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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.

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Chapter Nine—Blackened Wards

            “I suppose you will tell me why Harry Potter is currently outside our wards and attempting to destroy them?”

            His mother’s voice had a cool silver chime to it, Draco thought, leaning back from the table where he had written his hasty owl to Pansy and watching the bird wing away through his bedroom window. Just like the air around him had a gold-green radiance to it, gold from his excitement and green from Potter’s eyes.

            “It depends,” Draco said, and tilted his head back to smile at her. “What do you think of explanations that depend on rescuing Harry Potter from himself?”

            His mother simply closed her eyes and shook her head, slowly, tragically, back and forth. Draco laughed and kissed her hand. Narcissa leaned around him and cast a spell on the window.

            The view through it shimmered and changed. Draco’s bedroom no longer looked out on the back gardens—or at least it would appear that way to anyone unfamiliar with the spell Narcissa had used—but down on the gates. Potter was flinging spell after spell against the wards. He didn’t appear to know what weariness was.

            Draco drew in a little breath, watching. He had started this to stave off his own boredom and bring some fire back into the world, but seeing the way Potter spun away from the gates and walked to a short distance off, then turned around with his face cramped with his scowl, in the moment before he started throwing curses again, informed Draco there might be other reasons, as well.

            “What did you do to Mr. Potter?”

            His mother’s voice weighed heavily on his mind, and distracted Draco when he would have rather studied the span of Potter’s shoulders. He turned and frowned at her. “You’re always accusing me of doing something,” he complained. “Why?”

            “I assume that one of the Ministry’s most valued Aurors, and one who, moreover, did not seem to think we were guilty of anything after the war, has no other reason to be here,” Narcissa said, and tilted her head to the side, slowly enough that she might have been wearing heavy chains on her neck. “Draco.”

            “Nothing horrible,” Draco said.

            “Draco.”

            Draco rolled his eyes. That tone was just an octave away from the voice his mother used to use to tell him to do his homework. “Potter had done something stupid, as usual,” he said. He could have told Narcissa all about it—he had done that in his letter to Pansy, after all—but he wanted to clutch this secret to himself a bit longer. His parents might order him to stop, if they knew, and then Draco would have to go to boring lengths to conceal the extent of his involvement from them. “I set out to correct it. He went along with me at first, then took exception when it turned out his stupidity was connected to saving the world. Or so he believes.”

            His mother remained still, and Draco knew without turning to her that she was raising her eyebrows. As far as he was concerned, she could go on doing that all she wanted. He wasn’t going to mention any more.

            At last, Narcissa sighed delicately and touched his shoulder with one hand. “At least reassure me that Potter is not likely to bring down the wards.”

            “You must know the strength of them better,” Draco said, tilting his head back and smiling at her, “considering you’ve lived in this house longer.”

            For a moment, her hand tightened. Then she moved back from him and said to the nape of his neck. “All we want is for you to be happy. You know that.”

            “Yes, but you also don’t want me to annoy you.” Draco caught her eye, and blinked a little at what he saw there. “I know that, Mother. And I don’t mind. If I had thought I was annoying you more than my presence here was worth, I would have left the first time you complained about my complaining.”

            “I don’t know how you became what you are,” his mother whispered to him in return. “The events of the last five years of your life…I’m shut out from them. Oh, you sent me letters,” she added, anticipating Draco’s protest before he could make it. “But I don’t think you told me half of what happened to you in them.”

            Draco shrugged a little. How could he have? His parents would be horrified by some of what he had done, like having sex with non-pure-bloods or mountain-skimming, and the rest of it was simply tedious for them, the way Draco’s complaints about his boredom were.

            “We do want to give you the best life possible,” Narcissa said.

            “I know,” Draco said. “But right now, the best way to do that is simply to stand back and let me have my fun with Potter. One way or another, it’ll be over soon enough. I can’t keep it up long, this raging at him, and neither can he.”

            Narcissa placed one hand on her hip and studied the view of Potter out the window, still casting curses as if he had all the time and all the strength in the world. “It looks as though he has more stamina than most,” she muttered.

            Draco thought about some of the ways Potter might have stamina, and that combined with his earlier thoughts about Potter’s shoulders, and perhaps even his thoughts about fire in Potter’s eyes. He ended up coughing, while his ears turned hot enough that his mother could surely see.

            “If it’s like that, then,” Narcissa said, and her voice had deepened and grown knowing in a way that Draco just didn’t need to hear. She touched Draco’s shoulder, squeezing hard. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Draco.”

            “I know,” Draco said, and decided to see how much he could trust his mother with. “Even if it ends up leading to me sleeping with Potter.”

            A long pause, and then his mother said, “Well. I suppose it will not damage you any more than most of the other affairs you’ve had. You have learned how to sleep casually with people and part with them to head for the other side of the world the next day.”

            Draco turned around and smiled madly at her, his fingers closing hard into his palms. He sincerely doubted that any fling between himself and Potter would ever be casual, but then again, he had yet to be near Potter without a murder attempt or a frustrating conversation that made the murder attempts almost preferable happening. So perhaps they would never have the chance to experience what it would be like, casual or intense.

            “Yes, perhaps the other side of the world would be best,” his mother continued thoughtfully as she made her way towards the door of his room. “Australia, say, or New Zealand.”

            Draco nodded in silent agreement as she shut the door and left him to his contemplation of Potter. Potter had backed up and was eying the wards like a bull about to charge. Draco didn’t know what spell he intended to try next, but he knew it wouldn’t do the wards any good.

            And ultimately, it was his money, his to inherit after his father’s, that would go to repair the wards. For the sake of his family, Draco had to give in and go down.

            And for others’ sakes, too, of course, but he didn’t see the need to emphasize that.

*

            “Malfoy.”

            Potter’s voice still simmered and glowed with anger, and it had been almost two hours since Draco had bridled and broken the horse. Draco stopped behind the frame of the gates and admired, for a moment, the sweat on Potter’s cheeks and the way his hair hung over his forehead, and hoped that that might be it, that he might not have to break the chain ritual.

            No, he decided, in the end. Potter might retain his change for a few days, but then he would go back to drifting cluelessness, or an in-between state of confusion that would reward no one. He might even stir up his friends against Draco. He always had when he acted the part of helpless victim before.

            “I’ll make you a bargain, Potter,” he said.

            Potter rolled his eyes and backed up another step, wand ready in his hand. His feet danced in place for a moment before he controlled them. Draco had to lick his lips at the thought of what that passion might be like in bed. “Says the man who I have cornered.”

            “Not so,” Draco said, and gestured around to the Manor. “I’m home, here. I can stay here as long as I want to, and in the meantime, what will you do? Hammer on the wards until my parents call your fellow Aurors in? People who know you well?” He smiled at Potter, pleasantly. “And will surely notice when you suddenly go from raging passion back to idiot apathy.”

            Potter closed his eyes, then opened them again, as though hoping he would go back to idiot apathy right there. But the flame was still in his face when he looked at Draco, and he tightened his fingers on his wand. Draco decided to keep a step back in case Potter wanted to beat him over the head with it. “You have no idea what it was really like,” Potter whispered. “You have no idea who I really am.”

            “I don’t need to know who you really are to make a bargain with you,” Draco said. “Since you probably wouldn’t want to tell me anyway.”

            Potter’s eyes narrowed, and he twisted his head to the side, watching Draco as though he wanted to hit him. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, is what I mean,” he said, after a few seconds of a charged silence. “You have no idea what I might agree to, or whether I would even keep my word.”

            “This is the bargain,” Draco continued, because he saw no need to answer such twaddle. “You don’t try to interfere with me while I fight the next creature, whatever it is, and I give you the silver horsehair back.”

            Potter blinked, once, twice. Then he said, “I told you that what each animal gives you is the key to fighting the other one.” He was already slowing down, Draco saw in disgust, his mouth drooping a little at the sides. “You wouldn’t give that to me because then you would have no way to complete destroying the chain ritual.”

            Draco shrugged. “You’re more of a problem than I expect the other magical creatures to be, given what I’ve defeated so far,” he said, honestly. “Your interference—or rather, the lack of it—is something I’m prepared to bargain for.”

            Potter watched him with wondering eyes. Draco tried to appear innocent but not too innocent. There was no way Potter would believe that.

            “But that means you’re still going to go ahead and try to disrupt the chain ritual,” Potter said, as slowly as though he thought Draco was the one who needed extra help. “Even though I told you I didn’t want you to.”

            “Right,” Draco said. He thought of many more things that he could say, but in the end, it seemed better to drawl the words and hold Potter’s eyes, so he could fill in the missing details for himself.

            Potter scowled at him. “But why would you care what I feel like? Okay, so I could have confessed the secret of the chain ritual to someone else instead of you and really got myself in trouble. But I didn’t. So why the fuck does it still matter?”

            Draco sighed. “Don’t you remember what I said to you when you were choking me? Or did the spell do something to your memory to turn it into cheese, along with your moods?”

            “It’s not cheese!” Potter snapped, his cheeks darkening with a flood of color that soared up along his neck.

            “My mistake,” Draco said. “Cream, then.”

            Potter closed his eyes and did the sort of counting trick under his breath to recover his temper that never worked, as far as Draco knew. At least, it only made his mother angrier when he was a child and she’d tried it. Draco waited with his hands barely touching, the tips of his fingers resting against each other. He could do this all day, he thought. He wondered whether Potter could.

            “You said that certain things should always be true,” Potter said, opening his eyes and staring at him. “That Voldemort should always be dead, and I should always be—well, whatever you said, it didn’t make sense.”

            “Ah,” Draco said. “So the spell also caused you to be unable to take compliments.” Then he paused and studied the various shades of red Potter’s cheeks had turned, and shook his head. “No, perhaps only exaggerated the tendency. I remember now that you never did take them gracefully, whether it was Skeeter giving them to you or someone else.”

            “She never complimented me,” Potter snapped.

            “Which only goes to show that you have trouble even recognizing them,” Draco said. “Oh, dear.”

            Potter’s hand trembled, and Draco raised his own hands in placation. If this went far enough, he suspected that he wouldn’t ever get his bargain from Potter. “All right,” he said. “So, the bargain I want to make.”

            “No.” When Potter spoke like that, Draco could picture him knocking down the wards and making a triumphal entrance to the Manor. “I still want to know what you meant by—some things always existing.”

            “You’re a symbol to me,” Draco said, and shook his head when Potter’s eyes almost crossed trying to see his own scar. “Not for the reasons that you are to anyone else. You defied the Dark Lord, and I didn’t think anyone could do that. I was scared to the point of shaking in my boots just from looking at him, and he didn’t much care about me. Oh, he wouldn’t have mourned if I died in the ‘performance of my duties,’ but he didn’t actively want to kill me. You, he did. But you spat in his face and walked away. I didn’t understand how anyone could be that way. It’s nothing to do with being a hero, or even courageous,” he added, when Potter started to open his mouth. “It has to do with being beautiful. That’s the way you looked to me, beautiful. The way a storm is, you know, or a free wild animal.”

            Potter stared at him with his mouth open, then snapped it shut hard enough to rattle his teeth. When he finally spoke again, he sounded as though he would start spitting the teeth out. “Fine, Malfoy. Then don’t tell me your real reason.”

            “And deprived you of your ability to recognize the truth, too,” Draco muttered.

            “Do you want your bloody bargain or not?” Potter roared.

            I want you to keep roaring like that, Draco thought, but it would only strike Potter as daft if he said it, so he didn’t intend to say it. He gave a little shrug instead, and murmured, “All right. You don’t interfere with me when I go to fight the next animal, I give you the silver horsehair.”

            Potter studied his face once more. Draco just stood there. What could he do other than try and look innocent? It wasn’t like he could take any more jabs at Potter without the man turning tail.

            But Draco had started to think the majority of those jabs were true. Potter had lost his memory, and his sense of humor, and control of his emotions, and everything else that made Draco remember, fondly, the boy who had circled opposite the Dark Lord and made him look like a fool.

            Who had shown Draco that he had been jumping at shadows, afraid of nothing.

            Potter nodded brusquely. “But I’m going to stay here until you bring me the horsehair,” he said.

            Draco shrugged. “I have it here.” He opened the pouch at his belt and removed the thin strip of shining softness. He was surprised at how good a job he had done, with the spells he cast. He tossed it at Potter’s feet.

            Potter made a snatch at it with one hand, and then straightened back up, waving his wand to float the thing to him. Draco laughed. “Too good to touch the dirt, Potter? I see that the chain ritual has given you a sense of cleanliness, then. That might be the first good thing it ever did for you.”

            Potter looked at him. There was something in his gaze that made Draco look down, something in his words that sounded like the teeth he hadn’t spat out when he said, “It’s not like I ever wanted to be dirty. I had to stop caring about that early in my life.”

            Draco swallowed, his stomach squirming. “I apologize, Potter.”

            There was something…different about that, he thought. Insults to Potter’s memory and all the rest of it were one thing, but this was something else, something that went deeper into Potter’s eyes than he was prepared to deal with.

            After watching him with his head cocked on one side, Potter seemed to accept that Draco meant it, and nodded shortly. “Fine,” he said, brushing grains of dirt from his horsehair. “You have your bargain. Although I don’t know how you’re going to get along, without this to protect you when you face the next creature.”

            “That’s not your problem now,” Draco said, and took a step away, and started to Apparate.

            Potter’s hand on his arm stopped him. Draco looked at him. Potter was biting his lip.

            “Maybe I should—maybe I should go along, just to make sure you’re not too badly hurt,” he said.

            Draco had to bite his own lip, hard. When would Potter remember that he shouldn’t have made a bargain with a Slytherin?

            “Thank you, Potter,” he said, all on his dignity. “I appreciate that.”

            Potter drew him close, and Draco shut his eyes and leaned against his chest. It felt warmer than he had thought it would, at least when Potter had drowned his passion in the chain ritual.

            I reckon he’s just warm all over.

            And didn’t that thought feed Draco entertaining fantasies as they disappeared.

*

            SP777: I have no idea if mountain skimming is a real thing or not. In the story, it’s a way for crazy wizards to fly through valleys with wings on their ankles and wrists, that’s all.

            moodysavage: Thank you! I’m having a lot of fun with this story.

            delia cerrano: There’s more interaction in the next chapter.

            Seiren: Thanks! Hope you continue to enjoy.
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A Black Stone in a Glass Box