Don’t you say a thing about my friends,” Potter said, although his voice warbled uncertainly up and down the scale, not having the conviction that it really should. “I mean it.” He shook his head and touched his forehead as though his scar was paining him. “And my job as an Auror does involve caring about the world.”

            “You still haven’t listened to me enough,” Draco said. “You won’t understand the importance of the ritual you did or the one I can use to replace it until your heart is back in your chest.”

            “It never left, physically,” Potter began.

            Draco recognized how literally Potter had taken him, and held up a hasty hand. “Yes, I don’t want to hear the details,” he said. “Knowing how chain rituals work and the way this one affected you is enough.” He turned to look for a path through the jungle, but every one his eyes fell on flickered and vanished. He sighed. Probably only Potter could find his way through this place. “Lead on.”

            Potter said nothing. Again Draco turned to face him. Potter was meant to throw big obstacles in Draco’s path. Draco didn’t want a constant series of small ones. Those would bore him.

            “Do you really have another ritual that can replace this one?” Potter whispered, leaning near enough to stare into Draco’s eyes. “Or are you making that up so you can persuade me to forsake this magic and take my heart back?”

            Draco stepped up to him and stared into his eyes back. Gryffindors like Potter thought someone was honest as long as they didn’t flinch or flush or give any of the other obvious signs of a lie. But because Potter was a Gryffindor, he was horrible at lying himself, and didn’t know how to think outside that box of honesty.

            Draco, on the other hand, was excellent at deception of all kinds.

            “I spent five years walking around the world, Potter,” he said, softly, earnestly, neglecting to mention how much of that “walking” had been on the backs of winged horses, or on brooms, or by Floo. “I learned about dark rituals and secrets that I had only the faintest notion of when I left Britain. I went on that journey partially to grow up. Do you think you know everything? Really?”

            Potter wavered. Then he straightened his back and said, “I don’t know why you’re so invested in the world being protected from Dark Lords, anyway.”

            Draco rolled his left sleeve up. Potter stepped back from the Dark Mark. Draco couldn’t keep his eyebrows from rising. I wonder why. Is he that afraid of it, or is this the result of his partially chained-up emotions?

            “I have plenty invested in the notion of keeping a new Dark Lord from rising,” Draco snapped, and let his sleeve fall back down over the Mark. “I know you don’t understand people who aren’t your friends, or people who aren’t Gryffindors, or maybe the categories overlap and it’s just ‘people like me.’ But I don’t ever want to be a slave again.”

            That was true, as far as it went. It just wasn’t true for the particular combination of words he’d given Potter. He’d found the best way to avoid worrying about slavery was to drink a lot, and show off the Mark as a symbol of rebellion to people who had no idea what it was.

            Potter nodded, eyes big and luminous, and for a moment, Draco thought he would say something else, something more personal. But either his chained heart or the way he had always regarded Draco prevented that, and he turned away and held his wand out instead. One of the paths stopped moving and became a shimmering line of light leading away into the trees at an angle. “This way.”

            Potter plunged ahead. Draco followed thoughtfully, spinning the bird’s golden feather in his fingers and thinking about the point where lies became truth.

*

            They had been walking through the jungle long enough to soak Potter’s shirt with sweat and require Draco to cast five charms that stopped himself from sweating. Whether they were in a jungle or in the Manor’s drawing room, he had standards to maintain.

            They finally stopped, or rather Potter stopped, on the bank of a rushing river. He peered ahead, and then nodded. “This is where I left it,” he said.

            “What?” Draco stepped up beside him. He had to wonder if the river was real, it seemed so cool and the roar and mist that rose from it so intense. Perhaps Potter had partially adapted a real place instead of using illusions for everything.

            “The house,” Potter said, and gestured ahead.

            Draco blamed the effects of the glamours shifting around them for the fact that he hadn’t noticed it at once. But yes, there was a house there, a palace of glittering white and grey stone, sprawling along the far bank. Draco eyed the shaded courtyards and decided, with a sigh, that they probably weren’t real. Nothing he wanted that badly was.

            “The next animal you have to fight lives there,” Potter said.

            Draco looked at him sharply. His eyes were dull again, and it took a long moment for his pointing hand to fall back to his side. Draco sighed, noiselessly this time. Of course something like this would happen. He had just got Potter settled back into something like this normal self, and the ritual started to take over again.

            At least that gives me some clues as to the nature of the chain ritual. The kind that created small, temporary changes that then relapsed were fairly rare.

            “I suppose I stay here, and you go and fight it.” Potter was blinking at a small green frog in the tree next to them as though he didn’t know how it could have got off the ground. The frog blinked golden eyes as big as Draco’s last tattoo and hopped up the trunk. Potter gave a little grunt of enlightenment.

            Draco strode forwards. Even crossing a real river and facing God knew what kind of creature in the stone palace—probably another illusion—was preferable to staying with Potter once he reentered this stupid trance state.

            The river lapped and foamed around his ankles, real enough to soak the hems of his trouser legs before he cast an Impervious Charm. Draco snorted and shook his head as he waded forwards. He couldn’t even blame Potter for that carelessness; he had been so sure that the river was an illusion, he hadn’t bothered to cast the spell.

            The river lasted until he was halfway across, and then vanished. Draco paused, blinked a little, and lifted the dripping hems of his trousers—which were dry now, as though the water had been a glamour from the beginning.

            This was powerful magic, and a kind Draco didn’t feel easy about confronting. But his heart was racing and his palms were damp with something other than condensation from a glass, which meant he was willing to keep going.

            The magic might come from the chain ritual, and not Potter. Which meant it was a kind Draco had never heard of before, but it would still have something in common with the other chain rituals he knew about, simply because that was the way those rites worked. He had something to do other than sit around and be bored.

            He could almost cheer Potter for doing something so stupid in the first place.

            He sprang lightly up on the grass in front of the palace, which had until a moment ago been the river bank. The door that faced him was at the end of a short, blunt wing that projected forwards from the rest of the building like a nose from a face. The walls were all glittering white and grey stone, but the doors were huge, made of heavy wood, clasped with iron, and each had a golden sunburst in the middle.

            Draco watched the gold sparkle, and then he took the feather from the bird he had defeated out of his pocket and held it up in front of him, watching the gold shine back and forth in gleams of light from feather to sunburst and from sunburst to feather.

            The doors swung open.

            Draco walked forwards, keeping his steps gentle, turning his head from side to side as he passed inside the immense walls. The feather hadn’t been the weapon he would need to face the creature here, then, the way he’d hoped, because that would involve less danger for him personally. It had been the key instead. Well, Potter had warned him it might be.

            That did mean Draco didn’t have any idea what would come next, or any weapon that might avail him against it—except his magic, and his wits.

            And those have always been enough for any Malfoy.

            Putting his head up and whistling a little so anything that watched him wouldn’t think he had been uncomfortable, Draco proceeded down a corridor empty of everything but a few windows high on the walls that looked out on the sun and the jungle. The flagstones shone beneath his feet, not dusty, the huge joists in them echoing perfectly the ones in the ceiling. The corridor looked as though someone had made it by laying weaves of stone together, instead of building it.

            Beautiful, Draco thought. He might have considered taking it as a second home if it wasn’t an illusion made up by a crazy man who thought himself responsible for all the ills of the wizarding world.

            Then a door opened at the far end of the corridor, one Draco hadn’t noticed, it fit in so perfectly with the wall. He was glad that there was a door there instead of the dead end it had looked like, though. He stood and politely awaited developments.

            A dog stepped out of the door and into the middle of the corridor, where it shook its head back and forth and then sat down and scratched behind one ear for so long Draco wondered if magical creatures got fleas. It wasn’t a question he’d ever had reason to be interested in before.

            The dog stood back up and faced Draco, head cocked to the side, tail wagging slightly. Draco studied it back. It had a long, squarish body, a ropy tail, huge paws for its size, and a squarish muzzle, too. When it parted its jaws, the teeth were long enough to make Draco reach for his wand.

            This had to be the second guardian. But at the moment, other than baring its teeth, it hadn’t done anything intimidating. Draco didn’t know what he was supposed to do, what would be appropriate.

            They stood there for so long that Draco started feeling silly. “This is stupid,” he said aloud, and began to move towards the door behind the dog. It was the only thing he had seen so far that might lead into the rest of the house.

            The dog tensed and crouched, a growl rumbling up from its throat. Draco stopped and watched it again, but this time, it didn’t relax because he did. The growl went on, and then it began to charge him.

            Where it ran, its claws tore gouges from the stone, and sparks leaped into life behind it, starting small fires.

            “You’re kidding me,” Draco said blankly, and almost didn’t get out of the way in time as the dog breathed fire.

            The fire was as bright gold and orange as the flames of a phoenix, and Draco leaped into the air and came down in a way that would have made his dance instructors in Paris applaud, although he thought they never could have envisioned him using the talents they’d taught him quite like this. He shook his hair out of his eyes and pressed closer to the wall as the dog wheeled around and faced him.

            The dog didn’t immediately rush in. It wagged its tail a few times and turned its head back and forth a few more, apparently lining up its angle to Draco and deciding what it wanted to do. Draco shook his head.

            “I’m not going to be intimidated by a creature that should be sleeping at some old wizard’s feet,” he said aloud.

            The dog growled loudly enough that Draco almost didn’t hear the crackle of the coming flames. He drew his wand and held it ready, but loose at his side. The dog seemed smart. If he cast too soon, then he wouldn’t get it close enough to let the magic really take effect.

            The dog scraped its claws back and forth on the stone and growled constantly under its breath. Draco decided it was waiting for a sign of weakness. Not that he knew how the minds of magical dogs worked, really, but he had already seen it was different from the golden bird, which simply attacked regardless of where Draco was at the time or whether he seemed ready.

            So Draco took a long, confident stride forwards as if he was coming to confront the dog, and “slipped” instead. He slapped a hand over his ankle and uttered a delicate little shriek. “Oh, I’ve sprained it, I’ve sprained it!”

            The dog couldn’t have been stupid enough for fall for that, not really, but it was hesitating, staring at him, baring its teeth, and perhaps it got impatient after all. It rushed him, the flame flaring around it and making it look like a number of nightmares Draco had had as a child.

            But Draco was no longer a child, and he hadn’t really slipped. He conjured water in front of him, a brimming sheet of it, a Protego made of it. It wasn’t really that hard to change the way spells manifested, as long as you weren’t trying to make some deeper change in their nature.

            Potter’s probably powerful enough to do something like that.

            But did Potter use his power for something like that? No, he did not. He enslaved himself with chain rituals and left Draco to pick up the pieces of his stupidity.

            The water splashed into the dog’s fire and choked it, and the dog let out a surprised, pained yelp. Draco used another spell to string it up from the ceiling in the midst of all that steam, and the dog flew upwards and hung there.

            Draco tried a variation of the spell that had stopped the golden bird’s heart, this one meant for larger animals. Not that he knew the spell that would stop a human’s heart, of course not. He hadn’t studied that kind of thing.

            Nothing happened this time, though, except—

            Except that the chain holding the dog to the ceiling snapped the moment the beast struggled against it, and it came crashing to the floor, turning its head to snarl at Draco. It shimmered all over with fire.

            Draco blinked. For the first time, he had the feeling that he might be in trouble.

*

            delia cerrano: Yes, seven more to go, counting the dog.

            Seiren: Thanks!

            Draco accepted the dog might try to kill him, but he still thinks breathing fire is manifestly unfair.

            SP777: I’m sorry, but still not sure what you mean. The needle in a haystack?

            Makoto_Sagara: Someone else might have told Harry that it was stupid when they found out about it, but not with as much enthusiasm. ;)

            moodysavage: Thanks! I hope you like the next chapter even more, since it has more Draco-Harry interaction.
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box