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Contracted	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18657 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Ten—An Intense Hour

            Draco waited, leaning one elbow on the mantle. The refusal to take the wards down for him when he asked was simply unaccountable, but he reckoned that he would have to learn to live with that if he worked with Potter. The man knew the empty, polished words that one exchanged at Ministry galas, but that was a long way indeed from exercising proper courtesy.

            Regardless, the color of the Floo flames changed subtly a second later. Draco smiled and leaned forwards. “Potter’s home,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly enough that the Floo stood no chance of landing him somewhere else.

            Potter would probably prefer that it did, of course. Draco could live with the knowledge that he’d disappointed him.

            Draco caught himself neatly on the edge of Potter’s hearth, brushed off the soot that was doing its misguided best to cling to his robe, and nodded to Astoria and Blaise. He hadn’t expected to find them there, having thought they would have made their call on Potter earlier, and that he would appear to reinforce their message. But he could certainly live with seeing them. “Hello, Astoria. Have you ceased to regret my magnificent bed yet?”

            “Not when you would eat biscuits in it, and litter the pillows with crumbs,” Astoria said, not batting an eye, and glanced at Potter. Potter had his mouth open and his gaze darting back and forth between them. Draco felt a moment’s pity for him. He must not have ex-lovers whom he could banter with. Of course, in the seven years since the war, Draco thought he only recalled him being with Callia. Weasley’s little sister and the romance Potter might have had with her had faded like a dream of paradise.

            “I only did that once,” Draco said. “Don’t give Potter a false impression of me. He already thinks I’m rude and pushy. The last thing we need is for him to think I’m a slob.”

            “You—” Potter raised his hand as if he would wipe it across his face, and then lowered it again and shook his head. Draco wondered if he had decided that the gesture was too revealing. “I can’t—fine. Anyway. Why would you think that I should ally with Rettern?” He had turned back to Astoria and Blaise as though Draco had ceased to exist. “She courted me in the way I hate to be courted, as if politics is the only acceptable human interaction.”

            Draco edged up behind him and curved his arm around Potter’s waist, though he left it hovering in the air instead of touching skin or flesh. “You must tell me how you like to be courted,” he murmured into Potter’s ear. “It’s important information.”

            Potter danced into the air, as if Draco had tried to fuck him in front of everyone, and then drew away to the opposite side of the room, giving Draco a look that could have fried eggs. Draco smiled. He preferred it to the cool ones that Potter handed out like sweets. Potter’s attention was all very well, but Draco wanted his unique attention.

            “I think we can drop the pretense in front of your friends,” he said. “They know you don’t want me.”

            “Define ‘want,’” Blaise said, and he had the smug grin he did so well. He had already drawn a chair out for Astoria, and she sat down in it like the queen she was, leaving Blaise to find a seat of his own. “Draco’s always talked about you far too much for anyone’s peace of mind, and he’s taken to this opportunity to help you with disturbing eagerness.”

            “He hasn’t pined after me for years like a lover,” Potter snapped. Then he seemed to realize he was showing his fire to more than one person, and a set of Slytherins at that. He turned his back and took a few quick steps away so that he was staring into the fire, shielding the expression on his face from prying eyes. “I want to know why you think that Rettern’s such a good ally.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows at Astoria. She smiled back. Blaise was the one who took up the thrown gauntlet of the conversation, though, running his fingers idly back and forth through Astoria’s hair. “We answer that question if you answer ours.”

            Potter canted his head slightly back to look at them. He had recovered his poise enough to have a calm sheen over his eyes again. Draco disapproved. Potters should always have an edge of wildness, or what was the point of them? “I already did. I don’t want to ally with Rettern for the same reason I wouldn’t want to ally with any other politician.”

            “No.” Blaise leaned forwards and clasped his hands in front of him, although his elbow was still touching Astoria’s. Draco frowned. They really were a disgustingly sentimental couple, and he would make sure to tell them so, the moment their sentimentality ceased to help him handle Potter. “The question about want. What do you think about, when you think about Draco wanting you?”

            Potter turned his head and glared at Draco, as if it was somehow his fault, how Blaise chose to phrase things. Draco splayed his hands out and showed all the world his innocence.

            “I think about him wanting to be free of debt,” Potter said. “And wanting me to be different from the person he perceives me to be because, presumably, it would be more fun for him.” He thought a moment, and then added, “And wanting me to be his friend, back in Hogwarts. But I think being allies would be enough to content him now.”

            Draco smiled. He knew that even Astoria tilted her head at the sight of it, but he didn’t care. Potter had just showed him honesty. Considering the lies that spun around him in such fine, glittering fragments that most people weren’t aware they existed, that was momentous.

            And Draco was free to consider it a gift to him, rather than to him, Blaise, and Astoria, because he was the only one who realized the significance of the gesture. Only people who valued them should receive gifts.

            “You’re wrong,” Draco said.

            “About which part?” Potter had the reins of himself in hand again. He did no more than inflect his voice with a slight, cool curiosity.

            Draco would have liked to shake him, but some things were beyond the bounds of both courtesy and common sense. He clasped his hands behind his back to lessen the temptation and said, “About wanting you only as an ally. About seeing you as a simple means to free myself, and my friends, of debt.”

            “Then explain to me what you want.” Potter’s voice had lowered, his eyes fixed on Draco as if he were a lone enemy, and Draco could feel the room cease to exist. He resisted the urge to lick his lips, because both Blaise and Astoria would never let him forget it, and they had enough blackmail material already.

            But Potter could have built a Ministry career on the thrill of paying attention to one single person alone.

            “I want you to stop acting like a statue of yourself,” Draco said. “To let your honesty inform your life, the way I think it sometimes informs your Auror career.” Then he saw the way Potter shifted his weight, and made a thoughtful noise. “No, that doesn’t happen either, does it? You wouldn’t have become an Auror if you had the choice. Instead, you traded your freedom in the choice of jobs to Sandborn with the contract. So even that isn’t your own.”

            “I understand,” Potter said, and he had tamped down the emotions into a stillness so profound that Draco thought it would have fooled most people who weren’t him. “You want me to act more as the person you knew, the foil, the rival. That way, you can decide how to define yourself by me. You do seem to enjoy defining yourself in relation to different people.”

            Draco let himself stare, let the smile widen his mouth until Potter shifted his weight again, and then said, “You do have a brain. You can use it. Yes, I’d like to see more of that.”

*

            Harry felt as though he was pulling against the meshes of a fine, invisible net, and wondered how in the world he had ended up there.

            This was—

            No one had noticed him like that in years.

            His friends knew him, yes, knew the only genuine part of him that Harry thought he had left, the willingness to sacrifice everything for their sake. But they didn’t know the part of him that saw his own willingness and had decided to contract his services to Sandborn for their sakes. Malfoy had discovered that before anyone else had.

            On accident, it was true, and because he was following Harry instead of paying attention to his own business at a Ministry gala, but still, he saw it.

            Malfoy saw into Harry, saw past his excuses and his crimes and his weakness of will, and still found him worthy of attention. Harry’s skin burned, and he swallowed a little. He knew he was blushing, that it was an unpardonable weakness, and that he couldn’t stop it. That Greengrass and Zabini were witnessing this, too, was the only reason that enabled him to remain still when Malfoy said—

            Well, things like what he’d said tonight.

            Along with everything else, the unexpectedness of freedom and the fear of change and the suddenness of discovering that he hated the way Rettern had approached him, came the fact that he’d really like more of Malfoy’s notice. He’d like to earn his admiration as well as give his own to Malfoy. He’d like to show that he was worthy of the time and attention that Malfoy was lavishing on him.

            And he had to admit that that time and attention, at least from Malfoy if not the rest of the Slytherins, was personal. More than what he needed to settle the debt. Harry had believed the debt was the sole motive Malfoy had for acting this way, at one point.

            He didn’t, now.

            He wrapped his arms around himself to still the involuntary shivers, and said, “Fine. Then that’s the way I’ll act.” He turned back to Zabini, because he needed to look at someone right now who didn’t make his heart race with genuinely dangerous desires, and said, “You were about to tell me why Rettern is so wonderful.”

            “I was,” Greengrass said, a chiding note in her voice that Harry had heard before, most often from Mrs. Weasley. “I am the one who arranged for her to begin the investigation into Sandborn’s allies who stood to benefit from our money and property being redistributed.”

            Harry nodded to her. “My apologies.” He was used to dealing with that kind of pride—the kind that swelled like a balloon in the souls of most Ministry flunkies, not the kind that Malfoy had tried to show him like a distorting mirror that reflected only the best parts of Harry. “Please tell me.” He went over to stand near the mantle, opening some distance between himself and the Slytherins. He didn’t think they would cast spells at him, but he needed the steps between them, at the moment, for other reasons.

            “Rettern has a grudge against Sandborn,” Greengrass said. “He has no hold over her that I could find. She has the power to launch such an investigation, and from what signs I have been able to see, it is panicking him.”

            “It is,” Harry said briefly. “I don’t know what else is happening at the moment, but it’s something that the investigation is prone to unbalancing. So he fears it not for itself, but for what else it might turn up.”

            Greengrass leaned forwards in her chair, all but vibrating. “How do you know this?”

            “I know Sandborn,” Harry said dryly. “He’s been my more or less constant study for the last seven years. And he summoned me on the day the investigation formally began, to accuse me of perhaps knowing about it before it began. He uses me as scapegoat when necessary, but not often preemptively.”

            “Astonishing,” Greengrass said.

            “Why urge her to begin the investigation if you didn’t think it would work?” Harry asked. Sometimes he didn’t understand Slytherins at all.

            Greengrass’s hair flew around her as she shook her head. “I meant you. You do understand something beyond basic emotions and Gryffindor standards of rusty independence.”

            Harry found it much easier to hold his temper with provocations like this than the ones Malfoy had raised. Perhaps it was because these friends of Malfoy’s, although they seemed to have decided to help willingly, didn’t seem interested in him as a person, only in clearing their debt. “Yes, I can,” he said. “I simply haven’t had to do it in a while. Now, do you insist I work with Rettern? I can see you making that a condition of trying to free me.”

            “Is the only sort of bond you understand obligations, Potter?” Malfoy spoke casually from near the door, holding up his hand so that he could examine his nails. “You’ll be boring company even when free, if that’s the case.”

            “I understand obligations like these under the terms on which they’re offered,” Harry said. “You turned this into a debt, but you’re going beyond what you strictly need to do. That must mean I owe you something. What is it?” He didn’t take his eyes off Greengrass, because he knew looking at Malfoy would only confuse him.

            “This is a repayment,” Greengrass said. “All of it. Although, of course, if you make difficulty with Rettern, your freedom might take longer to arrive.”

            Harry hitched one shoulder up. “I can wait a few years, if necessary. What I want to know, if you won’t accept another debt from me, is this: must I work with her? Will it jeopardize your plan if I don’t?”

            Greengrass sighed. “It would be easier to discuss these matters with the cup of hot chocolate you promise me some time ago safely in hand.”

            Harry murmured an apology for being a rude host—he had learned to do that kind of thing while he served Sandborn, too—and turned around to examine the cupboards. He thought he had some hot chocolate left over from Hermione’s last party to celebrate her newest promotion, and so it proved. He busied himself making it, while he listened to Greengrass breathe in delicately behind him and Zabini and Malfoy talk. It sounded like they were talking about people he didn’t know. Nothing interesting.

            Greengrass probably has to gather herself. I doubt she knew Rettern would ask me those questions, but she wouldn’t want to admit that.

            He found the brandy for Zabini while he was at it, and turned around with both drinks to give to the Slytherins, tossing Malfoy a look over his shoulder and arching his eyebrows to ask if he wanted anything.

            Malfoy shook his head and gave him a richly amused look that made Harry bristle despite himself. “Your presence is enough,” he said.

            Perhaps I do prefer Greengrass and Zabini, after all, Harry thought, and moved over to stand by the mantle again. “You were about to tell me about Rettern,” he told Greengrass. “And you’ve put off the news several times now. Is it that horrible?”

            “I didn’t know that she would ask you to work with her.” Greengrass sipped a few times at the chocolate and then lowered it to the table beside her. Harry decided idly that it must not be up to her standards. “That was unexpected, yes. But she is still the best of the Wizengamot members we have to work with, and I see no sense in starting at the bottom. Work from the top, work with those Sandborn has most reason to be afraid of, and you will be free. And not in a few years,” she added, curling her lip as though Harry’s lack of impatience was a fault.

            Harry relaxed a bit. He thought he was starting to understand her. Nothing he did would suit her, so he might as well stick to business and hope that would encourage her to do the same. “So you want me to please and impress her?”

            “It would certainly help,” Greengrass said.

            Harry nodded. He could do that without promising her anything, he thought. Rettern was more direct than most of the people he’d met since he started serving the Ministry, but she would be used to dealing with those who weren’t. Harry could let her know that he wasn’t the unsubtle Gryffindor she might have been expecting, and she would probably back off and let him dance at the end of a long rope before she would risk losing him altogether.

            “As long as I don’t end up a different kind of slave because of the debts that I’ll owe her,” he said.

            Greengrass looked at him sharply. “That’s up to you. All we can do is get you out of the initial set of obligations.”

            “Perhaps not,” Zabini said.

            Harry glanced at him. Zabini smiled and leaned back with his hands behind his head, seeming to enjoy the attention from Harry as well as the pointed stare of his girlfriend.

            “Would you mind explaining that, Blaise?’ Greengrass picked up the chocolate and took a small, controlled sip. Harry recognized it as a means of hiding irritation, although her voice had been perfectly smooth. Callia did much the same thing, and Callia came from the same family as this woman, if a different branch.

            “Sure,” Zabini said. “I don’t see that it’s worth much use if Potter gets out of his contract to Sandborn but immediately finds himself under the thumb of another politician. That would be repaying our debt in the letter but not the spirit.”

            “Since when do you care about the spirit of an agreement like that, Blaise?” Greengrass leaned forwards.

            “Since it was more fun,” Malfoy and Zabini said at the same time, and then grinned at each other.

            Watching them, Harry felt his heart ache with an unexpected envy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a moment like the one they’d just shared with Ron. Sure, Ron might think they’d had moments like that, the exchange of laughter and jokes, but only Harry knew how false they were beneath the surface.

            “If you can tell me how to convince Rettern to work with us when we don’t have anything to give her in return,” Greengrass said, folding her arms and tossing her long blonde hair back, “then I’m waiting to hear it.”

            “Her vengeance is her payment,” Zabini said. “Why should she need something beyond that? There’s no reason to think she would have come up with this plan on her own, and therefore, she wouldn’t necessarily have earned the vengeance on her own. We offer her what we originally did, and no more. Meantime, we help Potter to set up as an independent power on his own.” His eyes and teeth were both shining, and Greengrass looked at him with one twitching hand. Harry wondered how often she had seen that kind of grin, and how often it had got Zabini in trouble.

            “If Potter is clever enough for that,” Greengrass said, and her cold eyes turned to him.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said in return to them. “I don’t know how clever you would need me to be, and I don’t know what you meant by independent power. If I can get free of the contract—” He paused and considered. What would he do, once a few months of recovery time had passed and he’d begun to confront his friends with the truth and accept their anger and give his apologies?

            “I wouldn’t want to be in the Ministry anymore,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be an Auror. I wouldn’t want to sit on the Wizengamot.” He knew all that from the silent voice of his third soul speaking in his heart. “I don’t think I’d want any of the recognizable power bases that you might try to install me in.”

            “Just because of who you are,” Zabini said, and jabbed a finger at him, “you’re going to be a threat to some factions in the Ministry and the Wizengamot who would want to control you. I think that you’ll be best-advised to remember that. Ordinary actions from someone else can become threatening actions from you.”

            Harry shook his head, frowning, and glanced instinctively at Malfoy to translate.

            “He means,” Malfoy murmured, “that you can set up a power base, as such, simply by living an ordinary life.” His eyes reflected the light of the fire as he gazed at Harry, and Harry found it hard to tell what he was thinking. Then again, hadn’t that always been true? “You can make them all nervous by refusing to join either side, and they’ll gradually come to terms with that as the status quo, but they’ll always keep an eye on you.”

            Harry shrugged. “I knew that I would endure public scrutiny when I started serving Sandborn. That part, at least, I can put up with.”

            “But could you stay neutral?” Greengrass asked. “That would, indeed, be repayment for anything extra that we might do beyond dismissing our debt. Remain out of the reach of Gryffindor politicians as well as Slytherins? Stand aside on causes that might attract your attention and support?”

            Harry shrugged again. “I don’t know that I could refuse to help people, but I could certainly refuse to make public statements about it. Paradise at the moment is the idea of never having to give another speech.”

            “I wonder,” Malfoy said softly, “if staying hidden would really content you.”

            Harry glanced back at him again. Malfoy was making him uneasy now. It was one thing to want his attention and live up to the weight that he was putting on your shoulders. It was another thing entirely to want to live up to the way his eyes gleamed just then, or to become the kind of hero-figure that you wanted to get away from.

            “I don’t want the attention,” Harry said. “There’s a reason that being the public face of the Ministry is a price I pay for Sandborn’s aid, rather than a gift of the contract to me.”

            Malfoy sniffed in a way that plainly said, “If you say so.” Harry turned his back again and focused on Zabini and Greengrass.

            “What plan do you have for retaining your property?” he asked. “Rettern is only making an investigation into those who would have seized your money, as far as I know. And what about Azkaban?”

            “Oh, the property part should be easy,” Zabini said. “Do you have any idea how many people my mother threatens or sleeps with or marries in a year?”

            Harry blinked. “No,” he said in wonder. “And I don’t think I want to.”

            “The exact number isn’t important,” Zabini said. “The point is that she can bring pressure to bear in a way that will expose a number of embarrassing secrets if people fail her. And since she’ll be protecting her own property as well as mine—there was a strong chance she would have been accused, if you hadn’t intervened—she’ll fight even harder.”

            Harry nodded. “Fine. Then the part I’m most worried about, concerning you, is just what it’ll take to make Sandborn not retry you when he finds out what we’re doing.”

            “And that part,” Malfoy said, “is going to be mine.”

*

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