Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

This chapter was so much fucking fun to write.

Chapter Sixty-Four: Stalked

Harry opened his eyes slowly and rolled over. His mind leaped immediately into motion, making plans for today. He smiled. Regulus had told him that the papers in the Ministry had changed immediately when he finished signing the ones in Wayhouse, marking him as the Black heir, but it had been so late in the evening by the time he finished that Harry had decided to wait and start making the changes he wanted to make tomorrow.

Not even yet another odd, mist-shrouded dream of a corridor lined with locked doors, leading to one he was unable to open, and Voldemort's frustration that left a burning pain in his scar could dampen his good mood.

Seeing the strange bird with the teeth and clawed wings sitting in his bed and staring at him did. Harry sat up quickly, his magic coiling once around him and lashing at the bird.

It passed through it without any effect, except for starting a slight fire in his bed-curtains. Harry put it out, watching the bird all the while. It preened itself, cracking feathers in its jaws before it looked back at him, and that voice spoke in his head again, rather like dropping words into the past than speaking full-out in the present.

You have not learned. You will not learn until it is too late. Unlike the other times, the bird sounded almost cheerful about their mysterious binding this time, or at least smug. Then we shall have to live with each other. I suppose you are not so bad. Entertaining in your stupidity, at least, to still think you can hurt me. I can be wherever you are, Harry.

"Why can you hurt me, if I can't hurt you?" Harry whispered challengingly. Unlike the time he had seen the bird right before his parents' trial, he found himself more angry than worried. No laws of magic that he knew explained the bird. None explained its ability to pass in and out of Hogwarts' wards, either. He thought he had a right to be angry.

That is part of the bond. The bird stretched its wings and hopped a little nearer to him. Harry pulled his arms back. The bird laughed at him, a snorting, chuckling, vicious sound, and then hopped into the air and flew at him. Harry ducked, but it was too late. Those freezing claws passed across the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, the blood that it drew mingling with the blood from his nightmare.

To see you later, said the bird, and spread its wings, and rose, and vanished.

Harry sat where he was, panting for a moment and gingerly feeling the depth of the cuts. They felt like the last ones he'd got, and those had healed without leaving anything but scabs that fell off eventually. Still, it would be harder to hide them or explain them away as the result of stumbles than the last ones had been. Harry rose to go to the loo. It was practically time to get up for class anyway.

He drew his curtains back, and found Draco standing there, staring at him.

Harry stared back. His anger at the bird mingled with a rush of the older, harder anger he felt at Draco and Snape right now, and made it easy. Draco was the one who looked away first, though his voice showed no sign that he was no longer meeting Harry's eyes.

"What happened to your forehead?"

"A magical bird showed up and cut it," said Harry, which was nothing less than the truth, and made to push past Draco.

Draco caught his arm and turned him around. Harry went with it only because he didn't—yet—want to start a physical fight. He would if he had to. He stared into Draco's eyes again, and again it was Draco who looked away.

"I felt an odd sensation last night," he said. "I didn't understand what it was at first, but then Mother contacted me. She said you're Black heir, and what we felt was the magic of our bloodline readjusting to accept someone who isn't related directly by blood."

"That's right," said Harry. "Regulus told me certain truths last night that made me decide it was best to accept the legacy."

"So is he your family now?"

Harry took in Draco's tension, and remembered how upset Draco had been when Harry told him he didn't really consider the Malfoys his family. "Not in the way you mean," Harry said. "I haven't taken his last name, and he's only adopted me as an heir, the way that you could do with someone else in a normal will. I don't consider him a father. More like a brother, if anything," he added, with a slight frown. Come to think of it, perhaps it was better if Regulus waited for a while before he married and had children. Harry didn't think he'd be a good father right now.

"But you still share something with him that you don't share with me."

Harry didn't know why that declaration broke his will to stand here and have this strange sort of half-argument with Draco. He tugged his arm, and Draco, surprised, let go of it.

"I share lots of things with other people that I don't share with you, Draco," Harry snapped. "Honestly. I would have said, before we had this fight, that you understood that. I share danger with my enemies, and memories of childhood with my brother—"

"You were never a child," Draco interrupted.

"So now you think that," said Harry. "But I mean it, Draco. I shared plenty of games and adventures with him that children have and play. And I share bonds with my allies that you don't understand in detail, and friendships with people like Hermione—" he was watching, and saw the way Draco wrinkled his nose, his prejudice towards Muggleborns apparently unconquered "—and life debts, and, Merlin, everything with someone else."

Draco's eyes widened. "So you could find someone to fill my place in your life?" he asked.

"Argh," said Harry, knowing he was not being eloquent. "Don't be an idiot, Draco. No. I love you. But it doesn't mean I share everything with you. It doesn't mean I never think you're wrong. It doesn't mean that we're going to always avoid fighting."

"But I thought we were," said Draco quietly. "You asked me what I wanted from you, Harry. I told you. To be the most important person in your life, among other things." His face was flushing. "I don't think that's too much to ask, with how much support I've given you and the gifts you hand everyone else every day."

Harry stared hard at Draco, ignoring Argutus's suggestion that everything would become clearer if they just curled back up into bed together and let a small snake sleep in the warmth of their cradled bodies. Draco showed no signs of backing down this time, or of looking away. Harry supposed they had arrived at the core and heart of the argument. Draco resented being left out of Harry's dangerous escapades not just because Harry might get hurt, but because he wanted to share them with Harry. To share everything, really.

"I can't share everything with you," said Harry. "Not everything."

"And I said—"

"It's impossible, Draco." Harry could hear his voice soaring and knew from Blaise's sleepy grumble that they'd woken him up. He ignored that, too. "There will always be situations that I get into where I can't go for you, or where you're somewhere else entirely, and then I have to fight or rescue someone else or make plans or whatever and you're not there to advise or consult. I can tell you about them later, but that's not the same thing, is it?" he finished, thinking of the way that Draco had always resented being left out of the confrontation Harry and Connor had had with Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, even though Harry had told him all about it later and he'd seen the memories. "You always want to be there."

"I don't think it's so unreasonable," Draco said, voice like flashfire.

"Tell me," said Harry, "would you let me watch a ceremony that's special to the Malfoys? How your father confirms you as magical heir, for instance? I know that's private for most of the pureblood families. Oh, you announce it afterwards and have festivities to honor it, but the actual ceremony is private."

"Of course it is," said Draco, whose face was slowly flushing. "Our enemies could get too good an idea of how to hurt us if we held them in public, or even with anyone but those who are Malfoy by blood attending."

"So, you see," said Harry, folding his arms. "There's one example where you can't share something with me. So why should I be able to share the whole of my life with you?"

"But you don't—" Draco began, and then stopped. His flush altered.

"Oh, do finish that sentence," said Harry, taking a step forward. "I'd like to hear what you have to say about it."

"I—"

"Say it, Draco. Say exactly what you meant to say," Harry goaded him.

"I don't want—"

"Since we're supposed to be able to share everything, after all."

"All right!" Draco burst out, not seeming to hear the moan that came from Blaise. "You don't have a family, Harry! You don't have ceremonies like that, since you chose to renounce your surname! You're not pureblood! It's not comparable!"

The silence that followed that reminded Harry of the moment after he'd compared Draco and Snape to Lily, except that that previous meeting didn't have Blaise whimpering about lost sleep in the corner. Draco looked similarly horror-stricken. Harry had the same feeling of having jumped an obstacle they hadn't known was that high, and landing safely on the other side. He swallowed, and nodded, and met Draco's gaze.

"So, you see," he said, proud of how steady his voice was, "there are some differences between us, Draco. I would never insist that you be lesser than I am. If you think something is deficient in my behavior towards you, I rely on you to tell me, not sulk around and hide what you really feel behind other things. I can't fix my mistakes if I don't know what they are. Similarly, I won't accuse you of hurting me without explaining the accusations. And we are both going to make mistakes, and we are both going to have parts of our lives that we don't share with each other, Draco. We are different people. Sometimes I think you know that, and sometimes I think you always envisioned that I would become just like you as I shed my training. That's not true. You're right. I'll never be pureblood. I'll never have the blood, and I'll never have the prejudices." He took a step closer to Draco, though his every instinct was screaming at him to retreat and, if nothing else, have the last bit of this argument in private. It was too late, though. If he moved, he would lose his momentum, and he might never gain back this kind of silence with which Draco was listening to him now, quiet, rapt. "We are both different people, Draco. I'm becoming who I am. I think you have to become who you are, too. And maybe it's good that we're fighting now, and can't forgive each other these words just yet. Maybe that will give you time to figure out who you are, not just who you want me to be."

He turned away and strode towards the loo, hoping his shaking muscles weren't visible. Then he doubted it mattered. Draco would be entirely involved in his own thoughts right now, as he should be.

A part of Harry's anger shifted and melted into compassion. Draco had ideas about who he was, but they tended to drift in a cloud long after they should have solidified. Maybe this would give him the push he needed to turn them into ice, or stone.

Draco lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling of his four-poster. Blaise had drawn back the curtains and asked if he was going down to breakfast, but after one look at his face, had quietly shut them again. Draco was glad. He knew he would get in trouble for skiving off Arithmancy, but he didn't care.

In fact, the gladness and the indifference were both smaller ice floes drifting around in a larger, widening sea of cold shock. He shivered now and then, as if he could actually feel a wind on his skin, despite the thick pyjamas he wore.

He…

What did he want?

Oh, he knew what he wanted. That wasn't really the problem. The problem was that he'd always assumed he knew how to achieve what he wanted, too, and now Harry had asked him, and Draco found himself standing amid the wrecks of ideas and plans and dreams that were supposed to have given him wings, and found himself severely embarrassed.

What was he supposed to do?

He didn't know.

He had the ideas—be rich and famous and respected, keep Harry at his side and in his life, invent new spells, avoid actually working for a living. But he realized now that he didn't know how he would achieve any fame and respect on his own that didn't come reflected from Harry or his father, or hold a place in Harry's life if Harry grew this profoundly irritated with him all the time, or keep going with spells when he seemed to invent them and then not pay any more attention to them, or avoid just lounging around on the Malfoy fortune.

He kept asking himself the question, and he kept not having an answer.

Well, then, perhaps he should ask himself what answers would definitely not do.

He couldn't be what his father had been. Draco enjoyed playing politics, but he couldn't hold himself as distant from his machinations as his father had always done—he did things out of rage and hatred as well as for advantage—and he couldn't do them for the same ideals. Draco had to admit that he still thought Muggleborns weren't as powerful or magically talented or skilled as purebloods, but the thought of killing, say, Granger left him physically sick. If purebloods really wanted their children to grow up desiring to kill Muggleborns, he thought, then they shouldn't make them go to school with them. (Not for the first time, he wondered if a motive like that was behind his mother's insistence on sending him to Hogwarts and not Durmstrang). No, he wasn't a Death Eater, and he couldn't follow even the more limited versions of that path that might be left after Voldemort was gone.

He couldn't expect to gain fame from his spells if he just invented them and then never did anything with them. He would have to introduce them to the public if he wanted credit. Draco bit his lip, and wondered if insisting that people pay money to use or learn his spells was too much like working for a living.

He couldn't give up Harry. The mere thought of doing so caused a bottomless pit to open in his stomach. No, he had to have Harry in his life.

But it looked like he would have to have him differently. He wasn't an obedient little pet on a leash—and neither was Harry.

Did I do what he says I did? Did I really expect him to adopt the pureblood ideas about Muggleborns someday?

Draco could feel heat stinging his cheeks. Yes, he had. It was always unpleasant, and dangerous, to turn a corner in one's mind and come face to face with something he'd never known he believed. What would his father say?

Yes. I thought he'd be more like me. Why not? He's a Slytherin, and he'd been so badly abused by his family that I thought he wouldn't love what they did. I thought he'd become more ambitious, more willing to play politics, Darker, more willing to see that Muggleborns don't fit well into wizarding culture, more willing to—Merlin, did I really think that he'd come to agree that house elves needed to be servants, because we can't get along without them?

Merlin, he was right. I did really think he would betray everything he was.

Draco rolled over and buried his head in his pillow. The coolness of the cloth helped muffle the heat of embarrassment in his face. He lay there for a moment longer, until he took a great, gasping breath and sat up.

All right. I know a few things I can do, after all. I was putting off doing them, and I shouldn't have.

But the best of those plans, the most likely to succeed, would also put Draco directly in the path of an enemy as formidable as Harry when he was angry, so Draco determined to wait and see if it was necessary.

And how am I going to do that?

See what Harry was doing today, of course—have an idea of what he was like when Draco wasn't with him. After all, those actions might suggest a plan on their own, and if Draco learned that his other, risky plan wouldn't help after all, there was no need to pursue it.

Coward, his conscience accused him, in a voice that sounded much like Harry's.

Slytherin, Draco argued back as he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself. Not Gryffindor. Survivor.

His conscience sneered at him, as if it didn't buy his excuses. Draco, still reeling from the revelation that he really had expected Harry to accept most wizards' need of house elves, didn't have much of a defense.

Draco watched as Harry determinedly approached the Weasley twins at lunch. So far, he hadn't done anything remarkable, just attended classes, but Draco had the feeling that he was about to do something now.

Watching Harry this way was both intrusive—Harry gave no sign of suspecting he was there, so Draco did feel a bit like a voyeur, or an enemy—and enlightening. Draco saw all sorts of little shards of expression on his face that he'd never noticed before. He'd realized that Harry and Pansy had somewhat made up their argument from earlier in the year, and even talked softly as they walked from one class to another. He'd seen the rapt expression on his face in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and realized with a start that Harry really did enjoy the theory behind the class that Professor Merryweather explained to them, while Draco would have preferred more spells. He'd noticed that Harry resolutely ignored the Ravenclaws he passed in the halls, except for Loony, Chang, Padma Patil, and Isabell Neelda. His greetings to them were incredibly warm.

He does have a life apart from me, even when we're together. And I never noticed.

So far, though, nothing he'd seen had made him sure that he had to pursue his risky plan. Draco gnawed his lip as he stepped between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, far enough back from the benches that no one should bump him accidentally, but close enough to hear what Harry was saying to the Weasleys. Perhaps he should do something else, after all.

"Fred," Harry said, "and George."

The twin on the right, addressed as George, lifted his eyes and laughed. "Poor ickle Harry-kins," he said. "I'm—"

"Fred," said the other. "And I'm George. Or perhaps it's the other way around. You'd never—"

"Know, would you?" the other said, and both of them grinned, reminding Draco of just how much he loathed Weasleys. That was another thing he and Harry didn't have in common, by the way Harry grinned back.

"I wanted to ask you something," said Harry. "Bear in mind that this is purely hypothetical. I wouldn't want you to think it was real." He braced his hand on the Gryffindor table and leaned towards them. "Would you want to open up a shop to distribute your jokes someday?"

Two identical Weasley mouths fell open. Draco took another step closer, mouth full of his beating heart. He can't actually be doing what I think he's doing, right? Please let him not be doing what I think he's doing.

"Yes!" said the one who'd claimed to be Fred, at last. "It's only our—"

"Lifelong dream, Harry," the other finished. "We tried to distribute order forms last summer, but Mum—"

"Got in the way and made us get rid of them," said maybe-Fred, gloomily. "The main problem is that we just don't have enough money, mate. We'd need enough to establish the shop, to distribute the order forms, to advertise in the Prophet, to buy ingredients for the test products."

Harry was nodding along in sympathy. People watched him witlessly all along the Gryffindor table, except for his brother, who was grinning maniacally. "I know," he said. "It's hard, it really is, for young entrepreneurs to make their way in the world today. How much do you think you'd need? You know, tops?"

"A thousand Galleons," said maybe-George.

"That'd make us comfortable," said his twin. "And cover the expenses for the first year and a half, at least." He shook off his gloom with an obvious physical effort and straightened, clasping his hand to his heart. "But tell me, O Great and Glorious Defeater of Dumbledore, where we can get a thousand Galleons, and I promise that we'll be your slaves for life."

Harry grinned, and looked over his shoulder. Three enormous birds came through the Hall windows in the next moment; Draco thought they were gyrfalcons. They labored along under the weight of a trunk with the Gringotts seal on it. Draco recognized that kind of dark wooden trunk; his father had had one during a year when he'd done a lot of intense bribery in the Ministry. It would open a hole to the appropriate vault in Gringotts, and money would flow from the vault into the trunk, until its owner had the required amount and said to stop.

How can he do this? It's not like he has the Potter vault any more—

And then it hit Draco. The Black vaults, of course. Harry would have access to them now.

And Regulus Black was such a joker that he'd probably approved this.

Draco fumed under his breath as he watched the gyrfalcons land in front of the astonished twins. Harry laughed as he threw open the lid, and Galleons shimmered in the light of the Great Hall. It was obvious that he'd planned this to happen at lunch so he'd have the largest audience possible. Draco studied the unfeigned pleasure gleaming in Harry's eyes, the sly smile on his face as he watched people watching him, and shook his head. Harry—this is the kind of thing Harry uses money for. To make other people happy.

Doesn't he know that there are better things to do with it!

"A thousand Galleons," Harry told the trunk, and it shuddered a little and appeared to grow. Some of the coins spilled over the rim. Harry nodded to the still-astonished Fred and George. "Finite Incantatem. There you are. The hole in the bottom's closed now, so it's just an ordinary trunk." And, indeed, Draco could see the Gringotts seal on the trunk's tilted-back lid fading. "And all yours, to establish a joke shop with. We'll skip the part about your being my slaves for life, since, after all, I think it's much more entertaining to watch you sit here with your mouths hanging open. Now I can tell you apart by how many teeth you each have."

The twins slammed their mouths shut. One of them hovered over the trunk as if to guard it from reaching Gryffindor hands—their brother and sister would probably try to take the money to buy new dress robes, Draco thought spitefully—while the other leaped across the table and prostrated himself at Harry's feet.

"A thousand, thousand thanks is not enough for your generosity, grand sir!" he declaimed. Harry laughed. Draco regretted that he was facing away at the moment, so that Draco couldn't see the way his eyes shone, the way they always shone, when he laughed. "The first of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes shall be named after our patron Harry, yea, indeed they shall, and verily, he shall receive free jokes and gifts whenever he wishes them, and the right to inspect our shop at any hour of the day or night, forsooth, and the first of our children shall bear his name, but this is not enough to do him honor!"

Harry was by now laughing so hard he almost couldn't stand. Then he straightened, and announced to the people who were gaping at him, "Oh, by the way, I became Black heir last night." Then he turned to face the head table, where all the teachers were staring at him in absolute astonishment—but apparently, except for Snape, enjoying the performance too much to put a stop to it.

That meant he wasn't watching the faces of the other students. But Draco was, and he saw the effect Harry's casual bit of information had on them. Their faces rippled like water in a pond, and so did their emotions. But then they settled, and except for envy, the most prominent emotion was—

Desire. Longing.

Draco didn't understand it, until he realized that not only had the other students just heard Harry announce that he was fabulously wealthy and the heir to an ancient pureblood name, but they'd seen him laughing, and seen how beautiful he was when he laughed. Pureblood students from all the Houses whom Draco knew had only looked at Harry when he had his name in the Prophet for something were staring at him with steady looks of appreciation now. The little Weasley tart had her eyebrows raised. Draco heard a seventh-year Hufflepuff girl breathe, "Well. Not much I couldn't get used to with that, even the missing hand," and saw her companion nod fervent agreement.

They could talk to Harry until their faces turned blue, Draco thought spitefully, and he'd probably never notice. He was oblivious to things like that.

Yes, oblivious. And oblivious to most of the pureblood marriage and courtship rituals, too. Someone could court him under the guise of helping him politically, and the git would never know, never realize, the true motive. There had been a few cases in the past of prominent leaders being tricked into marriage or joining that way, especially if they'd been raised in isolation from the rest of the wizarding world and were told that completing a certain ritual was the only way to achieve their goals.

And as Harry got more involved in politics, now that he was Black heir and had the money and extra political clout to do so, it wasn't just the other students at Hogwarts who would have the chance to see him laughing.

A vision rose in Draco's mind, of a future in which Harry swore an oath or completed a ritual he didn't understand and found himself joined or married to another family. Harry might even accept it, especially since for so long, he'd thought of his future life only in terms of duty and war. And if by that time he and Draco had parted ways over this argument or some other stupid fight—

It was a horrible vision. It made Draco physically sick. He rejected it, and watched intently as Harry nodded to, of all people, Remus Lupin. The werewolf looked surprised, but nodded back.

"There should be a bird coming for you," said Harry. "Right about—ah, now."

An owl, this time, circled through the window, and bore straight for Lupin. Lupin gave Harry a quizzical look, but opened the letter the owl carried. The next moment, his face paled, and he looked up and shook his head at Harry.

"I can't accept this," he said.

"Yes, you can," Harry said calmly.

"It's against the law," Lupin said, frowning. "Werewolves aren't supposed to have accounts with Gringotts."

Harry tilted his head and winked. "And there aren't supposed to be loopholes in the laws that will let the heir to a sufficiently ancient pureblood line establish one for anyone he likes, but there you are," he said. "And do you know, not one goblin at Gringotts ever raised any objections? I'm not sure why that is." He was radiating innocence. Draco, who remembered the ritual last year in which they'd freed the Gringotts goblins, was very sure. "I checked and triple-checked the laws with Regulus Black last night. There's no way that anyone can take that account away from you, Professor Lupin. The Ministry tries, and they run into a thousand years of iron-clad tradition and laws piled on top of laws—and goblin law, as well as wizard law, holding things in place."

Lupin still looked gobsmacked, but he nodded, slowly. "Thank you, Harry," he said. "I—thank you."

"I'm not quite done yet," said Harry, and pulled a knife from his pocket. Draco saw some students gasp and flinch away, but those were mostly the Muggleborns. The purebloods leaned forward. They knew an oath-taking knife when they saw one. The distinctive diamond edges against the steel shone in the January sunlight.

"I hereby swear," said Harry, "by the blood that runs in my veins and by the blood I have inherited to, that I will fight for the rights of werewolves until I have changed the laws concerning them to the same laws that protect other wizards." The oath-taking knife flashed and cut deep down the center of Harry's left arm.

Draco felt the magic take hold. Harry's blood rose into the air as a mist of light, both red and stained with silver as it formed the crest of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black above his head. Harry looked up at this with a calm expression, as if it were nothing very noteworthy. The red blood, now turned entirely silver, foamed along beneath the crest into lettering: Toujours pur, always pure, the motto of the Blacks.

Not now, Draco thought, a bit hysterical. Now it's something better than pure.

The crest and the lettering lost their form after ten heartbeats—the traditional pause, to let everyone present witness it—and fell back on Harry like molten rain. Silver melted into his hair, his arms, his shoulders, his face. Harry stood still under the rain, as he had to.

That would insure he kept the oath, Draco knew. If he broke it, the ancient magic would turn the blood in his veins to molten silver.

Harry bowed to Lupin, then turned and walked back to the Slytherin table as if nothing had happened. He left behind a terribly changed and charged atmosphere, of course, and Draco didn't have to look at Lupin's shocked, stunned, slightly teary face to know that. He'd just flung a declaration of war in the direction of those who opposed giving werewolves equal rights to wizards, and, for those slightly more alert, in the direction of those who valued some pureblood families less than others because of their lack of money.

And Draco could see other people accepting that. There was little most wizards wouldn't accept, even opposing politics, or ones that challenged ancient prejudices, for the chance to work with or otherwise secure someone like Harry to the family. Magical power was one thing, but there were people who wouldn't follow Voldemort just because he was powerful. Now Harry had shown he had wealth, and the obvious willingness to follow the most ancient pureblood traditions in at least some matters, and determination like a hurricane, and adaptability, the quality that so often made the difference in wizarding duels and on battlefields, the quickness to roll from one spell to the next and become what one needed to become to survive. Harry had shown that in the way he used an ancient oath to swear something quite new.

And beauty. Can't forget the beauty.

Combine that with the fact that Harry had announced he was Black heir, but not that he'd taken the Black name, and there were even more people who would see him as—not vulnerable, exactly, but free for the taking, if they could just coax or persuade him into joining their cause.

And Draco knew his risky plan was necessary, after all. It was absolutely intolerable, the idea that someone else would win Harry. He had to be free to make Harry an offer, and, if Harry would accept it, to show everyone else that he was committed to Harry beyond tearing away. Only the deepest and most sacred of the courting rituals would do, the one that took three years to complete, and involved twelve rituals, four for each year, and took and gave equally from and to both beloved and lover.

And the one that only a magical heir of the family could offer.

Lucius had so far refused to actually confirm Draco as the Malfoy magical heir, for many reasons, starting with his disobedience in attending Walpurgis Night last year and continuing from there. His latest letters were filled with hints that he didn't approve of the way Draco and Harry's relationship was going. He wouldn't confirm Draco as magical heir, and doubly so, if he knew the reason Draco wanted the confirmation.

But Draco was now determined that there was nothing he would not do to have Harry, including adapting his beliefs and expectations, and facing the old dragon in his den.

He would have to go have a little talk with Lucius Malfoy.