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Loup-garou	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8099 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Loup-garou. Thank you for coming along, and I hope everyone enjoyed it until the end. (There will be a fourth fic in the series, but I don’t know when I’ll start working on it).

Chapter Thirteen—Face the Sunset

            Harry didn’t know how long he spent in the hollow, walking in circles and breathing deeply to test the new lightness in his lungs. The guilt was gone. There had been weight everywhere, on his neck, on his arms, on his knees, and he hadn’t realized it until it vanished.

            Malfoy just sat on the edge of the hollow and watched him with a careful, smug smile on his lips. Harry nearly couldn’t bring himself to resent it. The git knew that Harry couldn’t have done this without him, and Harry knew it, and as long as Malfoy didn’t bring it up too often, Harry thought he could live with it.

            Then he started when he saw the sun sinking towards the western horizon and hastily drew his wand. He had to Apparate back to Ron and Hermione’s house and try to explain everything before it got dark.

            And then his hand twitched and dropped, because he was remembering the last words Ron had spoken to him before he left. He swallowed.

            “Harry?”

            Harry shook his head. He didn’t think a trace remained of the Mark, not anymore, and the bond between them that had let Malfoy speak into his head had dissolved when the magic had. But he was still uncomfortable with Malfoy even acting like he could read Harry’s thoughts. He reckoned that he always would be.

            Malfoy repeated his name behind him, softly, and Harry heard the soft plop as he dropped into the hollow. Harry felt the bastard’s hand on his shoulder a moment later. Harry shrugged it off and moved away a few steps, starting to pace for a different reason. He had to think out what he was going to do, whether he should go back to his friends’ house and try to repair their friendship—or at least convince them that he wasn’t mad, addicted, whatever—or try to find a place in Muggle Sydney.

            Then Malfoy stepped into his way and Harry had to stop walking or run him over. Actually, he would have preferred that second option, but he stopped out of reflex before he could think that he shouldn’t.

            “Harry.” Malfoy’s voice was patient, as it had been a moment before, but now Harry could see his eyes, and they were bright with something that meant he wasn’t patient at all. “I couldn’t help but notice that it’s getting dark.”

            “Good for you, finally learning to tell the time,” Harry snapped, and winced as he thought of what would happen if he went back now. Ron and Hermione were probably having dinner and wondering where he was. Or running around in frantic circles and wondering where he was. He winced again at the thought of the expression on Ron’s face when he’d Apparated away. He shouldn’t have done that. He didn’t know that his friend was going to curse him, and—

            Harry paused. Then he repeated the thoughts again. He added an extra image, this time, what Ron and Hermione’s faces would look like when he finally broke down and told them the truth about creating new magic with Malfoy.

            The guilt…

            It just didn’t have the same volume or keenness anymore. It didn’t hurt him the same way.

            Harry swallowed. “Malfoy,” he said carefully, “you mentioned that we didn’t need a ritual or a wand to control and channel the power anymore, right?”

            “Yes,” Malfoy said. “That’s correct. Because we were drawing from our cores—”

            Harry waved him to silence. He knew that the magical theory Malfoy was about to tell him was irrelevant, and that was enough by itself to make him not want to listen. “Fine, fine. But it felt like a ritual when we were going through it. In fact, I don’t think we created magic at all. We only used what was already there. We’re both powerful enough, we could have done it. Why did you say that we were creating magic?”

            Malfoy paused, staring at him. “So you didn’t feel as though that magic was different from any you’d ever done?” he asked carefully.

            Harry shook his head. “Of course it was. No incantation, no wands, more intimate. But it wasn’t different in its nature. I don’t think the magic increased. So far, I only have your word for it that it has,” he added.

            Malfoy pointed in silence to the melted sand on the other side of the hollow where he’d used his fire a few days ago.

            Harry sighed and shook his head again. “Fine,” he repeated. “But that only shows that you can do something that you couldn’t do before. It wasn’t a new spell, or something that any other wizard would find impossible.”

            Malfoy regarded him with lifted eyebrows and a faint smile. “None of this has anything to do with what you’re really concerned about,” he said softly. “What’s your question?”

            Harry ground his teeth. “What—did—we—do?” he demanded. “I thought we’d only eliminated the unnecessary guilt I was carrying around, but I just tried to feel ordinary guilt, and it’s not as strong! What the fuck did we do?”

*

            Ah.

            Well, Draco thought philosophically, suppressing his small flicker of disappointment, he reckoned that it would have been stupid to expect Harry to understand magical theory all at once, especially magical theory that had remained the province of mad idealists for the entirety of history until now, with no chance of becoming practice.

            “We changed your nature so that you were purged of your guilt,” Draco told him calmly. “I pictured you as free of guilt. You did the same thing, but I think our foci were slightly different. I didn’t intend to make further occurrences of that emotion weaker, but given that our foci didn’t match, and we were both pouring incredibly powerful magic at slightly different targets, while conjuring new magic to join the old when it began to run out—theoretically, this spell is possible, but beyond one’s reach because one would collapse before finishing it—this is a reasonable side-effect.”

            Harry closed his eyes and said something so softly that Draco couldn’t hear it, once. Then he turned and began to jog towards the far side of the hollow. Draco kept pace with him, matching him when Harry sped up, apparently doing what he could to get away. Draco didn’t know why he bothered. First of all, he had to know that Draco would find him wherever he went. Second, he could have Apparated if he was that serious.

            “Harry,” he said. “You know that you wanted this, and you agreed to it of your own free will.”

            Harry said nothing, didn’t even grunt. He just kept trotting with his head bowed as though pushing his way through a thick wave.

            “Where are you going?” Draco asked, a question he felt he was owed an answer to.

            “To Ron and Hermione’s house,” Harry finally said, and the disappointment Draco felt then was nothing to what he felt when he heard Harry’s addition. “To tell them that they were right about everything.”

            Draco sighed, seized one of his wrists, and wrenched it down hard. Harry spun to a stop, yelping, and glared at Draco from a few inches, away, his breaths sharp and indignant. Draco closed his eyes and tried not to revel in the way that Harry made him feel just standing close to him. That would dissipate his anger, and he knew he needed that anger at the moment.

            “You’re an idiot,” he said.

            “Yes, we’ve established that you have reason to think so.” That was all the warning Draco got before Harry pulled sharply against his confinement, leaning away, aiming for the side of the hollow he’d abandoned a minute before.

            Draco lost his hold, but grabbed another in a moment. Harry swore at him, and Draco opened his eyes to laugh in his face. Harry froze mid-snarl, staring at him.

            “We both know that you could have just Apparated,” Draco hissed. “There are things living under rocks that know you could have just Apparated. That you didn’t says something important. Special. It says that you want to stay right here for right now, or that you want me to stop you.”

            Harry shook his head. The mulish look was back on his face again, just when Draco had begun to think that the revelations in the silver dome had blanked it out forever. “If I don’t have a conscience, then I’m a monster. That was what Ron and Hermione were worried about, and that’s what’s happened. Why is this so hard for you to fucking understand, Malfoy?” He was shouting suddenly, his mouth less than an inch from Draco’s face.

            Draco patiently wiped away a few flecks of spittle and shook his head. “You have no idea what I think or feel, and yet you presume to lecture me. And you have no real idea what happened with the exchange of magic between us, either. We lessened the pressure of your guilt on your real life—if you like, sped up the self-forgiveness process that you now know happened anyway to a few days instead of a few months. You can still feel guilt. You’ve proven that in the past minute. You have a conscience, still.” No matter how much more convenient it would be if you did not.

            Harry closed his eyes. Draco thought he was fighting back tears, or groans of hatred, or something. He waited impatiently. It would have to happen, and he would have to explain to Harry again about how guilt didn’t make someone a more worthy human being, and Harry would reply that he knew that but it was just different for him, and there would be more promises and more of the oath tugging on him and who knew when they would get to make magic together again and—

            “Yeah. All right.”

            Draco blinked and stared. It took him long moments to realize that he was actually standing in front of Harry in the hollow, and that Harry was making sense, which was more than Draco had thought he would make. “What?” he whispered.

            Harry avoided his eyes but didn’t try to pull away from Draco’s touch this time, instead staring at the orange sand between his feet. “You’re right,” he said. “I should have Apparated. I should have just fucking Apparated. It would be so easy. There are no wards here to prevent me. It should have been that way. But I didn’t. I think I wanted you to stop me and say what you did.”

            Draco didn’t say, “I know you did,” because there were certain limits to what he thought Harry would tolerate. He just nodded and looked thoughtful until he realized that he wasn’t dreaming, then murmured, “What are you going to do now?”

            Harry tugged once on his hair with the hand that he had torn free from Draco’s grip. “I need to talk to Ron and Hermione,” he said. “But I can’t go back to their house. I don’t want to stay there. I want to meet in a neutral setting.”

            “What are you going to do about food and housing in the meantime?” Draco asked. He didn’t let go of Harry’s wrist, because he wasn’t stupid, and because he rather liked the shift of warm skin over smooth bone beneath his touch.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said, which had the virtue of honesty, if not of being the answer Draco wanted. “Get a Muggle place, I reckon. I brought some money with me, and it might not be simple to get it changed, but—”

            “Come with me,” Draco whispered. He had known he would make the offer, but he was a little ashamed of the speed with which he made it. He would have liked a little more time of talking to Harry first, to ease him in and soften him up. But Harry wasn’t the only one whose body was betraying him tonight.

            Harry blinked at him. “Of course you must be staying somewhere,” he said. “But I assumed it was with friends who would—”

            He didn’t finish the sentence, probably because he didn’t want to, but also because Draco didn’t let him, shaking his head furiously, pressing in, leaning against Harry until he made a protesting sound and shoved him back. But Draco had made his point, and Harry stood still, staring into his eyes, while Draco answered softly, “I’m staying somewhere private, tailored to my needs. Come with me there.”

            He would have tried to make the last statement into a question, if he could. He knew how angry Harry would be if he didn’t.

            But he didn’t manage, and so he just had to wait, while Harry stared at the sky and the sand and Draco’s shirt as if they would give him the response to his questions, as if they would tell him whether he had become the unnatural monster he feared, or only another version of himself. Draco knew the answer to that, of course, but he had accepted—finally—that he sometimes had to let Harry find the answers for himself.

*

            Fuck.

            Harry had thought Malfoy wouldn’t make the offer, because he had counted on having to confront Ron and Hermione anyway. And, well, of course he would find another place somewhere in Australia, because Malfoy seemed content to stay here for now, and Harry had to remain nearby to complete the oath. But this, even though it made sense, simply wasn’t something he could have anticipated.

            Or allowed himself to anticipate. That might be a better summary of his position, he thought wryly.

            “Harry.” Malfoy was getting impatient, curling his fingers into Harry’s shirt at the shoulder and holding them there. But the next moment, when Harry shot him a glance, he seemed to regret that he’d said anything, biting his lip hard and blinking.

            Harry sighed. Things had changed. He knew they had. It was just that, every time he thought he’d come to terms with them, he was startled anew by just how much they had changed. Maybe this was the last one, the last fall. Maybe this was the last time that he would lie to himself.

            Then he grimaced and mentally rearranged the thought. The last time I’ll lie to myself about this particular subject.

            “If I go back with you,” he said, “you won’t try to Mark me again, or fuck me, or touch me more than you’re doing right now.” It was an arbitrary standard to pick, but then again, Malfoy would probably touch him sometimes, if only by accident. And Harry had learned today that he’d pretty much been living by arbitrary standards all along; it was just that he’d been better at disguising it from himself until now.

            Malfoy’s eyes widened with a look Harry recognized because he’d seen it in the dome. Joy, honest joy. Harry snorted. He didn’t understand why he brought that feeling to Malfoy, but at least it was a nice change that someone wanted him around.

            “No,” Malfoy said. His voice wasn’t—breathless, Harry wouldn’t say that, but it had leaped into a new dimension where it could sound different. He leaned against Harry for a moment as though he wanted to hold him, then stepped back and spread his hands out. “See, not touching.”

            Harry nodded. Maybe he was tired of fighting what seemed to be inevitable. Maybe it was because Malfoy had made a promise that, for once, he trusted. Maybe he was still trying to make up for the idea that he had hurt Malfoy, really hurt him, with the Cruciatus Curse, and this was a way to do it. Maybe he just wanted a place to stay for one night.

            All of those could have been possible motives. At the moment, he didn’t feel the need to choose among them. Harry put out a hand, and Malfoy clasped it and Side-Along Apparated them. The last sight Harry saw before the darkness of the transition closed around them was the look of dazed, drunk happiness on Malfoy’s face.

            Which. Well. Harry might consider that he had some good luck in this situation after all, if he was responsible for putting that there.

*

            The instant they entered Thylacine’s Lair, Draco stepped away from Harry, keeping his promise. Harry gave him a faint smile and turned around, as if he wanted to study the walls for any signs of a secret passage. Draco didn’t question him. He thought Harry would appreciate some privacy at the moment as he tried to deal with the consequences of a decision that must be momentous for him.

            Hell, Draco would like some privacy himself, but for a very different reason.

            The moment he turned away from Harry, though, he saw the envelope that lay on the bed. He could feel his pupils widen as his heart began to race. He didn’t think Harry would notice such subtle signs even if his back wasn’t turned, but he still moved further away and didn’t touch the envelope until he saw Harry engaged in examining some of the carved thylacines, his brow wrinkled as he tried to make out what they were.

            Draco turned the envelope around and murmured to the fox seal on the back, “Jaguar’s paw.” The seal parted and dissolved, and he took out the paper inside, the letter that he knew Thalia had written to him, from the color and size and thickness of the envelope.

            All those things together could convey a lot at once. For example, that things had gone badly wrong in Fox Valley, more wrong than Draco could imagine them going while Lisa was in charge. Perhaps the Ministry had finally found out about them. It was true that Draco was the one who could best wield the magic of the bracelets he usually stored their stolen power in and the lenses that stole it. Lisa might not have been able to defend the place as effectively as he could.

            But Draco knew already that all that was untrue. So his hands were steady as he pulled out the letter that Thalia had sent him, but it was hard to keep his face blank.

            The letter was short. Well, it wouldn’t need to be long for her to give all that he required in the way of information.

            Lord Malfoy,

            Lisa has claimed that she found a way to break the Mark, and is taking over Fox Valley for herself. She can’t use the mirrors well, but she has driven Oliver, Mina, Victor, and me out of the valley. Come back.

            Thalia hadn’t signed her name, but the envelope and the words that had unlocked the seal, the references to her Animagus form, told Draco all he needed to know. He shut his eyes and stood there, silent, thinking.

            He would have felt Lisa’s rebellion, of course, with the links that he maintained—still—to her soul and her magic.

            On the other hand, he had thought before Harry ran to Australia that he would be able to track a Marked one anywhere in the world. And the distance had proven too much for the Mark. Draco shook his head, slightly. He should have researched better before he made the Mark, rather than trusting that he had done something so clever no one could find a way to undo it.

            There was the way that he had taken the Mark off Harry, for example. There was the way that Harry had nearly committed suicide. Two ways to reverse his dominion. He didn’t think either would be available to Lisa, but he didn’t know that, not for certain. And so, he also didn’t know for certain that he would have felt her breaking the Mark, or planning to break it. Increase the distance between him and his slaves and add the unknown properties of what might have happened to change the Marks when he had his core changed, and—yes, it was possible.

            Draco held the cold rage at bay until he heard Harry turn around and look at him. “What is it?” Harry asked. If he was surprised to see the letter in Draco’s hand when he hadn’t noticed it before, he didn’t show it.

            Draco laid the letter down and turned to face Harry. Harry recoiled, or tried to, and then lifted his chin and stared back. Draco relaxed. It was good to know that many things could alter between them, but the burn of the defiance would always be there.

            “What happened?” Harry repeated.

            “One of my Marked ones claims to have broken free and is turning the others out of the Valley,” Draco responded. “I am going to England to break her and take back what’s mine. I assume that you’ll be coming along.” He smiled brightly at Harry. “I have that goal now—the one you always accused me of lacking.”

*

            The first thing Harry felt was a jeweled flame of admiration, rage, and regret springing to life in his soul.

            If there’s another way to break the Mark, then I didn’t need to make the oath to him. I didn’t need to maintain the connection. I could have broken free if I’d just been patient, if I’d just waited—

            And then Harry shook his head, hard, and banished the flame. He wasn’t in that position. If he was still Marked, there might have been a point in regretting his decision not to wait. But he was free now, except for the oath, and Malfoy wasn’t bound to him, except by his oath.

            So things weren’t as simple as that, and he couldn’t change the past, and he had to react to Malfoy’s words now, not as he would have them be.

            “I don’t see why you need my company,” he said. “To do something evil, I mean, and that’s what I’ll always think your business is.”

            Malfoy took a swift step towards him. He was unsheathed now, his eyes shining with wild colors, his magic beating around him in a bright, swift pulse that Harry could see without much squinting. His hand slammed into the wall beside Harry.

            “We have the oath,” he said. “And I have already thought of at least two ways that Lisa could have broken the Mark.”

            “Oh?” Harry asked, uninterested. Or he told himself he was, at least. He didn’t know if he could be, with his own magic responding to Malfoy’s, stirring in him and spreading wings that invaded his limbs.

            “Yes,” Malfoy said. “By sacrificing all her magic, as you did, without someone to rescue her, as I did you.” His eyes swept up and down Harry, and a small smile curved his mouth. “But something kept her from dying, if that’s the case. Wouldn’t you like to know what that thing is? It might be useful, in case you ever want to end the connection between us and stop creating magic.”

            Bastard. Harry gritted his teeth. “What’s the second way?”

            “By splitting her soul,” Malfoy said softly. “By creating a Horcrux. And I think that you have some sort of moral objection to wizards running about and doing that, if I remember correctly.”

            Harry’s breathing sped up. His magic reached out, spinning patterns of color that connected with and brushed through and braided to Malfoy’s. When he tried to take a step back, a powerful yank forced him to stand where he was.

            Malfoy could be wrong. He could be lying. But the magic that danced around him didn’t lie, and neither did the light of their joining that filled the room, brilliant like the colors of sunset.

            And neither did the oath, biting gently into Harry’s collarbone.

            He shrugged a bit. “Looks like I’m going with you.”

            Malfoy smiled, and dipped for a kiss.

            And only laughed when Harry twisted his head to the side and bit, instead.

            Harry closed his eyes, listening to his thrumming heart, his thrumming blood, his thrumming magic, and bit down more savagely on Malfoy’s throat, leaving a mark of his own as Malfoy had once offered to let him do. True, it wasn’t against Malfoy’s will, which had been the attraction of that particular offer before, but that was more Malfoy’s kink and not Harry’s.

            I reckon I am going with him, after all.

            To the end, whatever it is.

            The End.

*

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