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Keep This Wolf	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20230 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Ten—Disarm the Pack
            “I notice that you haven’t made good on the promise you seemed to have at first,” said Ninian, sliding in alongside Draco at one of the tables for the evening meal. Even when they didn’t have a feast, Draco found, Potter’s pack seemed to eat at these long tables. It was probably Potter’s way of going back to Gryffindor in his imagination. “The promise of working against our beloved leader.”
            Draco ate some more of the stew, which seemed to have a lot of pulped vegetables floating in it along with slices of meat, and said nothing. He told himself that the meat was probably rabbit—more likely to be that, anyway, than some of the other things he could imagine. He ignored Ninian.
            “And now you won’t even speak to someone Potter’s probably told you is a troublemaker and not worth your time?” Ninian leaned back, squinting at him, one hand on his own plate that held a slice of raw meat. “Pity.”
            Draco turned his head. “I didn’t come here to negotiate Potter’s defeat,” he said. “I came to find out why he thinks he can tame Thornsberry.” He had so far spent three days among Potter’s pack on that last mission, though, and had to admit that so far, he hadn’t come across a lot of evidence that disproved what Potter had told him already. He was a powerful werewolf, and he could give anyone, even humans, a sense of comfort and belonging.
            But that was what Potter claimed, and what the Ministry knew couldn’t be true. There had to be something further, something stranger.
            Draco just needed to know how to interpret the evidence that was probably right there in front of him.
            “What if I could help you, and you could help me?” Ninian moved restlessly to his right, enough that Draco caught his eye again. “I know you can’t lend me the Ministry’s full support. It was a fantasy to think you could. But we might make a different kind of trade. I tell you the answer to your question, and you tell me some of what you knew about Potter when he was a child.”
            “I don’t see how that last would help you,” Draco had to point out. “I haven’t met Potter since he turned into a werewolf. He’s very different now than the child I knew.”
            Ninian frowned and picked up a piece of the raw meat, gnawing on it. “Well, I know that,” he said. “And his magical and physical strength are beyond question. He wouldn’t have control of us, otherwise. But what about his emotional vulnerabilities? They’re the only way I can think of to attack him.”
            “Both you and the Ministry,” Draco muttered. Minister Hinsley seemed to trust him to actually exploit Potter’s weaknesses in the name of finding out the secret of his power, while Ninian wanted a little more than that.
            “What did you say?” Ninian was looking at him, as Draco had discovered due to his past few days here, not like a werewolf who hadn’t heard him, but like a werewolf who couldn’t believe what he had heard.
            Draco faced Ninian again. Hadn’t he thought that he was going to serve the Department of Mysteries as well as he could? And sitting around and feeling sorry for himself didn’t do that. But giving attention to the problem, and using his childish emotional outbursts as weapons in themselves, might.
            “The Ministry is concerned that Potter might not be able to handle Thornsberry. You know that already, or I wouldn’t have been sent.”
            Golden light flared in the back of Ninian’s eyes. “And they should be concerned. Even if Potter managed to tame him, there would be people here who wouldn’t stay in the same pack as such a notorious criminal.”
            Draco refrained from saying that the Ministry didn’t care about the internal problems of a werewolf pack unless those problems could be twisted to further their own goals. “What I want to know is, how common is it for werewolf leaders to be able to handle someone like that? Potter said that he could make Thornsberry into his Scion. But Thornsberry is already known as Fenrir Greyback’s Scion. Can Potter really change his nature? Or is he always going to run around enforcing what Greyback what would have wanted him to enforce?”
            Ninian hissed a little. “A Scion is supposed to be a werewolf secret. I see that Potter has been spilling his mouth to you just the way he shouldn’t.”
            Draco saw no use in saying that he had already known that tidbit of information about Scions before he came here. He didn’t think Ninian would take it well. And Ninian had already gone on. “I wouldn’t think it’s likely at all. Greyback was the most powerful member of our kind in decades. He couldn’t have taken his pack on the road like that and influenced other werewolves if it wasn’t so. A pack tends to break up once it reaches a certain size, or if the leader leaves for a while.”
            Or it fragments around him while he’s sitting still, Draco thought. He wondered again why Potter was so determined to hang onto people who wanted him gone, like Ninian. Perhaps it was the pack’s place in the Forbidden Forest that was important to him, rather than the werewolves involved.
            “If Greyback made a Scion, and I’m not saying that he did, then that Scion would stay loyal to him.” Ninian snorted and folded his arms. “I never heard of this Thornsberry before he attacked the Minister’s son, though, so there’s reason to think that he’s all that powerful or great. I’m just telling you what I know.”
            Draco held his face immobile as he considered. Potter had seemed so honest, and straightforward—and even if he couldn’t dominate Thornsberry with his power, that didn’t answer the question of why Potter was so confident that he could. But it might give Draco an idea of his power’s limit.
            “So it’s your thought that Potter would never be able to accomplish what he says he will,” he said. “Even if he’s remarkable at a great number of things.”
            Ninian snorted. “Are all those tales they tell of him really true? Ask yourself that. How could one person accomplish them all?”
            Draco shrugged noncommittally. “I was there to see some of them happen. It doesn’t mean that he’s great at everything, but some of the stranger things are true.” He thought of the way that Potter had seemed to spring back to life from the gamekeeper’s arms, and shivered a little. Yes, strange things were true.
            “Fine,” said Ninian, who now looked a little disgruntled. “Even the vast majority. He doesn’t know much about being a werewolf. I’ve been one much longer than he has, and I say that it’s impossible for one werewolf to change another’s Scion into theirs.”
            “Why does Potter go along with the lie, then?”
            “Because he thinks that people from the Ministry don’t know enough about werewolves to prove him wrong.” Ninian nodded, pleased. “It’s a good thing for you that you talked to me.”
            Draco held his peace on that. Maybe just asking Ninian would give him some answers on what else was puzzling him. “What about this power Potter has?”
            “What power?” Ninian looked around with a sneer that Draco thought was directed at his packmates. “I’m not the one who thought Potter was a harmless nobody and we shouldn’t drive him out of the pack the minute he appeared.”
            “I meant,” Draco said, “the power he has to make people hold still and feel a sense of warmth and belonging. He demonstrated it in front of me, so I know it exists. And then he demonstrated it on me, even though it’s not supposed to work on humans.”
            Ninian froze, staring at him. Then he said, “He doesn’t have that.”
            “Yes,” Draco said, “he does.”
            Ninian opened his mouth as if he would continue arguing with Draco about this, but abruptly, he jerked his head up and looked over Draco’s shoulder, a growl rising in his throat. Draco started to turn his head, but Potter’s voice spoke before he could complete the motion, his tone relentlessly cordial. “Could I talk to you, Ninian?”
            Ninian didn’t back down or flinch the way Draco had thought he would, after his talk of Potter’s power. He simply rose to his feet and growled, “I’m sick of this. I challenge you to a leadership battle, Potter.”
            Potter raised his eyebrows. He was standing not far behind Draco, so at ease that Draco wanted to hit him. He should have showed a little more discomfort or consciousness about sneaking up behind someone, at least.
            “Really,” he said. “I suppose you know that it’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning, so everyone else can be informed of the challenge and make the circle?”
            “Let it wait!” Ninian looked as if he’d foam at the mouth. “I want everyone to see what a hypocrite you are!”
            “Very well,” said Potter. He looked calmer than Draco thought he could reasonably be, and he found himself holding his breath, anticipating the moment when Potter would burst out with his contempt at someone who challenged him like that. But it didn’t happen. “Then you won’t mind leaving our honored guest alone for now, and obeying that supposedly ancient tradition that someone undertaking the leadership challenge spends his last night alone.”
            Ninian stood there for a moment, trembling. Draco thought he would violate the “tradition,” if it even existed, and stay, but a second later, he hissed, bowed, and strode away from the tables and benches.
            “And now, you.” Potter sat down on the bench across from Draco, trailing his nails in the marks Ninian had left, and looking at him. “What can I do to stop you from encouraging my packmates to rebel?”
            “He approached me,” said Draco, but he pursed his mouth tight after that. He wasn’t going to say anything else that would make him appear weak in Potter’s eyes. Using the humiliation and the embarrassment that already existed to help himself was one thing. Stirring up new humiliations on purpose was something else. He turned back to his tasteless stew.
            “Well?”
            Draco glanced up and let himself frown. “What else do you want me to say? He approached me, and he told me interesting things.”
            “Really.” Potter’s eyes burned, but that could as easily be in reference to Ninian as to Draco himself. At least Draco was sitting down, so he wasn’t standing up to let his legs tremble. “Like what?”
            Do I really want to do this? The method of speaking directly and giving away all his secrets first was alien to Draco.
            But until Ninian spoke to him, Draco had really believed what Potter had told him about Scions. And working off of false information would hurt the Department of Mysteries more than the embarrassment of one of its most minor servants.
            “That a Scion can’t be turned by another werewolf,” said Draco, “or changed. So Thornsberry is always going to belong to Greyback no matter what you try to do to him. And that you don’t have a special kind of power that can affect werewolves and humans alike, the way you’ve been trying to pretend you do.”
            “And you believe him?” Potter’s voice was shallow and relaxed. “Why?”
            I wish I had a werewolf’s nose, and I could smell what he was feeling right now.
            But Draco rejected the thought a moment after he’d had it. He had never wanted to be a werewolf when he was a Malfoy alone, and he couldn’t want to be one right now. Werewolves couldn’t work in the Department of Mysteries. Draco would never want to sacrifice all he had gained for the sake of one possible convenience.
            “Because it does sound more likely than you having a power that the Ministry has never heard of,” said Draco.
            Potter sighed and propped his chin on his fist. "You've received answers to those questions. Is it my fault that you and your Ministry are so distrustful of those answers that you think I must be lying?"
            Draco said nothing. He could remember one interrogation conducted by two Unspeakable trainees on the owner of a Dark artifact the Department hadn't been able to figure out. They had asked and asked what the artifact did; he had refused to tell them; they had got rougher, and he finally answered. But by then they didn't believe him, and they had gone on questioning him, phrasing the questions in as many different ways as possible to try and trick the truth out of him. It had taken Invisible Heldeson intervening to point out that he had probably been telling the truth when he first answered.

            Draco remembered that incident well, because he had been one of the two Unspeakable trainees.
            He leaned back and looked at Potter. “I distrust you because the Ministry has different information,” he said. “And Ninian gave me different information yet again. Why should I trust you more than either of them?”
            Potter grinned at him. “That’s a better question than the one I expected you to ask. And you looked like yourself as you said it.”
            “I always look like myself.” Draco spoke more coldly than he meant to. He knew that he couldn’t rely on the Malfoy looks that had always gained power and favor before. What he needed was the cool expression and grey cloak and hood of an Unspeakable.
            “But you looked like someone who breathes just now,” said Potter, and went on before Draco could ask him what that meant. “I do have an answer for you, though. I have more incentive to tell you the truth. The others only want to use you. I’ve given you the truth from the beginning and haven’t asked you to do anything for me.”
            “You asked me to be your messenger to the Ministry for your supposedly true information. That’s something.”
            Draco could feel a stir of uneasiness in the back of his mind even as he spoke, though. Minister Hinsley had commanded him. Ninian had wanted to make a bargain with him. It was true that Potter hadn’t done either of those things. What if he was right?
            But Draco shook off that idea, because Potter had more power than Draco did in this situation. He didn’t need to bargain. He would just order if he got around to that.
            “Fine,” said Potter, with a quick dip of his head. “But I can’t make you bear the message. I asked you.”
            “Just as Ninian asked me to listen to him.”
            Potter sighed and stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t think that the Ministry has a motive to tell you the truth. They flung you into this situation in the first place without enough truth to make a decision. Just remember that.”
            He turned away before Draco could ask him what his motive was, then. Because what he had already hinted was simply unbelievable.
            He couldn’t want Draco to be more emotional, more like the Malfoy he had once been. No one in the world wanted that, except people who were dead. And Draco included the boy of his childhood among those people.
*
            “Is it true that Ninian challenged you for leadership of the pack?”
            June was the one who confronted him, the angle of her head impertinent. Harry could have grunted at her and kept walking. He didn’t. He had only recently talked June around into thinking that he wasn’t so bad after all, and she was someone that people would watch because he had battled her right before Malfoy got here.
            “He did,” said Harry, and leaned against the trunk of a tree, and looked around. He could smell the scents of other pack members, casually drifting in his direction, or with movements that would look casual if you didn’t know the way they reacted. Their scents still seemed less crowding and overwhelming than the scents of Malfoy’s emotions. “He said that he was sick of ‘this,’ without being more specific.”
            “But he was speaking to the Ministry negotiator,” said Sarah Woolwine, stepping around in front of a tree. “I saw.”
            “Of course he was,” said Harry, with a bored sigh that concealed more than he would let them know. “And he was trying to encourage the Ministry to interfere in our pack. He already tried to do that once before, the last time Unspeakable Malfoy was here.”
            Woolwine tensed, and the air filled with the whirling of anger. Harry considered Woolwine with the most interest. He had thought she was exactly like Ninian, willing to do anything to get him out of the pack leadership. But it seemed she drew the line at collaborating with the Ministry.
            “What did he try to do?” Woolwine breathed.
            Harry smiled at her. “Encourage the Ministry negotiator to support his rebellion in exchange for—something. I’m not sure exactly what. For that, you would have to ask him.”
            Woolwine marched off, probably to do exactly that, although Ninian wouldn’t want to interrupt his isolation to talk to her. Other werewolves started arguing with each other about who would win the challenge, or telling Harry why they supported him, or making bets.
            Harry grinned around at all of them. Sometimes he wondered why he had ever taken on the challenge of running the pack, and other times, he knew.
*
delia cerrano: Well, in this case, Harry balances Paracelsus’s lust for his blood with a teasing relationship because he’s a useful asset. He doesn’t think of Draco in the same category.
CareLessLover: Draco thinks of what he’s hiding as unimportant and uninteresting, anyway.
Jester: Thanks! Draco at least has to wonder why the Ministry sent him in so ill-prepared. The Minister tried to explain, but Harry is offering a far blunter perspective, and the Ministry is different right now.
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