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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 Twelve—The Importance of a Second

            Harry thought he was frozen too long, staring at the potion, although he genuinely didn’t know what it was for. Sandborn seemed content to wait, though. A small, hard smile pricked up the corners of his mouth, and his fingers flexed and then closed around the bottle with a predator’s cold patience.

            “I don’t know what sort of potion it is,” Harry said at last, and honestly as far as he knew. “Is someone trying to poison you, sir?”

            “I found it concealed in my office,” Sandborn said. “Specifically, where it would have slowly turned into a gas under the pressure of a spell on the bottle’s mouth and then spread throughout the room. It was a sophisticated setup, the sort of trick that would occur to a Potions master or perhaps his apprentice, but no one else.”

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t count Potions masters among my close personal friends,” he murmured. In truth, he had stayed away from the brewers in the Ministry more out of busyness with work than anything else, but it made a convenient cover to pretend that his memories of Snape, for good or evil, were too strong, and he avoided them for that reason. “I wouldn’t know.”

            “You must know,” Sandborn said, and his eyes were on fire now. Harry hadn’t seen him this close to losing control since the day he summoned Harry to first speak about Rettern’s investigation. That made his instincts stir. Could this be related to whatever else worried him then? Not the fact of the potion, but something delicate he’s handling that the potion might disrupt? “You must know what this is about, because we found your lover’s magical signature on it.”

            Harry stared at him. “Callia tried to assassinate you? Really?” He could picture her going after Malfoy, but not Sandborn, not unless she really thought that she had been allowed to date Harry and wear his engagement ring with Sandborn’s approval. And even then, Harry didn’t think she had the sort of pride to be harmed by such a thing.

            “Do not be more of a fool than you are.” Sandborn glared at him, eyes maddened. “Malfoy. It was Malfoy.”

            Strangely, the first thing it occurred to Harry to say was He wouldn’t leave his magical signature on the bottle like that unless he intended for it to be found. But he would hardly give Malfoy away to Sandborn when they were hoping that something like this would happen, so he shook his head. “Malfoy’s not my lover.”

            “Yet,” said a bright voice beyond Harry. “He means to add yet.”

            Harry spun around, his hand already on his wand, and found Malfoy there, his hands clasped behind his back as he regarded Harry with a blatantly greedy gaze. Harry shuddered a little as Malfoy swept his eyes up and down his body. Then Malfoy came a step closer and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

            Sandborn’s voice stopped them as effectively as a brandished sword. “Malfoy? You will explain yourself.”

            Malfoy pulled his hand back slowly, holding Harry’s eyes. Harry blinked, shaken. He knew the fake, melting warmth in Malfoy’s gaze was for the sake of Sandborn, the Aurors, and whoever might watch them in such a delicate moment. But he thought the smile genuine, and the way Malfoy’s eyes fastened solely on him, not wavering sideways to Sandborn even when he moved up a step in an attempt to be a credible threat…

            Harry didn’t know what to do about that, what to think about it. He only knew that it stirred up thoughts that belonged to his third soul—or the nonexistent part of himself that could handle serious thoughts about liberty—if they belonged anywhere. He clenched his hands and looked away.

            “Did you have the potion tasted before you began to accuse me, Minister?” Malfoy asked, and now he had warmth in the back of his voice, which could alter at a moment into either teasing or furious heat. How do I know this? Harry thought, still looking aside. I don’t know him that well, and I haven’t associated with him much since the trial. “Oh, excuse me, I meant tested. Of course.”

            Sandborn took another step forwards. Harry had last seen the expression on his face when the ambassador from the Bulgarian Minister of Magic explained that they wouldn’t be extraditing Bulgarian Death Eaters to England. “The setup marked an assassination ploy,” he said, and his sonorous voice dipped for a moment. “Do not tell me that you intended to use it for a potion of medicinal value, Malfoy.”

            “I must admit that I sometimes allow my jealousy to get the better of me,” Malfoy said, with a small sigh. “In this case, I came to the Ministry this morning with the intention of admitting everything.”

            “An Auror stands here,” Sandborn said. “I can have him arrest you.”

            “Not just any Auror,” Malfoy said, and the warmth in his voice had taken an unexpected direction. Harry looked at him, because he had to, more or less, and found Malfoy considering him with eyes that…Harry had never had someone look at him like that. And because he really didn’t know Malfoy so well, he didn’t know whether half the emotion there was genuine. “A special one. And that’s the whole point.”

            Harry felt shaken when Malfoy’s attention turned away from him, as though solid floor had crumbled beneath his feet. He held his breath for a moment and refused to look at anyone until he thought he had it back under control. This was…too strange.

            “Explain yourself now, Malfoy.” Sandborn had gained control of his voice again. This was the one he used to make speeches about unpopular new laws, to soothe the small minds listening to him that everything was all right and their lives would continue without cease, without interruption. “You drop hints without explaining what your potion was meant to do. I know you are more than intelligent enough to do so.”

            That was another technique that had won Sandborn followers over the years, Harry thought, keeping his face turned away. Sandborn addressed his enemies and the uncertain factions that eddied and flowed behind him as if they were intelligent. And they tried to prove that they were, that they were worthy of his regard.

            Harry’s cheeks warmed. They reacted much the same way that he reacted before the silent demand of Malfoy’s attention, in fact.

            He turned back in time to see Malfoy give Sandborn a slow, sleepy smile. Lizards had used smiles like that in the dawn of the world to make their prey think they were asleep, Harry decided. Big lizards.

            “An impotence potion,” Malfoy murmured.

            Harry could have bottled the silence that followed to sell at Wizengamot meetings. They always liked a bit of a dramatic pause before they began their speeches, or whatever else it was they were doing today.

            “Why in the world,” Sandborn began, and then he stopped. He was regarding Malfoy with an entirely new look in his eyes now. Harry blinked, and then recognized it. Sandborn had used it when it turned out that one of his political opponents had had his mind so twisted by Dark magic he began to spout inanities in public. “You must realize that if you told anyone about this, you would be the one humiliated, not me.”

            Malfoy’s smile deepened. “You assume there is value only in public actions,” he said. “It’s one of the qualities that I’ve always noticed about you, Minister.”

            He didn’t need to use a verb other than “noticed”; his tone made it obvious in what way he regarded it. Sandborn’s hands closed down on his wand, which he’d drawn without Harry seeing more than a flicker of motion. Then he slipped it back into the concealed sleeve sling that he usually kept it in and started healing the conversation, since at the moment it lay wounded in the middle of the floor.

            “Malfoy. There is no reason for us to be enemies. I understand the value of pure-blood interests and participation in the wizarding community. I pride myself on having attained a majority of the pure-blood vote in the last election, in fact. And I have noticed that you attend Ministry galas frequently.”

            Malfoy folded his arms and cocked his head, grinning. “Another thing I know about you is that you assume each person is one thing, and one thing only, loyal to a single identity.”

            Sandborn leaned forwards slightly, shifting his weight from one leg to another. Harry thought, briefly, of the abandoned boy he had been seven years ago, who either never would have noticed the movement in time or never would have read the expressions and the nuances of the words correctly. “You would know something about that, I presume,” he said. “Since you have created a new identity for yourself in the wake of your father’s mistakes.”

            “Yes,” Malfoy said, and bowed his head in sorrow so perfectly feigned that Harry didn’t know it was feigned until he looked up again and showed his blazing grin. “They were tragic. And buried with him.”



            Sandborn’s nostrils flared. Harry didn’t think he knew he had the habit of acting as if he would draw in an enemy’s scent and learn more about them that way. “Perhaps not so buried,” he said. “Some secrets stink beyond the grave.”

            “And some don’t, because we expose them to the open air,” Malfoy said promptly, then looked at Harry with soulful eyes.

            Harry bit back the laughter so savagely he choked. Surely Malfoy had to realize that Sandborn would see through the act? He wouldn’t be able to complain, later, that it was Harry who had overacted and betrayed them.

            “Don’t look at me that way, Malfoy,” he said, which was both the way he would react if he didn’t know Malfoy’s deception and the way he felt at the moment. He wondered idly how many other times truth and lies would be tangled for him over the next few months, then dismissed the thought. It wasn’t as though he had never been in this position before.

            “But you don’t know what it does to me when you breathe like that.”

            Malfoy dropped the grin as he spoke. Instead, it was his eyes that blazed, straight and hard into the center of Harry’s soul. Harry fell back a step from him, and it was no feigned reaction. He felt…he felt…

            The way he had when Malfoy stood in his house nearly a week ago and looked at him with approval, sometimes, or at least attention. Harry could feel his heart clench, slowly, like a snake engulfing a mouse.

            He would do a lot to have that attention again, more to have the approval.

            But he didn’t know why, and unplanned reactions didn’t fit with the game they’d adopted. Harry mastered himself and let his eyelids droop, let his head turn away as though he had figured out Malfoy’s game. “Callia would ask you not to flirt in this disgraceful manner,” he murmured. “And because she is the epitome of grace for me, and teaches me more politeness than I ever knew, I would ask you the same thing.”

            “Flirting,” Malfoy repeated thoughtfully. “I don’t like the word. It has an undertone of teasing, the inherent assumption that one doesn’t intend to fulfill the promises that one makes. And I assure you, Harry, I mean every word I say.”

            Harry had mastered his reactions this time, even the unexpected jump in his throat that came from hearing Malfoy use his first name. He met his eyes with nothing more than a small smile, turned his head away, and said, “I think we should let the Minister decide your punishment, since he was the one you chose to use the impotence potion on. For someone who prides himself on his clarity of vision and his precise definitions, you were neither clear nor precise this time. Minister?”

            Sandborn was watching both of them, of course, and Harry had to hope that his own steps of the performance were perfect. Malfoy’s had been. But then again, he was a Slytherin born, and from the way he spoke to his friends the other night, he had practice in flirtations he didn’t mean.

            “Of course,” Sandborn said. “I will depart from a practice I tend to respect with former Slytherins, then, and ask you a direct question, Mr. Malfoy. Why did you use the potion on me, rather than on Harry, so that he couldn’t take up any liaisons you disapproved of?”

            Harry suppressed the flinch in the center of his back that came from hearing his first name from Sandborn, and glanced at Malfoy.

            Malfoy hadn’t looked away from him. Harry melted the flush that tried to mount his cheeks. He would be more careful in the future. He hadn’t known Malfoy would resort to such direct tactics. Then again, Malfoy had no reason to fear Sandborn.

            At the moment. If Sandborn thinks that imprisoning him again is a good measure…

            The impulse to shove his wand under the Minister’s chin if he tried any such thing flashed through him and surprised Harry.

            “It surely ought to be obvious,” Malfoy said, and since he didn’t take his eyes off Harry, Harry had the feeling that Malfoy was addressing him as well as Sandborn. “You spend more time with Harry than anyone else, even his partner.” The wry twist to his mouth when he said the word partner was just right, Harry thought, as he tried to convince himself to look at this from a rational distance. “I would think that you might know some things about him that only certain people should know.” Now he glanced at Sandborn, and the brightness of his smile was a glint like a jewel tossed in the air. “This potion was to make sure you don’t exercise that knowledge.”

            Are you insane? Harry wanted to ask. Do you think this is a good move? I thought we agreed that we would pretend to be hopelessly in love and coming around to the idea, respectively, but we never said anything about you attacking the Minister.

            Malfoy’s gaze had returned to him, and in the serenity of his eyes, Harry could read the response to every question.

            Relax. Let me handle it.

            Malfoy had said in their conversation at Harry’s house that the task of getting them out of this situation without the Slytherins being retried was his, after all. Somehow Harry had thought it would involve less madness.

            “Surely you ought to know,” Sandborn said, stretching the words as if he thought longer vowel sounds would render them more acceptable to Malfoy, “that Auror Potter is engaged to be married. I would not encourage him to be unfaithful to his fiancée.”

            Malfoy blinked once, then let his mouth round out. “Oh! That’s the difference between us, then. I thought there was one.”

            Sandborn lowered his head. Harry knew that gesture, too; it protected his throat, although he had never followed it with a punch or a lash of his wand that Harry could see. It was the significance of the gesture in Sandborn’s personal collection that made Harry’s eyes follow it, not the consequences.

            “You can’t tell me,” Malfoy continued in a querulous voice, “that when he looks at you like that, he lacks a romantic interest in you.”

            Harry had no idea which one of them Malfoy thought he was talking to, but the point was that it made Harry look at him, and then Malfoy caught him in a ferocious gaze and wouldn’t let him go. He had wondered aloud about Harry’s acting skill, but he was the actor par excellence, Harry thought. His eyes really looked like the eyes of an outraged lover. He had one hand on his hip, the other clenched in the air as though he missed the feeling of something he usually held. And those eyes, the pulling, burning intensity of them…

            Harry did turn away, then, because he had no idea of what would happen if he kept looking.

            He turned into a trap, into Sandborn’s gaze. “Harry?” he asked, mild as could be and dangerous with it. “Has this man encouraged you to be unfaithful to Callia?”

            And this is why you can’t let yourself fall for Malfoy’s act, Harry told himself sharply, and pulled his first soul forwards again to seat it primly behind his eyes. It’ll make you weak, and worse, when you deal with Sandborn. Luckily, the first soul contained enough experience of the cold, crystalline world he inhabited when dealing with Sandborn to let him answer with the right twist in his voice.

            “No, sir,” he said. “He has attempted it, yes. But for him to succeed in his encouragement, I would have to find him alluring.”

            “I saw the way you look at me,” Malfoy said. “Or should I say I see it, because you can’t keep yourself from turning to me with it in your eyes every moment we’re alone?”

            Damn it, damn it, too close, Harry thought, the pulse in his throat beating faster. He brought his head down to conceal it, which Sandborn could read as a defensive gesture if he wished. At the moment, Harry knew less harm would come of Sandborn suspecting his irritation than of Sandborn seeing how much Malfoy’s words affected him.

            “Do you see his arrogance, sir?” he asked Sandborn quietly. “Do you see the way he flaunts his attempts to engage my attention, caring about not even the normal proprieties that are supposed to be important to pure-bloods? Callia is everything he’s not, delicate and cool and serene. I won’t look at someone like him.”

            “Just for that, I’ll make you beg,” Malfoy murmured thoughtfully.

            Lightning flared and tightened in Harry’s gut. They hadn’t discussed this. He hadn’t known that Malfoy would speak like this, act like this, shove his supposed sexual attraction so close to the front of their interaction and hold it there.

            For years, Harry had interacted with people he understood. Sandborn. The other Aurors. His friends. The Wizengamot members who believed him totally Sandborn’s creature. The heads of various Departments who believed much the same thing, or else were Sandborn’s allies and had no reason to try and turn Harry against him. Harry had begun to suspect how badly he dealt with people outside the world of the contract and his three souls when he spoke with Rettern. But ultimately, he understood her, too. She wanted certain things from him, and would try to trick them out of him when she didn’t get them.

            But Malfoy…

            His words cut too deep. He had promised Harry that he would make gestures in the air and on the surface only, but he had plunged his knives between Harry’s ribs, instead.

            But Harry’s reaction was complicated by the fact that he knew that his response to Malfoy’s words was the problem. Malfoy hadn’t set out to trick or arouse him. Harry was doing that to himself.

            So he flicked his wand silently against his arm where it rested in his sleeve and cast a charm that he hated using, because most of the time his control was good enough that he didn’t need to, and he knew he was dangerously slipping when he required it. It numbed his mind, cast the emotions to a distance and made them unimportant. He looked at Malfoy, and knew his eyes were liquid with indifference.

            “You can try,” he murmured. “But I don’t think that I would beg for anything you could offer me. Or accept it if you were to offer it.”

            Malfoy reacted to that. And not in the way he expected.

*

            Draco recognized the echoes of the cold magic in the air, and choked on his tongue, though luckily he managed to keep the choking beneath the surface, where it belonged, and away from Sandborn’s eyes. Potter had chosen that spell? Draco thought it of all those he knew least suited to a Gryffindor’s fiery, impetuous nature. Even one like Potter who had changed and disguised his nature as much as he had in these last few years.

            Plus, it was stupid. Repeated use could stretch the recovery from the spell out from hours to months to years.

            It was annoying to realize that Potter might not have the acting skill that Draco had thought he had, only his spell-assisted coldness, and that meant Draco had wrongly praised him to Pansy. Pansy would kill him when she found out, or change the direction of her torments. Draco hated lying to his friends when he didn’t get anything out of it.

            And so he leaned forwards, ignoring Sandborn’s tense, curious half-motions, and asked, “What is it about me that makes you nervous, Potter?”

            It was a question for the pretense and a real one both at once, and Potter was smart enough to know that. He brought his head down further, defending his throat and hiding his pulse, and Draco admired his economy of motion.

            “Why, nothing, Malfoy,” Potter said. Of course he had to say that, Draco thought, his ears sifting hard through the subtleties and shimmers of the words, but he meant it, too. That was different. “What you can offer doesn’t tempt me. The spells you can cast won’t stand up to an Auror’s training. You have yet to sufficiently explain why you foisted an impotence potion on Minister Sandborn, but then, sufficient explanations aren’t much a part of your life.”

            Little idiot. Doesn’t he understand that the way he responds to the lures I throw out there are as much a part of his escape as the ways that we hold back and fool the Minister?

            Well, no, Draco understood a moment later, the comprehension raking his mind like the claws of a diving osprey. Of course not. Potter still thought all plans were precise and beautiful and frozen, because that was the way he had lived in the past few years. He knew how to improvise, but even the improvisations came from a limited bag of tricks, proceeded along a limited number of tracks. He didn’t realize that the lively interplay Draco had intended to set up between them would, like all living things, change.

            It was more important, at the moment, that Potter understand this than that they go on perfectly fooling Sandborn. Besides, the potion had done its real work. Draco let the mask drop for the moment.

            “I can make you beg,” he whispered. “For pleasures that you’ve never felt. For delights that you don’t know exist yet. For a glance from my eyes. But never for pain. I would never hurt you. You’ve had enough of pain in your life.”

            Potter understood that much. Of course. But it didn’t, couldn’t, prevent the fear that cracked the surface of his spell, at least until he clasped his hands behind his back, half-bowed his head to Draco, and turned away. “I can escort him from the building, Minister, if you wish,” he said.

            “I don’t think that would be wise,” Sandborn said. Draco could hear a dragging slur on a few of the words, and smiled. The potion, when tested, would show as an impotence potion. That was planned. But it did something else, something that it would take Sandborn months to feel the full effects of. “No, not wise at all. Call other Aurors to do it.”

            “All right,” Potter said, and he glanced at Draco once more before he turned away.

            It was no more than he had done that night at the Ministry gala, playing to the crowd, doing exactly as they should. And Draco knew that was good in its fashion. If they could convince Sandborn that Potter was acting more slowly or differently or both because he was affected by Draco’s pretended love, then that would mean that he would attribute any changes he saw in his prize Auror to that, not to Potter gradually breaking free of him.

            But in Potter’s eyes, Draco saw something else, something that made him content to wait for the Aurors to escort him from the Ministry.

            It was—not trust, but a longing to trust. A longing to put down fear and accept what Draco offered.

            Whatever that was.

            Gryffindors were always good at impulse, Draco thought as he walked out of the Ministry. He wanted another glance with Potter, but he was good at putting aside his wants when necessary. And Slytherins, excellent teachers of the need to accept those impulses.

            The world could change in a second.

And because of an embrace of an offer as much as because of the offer itself.

*

polka dot: The purple potion is the one Draco and Theo were brewing in the same chapter.

SP777: Sandborn is someone I made up.

Harry doesn’t know what the purple potion is meant to do yet, and neither does Sandborn. ;)

Squeeky: Thank you!
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