Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Ancient and Noble Houses'- Where He Went

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Title: Ancient and Noble Houses (24/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, past Harry/Ginny
Warnings: Angst, violence
Rating: R
Summary: Harry finds out that being the heir to the Black fortune—at least once he’s of age and residing in Grimmauld Place full-time—is a lot different than just inheriting some vaults and property. He’s changing in ways he doesn’t understand, both body and mind. Even with Draco Malfoy to help him, the chance that Harry can resist becoming the perfect Black heir, with all that implies, seems slim.
Author’s Notes: This story came from wondering exactly what the house part of “The Ancient and Noble House of Black” might mean. This fic will have short chapters, and update every Friday and Saturday.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Four—Where He Went

“I don’t know where he went, Granger, for the last time. Don’t you think I would tell you if I knew, just to get you off my back?”

That set Granger off in another flurry of scolding that Draco paid less than no attention to. He was gazing wearily down the corridor from the library instead. He’d returned there after a fruitless search for Potter that had carried him up to the Astronomy Tower—Draco couldn’t help thinking that the Dark magic of the Black inheritance might push Potter to jump—and down to the Slytherin common room without revealing anything. At the very least, he had to gather up their Gringotts documents before someone else noticed them.

Granger had already taken care of that. And Granger had determined that, for some reason, he was the best person to find Potter.

Granger had opened her mouth to begin a new volley of words when Potter stalked into the library. Draco stared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He did look up and incline his head in a choppy nod to Granger, and then faced the forms again.

“Where were we?” he asked, plopping into his chair.

Granger swarmed to his side and said, “Harry! We were worried sick!” She continued before Draco could challenge those words as applied to himself. “Don’t just come in here and act like nothing happened, we know it did!”

“I know that something happened.” Potter’s voice was without inflection, and the way he tilted his head back to look at Granger made Draco grip his chair, then wonder why. The gesture was certainly a lot less threatening than the last way Potter had looked at his friend, and even than the ways he usually considered Draco. “I acted unforgivably towards you. I hope you can forgive me, even though I don’t deserve it.”

Granger gaped for a second, and then nodded. “Of course, Harry,” she whispered, her voice lowering with emotion. “I know it was that awful house, and not you.”

Draco tried to catch Potter’s eye, but he had his head bowed, searching through the forms. “Thanks, Hermione. I think that we need to sign one more, Malfoy, and then you can go,” he added, looking up at Draco.

Draco would have fallen back a step if it wouldn’t have so obviously exposed to Granger that something was going on. There was fire in Potter’s eyes, but it was the fire that Draco had seen when they were playing Quidditch against each other, not the savage light the house tended to put there.

He was back to seeing Draco as an opponent, not someone he wanted to persuade into his bed.

What happened? Draco wanted to be relieved, but he didn’t quite dare. When Potter was mysteriously influenced by something Draco didn’t see, it always turned out to be bad news for him. And Draco didn’t think this climb back to his former self was natural at all.

“Why don’t I stay?” He kept his voice casual, but he nodded to Granger. “I am rather intimately involved in this, after all.”

Granger sniffed and touched Potter’s arm. She didn’t seem to notice the way he stiffened, before he flicked his eyes closed and took a steadying breath. “I’m sure your interference isn’t necessary, Malfoy. Harry and I can handle this on our own, now, with Ron’s help. Besides,” she added, a thick tone in her voice, “if you don’t know what you feel and Harry can’t control himself around you, then you ought to stay away.”

Potter bowed his head further, and nodded as though he agreed. Draco was more than sure he didn’t, and wanted to say something, but Potter grunted and shoved the form that he needed to sign over to him.

Draco wondered what he was supposed to do now. Refuse to sign it, and cheat himself and his mother out of a lot of money?

No. He had to think of himself and his family before anything else. He might have to insist on being allowed back into Potter’s life, he might have to ask questions he would rather not ask, but there was no reason to deprive them of part of their inheritance on top of that. He signed with a flourish and leaned back in his chair, waiting to see what would happen next.

Granger glared at him, was what happened next, and repeated, “You can go now, Malfoy.”

Draco hesitated one more time and turned to Potter. Silly as it was, he would have stayed if Potter had told him to.

But Potter’s head continued bowed, his fingers playing with the quill that Draco had used to sign the last form. Draco stood up and pushed his chair back with a long, raspy squeak, and still Potter gave no sign that he’d heard.

Draco checked the words he wanted to utter, bowed instead, and left the library. He heard Granger ask Potter something in which his name figured prominently.

Draco didn’t listen. If it wasn’t any of his business, then it wasn’t any of his business, no matter how much he wanted to know what had caused Potter to change like that.

He wandered back to the Slytherin common room, wondering what he would do with his sudden freedom.

*

Harry could still feel the desire hammering against the walls of his chest as he watched Draco go, with his head lowered so that no one could watch him watching. He wanted to reach out and touch him. He wanted to lean his hand against Draco’s heart and explain. He wanted his help with the potion that Snape had agreed to teach him, and his help with the research that Harry would need to do before he let Snape begin teaching him to brew.

The problem was, yielding to those impulses would pull Draco straight back into the clutches of what he now had the chance to escape from: Harry’s insanity and his perhaps hopeless quest to be free of the house. If Harry could give him the chance, now, while he still had his feelings under control, to leave, then he might manage even more in the future.

“Harry?” Hermione tapped him on the shoulder. “You said something about how you had found a solution to the house and your problem with it?”

Turning to her, Harry forced himself to remember all the benefits he would get if he did manage to change back, and focus on being himself: he would get his friends’ love and trust, for one thing. He smiled at her and nodded. “If we can’t solve the problem with ordinary magic or by researching pure-blood families, what about potions?”

Hermione clapped her hands together, her eyes sparking. “Of course! Potions can be pretty complex, and they can include symbolic ingredients in them that can influence the outcome! I bet we can find one that would let us free you from the house, or at least sacrifice some symbolic ingredients so that we can modify another potion’s formula into one that would free you…”

Harry let her chatter on, while he stood up and went to fetch some books on potions from the section in the library where Snape had told him to look. He would have to “guide” Hermione in the right direction, not revealing that he already knew things about the potion. She would probably distrust Snape, or at least raise objections to his motive for teaching Harry how to brew the thing.

Harry paused in reaching out for one of the books on the shelf in front of him. Come to that, maybe he should distrust Snape. The man had never answered his question about why he had a portrait in such an out-of-the-way place in the dungeons.

On the other hand, who cared? The influence of the house couldn’t have anything to do with the portrait, and Snape couldn’t have known Harry would run in that direction when he left the library. He probably would have seen Harry eventually from some other frame, but it was just too much of an outlandish theory, the kind that Hermione would tell him he needed more evidence for, to think that Snape could have made him come there.

“Harry? Have you found the right books?”

Harry started and picked up some of the tomes, turning around. Hermione was waiting for him, hopeful smile and reaching arms and all.

No matter what happens to me, I just have to be grateful that Draco is well out of it, and that I have friends who can help me. I never should have approached Draco in the first place, especially once I realized that he didn’t know anything about the house. What I did was wrong, and I need to let him go and move on. Harry snorted a little as he felt his own reluctance dragging at his limbs like treacle. No matter how hard it is.