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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 Eighteen--The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

            Harry opened his eyes slowly the next morning. He felt soft sheets beneath him, a pillow under his head, and couldn't fathom immediately why that was wrong. After all, while his bed in his house was nothing extravagant, he didn't make it uncomfortable on purpose.

            Then he remembered that the feeling of wrongness was more likely to come from the warmth pressing at his back, the arm slung casually over his waist, the hand resting in the middle of his stomach. And the residual stickiness that he could feel clinging to his face, although he'd washed it and used a Cleaning Charm before he went to bed.

            Before they went to bed.

            Harry let his eyes travel slowly around Malfoy's room. It was decorated well enough, he reckoned, but what struck him was what wasn't there. No Malfoy family tapestry on the wall. No portraits of sneering, disapproving ancestors. None of the subtle markers that Harry had identified in the offices of pure-blood Aurors who disliked the new status quo: worn blades, golden cauldrons, glass jars of house-elf make, silk robes. Not objects that were used for anything, unless reminding someone that you considered them inferior over and over again was considered a use.

            "What are you thinking about?" Malfoy's lips moved across the back of his neck, and his hand swooped lower. Harry closed his eyes and thought for a moment that he had never known anyone as energetic in the morning as Malfoy.

            But those led to other thoughts that he didn't want to entertain right now, and Harry moved Malfoy's hand gently aside. "I have a plan," he said.

            Malfoy moved away from his back, and announced when Harry didn't turn to look at him, "This is me cringing in terror."

            Harry rolled over slowly, unsure exactly what he would see when he did. He blinked when he saw that Malfoy was naked; he'd expected pants if nothing else. Malfoy met his eyes and gave him a slow, appreciative smile. Come to that, Harry supposed that he was wearing less than he'd thought. No shirt, no robes, no socks or boots. Only pants and trousers shoved down low enough that Malfoy's cock would have resting right in the crack of his arse--

            Harry pushed away the thought of what might follow that if he let it, and nodded. "I think I know a way that we can get Sandborn out of power without killing him or even controlling his thoughts."

            "That would be remarkable," Malfoy said calmly. "If such a thing was possible."

            "You think you know everything about me," Harry marveled. "You think you know exactly what will stop Sandborn, although you've failed once before, and if you had asked me in more detail about using a potion on him, I could have told you exactly what you needed to know. What's remarkable is the extent of your arrogance."

            Malfoy blinked as if slapped, and then he smiled. "I did promise myself that I would be the one to call up your fire," he murmured. "Fine. What is this famous plan?"

            Harry sat up, forcing himself to ignore the way that the sheets slid across his bare skin and the way Malfoy studied him with bright interest. For the first time, he could share his third soul with someone else and not feel that he was betraying the careful facades he had set up, the lies he needed to tell. Malfoy wouldn't betray his third soul to anyone else. He had said he wouldn't, and Harry trusted him.

            And Harry knew certain things about him, too, now, such as the location of his bedroom and the strength of his wards. He was fairly confident that he could Apparate straight through them if he wanted to.

            Which he would only want to, really, if Malfoy betrayed him.

            "Sandborn knows that he can't hold power as easily as he does without me," Harry said. "I couldn't do anything about that before, because he hadn't done anything that would be cause for me to turn on him."

            Malfoy snorted hard enough to ruffle a few of the blankets.

            Harry rolled his eyes. "I mean, he didn't think it would be enough. I was the one who came to him in the first place and proposed the contract, remember. He didn't force it on me."

            "I wish I'd been there when you did, to convince him not to go along with it," Malfoy muttered, but reluctantly gestured for him to continue. "What's different now from three days ago?"

            "Now, I have actions that I can use as excuses for doubting him," Harry said. "The way he acted under the potion. Rettern's investigation. His increasingly erratic actions in regard to me, such as the way he insists on meeting with me alone and not at the prearranged times we used in the past."

            "He knows that you know about his potion allergies," Malfoy pointed out. "Your first excuse won't work."

            Harry smiled tightly. "During his first episode with allergies to a potion, he became paranoid around others, but he didn't attack me seriously. Not me. He showed that he still trusted me to protect his back from his unseen enemies. Now, he's made a serious effort to kill me. Even if I attribute it to the allergies, I can say to his face that something must have changed in his mind, something about me. He can consider me someone he needs to strangle, even if only for a moment. If I had been a little less quick, he might have succeeded."

            "I'm sorry."

            Harry blinked as Malfoy reached out and took his hand, running his fingers in neat circles over Harry's knuckles. That sparked more images he didn't need, and he rolled his eyes at himself. God, you have sex for the first time in six years and you act like it's some special occasion. "For what?"

            "For putting you in danger," Malfoy murmured.

            "You couldn't have anticipated that, not without knowing about the allergies."

            "But it was still a consequence of my actions." Malfoy tilted his head, making his hair fall about him in a curtain that looked like icewater, it was so pale. "If I'm going to claim honesty for myself, and honesty with my lovers, then I should be able to live with acknowledging that I caused this, whether I meant to or not."

            Harry blinked. "I don't know whether you're more mature than I thought you were, or less," he said at last, because he thought he might explode if he didn't share his thoughts on this with Malfoy. "That's one of the weirdest things I've ever heard."

            "Probably because you've spent the last seven years running from the natural consequences of your actions," Malfoy said, with such extreme sweetness that it took Harry a minute to realize what he'd said.

            When he realized it, his third soul subsumed the others, and he leaned forwards so that he could sink his wand into the soft skin where Malfoy's ribs ended. "Do you want to repeat that?" he asked gently.

*

            As a matter of fact, Draco did. He wanted to say similar insulting things until Potter forgot the caution and the plans and rolled on top of him so they could continue having sex. They'd tried it with Potter beneath him last night, and Draco was extremely curious to see how it would work out the other way.

            But he also knew that there was more to life than sex, and he had to give Potter the chance to discover for himself how much he would miss Draco now that he'd had a taste of him. Anything else wasn't fair, especially with someone who was probably as close to a virgin as you could get at this age. So Draco smiled and said, "I'd like to, but I think we have more important things to worry about. Do you really intend to declare to Sandborn that you'll oppose him from now on?"

            Potter's hands twitched, and he looked away. Draco permitted that. He had to get hold of his own conflicting impulses, more than likely. Draco rocked back on his heels and let Potter look his fill if he wanted--he was always happy to have his body admired, provided the person doing the admiring was attractive in return--but Potter chose not to this time. Draco shrugged. He thought there'd be other times.

            "No," Potter muttered. "I intend to start hinting around to others that I don't trust him as much as I used to. Look away from him during important meetings. Touch my throat when I can plausibly pretend that I don't see him looking. Start drawing away from him when it comes to my friends."

            Draco nodded. "Ah," he said. "Preparing the ground for the moment when you have to confess the truth to them. It won't come as such a shock if they suspect that you were unhappy before then."

            "Will you leave that?"

            Potter had turned back with his teeth bared, and as they looked strong enough to rip a piece of sensitive flesh off Draco's body, he raised his hands protectively in front of him, nodding. "All right, fine. But I think that'll help. And it's a cleverer plan than I expected from you."

            "Oh," Potter said, looking at him as if the compliment was a hot coal that he had to juggle from hand to hand. "Thanks. I suppose."

            Draco nodded and stood up, sliding out from between the sheets with a delicious little shudder. He enjoyed that sensation, although he only got to feel it when he slept totally naked, and he only did that when he had someone else in bed with him. "So," he said. "Pansy and Theo will suspect what happened, but they won't tell anyone. Do you want me to?"

            "No," Potter said. "Are you mad?"

            "Hmmm." Draco considered him. It would be too bad if Potter decided that this was to be one tumble and no more, precisely because Draco had enjoyed it so much and Potter had seemed to as well. In fact, Potter's pleasure was a large part of what had made the experience richer than usual for Draco. But then again, Potter was the one who to make decisions like this for his own political future. "If you insist."

            Potter rolled his eyes. "I don't want anything like that coming out this early. Sandborn would figure out that my rebellion runs deeper than simple distrust of him, if he knew that, a few hours after Callia rejected me, I went running to you. We're supposed to have a casual flirtation, remember? One that I'm on the brink of rejecting, but intrigued by despite myself? That doesn't fit with a night spent in bed together."

            Draco blinked. "I really should have thought of that myself," he said. "Sorry. I do appear to lose more than a few ounces of cleverness around you."

            Potter rolled his eyes again. "So sad, that my stupidity is catching," he muttered.

            "Did I say that? No." Draco leaned across the bed and kissed him, because he could and he wanted to and he didn't think Potter would object. Potter lifted a loose hand, wavering, and then dropped it back to the sheets. Draco pulled slowly away from him, sighing as the warmth at his lips dissipated. "I mean that you affect me too powerfully, and I don't always know what I'm going to do as a consequence."

            "Oh," Potter said, and Draco could see that that would never have occurred to him. Draco tilted his had and examined him more attentively. Did he not know what he looked like, moved like, sounded like, smelled like?

            Well, no. Probably not. That wasn't part of his appeal even before he started dating Callia. I suspect Sandborn thought he would be more chaotic and harder to handle if it was.

            And he's allowed his public image to influence his private one to a great extent.

            "We have our plan now," Draco said. "What can I do to help?"

            Potter visibly reached out and pulled several disparate aspects of himself together, which Draco had to admit was more than he had thought the man could do when he was half-naked like that. But he'd presumably had to think in more stressful situations, as an Auror. Draco waited, and Potter's eyes, focused on the far wall and the single mirror that hung there, flickered as though many flames were springing to life behind them and being dismissed.

            Then Potter frowned and said, "I don't think I'll need help for several days at least. That's how much time it should take to convince Sandborn that my trust in him is falling apart, and it's not simple coincidence, or results from the loss of Callia. Do whatever else you can, whether it's bribing the people who would have testified at your trials--" he gave Draco a small, mean smile that said he knew Draco wouldn't be bribing all of them and didn't care "--or adding more dimensions to the plan. Keep them concealed from Sandborn as much as you can. I need him focused on me, not distracted."

            "We would have more luck in making him fall apart if we strike from multiple directions," Draco pointed out mildly. "If that's what we want to make him do."

            "It's not what we want to make him do," Potter said. Draco had opened his mouth to argue when Potter continued. "We want him to fall apart in a specific way, not in the sense of scattering his pieces all over the place. And that means that we need to keep him focused on the one distraction. The time to bring you in is going to be when we can be reasonably sure that he would start to recover otherwise."

            "What you suggest sounds more ruthless to me than killing him," Draco said. He wouldn't let Potter forget that he was essentially all right with murder, since he had accused Draco of being all right with it earlier.

            "It would," Potter said, and no more. He rose from the bed and held out a casual hand, summoning his shirt and robes to him with a nonverbal spell. Draco lay back down on the bed to lounge and to watch him dress. He did it with neat, efficient movements, as exciting in their own way to watch as the frenzied way he had stripped them off last night.

            He paused at the door of the bedroom and turned to look at Draco. Draco sat up, sensing something important was coming, not sure what it was.

            In the end, it turned out, not much. Potter nodded once, and then faded out in the direction of the front door. Draco heard a house-elf appear and offer to escort him, on command. Draco flung himself back and stared at the ceiling.

            He could have used a visit from Daphne right then, or even one from Pansy or Astoria. He didn't think he had done something he would regret; he rarely did, anymore, because he knew too much about what he liked and wanted. But he did feel rather as if he'd launched an owl into the air without knowing if it would ever return.

*

            "Mate?"

            Ron's question was soft. Harry spent a moment facing the office door as he shut it, and deciding how he was going to play this.

            No question that it would have to end, all the deceptions that he'd put into place instead of friendships, all the lies he'd handed them. Harry decided at that moment that he would have to let them make up their own minds when they knew the full truth. Maybe some of them would stay close, maybe some of them would walk away. No way he could know ahead of time, really. They were less predictable than he had formed himself to be.

            But at the moment, they couldn't know the real purpose of his rebellion against Sandborn. They would distract the Minister at exactly the wrong moment, rather like Malfoy if Harry had let him help.

            He turned around, smiled at Ron, and then let the smile waver and break and vanish. It was a strange mixture of his first soul--this was for the best--and his second--this was his friend--and his third--he was doing this because he wanted to rather than in return for some gain from the contract--that made him say, "Callia decided that she couldn't believe me. We called off the engagement."

            Ron stood up, then sat down again. He looked as though he wanted to cheer and was suppressing it. Harry suppressed his smile in return. He probably wasn't supposed to notice the happiness the news caused Ron.

            Ron finally shook his head and said with a low whistle, "That's rough, mate. Couldn't you make her see that it was just stupid lies?"

            Harry sighed then, and sat down on his desk. He still regretted the way things had gone with Callia, in part because he thought she would have taken the news of the contract's existence better than his friends would have. That was his one chance to be completely honest with someone he'd fooled, and he'd thrown it away.

            No. You have others. You made the decision to have them. You just have to put the decisions into effect.

            "I don't know," Harry said. "It was a pretty grotesque rumor. I think that was what really drove her away. I didn't deny it fast enough, and the thought of it happening to her...it was too much."

            "Bet it wouldn't have been too much for Ginny," Ron muttered.

            Harry rolled his eyes. "In the imaginary world where I married Ginny and Luna married Neville, I'm sure it wasn't." Ron had lived happily in delusions for a year or two after he and Hermione got married, certain Ginny would leave Luna and "come back" to Harry. Harry and Hermione had made up elaborate details of the imaginary world where that had happened to content him.

            "Of course it's like that," Ron said staunchly, nodding so seriously that Harry eyed him for a minute. Then he ruined it by grinning. "And in that world, where are all things are as they should be, Hermione left me for some fit bloke who appreciated her a lot more when we were twenty than I ever did."

            Harry laughed. "I don't think fit blokes are what she looks for."

            That led to a pretend wrestling match, and Harry settled down behind his desk feeling happier than he had for some time. He hadn't actually taken the first step towards convincing Sandborn he distrusted him yet--that came with a letter he wrote to be taken to the Head Auror when he went to lunch--but he'd committed now. He'd chosen. There would be a lot of pain still to come, of course. Ron didn't know the real source of his argument with Callia yet, or anything else.

            But it was a beginning.

*

            "Is that a bite on your neck, Draco?" Pansy leaned into the fire as if she would jump through it and into the Manor if she could. Draco gave her a smug smile over his scone. He had opened the connection enough for a firecall but not enough for Flooing. There were several reasons for that, but frustrating Pansy was not the smallest one.

            "Yes," Draco said, and let a few seconds pass, while Pansy practically wriggled on the edge of her chair. Then Draco smiled and gave in, just before she would have had to feign boredom and declare this minor mystery not worthy of her time. "From Potter's teeth."

            Pansy laughed, leaning back in her chair and tossing her dark hair over her shoulder with one hand. Draco blinked. He usually felt at least a pang of desire when she did that, but not this morning. He wondered for a moment if that was what people meant when they said one person had ruined them for someone else. He hoped not. It was an uncomfortable feeling, not a romantic one.

            Most likely I'm simply exhausted from last night, he decided, and nodded to himself in satisfaction as he figured that out.

            "He broke up with his little fiancée and came straight to you," Pansy said. She was glowing softly with delight, in a way that seemed to make her skin more translucent, and at moments like these, Draco could see why Theo had wanted to marry her. "I knew it."

            "I never said anything about his fiancée," Draco protested.

            Pansy waved a hand. "But you know my strength when I want to persuade someone of something, and Callia wasn't a strong target." Pansy's tendency to read the world in terms of herself would have been more annoying if she'd been right less often, Draco thought. She leaned forwards again. "And did you teach him how good it can be, when he's with a man?"

            "He was a most eager student," Draco said. "Practically virginal."

            Pansy sighed longingly. "I remember the days when Theo was like that."

            Draco snorted. "Theo had had more sex when you two got married than you had."

            "Yes, and I was responsible for most of it," Pansy said, beaming at him. She laughed, presumably at the expression on Draco's face. "What, you never noticed the evening we disappeared with Daphne?"

            "No," Draco said indignantly. Daphne had never told him about that, the traitor. Of course, Daphne had odd morals about some things, and found it more profitable to drop subtle hints about others rather than explain them outright. "When was this? I must have been out of the common room, or the pub, or wherever we were. I would have noticed."

            "It was the common room," Pansy said. "And you were too busy complaining to Blaise about the way that Potter ignored you, if I remember correctly."

            "I was not," Draco said. He remembered that conversation well, now that he considered it, but he'd thought he'd successfully buried it in everyone else's minds, especially because that was about the beginning of his arguments with Pansy and their spectacular decision not to marry after all, the way that most people in their House had assumed they would. "He should have paid more attention to me at the time, if he was going to bother to free me from Azkaban at all."

            "Of course he should have," Pansy said. "And now you can fuck him into the floor as punishment for ignoring you then. Or are you going to use some chains first, leave him wanting for hours? I think you should. They--"

            Draco shut down the Floo connection. Pansy was, sometimes, too much.

            Then he turned and considered the list of possible witnesses that Daphne had retrieved for him.

            Potter's crude idea of bribery had some merit. But Draco knew by now that Galleons were far too unsophisticated a tool for most jobs of the sort. They were hard, for one thing, and they shone, and they had only one significance. Far too many people could look at them and have to turn their heads away, unable to bend them into some other shape and justify their acceptance of money to themselves.

            But there were other things people wanted, and they had more fluid shapes. Donations to certain charities. Political alliances. Interviews with someone famous--and Draco would be in place to offer them an interview with Potter, soon enough, or at least with Potter's lover. (Going to the papers with secrets about their love life was right out, of course, but not if he had permission). A nice dinner, in the case of a few who weren't doing so well right now, or a debt paid off.

            Some of them would appreciate what he was doing. More wouldn't. That was all right. All Draco had to do was create some goodwill for himself.

            Since the end of the war, when he had decided to live in the way he wanted to, he'd always been good at that.

            Of course I'm not going to bribe them, Potter, Draco thought, and went to begin the primping necessary to add to his appearance. I'm going to charm them into the palm of my hand.

            The same way I did with you.

*

            Yami Bakura: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

            Nubia: Gracias a ti para sus palabras! Si le Draco haya mentido a Harry, no es para metas malas. Es simplemente que Draco cree que sus intenciones sean honradas y sus otros amores esten pasajeros y nada mas. Pero es posible que sus metas puedan cambiar, y Draco pueda cambiar tambien.

            (Lo siento si haya errores en esto, espanol no es mi lengua primera y mi computadora no tiene los acentos).

            SP777: I think you're right about the way Harry would prefer to make love. For the present, though, this is more than enough for him.

            elfqueen114: Thank you! Glad it got across.

            cinder1013: Draco is beginning to think he won't be surprised either way.
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