lomonaaeren

Chapter Forty-Seven.

Title: Ancient and Noble Houses (48/50)
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 Forty-Eight—The Trusting Moment

Draco stood there with his hands groping out. Then he took another tentative step. By now, he was certain he had heard something, and because he had never been touched by Harry’s soul, it had to be Harry himself.

His breathing was fast enough to shake his chest, his skin so sweat-soaked that he couldn’t have held his wand. It was back in its place at his side, and he still groped and cast forwards. If Harry was there, Draco wanted to touch and reassure him. He thought touch might be a sense that the cleansing couldn’t twist as much. If he could hold Harry close and whisper into his ear, the way he had before…

He halted when something pressed against his chest. It was the blunt tip of a wand. Draco swallowed. He, at least, had no doubt about his perceptions in this room, especially since the rest of his senses were focused by being denied sight.

“Harry?” he whispered.

*

Is that Draco, or isn’t it?

Harry didn’t know. Images raced through his mind as he strained his eyes into the blackness, trying to see the silver lines that had defined the beast once before. He could imagine the beast scratching out his eyes, biting his ears off, twisting its head to the side and breaking his neck. Wouldn’t the house do that if it thought it was losing control of him?

But it will only do that if I don’t kill Draco first. That’s what it’s trying to do. Make me kill Draco.

Harry’s hand clenched and caught on his wand. He wanted to vomit. It would be easier to curl up in sickness than to do lots of other things, and then he could collapse to the floor, beneath the sweep of the paws or the groping hands. Maybe Draco would go by and leave him in the darkness, and that way, they might both survive until morning, when Kreacher would have to open the door of the ordeal room and let them out.

Then there came the voice of the creature again, or whatever it really was, whispering, choking. “Harry?” it said.

Harry knelt, the way he had imagined doing, but it was to lay his wand on the floor. He kept one hand pinioned over it, so he wouldn’t lose it again, but he bowed his head and shivered. Then he licked his lips and raised his voice. There was the chance that Draco would hear him, even though Harry already knew he wouldn’t hear himself. That was one source of the house’s control over him. “Draco?”

Yes. Silence came out of his mouth. A scream clawed its way up Harry’s throat, and he thought about giving it, about making the silence tremble and shatter, and then maybe his fate, whatever it was, would come for him sooner.

His Defense instincts raged and shrieked at him that he was giving up the advantage, just sitting there and waiting like an idiot for his death to approach him. But he held out his hand, and he fell into trust. He hated the thought of killing Draco more than he hated the thought of being torn apart by the beast. That was the truth.

“Draco?” he repeated.

*

There he is!

To be honest, though, Draco knew he probably wouldn’t have found Harry if it hadn’t been for the repetition of his name. The darkness confused him more than he would have thought possible, and the walls bounced the echoes of Harry’s word in unpredictable directions. He groped and followed, and nearly fell over a pair of hunched shoulders. One quick feel up them found the freezing silver chain around Harry’s neck.

Draco knelt down beside him, opening his arms to embrace Harry. “Yes, it’s me,” he whispered. “I’m here. Please. Can you talk to me? Are you all right? Did it—did it wound you?” He had no idea whether Harry’s soul would try to hurt him. There was so little they knew about this ordeal, and about what the house would try to keep its chosen heir.

Harry choked and turned, burying his face in Draco’s chest. Draco closed his eyes in thankfulness when he felt the bristles of Harry’s hair beneath his touch. There was no reason to close his eyes or keep them open, in a place like this, except that it was a private gesture of thanksgiving, one that the house could not force him to change.

“I’m all right,” Harry finally whispered. “It—it was making your voice sound like that thing’s. I didn’t know it was you at first. I just had to trust.”

Draco curled around him, trying to fill his hands with enough sensation that he could forget about the blackness around them, and his touch with enough tenderness that Harry would take comfort from it. He didn’t know what to say. But perhaps his tongue and his teeth and his lips found the words before the rest of him did, because he whispered, “So—why didn’t you strike? If you couldn’t tell the difference between us?”

Harry turned in his arms. Draco could tell that much, but until their chins bumped, he didn’t realize which way Harry had turned.

Then Harry’s hands rose, and Draco shut his eyes again as they trailed over Draco’s lips and nose and the pieces of hair that hung down next to his ears. “I didn’t know the difference,” he whispered. “But I decided to trust. Because I could bear the thought of being torn apart by the beast if I was wrong, but I couldn’t bear the thought of killing you, even by accident.”

Draco reacted before he thought. He kissed Harry, so hard that he felt someone’s lip start bleeding. He couldn’t even tell whose, he was so close, they were so close, pressed and touching, aching and moving against each other. He felt Harry lowering himself so that his back was against the floor of the ordeal room, and went with him, until he was crouching above Harry and still kissing him, threading his fingers into his hair.

Harry was gasping for breath by the time Draco pulled back. Draco found himself savagely glad of it. If he was doing that, then he was focusing on simple, physical things, not his soul and not dying.

“If you ever say that again,” Draco whispered, “I’ll kiss you until your head spins.”

Harry’s hands reached up and settled against his shoulders. “That doesn’t make it much of a threat, you know,” he whispered, with the first humor Draco had heard in his voice since they entered the house. “Why shouldn’t I want something like that?”

“Because then I’ll haul you to the Manor and lock you in,” Draco said, his hands tightening reflexively. “And then you can explain to both my mother and I—both your heirs—why you don’t care about your life.”

“Not that,” Harry whispered. “I just care more about you living than I care about my own life.”

Draco bent down, dizzy again, and kissed Harry until it felt as if the blackness was inside his head as well as out, threatening to burst through his ears and eyes. Harry writhed beneath him, legs wide-spread and—and Draco had to think, had to decide that they were still in the middle of the ordeal and this wasn’t a good idea, because it was obvious that Harry wouldn’t be able to decide it for himself.

“No,” Draco whispered savagely, drawing back and shaking his head. “I can’t—I won’t let you forget that. I won’t let you forget that you feel something for me outside of what the Black blood and the Black house were influencing you to feel.”

Harry gave a choke, as if that take on the situation hadn’t occurred to him, and his hands became gasping and greedy. Draco rolled down on top of him again, more than willing to return to the kiss now that he’d had his say.

And no matter how he listened, he thought that he couldn’t hear anything else coming near. Whether that creature Harry had seen existed or not, it wasn’t here now.

“I wonder what the ordeal means, if what you saw wasn’t really your soul,” he murmured at last, when he drew back and released Harry from the kiss again.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Harry whispered. “And I thought—what if we were being too literal? Expecting to see an image of the soul? You notice that the description of the ordeal in the book didn’t talk too much about that, even though there must be lots of people who went through it and could write down descriptions. Maybe—maybe I did see my soul. Maybe I learned what matters to me, and that’s enough.”

Draco shut his eyes. He could have spoken, but he didn’t think that he had words to do the moment justice.

So he kissed Harry again, and they were still doing that when a door swung open somewhere behind them and a line of light pierced into the darkness.