Title: Just Say No

Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel

Pairings: None at present: please note this is NOT, and NEVER WILL BE, a Draco/Harry. Just wanted to make that clear.

Setting: Beginning of sixth year onwards. Non-HBP compliant, but apart from that Harry's history pretty much lines up with what's in the books.

Author notes:

Okay, I had inspiration for this one; "Love and Betrayal" by feanor, a story in which Draco apparently decides to make Harry his mate and Harry resists. I've always hated the 'Draco the veela, Harry his mate' stories, and so I loved feanor's fic. I decided to do my own take on it.

Parseltongue

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER ONE:

A BLACK POINT OF VIEW

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Believe me; we all tried to get out of this. The first pair of scissors I find I'm taking with me to visit the Headmaster."

-Pretty Little Secrets by sparkley-tangerine

88888888

From the point of view of whom Harry visits next.

I was hanging out at the top of the Astronomy Tower as usual when a straight, thin figure stepped through the doorway in a swirl of black robes. I didn't need the messy black hair and the steely green eyes obscured by old-fashioned glasses to tell me who it was; the red tentacles of magic trying to escape an emerald core could only belong to one person.

"Hey Potter," I greeted him. "Bad day?"

"Horribly," the boy said icily. He stalked past me to the edge of the tower and sat carefully, wrapping his arms around his knees and gazing out into the darkness.

Most people don't even know of my existence. It's not surprising. I let few people see me, after all; a Black, a ghost? Why, it's a disappointment to the family name. Not that the last of the Blacks wasn't even more of one, but still… The point is, if it became commonly-known that Thyone Athena Black, the only Black in the last two centuries to inherit the Sight, was haunting Hogwarts, my reputation would be severely tainted.

Harry is one of the rare exceptions. The reason that I haunt the Tower in the first place is to make sure that no one else tries to throw themselves off it the way that I did, and so when I caught Harry attempting to do so a couple of years back I naturally did my best to stop him. It took some convincing, but in the end he told me exactly what was bothering him and I helped him deal with it in a less suicidal fashion. After that, any time that something was really troubling him he'd make his way up to my tower to tell me all about it. I think that for someone like Harry, having a person who won't judge him when he lets down his guard is something that he values for its rarity.

Now I let him sit in silence, merely curling up beside him, waiting to see if he wanted to talk. Eventually he broke the silence.

"Dumbledore's been missing with my life again."

Once again I felt the desire to invoke some of the less …pleasant family magics on the man. Honestly, could anyone have made a bigger mess of Harry's life? Well, probably, but nonetheless they'd have to be talented to beat Dumbledore's record.

I didn't reply, merely waited, listening.

"Believe it or not, Draco Malfoy thinks I'm his mate, and of course Dumbledore's all for it. Doesn't care what I think, what I feel, just says that it's my responsibility and expects me to do it, that's it. Never mind that I hate Malfoy's guts, that for all he knows I could be in love with someone else, or even that Malfoy's practically a Death Eater-in training. I have absolutely no say in any of this at all, and when I turned Malfoy down he got all mad and disappointed at me like I'd set fire to his office or something."

Ooh, there's an idea to add to my list.

"Lovely suggestion. Mind if I try it?"

He snorted.

"Not at all. Be my guest. The bastard deserves it."

"That he does," I agree. The number of students I've talked to in my time who owe their troubles to him, through either direct interference or a lack of action... I still remember, a long time ago, a small boy who looked a lot like Harry, telling me about the horrible things that happened to him over the summer and how Dumbledore refused to help him and how frightened he was that things would get even worse… Fear leads to suffering, suffering leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Side… even the muggles get it right sometimes. Little Tom's a Dark Lord now, the fear of all of Britain. I doubt many people would believe me if I told them he used to be a scared, abused little boy, but he was once. He needn't have been, though. Like they say, all that evil needs to flourish is for good men to stand by and let it happen. Albus Dumbledore's done a lot of standing by.

Harry sighed and rested his head on his knees. I wished that I was a little more corporeal just so that I could rest my hand on his shoulder. That boy needs a little more friendly touch in his life. I swear to Merlin, one of these days I'm going to go haunt those relatives of his and put the fear of the Blacks into them. Until then, I just have to offer him what I can.

"I don't understand why he does it," Harry whispers, and it's the heartbroken whisper of a child who has been hurt all his life and doesn't know why. "Doesn't he realize that I have feelings, that all those things he does hurt me? He's slowly taking everything I still have, and he doesn't even realize it." The red strands, fewer and smaller now, swirl gently in agreement. "I'm just so sick of it, Thyone, all the pain and all the bullshit and all the manipulations and lies. Why can't anyone just see me for what I am? Not even Ron and Hermione do, really. Even they expect me to be the hero. I'm never allowed to just leave it to somebody else. I'm so tired, and so old, and I'm barely sixteen years old. Why should I care about the world when the world doesn't care about me?"

His words sound like the ones someone else said to me a long time ago, and once again Riddle rises to my mind, haunted black eyes swimming with pain and sorrow and the beginnings of an all-consuming hatred that later will destroy him and much of the wizarding world. Harry raises his head to look at me, desperate for some kind of comfort, eyes swollen and shining with tears and face wet. Suddenly I can Feel it, as surely as if Fate and Destiny were spread out before me in a map. We're balanced on the edge of a precipice, an apex, and we could go one of two ways. Destiny depends on which path is chosen. The Sight tells me that my actions will determine what happens next.

Resolve grips me. I know one path already; I have walked it with Tom Riddle, to whom I offered comfort and an ear but little action. I will not let Harry take that path. A ghost might not be able to do much, but whatever I could do I would.

"I care, Harry," I said softly. "I don't know how much I can do, but I assure you that I will help you anyway I can."

Harry stared at me in disbelief, but I could see the faint flicker of hope in his eyes.

"But you're a ghost," he said blankly. "What could you do?"

I offered him a grim smile.

"I am a Black, Harry, and Blacks have their ways of doing things even in death. Anyone who dares mess with one of us soon finds that they have made a grave mistake."

Harry smiled at me, brilliantly, and even though I've been dead for a good two hundred years I swear I feel my heart stop and my breath catch. When those eyes glow like that it's a sight to see. No wonder so many girls have such a thing for him.

I can feel the uncertainty vanish and the cogs and wheels of Fate start to turn, and for a moment the entire future dependent on this moment is spread out before me in all its glory, spinning and forming, inexorably knitting together to create a path that is set in stone. A moment later everything is normal, only the faint purrings of Fate and Destiny indicating that anything important has taken place.

"Come on, let's go see my friends," Harry said, getting to his feet.

I smile, and together we leave the Astronomy Tower.

I do not regret it. At all.