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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 Sixteen—A Morning and an Evening

            “You’re sure this will work?” Harry looked doubtfully at the parchment that Malfoy had given him. It had all the ingredients listed—not the ingredients for the potion that had incapacitated Sandborn, Malfoy assured him, but another one that looked much the same but was harmless. Harry had to take his word for it, since he didn’t even know much about the potion that had actually been used.

            Then again, he was taking Malfoy’s word for rather a lot already, and would have to continue to do so as long as he wanted Malfoy to help him.

            “Positive.” Malfoy lounged back against his chair, still sipping his wine, and smiled when Harry glared at him. “Look at it this way, Potter. Competent Potions master or not, do you think Click knows the handwriting of all the possible Potions masters and apprentices and assistants at all the apothecaries you could have visited?”

            Harry shook his head reluctantly. He wasn’t comfortable thinking that an enemy had less than total competence; it kept you from being nastily surprised when they turned around and used a curse you hadn’t known they could use.

            But at the same time, he knew something about Ministry Potions masters and the way they worked. It was highly doubtful that Click would get more than a few hours a week to pursue her own interests, which would include shopping for ingredients. Most of her supplies would come from the extensive stores of the Ministry itself. She couldn’t afford the time to check up on the handwriting and that Harry had actually visited the shops she told him to visit. If she could have, she would have done it herself.

            “All right,” he said, and tucked the parchment away. He looked at Malfoy and then away. He didn’t want to chance a look that was too long and find himself staring in helpless fascination, which it really felt like he might do if he wasn’t careful. “What are you going to do next?”

            “There’s a lead I have concerning the people who would have testified against us at our trials that never happened.” Malfoy sipped the last of his wine and put down his glass with a regretful caress of his fingers. Harry tried to conceal how much he would have liked to be touched the same way. “I shouldn’t wait too long for it.”

            Harry cocked his head “But most of those people have some power and influence, and there’s a lot. Do you really think that you can bribe all of them?”

            Malfoy smiled at him. “Did I say that I was going to bribe all of them?”

            “Some of them, then.” Harry shifted restlessly. He wanted to leave Locus Lucis and he didn’t want to. “I don’t like to think of you spending the money I got back for you on something like that, even if you do only bribe fifty percent of them, or a quarter, or whatever.”

            Malfoy’s smile was gone so fast that it left an afterimage, and he leaned forwards. At the last moment, he seemed to have decided against pinning Harry’s hand to the table again, but the way his own hand shook with rage, Harry was sure that he’d considered it.

            “Listen to me,” he said. “That money is mine now. I do not consider myself in bondage to the outworn traditions that would say I must save it all for my heir, and I do not need to spend much of it on my day-to-day needs. Who do I have an obligation to, that I must spend it as you would dictate?”

            “I thought you felt an obligation to me,” Harry said, and tried to keep himself from showing what that deepened voice did to him. God, was he doomed to be affected by Malfoy’s looks and tone no matter what they were at the moment? “At least, that was what you told me when we started this thing.”

            Malfoy shook his head. “There is a difference between a debt owed and the person it’s owed to dictating that you should fulfill the debt a certain way.”

            Harry had to roll his eyes. “I thought that was the way it worked, at least with life-debts.” He had learned more about them than he wanted to when Sandborn had him give a speech on them and how nearly everyone alive in Britain at the time owed a life-debt to someone or other.

            “It may,” Malfoy said, “when the person who owes the debt isn’t a Slytherin. But I am, and this is the way that I choose to answer.”

            Harry sighed. “Fine. How are you going to do it, then?”

            “I don’t think you need to know.” Malfoy leaned back and surveyed Harry from that distance as though it made a huge difference to his angle of vision, then stood with a small sniff. “You would only interfere and try to determine that it was too much for us.”

            “Given our track record when I don’t know your plans, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Harry deliberately remained sitting as Malfoy stood, staring him in the eye. Such elementary intimidation tactics had long since ceased to work on him. Being Sandborn’s slave did have its advantages.

            “That one failed only because of information that I should have asked for and didn’t,” Malfoy replied promptly. “This time, I promise, there is no information you could offer me that would make a difference in the outcome. This is my world, Potter. The people that I was raised among and trained to handle. You would only slow me down.”

            “Even with all I’ve learned in the last few years?” Harry muttered. He couldn’t help it; he felt a bit defiant.

            Malfoy gave him another of those smiles that made Harry feel as if he stood in the middle of spring. “Yes,” he said. “Even with that. Your acting abilities have been damaged by the revelations that surround you now, by the prospect of freedom. I should have suspected that and created countermeasures for it, but I did not. Another thing I should have foreseen and will now have to live with.”

            “So sorry that I’m not the perfect automaton that you thought you would be getting when you proposed this plan,” Harry muttered. He was unsettled and seeking to lash out, he knew. Taunting Malfoy wouldn’t accomplish anything.

            Except that it made Malfoy lean forwards, one hand resting hard on his, and stare into his eyes for endless moments, until Harry knew his blush was devouring his face.

            “You can bluff Sandborn still,” Malfoy said softly, “or you would have more to report to me than his going mad from a wrongly judged potion. That is all I need you to do for the present.” His fingers moved gently, as if exploring the soft skin between Harry’s own fingers. “In the future…I think your fire and your lack of perfect acting skills will be more valuable.”

            “For giving testimony that could take Sandborn down?” That was the only use Harry could imagine for them at he moment, and it was so hard to take his eyes from Malfoy’s.

            “Because you are waking up,” Malfoy said. “Because you will become the man you should have been if not for this contract, and that means my debt to you will be fulfilled.”

            Harry nodded. Of course it returned to the debt, he told himself, swallowing hard. It all did. Malfoy wouldn’t have begun this in the first place simply to help him.

            Malfoy bent closer, and his lips were bloody distracting. Harry would have turned his head to the side, but once again he couldn’t look away from those eyes.

            “And because I don’t intend our connection to end with the debt,” Malfoy whispered, “and your fire and honesty will be valuable then, as well.”

            Harry froze, every motion of those long pale fingers on his seared across his brain like a flash of lightning.

            Then Malfoy pulled back, and gave him a smile that could mean anything, and turned away and walked out of the restaurant with a jaunty stride. Harry stayed long enough to run a hand over his jaw and think a bit more about what Malfoy had said before he gave up on reasoning through the turns of that labyrinth.

            He’s on my side, at least enough to forgive me for failing to inform him of something that could have been important. That’s more than a lot of other Slytherins would have been willing to do.

            Harry glanced at the list that Malfoy had given him once more, and stood up with a nod. He would have to hope that it could fool a Potions master as experienced as Click had seemed to be. And that meant trusting Malfoy a little more than he was inclined to, at least as far as their pretense of flirtation went.

            For the last seven years, you haven’t had to depend on anyone but yourself. Everyone else was only playing the role that came to them naturally, including Sandborn. I think it’s the trust itself that hurts.

            Harry grimaced. Probably true.

            As he ducked out of the restaurant, staggered a little under the surge of the concealed Portkey transporting him, and immediately cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself so that no one inclined to gossip would see him coming out of an entrance to what could be seen as a notorious meeting place for Slytherins and their associates, given all Harry knew about it, he suffered a brief longing, again, to run away. Running away would be easier than facing the pain he would cause his friends when they found out the truth.

            But it wasn’t an option, so he sighed wistfully and applied himself to what was in front of him.

*

            “I don’t think I know another potion that will do what you want that one to do without the same ingredients.”

            Draco stared at Theo for a long moment after that disappointing pronouncement. Then he leaned forwards and flicked a finger sharply against Theo’s right ear.

            “Ow!” Theo jerked back, clapping one hand to the ear as though he assumed Draco was going to try hitting it with a Stinging Curse next. “What is wrong with you? I’m only telling you the truth, that’s all!”

            “I came to you because you were a Potions master,” Draco said, and gave him a patient smile. “The only one I know who doesn’t work for the Ministry and Sandborn—”

            “I work for the Ministry,” Theo protested, but lowered his head protectively and dared around to the side of the table when Draco gave him a frozen stare.

            “You interrupted me,” Draco said haughtily. “I was making a speech with lots of rhetorical flourishes and interesting bits that were connected to my subject, and you interrupted me. You made me lose my train of thought.”

            “It must have been a bloody short train, then,” Pansy said, sweeping into the lab as though she owned it—and she did own half the house where she and Theo lived, Draco had to admit. That wasn’t the point, though. Pansy had interrupted, too, and at this point, he would never get to say what was most important. Pansy gave Theo a kiss and put her hands on his shoulders, smirking at Draco as if to remind him that she had a lover when he didn’t. “Merlin be thanked that you were never in charge of driving the Hogwarts Express.”

            “That job would have been too Muggle for me,” Draco said. “And Muggles are ordinary and boring even if they aren’t inferior. Can you honestly say that I’m either one of those things?” He turned his head to the side so that they could see him in profile and get the best view of him.

            They considered him for a moment, and then Pansy shook her head. “But I bet that sometimes your parents would have preferred a Squib son to what they had in you,” she said. Theo nodded emphatically, then cringed and lifted his hand to his ear when Draco turned to eye it thoughtfully.

            “Of course they would have,” Draco said. “My father liked life to be boring for others, because that made them easier for him to control. They would follow the excitement that he promised. But I don’t have the same ambitions that he planned for me to have, and you know it.” He caught Pansy’s eye.

            She nodded reluctantly. Draco nodded back. One of their first and fiercest quarrels after the war had been about what they were going to do with the money and the property that their parents had left them (and that Potter had ensured they got back after the trials, although they hadn’t known that at the time). Pansy had thought that Draco should carry on the traditions as his father would have, rising to the top in the Ministry political games and marrying someone who was so traditionally pure-blood she would choke if she saw a Muggle. Draco had refused. He was going to be his own person, living a life free of shadows. Draco sometimes thought it was the main reason they had never married.

            Other times, of course, he knew the truth: he would have outshone Pansy in any marriage, and she couldn’t stand that.

            “You’re a Potions master, as I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted,” Draco said haughtily to Theo. “I’m confident that you can come up with another potion to let us implant suggestions in Sandborn’s head that won’t use any of the ingredients that he’s allergic to.”

            “You don’t even know which ingredients those were,” Theo snapped at him, crossing his arms and scowling in a way that made him look unattractive. “I know that you’re used to miracles, because you knew Snape, but I don’t have his skill.”

            Pansy drew in a sharp breath.

            “What did you say?” she asked, and she was looking at Theo as though he had admitted to spilling snake venom on one of her new robes. (He had actually done that once, he’d confessed to Draco, and been so nervous about it that one arch look from Pansy had been enough to make him admit it. He still turned red when Draco asked about the punishment).

            Theo gave a small, unhappy laugh. “You heard me, Pans. I wanted to become a Potions master because of Snape, but I can’t brew as well as he could. That’s just the way it is. He was the kind of bloody genius who comes along once in a generation, if then, and I don’t have that level of learning.”

            “No husband of mine,” Pansy said, “says that.”

            Draco gave a small smile that he knew neither of them would notice and withdrew quietly. He would leave it up to them to have this out, and when they started paying attention to him again, he knew that Pansy would have convinced Theo to make a try at the potion, this time with different ingredients. Since that had been all Draco wanted in the first place, he had no qualms about who achieved it.

            A pop behind him made him turn around, wondering if Pansy had ordered the house-elves to serve tea and then forgotten about it. But it was one of his own elves standing behind him, bowing fast enough to make him dizzy. Draco snapped his fingers so it would straighten up again—his elves were under standing orders not to make such gestures, because they always made Draco dizzy—and murmured, “What is it?”

            “Master Harry Potter is being at Master Malfoy’s wards,” the elf said, flattening its ears to its head as though it assumed it would be punished for mentioning a visitor whose existence might be repulsive to Draco.

            Draco glanced back. Pansy and Theo were good for another fifteen minutes, he judged, and slipped out of the room so that he could use the fireplace in the next one.

            He felt another smile tug at his mouth. Couldn’t stay away from me even one day, could you, Potter?

*

            "Is this about the list of ingredients, Potter? You couldn't manage to do even that much right, could you?"

            Harry said nothing as Malfoy had him escorted by house-elves into some room that was probably studded with precious gems and gold and marble and all the other signs of wealth. Too good to come to the door himself, Harry thought, but even that was a faint reflection of the thoughts going on in his head. He handed his cloak to the elf that reached for it and paced over so that he could look out one of the windows. It was enormous, diamond-shaped panes of glass laid together so that they gave a good view out over a garden of blue flowers.

            "Potter?"

            Malfoy's voice had gone softer, with something that sounded like concern creeping into it. Harry grimaced to himself. He didn't like that Malfoy was seeing him in a moment of weakness, but anyone else would have been worse, and the thought of going home and brooding in his silent house was intolerable. He needed the company.

            "I confronted Callia about the news that she sold to the papers," he said, keeping his head turned away.

            He expected some taunt, some remark about how Callia wasn't worth the sort of anxiety Harry was spending on her, but instead, Malfoy grunted softly and said something to a house-elf. Harry shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the glass in front of him. It wasn't very cool, given the sunlight shining on it, but cooler than his furiously whirling brain.

            "Here."

            Harry started as Malfoy pushed something towards him, and turned with his hand on his wand, ready to shove a misplaced offer of sympathy back in his face. But Malfoy held a glass full of some iced amber drink     , the smell alone almost enough to knock Harry on his arse. He blinked and accepted it. The house-elf must have brought it.

            "Drink," Malfoy said. "That's the operation where you open your mouth and tilt the glass so that the liquid in it goes down your throat, not on my carpet." He eyed Harry expectantly for a moment, then snorted and said, "Perhaps I should show you." He reached out, one confident hand aiming for Harry's wrist and one for his shoulder.

            "No, thank you," Harry said hastily, dodging, and tossed the drink in the direction of his mouth. Some of it missed and soaked his shirt. Malfoy laughed, and Harry glared at him through the sopping mess on his face.

            Then he choked, because the drink only made him want to fall on his arse more when it was inside him. Malfoy pounded him on the back, chuckling.

            "There you go," he said. "Give you something to think about other than the future ex-wife. Or should that be the ex-future wife? I don't usually have cause to refer to things like this, and so I don't know the proper term." He paused, visibly disturbed, then smiled and nodded. "The ex-fiancée. I like that better."

            "You're an arse," Harry muttered, but there was no denying that he felt different than he had a moment ago. It wasn't a good kind of different, he hastily reassured himself, mopping at his face. Then he rolled his eyes--was he a wizard or not?--and cast a Cleaning Charm on himself to get rid of the scotch, or whatever else it was.

            "Yes. But a pretty one." Malfoy leaned on a table nearby that looked too delicate for that kind of leaning, watching him attentively. "Do you need to talk about it?"

            Harry blinked at him. An unexpectedly sensitive question for someone who had so far shown more of a tendency to trick him out of information he wanted to know, or spy on him, instead of simply asking.

            Malfoy met his gaze, not smiling, and Harry shrugged. The openness seemed sincere, and while he could have talked to Ron or Hermione about breaking up with Callia--and would have to--he doubted that he could talk about all the reasons. Malfoy already knew the most likely source of their argument.

            "She wanted to know if the information about me having children made of stone was true," Harry said. "I told her it wasn't, and offered to get tested."

            "Why that?" Malfoy interrupted, thus proving that he wasn't the simple, receptive, listening audience that Harry had imagined. On the other hand, he doubted that those words had ever applied to Malfoy in his life. "You could use the lie to make her back away from you. You're destroying some of Pansy's hard work by saying that."

            "Bugger her hard work," Harry said, and swallowed another gulp of the drink. When he looked up, Malfoy was giving him a slow smile that made his stomach contract.

            "That's good," Malfoy said. "That's good. You need to find a challenge to fling yourself against, or you're working at less than your full potential. You're less than human, as a matter of fact." He went on before Harry could splutter in more than minor outrage. "Anyway, you still haven't explained why you told her it was a lie."

            "I want to get married to someone someday, probably," Harry countered. "And I can't do that if a lie like that is in circulation. At the very least, no one who wanted to marry me could possibly agree to have children with me."

            Malfoy folded his hands beneath his chin and eyed Harry meditatively. Harry glared back, ready to kick him if his next words were anything about being challenged or being less than human.

            "I hadn't realized that you were thinking of the future in such detail," Malfoy said instead. "You gave me the impression that you were still stuck fearing the past, that you would keep the marriage intact if you could because it was less fearsome than change."

            Harry shook his head. "I never wanted to marry Callia. There's a reason it was one of the last and greatest prices that Sandborn asked of me."

            "Then why are you so upset that she chose to reject you and your engagement is dead?" Malfoy asked. His eyes were intent.

            Harry studied the glass in his hands for long moments before answering. He knew that Ron and Hermione would ask the same question, though not with the same spin. And Ginny, and Luna, and the other Aurors in his Department, and...

            And so many people. But for some reason, it felt like it was the most important to have the right answer for Malfoy, not any of those other people.

            Harry grimaced. Malfoy is becoming too important to you. You have to make sure that that doesn't affect your future plans.

            "Harry?"

            The shock of his first name on Malfoy's lips was like the first plunge into cold water. Harry met his eyes and answered far more honestly than he had meant to.

            "Because I half-fear that no one else will ever want to marry me again. Like I've lost my chance with Callia, my last chance, and I won't know that for certain until it's too late and I'm dying old and alone."

            Malfoy reached up and wrapped his fingers around Harry's wrist. "Poor Potter, loud and overdramatic as always," he murmured, eyes shining. "I can tell you this one thing, I don't think you'll ever be without admirers and suitors."

            Harry snorted incredulously. "Sure."

            "This has nothing to do with your status as Chosen One or wonderful Auror," Malfoy said, and leaned forwards as if seeking his own reflection in Harry's eyes. "It has to do with who you are, and the people who will see that."

            The moment stretched, trembled on the point of snapping...

            And that was it. Harry was tired of the way that Malfoy danced along the border of his life, flirting and laughing and taunting him without suffering from any of it himself. And then he would do something intense, like this, and Harry would have to know that it cost him nothing, that he wasn't touched by it.

            So Harry reached out, and yanked him forwards, and kissed him.

            Let's see the incredible bastard beat that.
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