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Business Meetings	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21371 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Ten—Out of the Mouths of Vampires

            Harry rested one hand against the door of Malfoy’s mansion, and wondered who would know if he turned back now. He carried the burden on his shoulders of the knowledge his investigations had granted him, and yes, it was knowledge that would comfort Malfoy and knowledge that was not exactly new. He might chide Harry for bringing him old news. He would not care about it in the same way Harry would.

            It was not what he might care about, but what he might urge, that was the problem with Harry seeing Malfoy this month. It was the poised, trembling crack in the middle of Harry’s soul that might open to Malfoy’s call.

            He could not deal with that.

            He turned his back to leave, and the door swung open behind him, with a small click like the springing of a trap. Harry turned around and squared his shoulders. Well, after all, he had never expected it to be that easy.

            “Lord Malfoy will see you,” said the vampire on the door, one of the female vampires Harry had seen before, the one with the most grey in the middle of her black eyes. She bowed, and held the bow until Harry walked past her and into the warm, muffled, echoing dark of the inner chambers.

            The door shut behind him with the same low click, and the vampire came up to walk in front of him as a herald. Harry watched her back. She could have walked behind him, and then he could have felt the paranoia of wondering how much hunger flowed through her, how long it would take for her fangs to pierce the back of his neck, or she could have walked beside him, and then she would have seemed like a guard of honor.

            I shouldn’t have come. Aside from no real news to impart, his body jangled like a piano played out of tune the closer he got to Malfoy; his muscles twitched and flinched, and he could feel his heartbeat in his throat. The delicate tilt of the vampire’s head in front of him said that she had heard it, too.

            I shouldn’t—no one wants me here.

            That wasn’t true, of course. Malfoy did, and Harry had awakened from dreams of the mansion, of Malfoy, of vampires for the last four nights in a row. He closed his eyes, and his feet found their way down the corridors without assistance, without pause. His heartbeat was already slowing, as though the air carried Calming Draught in the form of a gas.

            Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. He wanted to halt and touch his throat, probe the sensation of thickness in it and make sure he wasn’t choking, but he didn’t have the chance. The vampire ahead of him swept the door to the throne room open, announced, “Auror Potter to see Lord Malfoy,” and then bowed and once again held the pose, obnoxiously, until Harry could move past her and see the interior of the room.

            Malfoy sat on his dark throne, his head turned to the side this time, so that his eyes met Harry’s immediately.

            Harry came to a stop, and yes, the split in his soul opened wider, and wider, and wider, and filled him with pulsing, glorious light. He tried to swallow, but it was difficult when he couldn’t breathe. The thickness in his throat seemed to shrink as he thought about it, though, to fill him with something better to breathe than air.

            He extended one hand before he thought about it, and then pulled it back to his side.

            Or he would have, if Malfoy hadn’t crossed the room in one of those quiet, swift blurs that Harry had known vampires could make from his first year of Auror training and taken it instead. He turned his head to the side, eyes so intent on Harry he couldn’t have missed the moment when he tensed unacceptably, and placed cool, dry lips against the back of Harry’s knuckles. Something left a brief spot of wetness on Harry’s skin, but he didn’t know if it was Malfoy’s tongue or his saliva.

            Malfoy didn’t release the hand, the way Harry had thought he would when he was done making his gesture, but he did straighten. He simply cradled Harry’s wrist, his expression calm, unanswerable, and when Harry made a small tugging motion with his arm, Malfoy’s fingers tightened. His smile was charming, if you overlooked the fangs and the strength in his grip and the coldness of his skin and everything else he was.

            “I heard about the Ashkanova case,” he said, his voice so deep and lulling that Harry thought for a moment it was like being drowned in melted chocolate. Of course it wasn’t. Melted chocolate would be warm.

            “What case—oh.” Harry shook his head. Yes, the case had happened three days ago, but already it seemed to have retreated before the weight of his new knowledge. That wasn’t the news he had come to Malfoy carrying on his shoulders. “Well, I brushed up against death, but it left me none the worse for wear.” He smiled at Malfoy, and thought for a moment that Malfoy’s fingers moved on his wrist, caressing rather than holding.

            “A day in hospital,” Malfoy said. “Half the blood in your body replaced.” The flare in his eyes struck deep, but not too deep, and Harry licked his lips. Malfoy tracked the movement of his tongue with alert eyes, not pretending that he was not, and then looked up again. “I would not call that none the worse for wear.”

            Harry gave him a plastic smile. “Well, we all have different definitions.” He nodded down at his captive fingers, and flexed them. Malfoy’s fingers moved to cover them. “For example, I thought it was your head that you put in the lion’s mouth, not your hand.”

            Malfoy turned it over. “Ah,” he said. “But is not the old metaphor an offer of one’s hand? I am no longer human, but I haven’t spent enough years away from the human world for that to change.”

            Harry shivered and bowed his head. Malfoy’s free hand came up and slid around the side of his neck, fingers running up his jaw and down again, down to the pulse, up to his ear. Harry’s heart doubled and rebounded beneath it, but not from fear.

            Of course. I’m not sensible enough to do that from fear.

            “It was an hour before I heard that you had survived Ashkanova,” said Malfoy. “The report that you were in hospital came first. Until I heard that you lived, the Ministry could have had their vengeance. I would have come forth, and all the walls of the holding cells would not have stopped me.”

            Harry clenched his teeth and told his heartbeat, his stuttering breath when Malfoy’s fingers traveled back down and along his collarbone, his whole stupid sentimental stupidity, to stop it. The knowledge he carried had to come out now. Malfoy’s li—existence, and the existence of his flock, mattered more than what Harry felt about him. And it certainly mattered more than the privilege Harry had, to keep visiting them.

            Ah. That’s familiar. Guilt like broken glass flared in him. At last he understood why he hadn’t wanted to talk about this. Because Malfoy would do what he had to do as a dominant vampire, and that meant Harry would never see him again. But that was for the best. It had to be. How much could the light in his soul matter against the knowledge that the Ministry wanted to destroy Malfoy, and had come up with a way to do so?

            “Malfoy,” he whispered, and found himself mouthing it against chill fingers, as Malfoy’s hand had risen to cover his mouth.

            “Call me by my first name,” Malfoy whispered. “Speak that, and I promise to listen to whatever you say.”

            Harry hesitated, all too aware that a promise to listen wasn’t a promise to act. But he had already trusted far more dangerous promises from Malfoy, so he mouthed, “Draco,” and saw Malfoy lid his eyes and twist his head to the side, baring his throat to Harry once more.

            “Harry,” he said back, and Harry clenched his fists and ground the glass in his soul underfoot once more, all so he would have the pain.

            “I know,” he said. “I heard them talking about it. They—I thought they granted me the position of negotiator because I was making a fuss about them eliminating your flock and they wanted to punish me, and save the embarrassment I could have caused them if I sought publicity. Now I’ve overheard them talking. It was more than that. They always meant to kill you, but you were the target, not me. Someone suggested to them that you might become fascinated with me because of that old rivalry we had. I was always meant to lure you out into the open, whether you hated me or—”

            He couldn’t speak the other word. He couldn’t profane it like that. And even as he laughed the word profane to scorn in his head and told himself he was an idiot, he still kept silent and fixed his eyes on Malfoy.

            Malfoy stood in silence back, and Harry found himself holding his breath, trying to match the pure, almost terrible serenity Malfoy showed. He failed, of course, and all his breath rushed out at once in a whoosh. Malfoy opened his mouth and showed him his fangs, and Harry smiled back before he realized that he didn’t know if he should classify that as a smile.

            Malfoy’s fingers smoothed up and down his neck. He had let go of Harry’s hand, and seemed instead to want to measure the heart, the width, the smoothness, anything he could touch, of his throat. But he still never looked away from Harry’s eyes. So Harry looked back, and let himself think about impossible things until Malfoy spoke.

            “You were meant,” he said. “You did not mean. That makes the difference.”

            Harry half-tossed his head, and then went still, because Malfoy’s hand had moved around to the back of his neck and pressed gently down. “It could still happen. If you venture out because of me, whether it’s at a time the Ministry anticipated or not—even if it’s to avenge me, whatever—then you’ll still die. They’ll strike with overwhelming force. I didn’t realize—I don’t know if you realize how badly you’ve scared them. There hasn’t been a flock this powerful and this organized in a long time. I thought you were thinking all the anti-vampire legislation revolved around you because of your ego, but it really was directed against you, at least all the stuff they’ve passed in the last few months, all of it. I’m sorry that—”

            “Apologies, I will not accept from you,” Malfoy said, and lifted his hands to cup Harry’s face. “A kiss, yes. Desires, wishes, declarations, facts, plans. Nothing else.”

            Harry winced and reached up to pry away Malfoy’s fingers. Malfoy let him, but it was clear that it was letting and that Harry would never get rid of him completely if Malfoy didn’t want him to. Harry felt his stupid heartbeat once more step up the pace, and there was light inside him, and he shook his head. “You have to distance yourself from me,” he said. “I can’t stop coming here, because then the Ministry will realize what’s up and try something else, but you can—you can move your flock to a safer place. You can go, Draco. That’s what you need to do.”

            Malfoy’s hands swept over him like white wind, and ended on his waist. It might have been a full embrace; Harry felt as held as if it was.

            “I will not let the Ministry dictate to me,” said Malfoy. “Neither to you. I said we are equals? I will not run, because you will not. I do not choose separation. Neither do you. You only advise it because you think you must.” He leaned nearer. “So we will not.”

            Harry raised his hands and curved nerveless fingers around Draco’s. “But if something happened to you because of me,” he said, “then I couldn’t bear it.”

            “So it is down to Gryffindor guilt,” Draco said, and moved closer, so that Harry could feel the cold of his body as he might feel heat. “I do not choose to rule my life by that. We continue, and the Ministry will lose patience first. I am a vampire. I can afford to wait.”

            “What about me?” Harry whispered.

            Draco met his eyes again. “I can afford to wait,” he repeated, and his voice had something horrible and beautiful at the end of it, something many-eyed and many-fanged.

            Harry turned his cheek against Draco’s palm and stood there, and stood there, and if he had not known the morning was coming, when Draco would need to retreat and sleep, he would have stayed there for the rest of the night. As it was, he stepped back and laid a kiss on Draco’s palm in passing, something to burn and bless.

            I am strong enough to bear this. So is he.

            That knowledge carried him back out the door again, and into the morning that always came.

*

            Zip: It’s no problem! I can understand you.

            No, Malfoy doesn’t want the kind of relationship where he just leaps on Harry anymore. That’s why he’s taking it slowly now.

            You get to see some of what he does picture in the next chapter.

            Yami Bakura: Thank you! The only way I wouldn’t be able to leave a notice is if something really sudden happened, like a car accident, and of course those are impossible to plan for.

            SP777: It was actually a little longer than the chapters I began the story with. :)

            Maybe? The only really important thing you need to know for this story is that Draco was turned by a vampire named Yacinth, tortured for three months, and then fought his way free.
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Business Meetings