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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 Five—Sleek Silver Scars

            “And you’re sure that it wasn’t a dream? Or a trance? Or anything to do with the healing potions you drank?” Hermione’s voice was strained, and she was shivering.

            Harry glared at her. “I know you don’t want to think badly of a house-elf, but I know what I saw,” he said. He put down the teacup she’d given him a little harder than was strictly necessary, then flushed and cleared his throat when he saw the way she watched him. “I was awake. I only drank a few healing potions, and the cuts didn’t even heal completely, look.” He stood up and moved his hands away from his throat.

            Ron, who’d been listening to the story on the other side of the Burrow’s kitchen table with his mouth open, jumped up. “It looks like you got cut months ago, mate,” he interrupted. “I know that you didn’t have those scars when you went to Grimmauld Place, because I saw you, but they look old.”

            Harry stared down, but of course he couldn’t really see his own neck. Hermione wordlessly conjured a mirror and passed it across the table to him.

            Harry tilted it so that he could see himself. The angle was still awkward, but he could feel the lingering pain, and that guided his hand to the proper place. The scars did look months old, he had to admit. Sleek and silvery and spiral, as though someone had tried to take his head off with a corkscrew. The kind of scars that he might have left on Draco Malfoy’s chest with the Sectumsempra.

            Harry winced as he thought about that, and put the mirror down, turning to face his friends. “But you believe me about what happened?” he whispered, needing the reassurance, because Hermione’s doubts about Kreacher and the sight of the scars had shaken him so badly. “You believe me?”

            “I don’t know what’s going on or what part Kreacher really plays in it, but I believe you,” Hermione said steadily, eyes fixed on him. Her face had gone pale.

            Ron walked around the table to clap Harry on the shoulder. “Me, too, mate. But like Hermione, I don’t know what it means. Kreacher acted like you had to do this to be the Black heir?”

            Harry nodded. “Black heirs had to kill something. You didn’t see that trophy room.” He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine it, either. He had caught only a glimpse of the Muggle heads, but that was enough.

            “There’s too much that we don’t understand about this,” Hermione said quietly. “I agree that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to stay away from the house for now, and try to learn more about it. Maybe ask the only Blacks you could trust to tell you?” When Harry glared at her, she added, “Narcissa and Draco Malfoy.”

            “I’d rather not,” Harry said. “I’m out of there now, and Kreacher can’t do anything to me.”

            “But you have to go back to get your clothes and your books and your Invisibility Cloak and all the rest of it,” Ron pointed out helpfully. “Unless you want to leave them there to rot when you go back to Hogwarts. And clothes fall apart when you use Cleaning Charms on them too much, I just want you to know.”

            Harry let his head fall forwards to rest in his hands. “Fuck,” he muttered.

            “Please don’t say that,” Hermione murmured, with a dignity that Harry had to bite his lip savagely to keep from laughing at. “It annoys me.” She turned to Ron. “I think we should be the ones to fetch his things. Kreacher can’t affect us the way he can Harry.” She glanced over her shoulder at Harry. “And in the meantime, you should write a letter to Draco, or Narcissa. Maybe Narcissa would be better. She probably has more experience of the house than Draco does.”

            “But Draco’s the one who owes him a life-debt,” Ron said, who was fond of that fact. “Two, actually. He owes the git’s mum instead of the other way around. Would she really answer his questions?”

            “It does no harm to ask,” Hermione pointed out, and stood up, brushing soot off her robes. “In the meantime, Ron, you and I have some things to fetch.”

            She had already turned towards the fireplace, so Ron rolled his eyes at Harry behind her back and followed. Harry chuckled weakly, and tried to sit there looking as though he intended to write a letter the instant they left.

            But the more he thought about it as he sat there, the less inclined he was to actually do it. Why should he? He was out of the house now, and he hadn’t seen any of the snake-shaped shadows here, or the cat-shaped one (if it existed), and Kreacher hadn’t shown up to hammer on the Burrow’s wards. The Weasleys made him welcome and didn’t question him as to why he had abandoned his “sanctuary,” as Mrs. Weasley called it. He could stay here for the rest of the summer, and go back to Hogwarts in the autumn, and…

            And what? What came after that? Was he going to let the house sit empty for the rest of his life, and then leave it to someone else who wouldn’t know how to cope with the Black heritage, either?

            I’m not going to do that, Harry decided slowly. I’m going to have to deal with it somehow. But not right now. It’s only a few months after the war. I should have some peace before I have to do that.

            And so he stayed there, sipping his tea, and when Ron and Hermione tumbled back out of the fireplace with a couple trunks holding his things, he looked up and smiled. “Did Kreacher give you any trouble?”

            Ron dusted soot off his sleeve, frowning. “You weren’t kidding about how dark that house’s got,” he muttered. “We didn’t see the door you were talking about, though.”

            “Well, I didn’t see it myself until Kreacher showed it to me, so I didn’t expect you would,” Harry said wryly.

            “Kreacher did call me that word,” Hermione said. She had already shed the soot and was setting Harry’s trunk down in the middle of the kitchen, regarding him intently. “Did you send an owl to Malfoy?”

            Harry shrugged casually. “Yeah, but I don’t know if he’ll respond. He would probably find it embarrassing to be reminded that he owes me a life-debt.”

            “Two,” Ron said, and grinned at him. “You did remind him it was two, didn’t you?”

            While Hermione scolded Ron for caring about that at all, Harry smiled and tried to ignore the churning sickness at the bottom of his stomach that said lying to his best friends about sending off a letter was stupid. It was simple, but so stupid. When Malfoy didn’t write back, then Harry would just say that he obviously couldn’t be bothered to reply to a friendly letter, or a letter pleading for help, and that would be the end of it. Harry couldn’t picture Hermione writing to the Malfoys herself to demand an answer. They’d probably burn her letter in the fireplace anyway, once they realized who it was from.

            But the squirming, uncomfortable feeling at the bottom of his stomach remained.

            I can’t do anything else, Harry reassured himself. I don’t want to deal with this right now, and how likely is it that the Malfoys would know anything, anyway? At least, Draco? Kreacher said that Sirius and Regulus both didn’t become heirs, so it’s been at least a generation since anyone was in the situation I’m in. That would be enough time to destroy and lose a lot of knowledge.

            Maybe it was stupid, but he deserved the chance to live the way he wanted to after the war. So he would keep silent for now and only deal with the consequences when they came hunting him.

*

            He slept that night without shadows haunting his bedchamber, and woke up to the soft, delicious smell of food drifting up from the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley’s cooking was better than Kreacher’s, even though Kreacher prepared all the things that Harry liked most. And Harry still couldn’t remember telling him that he liked most of those things.

            Life in the Burrow was easy, despite Ginny’s longing glances. No one but Ron and Hermione said anything about the old scars on his throat, and he had someone to talk to all the time, keeping him from being lonely or drifting into odd thoughts the way he had at Grimmauld Place. By the time he finished one day there, and was listening to Ron snoring in the bed next to his, he couldn’t believe that he had ever wanted to live for months alone in some grotesque old house.

            And if he got flashes of strange emotions sometimes, rage and hatred and the impulse to strike out and destroy something he was looking at, who cared? The grief for Fred in the house around him made other people have odd reactions, too, especially George. Harry controlled them and never hurt anybody or anything.

            His life went back to normal, and Kreacher was far from his mind the day that he stepped onto the Hogwarts Express and caught a glimpse of Draco Malfoy staring at him.

*

            delia cerrano: Well. If Harry will let Draco.

            SP777: No. It’s just another of those weird Black things.

            BAFan: Thank you!

            ChaosLady: I’ll take that as a compliment, then.

            unneeded: Harry wanted peace and quiet from the wizarding world more than he wanted peace of mind, at first. But he is regretting ever coming to the house now, of course.

            I can’t tell you the answers to those questions, yet.
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Ancient and Noble Houses