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The Long Defeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30612 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 7
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 Fourteen—Chains of Illusion
            “Harry. You need to wake up now.”
            Harry started up. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the training room; he wondered how he had. Then he remembered going there after lunch for a bit of privacy, and stretching out on the couch that he had conjured yesterday as a barrier—the only one not destroyed by a Blasting Curse—because it looked so comfortable…
            But Draco was bending over him and shaking his shoulder frantically, and the couch was no longer comfortable.
            “What is it?” Harry asked, reaching for his wand. “Has someone from Gringotts come?”
            “Not as bad as that,” Draco said, although a faint grimness to his mouth didn’t fade despite what he was saying. “But a reporter.”
            “I’m not talking to Rita Skeeter,” Harry said, putting down his wand again and folding his arms. “I don’t care what the consequences are.”
            “This isn’t Skeeter,” said Draco. “Some woman named Roberta Appleby?” His voice rose on the last word, and Harry only looked at him and shook his head wordlessly. He didn’t recognize the name from all the articles written about him and his reaction to the slavery, but on the other hand, he had stopped reading those articles towards the end. They were too depressing, what with being firmly on the side of “maintaining the wizarding economy”—which meant enslaving him.
            “I don’t know her,” Harry said. “What exactly does she want?” He knew there were wizards who would probably work for Gringotts as spies, if they suspected the Malfoys weren’t humiliating Harry the way they should.
            “To talk to you.” Draco sat down on the couch beside him, watching him carefully. “To see how you’re adjusting to your new lifestyle, as she put it.”
            No doubt, she’s a reporter, Harry thought. Reporters were the only people he knew who talked in that relentlessly softened style, with endless euphemisms, while at the same time constantly asking nosy, intrusive questions.
            “What do you think?”
            Harry stared at him. “What do you think? You’re the ones who would have to let her through the wards, after all.”
            “But this is ultimately your decision.” Draco took his hand and held it, even when Harry gave an automatic tug backwards with his arm, mostly just to see what Draco would do. “You have to know that. You do know it, don’t you?” His eyes were steady on Harry’s face. “We’re the ones who have to pretend to be in charge of you, but the only people we have to fool are goblins. You don’t have to grant some reporter the right to pick at you.”
            Harry stared off to the side. Once again, it felt strange to make a decision, the way it had when Draco was asking him if he wanted to change his rooms.
            And that decided Harry. He’d had enough of flinching and cowering. He sat up and nodded. “We’ll do it. But I want to make sure that she gets such a story that we’ll send her away instead of making her come back.”
            Draco blinked. “How can we do that? The more of a story we give her, the more the other reporters are going to think that they should have the right to come around and ask you.”
            “We’re going to have to frighten her,” said Harry. “And that means playing up the side of the relationship that you and I pretended to have in front of the goblins.”
            Draco flushed a little. “That might excite her. I don’t see how it would frighten her.”
            Harry grimaced. He didn’t like the charade that had sprung to mind, honestly. But if it would save him from having to play the wanton slave in the future, then he was willing to go through it. “This is what we’ll do…”
*
            “And this is Harry Potter.”
            It wasn’t as easy to maintain the haughty tone as it would have been eighteen months ago. Draco told himself that didn’t matter. What did was that he could walk through the corridors and down the stairs of the Manor with Harry crawling behind him, and the illusory chain stretched between them would look natural.
            Draco stood there while Appleby stared and stared. He disliked her more with each moment that passed. He would have liked to lash out and smash some of the stones in the walls, even knowing how much his ancestors had labored to construct this Manor.
            That had a lot to do with having Harry on his knees instead of Appleby being here, though. So Draco stood and let her look her fill on Harry’s bowed head and panting tongue, and then he gave what would look a tug on the chain. “Harry. Come here.”
            Harry crawled over to him. Draco patted his lap as he sat on the last step, and Harry scrambled up and into it. He somehow made even that look natural, although Draco suddenly had more warmth and weight pressed close to him than he’d anticipated, and tickling hair in his face.
            He would probably ruin the game altogether if he sneezed. He made sure to lift his head and get his nose out of the way, and to gaze at Appleby in a superior fashion over the top of Harry’s head. Harry leaned more heavily against Draco’s chest, and Draco felt a sensation of pleasure squirm through all the disgust. Despite everything, he was always going to like touching Harry. It was part of the way he was made.
            “A few weeks ago,” Appleby whispered, groping for her quill without taking her eyes off Harry, “he was as defiant as anything. Anyone could see that. He didn’t want to become a slave to the goblins even though he was doing it.” Draco held back the sarcastic remark he could have made, and simply waited. “Now he acts like—he likes it.” The last words nearly vanished in the way her quill began to dance over the parchment. “What happened?”
            “It’s not what happened,” Draco said. Harry had told him to substitute in his own words if Draco thought of better ones, but for this purpose, Draco thought the ones Harry had dreamed up were sufficient. “It’s what we did to him.”
            Appleby’s hand stopped moving, and she stared at him.
            “Oh, please,” said Draco, and his hand tightened viciously in Harry’s hair. Harry showed no sign that it hurt, instead just sighing and cuddling closer. “Did you think I would pass up the chance to tame my former rival and make him submit? I’m paying him back for constant humiliations in the classroom and on the Quidditch field. The Great Harry Potter got all sorts of special treatment at school. I’m teaching him that not everyone thinks he’s special.”
            Appleby shuffled and finally sat down on the floor, since Draco was meeting her in the corridor at the bottom of the staircase where there were no chairs. “I never did think about it,” she whispered, as if that admission made her contemptible. “But—don’t you feel sorry for him? Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”
            Why does that matter, when I’ve already given her an answer she should believe?
            But Draco knew the answer, as distasteful as he found it. This was what the reporters called “human interest,” and which Draco thought of as another name for gossip. Plumb deeper and deeper, and find all the bleeding wounds, all the things that made people flinch, until they could take the weeping victim or the complaining soul almost tenderly apart.
            “No,” said Draco. “He hurt me. He was under my mercy and control. My parents leave him more and more up to me, you know. And they were content to let me break and rebuild him. He still serves them, that way.”
            Appleby trembled a little. Draco resisted sneering because he had foreseen that he might want to. He looked down at Harry in his lap, instead. He was talking about conquering this man—as if he could—and Appleby reacted with a fascination that was almost sexual. It was there in her wide eyes, her shaking handwriting, and the way she spoke with a slurred voice a moment later.
            “B-but…you didn’t do anything special to break him? I know that you were renowned as a torturer for the Dark Lord…”
            For bringing that up, you deserve anything I can give you. Draco touched Harry’s hair again and channeled all the rage and frustration that came from watching Harry crawl on his knees into a lean forwards and a wink at the unwilling Appleby, who looked fascinated again anyway.
            “It’s not torture that I used on him,” he said. “It’s kindness.”
            Harry stiffened against him for a second, and Draco heard the hitch in his breath. This was the part that came closest to the truth, and the part that would be hardest for Harry to hear, even though he was the one who had come up with the plan. Draco merely raised his eyebrows and went on stroking Harry’s head and neck, waiting for him to relax again.
            They didn’t have to worry, though. It was doubtful that Appleby had eyes for anything except Draco.
            “But what does that mean?” she asked, once again whispering, as if Rita Skeeter would walk in any second and take over the interview from her. “He’s known kindness in his life. He was one of the most compassionate wizards in the world, just a few weeks ago. He’s the one who heroically became the sacrifice for all of us, so that the goblins wouldn’t take everything away from wizards…”
            Draco cradled Harry against his chest, unable to respond until he knew that he wouldn’t draw his wand and curse her.
            Now they care? And they think that any kindness Harry experiences is just the kindness he feels?
            Draco dispelled his rage by thinking about the fact that at least this biased view of Harry meant he and Harry’s friends—and maybe Lucius and Narcissa—were the only ones who knew the real Harry. Harry must never have revealed to anyone else how deeply a little simple kindness and a few presents could affect him.
            What Draco knew, he would protect. But the strongest lie was blended with some truth, which was why Harry had come up with this tactic in the first place.
            “He has known little kindness in the midst of war,” he said, and Appleby flinched at the way he hissed at her. Good. Maybe Draco could make her think about some of her choices, or reconsider what she would have written about.
            “I didn’t have much to do.” Draco stroked the back of Harry’s neck. There was utter stillness beneath his hands now, as if Harry was waiting to see what would happen. At least he kept his face pressed into Draco’s neck, which meant he didn’t have to deal with any of the stupidity that he would if he was looking at Appleby. “All I had to do was speak gently to him, and prove that he wasn’t going to be put out of the house or locked up in chains in the garden, without shelter. Food and having a place of his own did the rest.”
            “You mean that he’s not locked in the cellars?” Appleby tilted her parchment as though she was reading something written down on it. “I thought that someone said he was.”
            For a second, Draco worried that they had said that to the goblins, and he wasn’t remembering to match up their stories. But he sat further up on the stairs than Appleby’s position on the floor, and he could see the parchment. It was blank.
            She’s trying to make trouble. Or trying to make her story more interesting.
            The difference didn’t much matter to Draco. With hatred still boiling in the bottom of his stomach, he was nonetheless able to lower his voice and speak softly. “You’re mistaken. Or someone wanted you to become interested in writing the story by making up dramatic details. Of course we didn’t do that. We would never have gained the confidence of a willing slave if we had. And we wanted him very willing.”
            Once again Appleby seemed poised between leaning in and flinching away. “About that,” she said. “I thought—I heard—”
            She paused again. Draco refused to make it easier for her. He held Harry and stroked him, and Appleby finally stumbled into the words. “I heard that he was your lover.”
            “Can you use that word for the relations between a slave and its owner?” Draco shook his head. “That’s not the way I would describe it.”
            Appleby didn’t notice the shiver of tension that disturbed Harry’s body, but Draco did, and bent down and hissed into his ear. He took care to make it sound like generic shushing noises, but he did manage to say, “Just a moment.”
            Harry considered, and then relaxed back against him. Draco choked on his own breathless realization of how much trust that took, but Appleby was rattling on again, and he couldn’t concentrate on what it meant for long.
            “Then it’s true that you made him sleep with you?” Appleby licked her lips. From the expression on her face, she would ask him for a description of the bed where he fucked Harry next.
            “I didn’t make him do anything,” Draco said, and shook his head at her gape. “Haven’t you been listening to me? That would be against the whole system of what I’m doing here.” Harry twitched again at the word “system,” and Draco touched his cheek. The only good thing about this charade, other than it maybe making other reporters leave them alone for a while, was that he could touch Harry in comfort and have it be mistaken as something else entirely. “I made him want it. You could put it that way.”
            Harry said nothing, but Draco saw a trickle of blood on his cheek a second later. Harry must have bitten through his lip, or maybe his tongue. Draco cupped his hand over it, silently cleaning it away before Appleby could see it.
            “Yes, yes, I see,” said Appleby. “But I just—forgive me, but reports about you after the war said that you weren’t that formidable.”
            Draco sneered at her. “And why would I want to reveal myself in detail to anyone who hates me?”
            Appleby nodded and began to write again. Draco waited, but she didn’t ask another question for more than two minutes, her head still bowed. He decided that the interview had lasted long enough, and shifted under Harry. Harry promptly slid out of his lap and down onto the floor, crouching at the end of the length of fake chain again.
            Appleby eyed him for a second, then looked at Draco in a timid manner that he didn’t recognize until she asked, “One photograph?”
            No. Never. Not of Harry when he looks like that.
            Somehow, Draco managed to turn the fury into a small smile and a voice of whip-like scorn that made Appleby’s hand drop numbly back to her side. “I’m afraid that I don’t share pictures of my pets.”
            “Oh.” Appleby stood this time and scrambled away from Harry as if she was afraid of what Draco would do if he saw her knee touching him. “I understand. I—yes. I’ll go now.”
            “Do that,” said Draco. “And tell anyone else who wants to see for themselves how Harry Potter is treated that I’ll not accept someone just walking up to the doors again. I wanted the public to understand what has happened here. I have no reason to tolerate nosy questions.”
            Appleby actually bowed and held the bow for a second, before she scurried off. Draco watched her go. He had never actually mastered human-to-animal Transfiguration, but he wished he had. She would make a better rat than human being.
            They remained still until a house-elf named Joz appeared and said in his squeaky voice, “Madam Appleby is being gone, Master Draco.”
            “Thank fuck,” Draco said, and cast the spell that dispelled the illusion-chain, at the same moment as Harry rose smoothly to his feet.
            Harry’s face was blank, and Draco hesitated, then reached out with his magic sensitivity, which he had tried to keep dimmed around Harry since that first painful exposure. He shivered backwards a second later. Harry didn’t feel spiky, the way he had when he was seething silently in the bank, but he was cold. Draco might as well have crushed a chunk of glacier ice over his head.
            “Harry?” he whispered.
            “I appreciate what you did.” Harry said the words in a blank-metal way, not looking at him. “But I need to be alone right now.”
            “I think that’s a bad idea.” Draco rose to his feet, careful to keep his hands out to the sides, not because he wanted so badly to touch Harry, but so that Harry could see them and keep them under observation. Harry snapped his head over to look at them like a bird. That scared Draco more than the way he had spoken had. He said the first thing that came to mind. “Would you like me to take you back to the library?”
            Harry had to come back to being human for a second, if only because Draco knew he’d startled him. “The library?” He turned his head as if he thought that one would be appearing on the wall beside him.
            “The library where you found the magic book that you said calmed your temper,” said Draco. “We could see if the book has anything else to tell you.”
            “I think it only works once.”
            “Why? Did my father tell you that?” It would have to be Lucius, because Draco had never been in the library himself, and didn’t know exactly how it worked.
            Harry squeezed his hands over his face. Draco relaxed a little. He knew Harry was upset, but as long as it wasn’t staring into the distance with that desert gaze, and then running away…
            “No,” said Harry. “He didn’t. I just assumed that the book had given me all the help it could.”
            Draco reached out with one hand, and took his, prying it gently away from Harry’s face. Harry still stood there with his head turned to the side, not looking at Draco. Draco let it happen. He was happy enough to have Harry willingly touch him. “I don’t think that’s true. Even if it is, we might as well go and look, right?”
            I just don’t think you should be alone right now.
            But he also didn’t think it would be wise to say that aloud. Harry held a private little debate in his mind, then said, “All right.”
            Draco guided Harry gently ahead of him, with a hand poised above the middle of his back. Harry bowed his head and walked in silence. Draco didn’t chatter. They would have other things to talk about when they go to the library.
            He trusted me enough to let me do that, and then to still let me near him.
            Draco wondered for a second if Harry would have trusted even his two friends that much, and then dismissed the notion. The important thing was that Harry had done it, not whether he trusted someone else more.
            That was what Draco wanted.
*
Victoria: Thank you!
BAFan: Ron doesn’t think that Harry should be making friends with Draco. Compromise is okay, but he saw something in Harry’s face that went beyond that.
And Hermione thinks that Harry having house-elves serving him at all without compensation is mistreatment. It’s not that she thinks he’d beat them.
delia cerrano: Yes. Although this deception, even though it was his idea, has upset him.
SP777: I don’t know about a balcony. We’ll see.
Jester: Thank you!
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The Long Defeat