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Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28254 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
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Chapter Fourteen--In a Meeting

            "Malfoy?"

            "No need to sound so surprised, Potter," Draco drawled, and made sure that when he looked up from the parchments in front of him, his notes on the latest experimental lust potion, he kept the motion of his head properly slow and uninterested. "I assume Weasley did tell you I would meet you."

            "He said you were waiting."

            One glance at Potter, and Draco felt his own estimation of himself climb a few more notches. The potion had managed to disguise even Potter's swagger in the half-stumbling gait that Campion preferred. It was Campion Fipps, to all appearances, who took the seat across Draco's kitchen table from him, though perhaps Campion could not have managed the searching look in his own amber-brown eyes.

            Draco gathered his notes, lining up the edges so neatly and precisely that he made Weasley snort. Well, Weasley could. He and Draco were in charity on this, as on many other things, and he needed no scolding to make him understand his place in the plans.

            Potter was a different matter.

            Draco watched the way he leaned his elbows on the table and then leaned in, his face intense. Yes, Potter under the disguise, but a Potter who Draco hoped the cells had chastened. He laid his fingers together and ignored the insult implied by the word "waiting," because if he was waiting for anything, it was for Potter to prove he wasn't an arsehole.

            Potter took a few minutes to study Draco as if waiting for reassurance that he wasn't, then sighed and ducked his head. "Thank you for rescuing me," he said, with measured pauses in the back of his voice that Campion had never mastered. "And thank you for warning me about the Dark Arts. Thank you for that bloody potion, even. I would have tried them on Schroeder if not for it, and then that would have ruined things even more than they have been ruined."

            "Nothing is ruined that a Potions master is willing to retrieve." Draco leaned nearer. "Did you realize it merely kept you from using such spells as the Retrovoyance curse on me, not on others?"

            Potter paused, a muscle ticking near the corner of his jaw. Draco estimated the distance between them and shook his wand into his hand under cover of the table. If he had to get out of the way quickly, then he could do that.

            "No," was all Potter said, and his hands spread out on the tabletop, not even shaving flakes of wood from it with his nails. "I didn't know that."

            Draco jerked his head a little. "Do you plan to change your behavior now that you do?"

*

            I planned to change it even before then, Malfoy, you prick.

            But Malfoy, of course, would have no reason to think that.

            Harry leaned back and puffed out a long breath, so long he thought it took most of the anger with it. And what was the anger, really? So Malfoy had used a potion on him that worked a certain way, and Harry had assumed, without asking, that it worked another way. The potion had still acted as a chain on him at the moment when he needed a chain most, and for that, he couldn't be angry. He smoothed his hands up and down the tabletop before he answered.

            "Yes. I have to. I was thinking about that in prison. You were right. I was acting unstable, and that put the investigation in danger, and that puts the children in danger. You and Ron could have continued it, but it would be helpful if I wasn't constantly crashing around and getting in trouble, as well as attracting Schroeder's attention." He raised his eyes to Malfoy's. "Can you still work with me? Or do you need to use another potion to ensure you can trust me?"

            A flicker like wind in a field traveled across Malfoy's face. He turned away before Harry could recognize it and rose, setting the tea-things to dancing.

            Harry recognized delaying behavior when he saw it. He leaned back with his arms still casually resting on the table, and his eyes anything-but-casually interpreting Malfoy. The turned back, the half-hunched shoulders that straightened as he watched, the swinging hair that swung more fiercely around his face as Malfoy turned back to him.

            He knew half of what Malfoy would say before he said it. Things like that were what made him a good Auror. The half-training, half-experience that flickered into being, as fast as the expression that Malfoy had changed, perhaps to keep Harry from fully seeing it.

            Things like that, and not the Dark Arts.

            Harry bowed his head before the lash of guilt, but kept his eyes on Malfoy. He was what mattered in a situation like this. Not Harry, not the stupid things Harry might say or do. Malfoy was the one who had to make the decision, and the one who had the right to make it. He had got Harry out of the Ministry, and in a way that Harry thought Schroeder wouldn't be able to figure out even if he suddenly discovered that "Harry" was Campion. He was the leader here.

            Harry had never been happy following orders, but he could do it. After a lifetime of so much shit and fighting and hunting and coming back from the dead, there were plenty of things he could do even if he hated them. Someone only had to prove it was worth his while, and Malfoy had.

            "That you would let me use a potion on you," Malfoy said, sitting back down again and staring at and through Harry as the water began to boil behind him, "is a change." His head turned in Ron's direction.

            "No, Ron didn't put me up to this," Harry answered. "You can thank my delayed common sense. Do you want to?"

*

            No, I do not wish to thank your common sense, Draco thought, but that was not what Potter meant, and he would be more childish than he wished to be, even to Potter, if he responded like that.

            He closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair for a moment. Then he sighed and opened his eyes again, dropping his hand from his hair, feeling a lash of anger that he had forgotten enough about Potter to display a gesture such as that. "I wish to use one more," he said. "You would not accept it."

            Potter remained still, and that was another difference between him and Campion. Campion had to tap his fingers or his feet, grind his teeth, or whistle under his breath, even when brewing. Draco had never used him on potions that required utter stillness and alertness from the practitioner for that reason. "What is it? Tell me."

            "A potion that would let me read your impulses, and connect me to the deeper parts of your mind," Draco answered. It did more than that, but he could not explain the Potions theory in small words even if he wanted to. He had tried more than once with his assistants, versed in more theory than Potter would be if he lived to two hundred. "It would warn me when you were about to do something stupid, or when you thought about charging in."

            Potter bowed his head slightly, as though someone was framing his shoulders with an iron yoke. Otherwise, his expression didn't change. "All right."

            "Harry!" Weasley stormed, breaking out of his corner and swooping down on Potter. Potter didn't flinch or turn his gaze from Draco. Draco wondered if he himself was that dangerous, or Weasley simply that trusted. "When the Healers wanted to use a potion like that last year, you refused."

            "Yes," Potter agreed, still not turning away, not turning a hair. "They told me that I was too stupid to live and that they needed the potion because they thought I might get out of bed in the middle of the night and fall on the floor. Malfoy's already proved to me that I was too stupid to live. If he wants to use the potion, I'm agreeable." He leaned back in the chair, and his eyes turned opaque. "Two things."

            Of course, here are the objections, Draco thought, and inclined his head. "Yes?"

            "I think that potion has ginseng as a component, and I'm allergic to ginseng," Potter said. "You might want to substitute something else, if you can, or else use a stronger compulsion potion. I don't know which would be the better choice."

            Draco narrowed his eyes. But Potter knew that ginseng was a component of mind-reading potions, and that they were a variety of compulsion potions. Perhaps he would have to change his mind on the state of Potter's Potions theory knowledge. "I can substitute something else for the ginseng."

            Potter nodded to him. "Good. The other thing is that you give me back my own appearance, if you can. Retaining this one will make our next few actions dangerous, if others think Campion is in company with you and Ron."

            Draco took pleasure in drawing out a small vial of clear, salty potion from his pocket and setting it down in the middle of the table. "Done."

            Weasley blinked and moved away from the table as if this example of Draco's preparedness was simply too much for him. Potter reached out without changing expression and picked up the vial, uncorking it. "No ginseng in this?" he asked, his eyes meeting Draco's.

            "You take any excuse you can find not to trust me, don't you?" Draco said, lowering his voice so the words stayed as private as possible.

            "You didn't know about my allergy to ginseng until just now," Potter said calmly. "No reason to think you might have anticipated it." And he tilted his head back and swallowed the potion without a grimace for the taste, which Draco knew to be worse than seawater.

            His features shuddered and bulged, the Campion mask sliding away from them like watered-down paint. Weasley put a hand over his mouth. Draco forced himself to watch--no one would say that he was less capable of beholding the results of one of his potions than a Weasley--and Potter put the empty vial down and nodded to him, looking like himself again.

            "Right. You want to get that potion that's going to let you read my impulses? Or brew it, I reckon, if you have to substitute something else for the ginseng."

            Draco rose slowly to his feet, never looking away from those green eyes. Potter remained still, his face placid, his hands folded behind his head now as he prepared for a long wait.

            "None of this convinces me that you trust me," Draco said.

            "I know," Potter said. "Should we discuss what we're going to do next, Ron and I, while you brew? Or are you able to join in the conversation despite the delicacies of brewing the potion?"

            Draco narrowed his eyes. Still there was no mockery, and he had become preternaturally sensitive to it after the war. There were so many ready to sneer at him for having been a Death Eater, for having been a Slytherin or a Malfoy, that he learned to read the shadows of sneers before they appeared.

            "Fine," he said abruptly. "You and Weasley stay here and talk about ways to overthrow my evil empire, and I'll brew." He turned towards his lab, listening for a snicker behind him.

            There was nothing, and he shut the door with an echoing click, then spent five minutes in deep breathing exercises before he could go and search his supply cupboard for a suitable substitute.

            He had not thought that Potter's surrender to him would rattle him as badly as Potter's attempts to resist.

*

            "I know what you're doing," Ron said to him, in such a low voice Harry thought he felt the buzz in his bones more than heard it.

            "Do you?" Harry leaned back and rubbed the nape of his neck with one hand. His hand ached. He snorted and flexed out his fingers, listening to the way the tendons bent. He would have to be careful that his tension didn't keep him from resting or cramp up his hands. He didn't want to try and react quickly with hands curled into claws when he wanted to draw his wand. "More than I do."

            Ron hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Then you didn't mean what you said, about wanting Malfoy to use that potion?"

            Harry closed his eyes and rolled his head on the back of the chair, this time trying to relax his neck. "I don't want him to use it, no. But he has to, partially because I don't trust myself and partially because he needs to have a chain like that on me, I think, until some time has passed and I haven't done anything stupid." Which means it might have to be there for a long time.

            "Then this is it," Ron said, and his tone made Harry open an eye and look at him. "You don't want him to do it, so of course you're doing it. You're giving yourself up to him the way you give yourself up to a case."

            "I haven't run off on my own to investigate a mysterious sound yet," Harry said lightly. "So I don't think so."

            Ron shook his head, his face still plunged in gloom. "I've seen this before. Do you remember what happened when we had to ally with that Lestrange cousin to take Rabastan down?"

            "Yes," Harry said, blinking. He thought he had behaved rather well in that instance. He hadn't threatened the Lestrange cousin, although he was also a Dark wizard. He had worked with him and listened to his warnings about what Rabastan was capable of instead of rushing into things. "I didn't kill anybody. I didn't get hurt. We captured Rabastan safely. What more should I have done?" he added, a little roughly, because Ron was staring at him and shaking his head, and he really didn't know why.

            "You gave yourself up completely in just this same way," Ron said. "That bastard demanded you surrender your will and not trust your own instincts or anything but what he said, and you did."

            "We had to walk a swaying bridge over that pit of illusions Rabastan had built," Harry said. "Without him to tell us what was real, we would have fallen to our deaths and drowned in two inches of water. Anyway, he'd already done the hard part of scouting out the caves and casting spells that would let him see through the illusions."

            "You didn't hold back," Ron said. "You gave yourself over completely. And you're doing the same thing with Malfoy."

            Harry pulled his hands down into his lap and stared at Ron. "One minute you're chiding me for not trusting enough," he said. "Then you're chiding me for trusting too much. Or do you really think that Malfoy's going to betray us? I know you don't believe that very seriously, or you would never have worked with him even if he did promise to free me."

            "You don't hold back," Ron said. "Not with cases, not when you decide to trust someone like this. Not enough to make yourself safe. You stand or you fall depending on the decisions of someone else or your own instincts."

            Harry shrugged. "That's the kind of person I am, Ron. I walked to my own death on Dumbledore's say-so, and there I had to trust not only him but that Snape's memories were the real thing and he wasn't trying to kill me from beyond the grave or something."

            Ron stepped back, his fingers brushing over his wand. Harry watched his hand. Ron wasn't above chaining him down or Stunning him for his own good, as he had proved more than once, but this time, Harry didn't think he'd deserved it, which meant he would fight.

            "He did get you out of prison," Ron muttered. "And he's proven himself more trustworthy than I thought he could so far. I have to remember that." He mumbled and huffed to an end, and then stood there with a frown, his arms wound together over his stomach as though protecting himself.

            "Remember that," Harry echoed, and turned his attention to the door that hid Malfoy's private lab. He would give Malfoy all the time he needed, and he would drink the potion when it was brought, and he would do as Malfoy asked, within reason. There was a difference between holding back from using Dark Arts or rushing into a situation because Malfoy asked and allowing someone to be injured or killed.

            I do have my own limits. They're just not ones that Ron approves of.

*

            Draco stepped out an hour later with the newly-brewed potion dancing and foaming and smelling of cinnamon in the vial, half-expecting Potter to have departed. Instead, he sat in the same chair and didn't look as though he had grown bored or impatient any more than a stone statue would. Weasley was the one who leaned against the wall, fussing and fuming and glaring at Draco and then away. Draco raised an eyebrow at him and turned back to Potter.

            "This is a rather strong potion," he said. "You might not want to drink it all at once."

            "It's more effective if I wait, then?" Potter stretched out a hand and took the vial Draco gave him. He looked at it with mild curiosity, but no more than that, and then switched his gaze back to Draco. Draco tried not to fume, but it was hard to resist the temptation.

            "No, it's more effective if drunk all at once," he said. "But it kicks."

            "I can deal with a kick," Potter said. But he held off from pouring the potion down his throat. "Should I drink it with something? Food, perhaps, or water? I don't want your labor to have been for nothing."

            Draco sat down and busied himself with crossing his legs and folding his arms for a moment. "I wouldn't have expected you to care about that," he said.

            "When someone goes to the lengths you have to rescue me and make sure I can still do my job, then I care."

            Potter's face was no easier to read now than it had been a moment ago. Draco gave up the attempt and stared into the far corner of the room. "The first moments after downing the potion are disconcerting for both the drinker and the one who finds himself connected to the drinker's mind," he said. "Since we are both sitting down and fully warned, I suggest you begin."

            He saw the bending of Potter's arm from the corner of his eye, and grimaced to himself. He did not understand his own reactions, his wariness that Potter was doing what Draco had wanted, his almost-disappointment, but he would not allow them to rule him. He curled his fingers into the rungs on the back of his chair and hung on.

            The potion arrived as a sigh at first, a trembling motion in his blood that made his sight waver. He turned back to Potter and saw him with his eyes closed, a flush in his cheeks.

            Then the first effects hit.

            Draco's vision reoriented itself as though he had come out of a dark room into brilliant sun. He saw the room in front of him above the horizon, and under it was Potter's own view, a blurry image of Draco's face. Draco held his patience, knowing that the potion only lingered on the surface of the mind, near the senses, for a few moments.

            Then he dived beneath, and he stood amid the tugging, roaring flood of Potter's thoughts, his impulses careening past him.

            Trust. Sit still. Run. Hide. No. Trust. Sit still. Be still. Trust. Drink. Accept--

            Draco reeled, but managed to keep his feet. Potter's still surface was an illusion, he saw clearly now, perhaps meant for his benefit, or for Weasley's. Under that surface, Potter was a quivering ball of--not nerves, perhaps, because that implied more fragility than Draco thought Potter capable of, but impulses constantly tamed and soothed down again. He fought a battle moment by moment with his own instincts and motivations and muscles. He was shatteringly alive, and constrained by a rein of desire to listen to Draco.

            Draco wondered if Potter himself had any notion how thin that rein was.

            Draco swore softly and concentrated in the way he had been taught, forcing himself to see and sense patterns in Potter's impulses and modify them into a chant, like hearing a distant piece of music. He would hear it as long as the link that the potion created subsisted between them, but that in and of itself was not a problem. He had lived before with harder things, including the incompetent mutterings of his assistants. Bend one's will to a problem, and the problem must buckle.

            He could feel Potter moving opposite him, not in opposition but in a dance, and bending his own will to the force. Little by little, the worst quivering subsided, and Draco could open his eyes without fearing that he would start from his own chair and move around the room simply to ease the restlessness.

            Potter remained still, hands draped over the arms of his chair, staring at him.

            Draco met his eyes and spoke the first words that came to mind, heedless of appropriateness and alliance and Weasley's presence in the room. "How do you live with that flood?"

            Potter smiled at him and shook his head. "I've been like that since the war," he said simply. "Maybe earlier. It's sort of hard to remember the way you thought when you were a kid, as opposed to what you did, you know? It's just the way I am. Live with a storm most of your life, and you get so used to it that you don't remember what it's like when it's not raining."

            Draco shook his head. He wanted to say that it was probably the result of the Dark magic Potter had been using, or perhaps the mad risks he had taken both in his Auror work and when trying to save the world from the Dark Lord--

            Except that he didn't know that, and Potter's words indicated a deep level of comfort Draco would waste his breath trying to change. He had the music of Potter's impulses playing in the background now, and would notice when one wave rose higher than the rest or sang an unusual note. For the moment, he would work with the man Potter was, not the one he would have liked him to be.

            And since when do I care about that?

            Draco shouldered the thought aside and nodded to Weasley, to draw him towards the table and into the conference. "Where do you intend to begin with this investigation? And how soon do you think we can tie it back to Moonstone and Schroeder?"

            Weasley stepped up and began answering calmly, clearly, concisely. Potter watched with something that was not amusement, his hands twined together on the table.

            Draco listened to Weasley and gave it half his attention. His other half was on the storm, and the way that Potter could hold himself so still when his body and mind were clamoring for action, and trying to understand the contrast.

*

            polka dot: He is, but he's trying to repay the debt.

            AlterEquis: Good! I'm glad you're caught up.

            If they can destroy Schroeder as thoroughly as Draco wants to destroy him, establishing Harry again won't be hard.

            SP777: You can see some of them in Chapter 13, with the way he believes what he wants to, though certainly not all of them.
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