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Keep This Wolf	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20229 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—Explode the Fireball
            “I didn’t think you’d do that.”
            “Do what?” Draco was back in control of himself. He had trained for situations more worrying than this in the past, when the Unspeakables had sometimes told their trainees about the owners of artifacts who would catch them, call them thieves, torture them for information. Or even members of the general public might do that, if they managed to overcome their fear of Unspeakables and turn it into hatred instead.
            Potter kept his back turned for a moment, pacing slowly to the other side of the guest quarters. When he stood by the window, he turned around. Draco frowned a little as his heartbeat picked up. He knew Potter would hear it, but he didn’t understand the acceleration himself. Potter was far from blocking the only exit. There was still the door.
            “I’m disappointed that you told the Ministry something about my challenge fight with Ninian,” said Potter quietly, and looked him in the eye. “I had thought—I had thought you might not do that, that you understood enough of the contradictory stories you’ve received that you knew the Ministry wasn’t pure good.”
            “And your pack is?” Draco meant it to come out as a sneer. It was more like a squeak.
            “I can’t say that.” Potter turned his head restlessly to the side, and his hair rustled on his neck in a way that shouldn’t have been as distracting as it was. Draco inched his hand towards an artifact on his belt, a small bell that would ring if someone was using compulsion charms on him, but it was quiescent. It was something much different instead, something that he feared was connected to that strange magic Potter wielded.
            “We are unstable,” Potter continued, distracting Draco from what he wanted to concentrate on. “We could do with some time to recover ourselves, without any ‘help’ from the Ministry you want to serve so much.”
            “I know that the Ministry doesn’t trust you,” said Draco. “That some members of your pack don’t trust you.” He hesitated, but he had come this far, and he might as well say it. “That you’ve lied to me about your own magic. Why should I trust you over my superiors?”
            Potter turned around, a smooth, flowing motion. “When did I lie to you about my magic?”
            “Twice,” said Draco. “When you said that you didn’t use it on anyone unwilling, and when you said that it always comfortable and warm. I saw you use it on Ninian, and it terrified him.”
            Potter’s eyes widened a little. “You must be closer to me than I thought.”
            Draco didn’t like the sound of that at all. He crossed his arms and did some more glaring, but Potter wasn’t intimidated. He stared at Draco some more, then turned and looked out the window again, folding his hands in front of him as though he didn’t want them to tremble.
            At least, Draco hoped that was what it meant, rather than just that Potter was holding back on the urge to rip his claws down Draco’s face.
            “Tell me,” Draco whispered.
            “The power is two-sided,” said Potter softly. “It’s the power of a pack leader, yes, but magnified when I want to concentrate it. I can do that pretty well. Why, I don’t know. It makes those who are my allies or my friends feel comfortable and soothed around me. It makes those who are my enemies fear me and want to run away.” He glanced over his shoulder at Draco. “I normally don’t use it on the unwilling, true. But I can call it up on a challenge. Challenges have rules about the night before and the size of the circle that contains them and all the rest of that, but inside the circle…the rules are suspended. So I could use it on Ninian. And it proved conclusively that he no longer belonged to my pack, because if he had, then he would have felt soothed by it, and wanted to submit to me.”
            Draco stared at him. Then he looked down at a slight ripple in his lap, and found out that his own hands were trembling.
            Draco snarled and locked his hands still. Too late to hope that Potter hadn’t noticed, but at least Draco could do his best to face down what he feared. Perhaps that was the true definition of courage.
            But not the true definition of an Unspeakable. Draco knew that most Unspeakables wouldn’t have got into this situation in the first place, because they would have kept their distant, cool emotions wrapped up so tightly that Potter’s magic couldn’t have affected them in the first place. Or they would have been his enemies, proved so by the way his power affected them.
            Draco would prefer to be the former, but even the latter might have its advantages. He had to pause and gather his voice before he could speak again. “That’s why you exiled him?”
            Potter nodded. “Staying in the pack would be miserable for him when he’s so against me. I didn’t know how deep his disappointment with me ran, precisely because I’d held back from letting my magic touch him.” He was watching Draco with something in his eyes that indicated no lack of interest, making Draco clench his fists again. “But you…you’re much closer to me, more responsive to the magic, than someone should be who’s not a werewolf or even a member of my pack.”
            He took a step forwards.
            Draco didn’t think about the consequences. Too many thoughts were humming in his brain: whether the Ministry had known this, why they’d sent him, whether the Minister wanted Potter destroyed because his power was capable of reaching out to humans, why they had thought Draco would be susceptible. He snatched a spiked mace, in miniature and made of bronze, off his belt and held it up. “Don’t come near me,” he whispered. “If you do, this is waiting for you.”
            Potter halted, but from the way his nostrils twitched, he was too interested to stop himself from moving in. “What would it do? Read my soul? Rend my soul?” He was smiling with a red tongue spilling between white teeth, like a nightmare. Draco heard his own breath escaping, whistling and terrified, from between his own teeth. “I’m willing to take the chance.”
            He crossed the last few steps to Draco.
            The mace was an artifact that Draco didn’t need a word or even a squeeze for. When his fear flared brightly in his blood and the sweat that poured from his skin, it triggered the mace to life. It transformed in Draco’s hold, the blaze of light sliding over it like water as it became bigger and longer, and launched itself at Potter.
            Potter snatched it out of the air, the way he had the crystal beads that Draco had thrown at him after that first conversation with Ninian. He wrestled with it for a long second, the muscles on his arms standing out. Draco discovered he was holding his breath, and let it go with a hiss. He was not afraid of the outcome of this, because he knew what it would be. Potter would lose, and the mace would pound his skull in, and Draco…
            Would go back to the Ministry and confess that he had failed in his mission, and that was worse than murdering someone whose magic filled his head with confusion and warmth.
            The mace struggled and snapped open into twin halves of itself, which cut like jaws against Potter’s chin. He showed no fear even now, turning to the side as if he wanted to pin the mace against the wall. It squirmed away from that and leaped out, in a blow that would shatter Potter’s teeth.
            “Stop.”
            Draco didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice that spoke as his own, but it had to be, because the next instant, the mace fell to the floor with a disappointed-sounding clatter.
            That left two of them breathing in the guest quarters, and Potter watching Draco with his strange, wild eyes. Draco, feeling ill, knelt down and reached out a hand. The mace rolled over to him, slow and deliberate. The halves had snapped back together again, and it shrank the instant that Draco reclaimed it.
            Draco stared dully at it. He really didn’t know why it had shrunk back again, because the trigger was his fear, and he was still afraid.
            “You didn’t have to do that. Thank you.”
            Draco looked up. Potter stood in front of him with one hand extended, as though he assumed Draco would need some help standing up. Draco shook his head and rose, trembling so hard that he thought his teeth would vibrate out of his head. The words came without him having to think of them or reach for them this time.
            “I hate you,” he whispered. “There’s so much that I want to do, and I might never get the chance to do it, thanks to you. They’ll take me away from artifact duty and put me on classification duty. I’ll just tell other Unspeakables what the objects they’ve collected do. I’ll never have the chance to test them and work with them and reshape them myself. And all because of you.”
            “It’s not like I knew they would assign you to me or like I ever interfered with your work before you came here.” Potter stared at him with the same wild eyes. “Why are you blaming me instead of your bosses? I think they’re the ones with unreasonable demands.”
            Draco pushed his hair out of his face. When had it come loose from the neat style he usually kept it in? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Right now, the words were coming. He would have cracked his own teeth if he’d tried to keep them silent. “They offered me a job. The only way I can continue being an Unspeakable is if I’m good at that job. Good! And you have to maintain an objective distance and be detached and cold, or else your theories about what the artifacts are will get in the way and prevent you from seeing what’s really there.” He sounded sane as he spoke the theories that Invisible Heldeson had taught him, he knew, and for a second he thought he was getting back to normal. Then the anger broke loose again. “I already have trouble doing that! I broke down at the first challenge!”
            “I think that you’re wrong,” Potter whispered, which only fueled Draco’s contempt, because like he understood the way things worked in the Unspeakables and the way people were promoted. “You don’t have to be absolutely detached to work with Dark magic. I learned that in the Aurors. You have to know what Dark magic does to people and how it ruins their lives, or you’ll probably be tempted to use it yourself.”
            Draco snorted. “That view is so primitive.” At least, from the expression on Potter’s face, Draco’s word choice had surprised him. Draco smiled bitterly at him, and did his best to enjoy the sense of triumph that filled his mind. It would be the last time he felt it, he was sure, once Invisible Heldeson and the Minister heard what he’d done. “Listen, Potter. They might teach you that in the Aurors, but these are the Unspeakables. What you were outside the Department of Mysteries doesn’t matter.”
            “So that’s why you did it.” Potter frowned a little at him. “I wondered why how you could just give up everything you were and turn against your heritage, but you did it because you didn’t think that heritage was worth anything. And because it wouldn’t advance you anymore, with your name in the mud after the war. That makes more sense.”
            Draco gave a choked little laugh and dropped his head into his hands. “Yes, it would be like you to gloat over me,” he muttered. “Because you know that I can’t resist you now, and because you’ve always despised me.”
            Hands closed on his arms and tugged him nearer. Draco stumbled hard, and stared up into Potter’s face. Potter bent close to him, and his eyes flared the same deep green as some of the Forest branches untouched by sunlight.
            “No one who can respond that way to my magic is someone to despise,” Potter said, and his fingers hooked beneath Draco’s chin, tugging his face up. “Or someone I need to feel sorry for. Why don’t you stand up and admit that you’ve failed as an Unspeakable, but it’s not a goal that you should ever have tried for in the first place? It’s not for you. It doesn’t matter how much sense it makes for someone else. You have gifts to offer someone who can actually see them and help you find your place in the world.”
            Draco snarled and struck out, slapping Potter’s hand from his face. It was something a true Unspeakable would never have done, but he had admitted, to Potter and himself, to whom it most counted, that he was a failure as an Unspeakable. That meant that he could do whatever the fuck he liked.
            “You only like me because you think you can control me,” he told Potter, who continued to stand in front of him with his eyes so green that they were painful. “You don’t really want the boy back who taunted you and made fun of you because you had no parents. How could you? I know exactly what I’m worth, and it’s what the Unspeakables made of me.”
            “And you’ll do—what? If it turns out that you’ve failed at that.” Potter leaned towards him, his nose leading the way. “Commit suicide? Walk away and hide yourself in the ruins of your family’s home? Try to convince the Unspeakables that they should take you back by acting as their addled little pawn?”
            Draco laughed raggedly. “They gave me a chance already. They might give me a chance again.”
            “Can’t you see that it’s all nonsense? That they’re using you and don’t care what happens to you?” Potter came close to him on silent feet, and if Draco hadn’t already been looking at him, he would have had no idea that he was there. He bent down in front of Draco and looked him sternly in the eye. Draco could feel the aura that rode around with him at all times stir and reach out. He didn’t think this was the same as Potter’s magic, the one that apparently soothed his allies and broke his enemies. This was just a natural—
            Attraction.
            Draco tensed a little. What if the Ministry had known that about him, that he would be susceptible to Potter’s pull, and had sent him here anyway, because that was the best role he could play? He could become Potter’s trusted ally, and then strike at the heart of him from that close.
            But then reality came back and scattered Draco’s confused thoughts, and he snorted bitterly. No, he had never been that important. He knew he hadn’t. He had been trained for one specific thing; the Ministry hadn’t known, couldn’t have known, that Potter would find him fascinating enough to go on with instead of simply ignoring or killing him. He had to stop pretending that the Ministry had known exactly what they were doing. There were multiple, conflicting agendas here, what Minister Hinsley wanted and what the Unspeakables wanted him to do and what the person who had first proposed him for the mission—if it wasn’t Minister Hinsley—wanted him to do.
            “Can’t you see that it’s nonsense?” Potter repeated more insistently. He held his hands out, and Draco stared at them, at the short stubby fingers and the palms ingrained with dirt from working in the garden and the ragged nails that would turn him into a werewolf with one scratch in animal form. “You could come here. The magic that soothed you says you would be an acceptable member of the pack. You could build a life. It’s not much, it’s not what you were used to, but it would be an honest life. It would be better than what the Ministry would offer you.”
            Draco snapped his neck up with a gasp. “Why would you offer me something like that?” he whispered. “When you know good and well that I just tried to betray you?”
            Potter relaxed, eyes a little confused, as if he understood the words but not the point of the question. “What do you mean?”
            “What makes you think that your pack would accept me?” Draco waved a hand at the walls. “Or you? Why would you want someone who just walked into your pack one day? Why would you offer sanctuary to an old enemy?”
            “That’s how Lisa got here,” Potter said. “You remember, you met her a few times. She was looking for a pack but didn’t know exactly where mine lived, but she walked in, drawn by the tug of my magic, and decided to stay. I want you because I can fight for you.”
            “You know how useless I am, if you really believe what you’re saying,” Draco whispered. “And that I break under pressure.”
            “You could have time in my pack to recover from pressure.” Potter stared at him, but Draco looked away from those commanding eyes that would try to make him believe what he didn’t want to believe. “I wouldn’t put it on you. I wouldn’t try to make you do anything that you didn’t want to.”
            Draco turned further away, staring down at his hands. Why would the offer tempt him so much? He needed to go back to the Department of Mysteries, to return to his real work there—
            The work that he had already admitted to himself he couldn’t do. He couldn’t stay sufficiently detached from the artifacts. All the training and time the Unspeakables had put into him was useless.
            The realization had been there, he had thought it, spoken it, but now it pierced him inside, and he felt as though he was falling through the remnants of a spiderweb into an abyss. He drew a shuddering breath, knowing that any second it would break its way into dry sobs.
            “Draco?”
            Potter’s hand was on his arm, and Draco shook him impatiently away. He wanted to be alone to try and deal with this.
            Even if there was no way to deal with it. Even if the Ministry had used him and he would have to simply accept it.
            “Leave me alone, please,” he said rapidly when Potter opened his mouth. “Please.”
            There was some more silence, and then a hand pressing down on his shoulder. A few seconds later, Potter slipped across the guest quarters and out the door.
            Draco curled up next to the bed, pressing his face to the sheets. All the realizations tumbled through his mind like shards of broken glass, distinct and so sharp, piercing him every time he thought he was free of them.
            The Ministry used me.
            I gave up everything for the Unspeakables, and I failed.
            How can I go back to being a useless Malfoy?
            What am I going to do now?
*
BAFan: So is Harry, but right now, he wants to focus on Draco.
SP777: Thanks!
delia cerrano: Ninian wouldn’t have been comfortable in the pack anymore, anyway. His exile is sad, but that’s part of the drawback of running something on a challenge system: there’s always the chance that you might not like the new leader.
Jester: He has figured out that he has been, if not the why.
Tommy-Lane: Well, Harry did decide to explode the bomb!
And thank you.
CareLessLover: Harry is still willingly to be patient with Draco, or that would have been a lot worse.
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