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Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eighteen—Subtlety, Thy Name Is Draco

            “I think this is the best course to take.”

            “Hmmm?” Harry had to admit that he was admiring the shape of Draco’s face, and especially the way his lips moved, instead of listening to his words. He was sure that Draco would come up with a good plan anyway, since he had attacked the suggestion that he be the one to plan this with admirable vigor.

            “I said,” Draco muttered, and then paused and studied him. “I realize that I may not give this impression,” he added, “but I will be content with some worship once in a while. Not all the time. Listen to what I’m saying.”

            Harry shook himself, sat up on the couch, and did so. They had spent last night in Harry’s bed, although only sleeping instead of fucking. Harry had to admit that it was nice to watch Draco’s face relax, for once, and see him fall asleep inside the circle of Harry’s arms instead of pulling away as usual, as if the sex was dirty.

            Except Draco was glaring at him right now, and Harry had the distinct feeling that he’d been disobeying instructions to pay attention to his words again. Harry cleared his throat. “Merlin, but you’re distracting.”

            “Not right now,” Draco said, and it was true that he was dressed in an old robe and his hair was mussed and he was lounging on the other side of the couch in a way that might have seemed inappropriate to a Potions genius and the center of Harry Potter’s life right at the moment. Harry found him adorable anyway.

            “No, really,” Draco said a moment later, and snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s nose, causing him to flinch and straighten. “I know it’s hard for you to be serious, but that’s something I require in a lover sometimes, too.”

            Privately, Harry thought that was because Draco had never experienced the joy of a lover who could make him laugh, but he knew better than to say so. Draco wanted him to be serious, so he could. He nodded and leaned his elbows on top of his knees. “All right. What is your plan, and do I need to play any part in it?”

            Draco eyed him a moment as though unable to believe he finally had Harry’s attention, but Harry knew how to look sober and alert from endless boring meetings with Kingsley. Draco grudingly nodded and unfolded the parchment he held.

            “I can imitate my father’s hand well enough,” he said. “I needed to be able to, to get some money out of the vaults that the Ministry tried to freeze.” Harry opened his mouth, but closed it again when a sharp look from Draco told him that Draco wasn’t about to go into that story right now. “I’m going to write to my mother and tell her I’m not worried about his escape from Azkaban anymore, since I’ve received a letter from him saying that he’s well and doesn’t intend to interfere in my life.”

            Harry blinked. “Won’t she just go and ask him, and he’ll deny ever writing a letter?”

            Draco smiled sadly as he folded up the letter. “My family doesn’t trust each other anymore, Harry.” It was one of the few times he had ever said the name without a sneer behind it, and Harry wanted to pause and soak it up, but Draco’s narrowed eyes warned him to keep his mind going. “My mother would have told me that she planned to free my father from Azkaban, otherwise. Or at least hinted that she was afraid of the danger to his soul, so that I could help her. She didn’t. Nor will she ask him outright if he wrote a letter. She doesn’t have your gift for spotting lies.”

            Harry nodded. The plan sounded a bit daft to him, but Draco was the one who knew his parents.

            “And in the meantime,” Draco said softly, “she’ll start hunting for the break in her security, for the way that he got the letter past her defenses, or who might have told me where he was. And that will distract her.”

            “What will we do in the meantime?” Harry leaned forwards, not trying to conceal the hunting quiver in his veins. It affected Draco, if the way his eyes glinted for a moment was any indication.

            “I will keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere where she might learn too much,” Draco said, with a curl of his lip that made Harry not want to inquire into the details. He had made a discovery which shocked him, that not everything about Draco was adorable. “And you’ll invade the Manor.”

            Harry choked a little, though more because he hadn’t realized Draco had that much faith in him than because he thought it was a bad plan. “What about the wards? I know there are some wards on the place that only recognize a blood relative.”

            Draco started to answer, but frowned instead. “How did you learn that?”

            “Er,” Harry said, and blushed for the first time from something other than excitement. It looked as though Draco was about to learn the same non-adorable facts about him. “I learned it from some of the secrets I paid people to uncover about your family.”

            “You paid them why?” Draco sat up, and one could have mistaken him for an Auror conducting an interrogation if he was wearing a pair of scarlet robes.

            Harry swallowed. “Because I thought you might still be hiding Dark artifacts there, and I wanted to be prepared in case we ever had to make a raid,” he said. But he ended up bowing his head with shame, because Draco’s gaze cut through him, and if Draco ever found out the truth, Harry would end up bowing his head in shame anyway. “No, that’s not the truth. Not we. I thought you might be hiding Dark artifacts, and I paid the experts and undertook the extra research myself. The other Aurors and Kingsley thought I was being foolish. Most people could accept that you were innocent after the trials ended.”

            “I thought you did, as well.” Draco was still staring at him. “You spoke up for us enough at the trials. Why do that if you thought there was a chance that we might not be innocent?”

            Harry winced again. This was something he hadn’t even thought about when he was pursuing Draco, but he should have. Draco was more likely to decide that things he’d done in the past made him not worth having as a lover, rather than things that Harry had done in the course of this case. “I, um. I thought you were innocent of the charges of being a Death Eater willingly, and all that. Not your father,” he had to add. “Even though most of it was in the first war and not the second.”

            Draco still waited for an answer, his eyes said far too clearly, so Harry swallowed noisily and pushed on. “But I thought you might not be innocent of other things,” he admitted. “Every time I thought about it, thought about dropping the investigation, I would think of the way that you did turn out to be up to something in sixth year, and I would continue the research.”

            “Research.” Draco shook his head. “A nice word for spying. How much did that have to do with your eagerness to have me around when I showed up to hire you?”

            Harry blinked. “Nothing. I hadn’t thought you might be hiding Dark artifacts in at least a year when you hired me.”

            “You say that,” Draco said, with a weary, halting breath. “But how can I trust you? I know, I know, I should have asked you about grudges you held in the past before I became involved with you,” he added, holding up his hand, although that hadn’t been at all what Harry was thinking. “I didn’t think to, and that’s on my head. But I’ll have honest answers now.”

            Harry squirmed in his seat. Draco had turned the couch into a magistrate’s throne, far more impressive than it had been to Harry the times that he’d stood before the Wizengamot to testify. “I’m still willing to take Veritaserum,” he said.

            “I’ll take you up on that offer,” Draco said, and waved his wand. Harry couldn’t hear the incantation, which he kept nonverbal, but the effect was clear enough when a small vial of the potion soared out of the robes Draco had left hanging on a chair. He held it up and turned it back and forth, letting Harry see the clear liquid.

            Harry nodded.

            Now, of all times, Draco blinked, as though he had expected Harry to withdraw his offer at the last second. Harry reckoned he couldn’t blame him for being surprised by that, when he had been less than agreeably surprised by a few other things Harry had done tonight. But he remained still as Draco got up and walked hesitantly around the couch towards him.

            Harry leaned back and opened his mouth. He had thought of adopting a more formal pose, sitting up and keeping his hands down, but Draco knew him—at least a little—by now. That kind of thing would make him distrust Harry faster than all the rest.

            And Harry didn’t want to be distrusted. Maybe it was natural that Draco should do so, but Harry knew what he wanted, and distrust wasn’t romantic.

            Draco paused again, then tipped three drops into his mouth. He had precise control of the vial, Harry thought, and found a new thing to admire, that even when he’d been confronted by a revelation that was unplanned and seemed to have upset him, Draco’s hands were steady.

            Then the Veritaserum took over. Harry could feel his eyes crossing, then closing, but the sensation was distant from him. His skin seemed to be someone else’s, someone he was connected to magically. His breathing slowed, and his voice came out slow and halting when Draco asked him a question.

            “Harry James Potter.” Oh, the question must have been his name.

            It seemed Draco didn’t know what to ask next, or else the usual effects Veritaserum had on Harry were even worse than usual and he didn’t hear it as a separate thing. He heard Draco fluttering around him, and managed to open his eyes.

            Draco froze when he did, then shook his head and straightened up. It was the kind of attitude he probably assumed when he wanted to convince someone else he wasn’t afraid of them, Harry thought. “What was your object in letting me hire you?” Draco asked sternly.

            “I wanted to go with you when I saw you,” Harry replied, in that same dull, tired voice. “And I wanted to have the contact information you promised me.”

            Draco prowled back and forth in front of him. “When did you give up spying on me?”

            “Eighteen months ago.”

            Draco cast a glance at the vial that it took Harry a long moment to interpret, with his brain as weary as it was. When he understood, he wanted to protest, to assure Draco that of course he had brewed the potion perfectly. Wasn’t he the best Potions master there ever had been, the best Harry had seen, except maybe Snape, whose skills weren’t on display in the classroom much? But Veritaserum didn’t encourage responding except when someone asked you a direct question, so Harry stayed silent.

            Finally, Draco said, “I find that extremely difficult to believe. Why would you give up spying on me when you were so convinced that my family was hiding Dark artifacts?” He spun on Harry and nodded several times as though delighted at finding an argument that would be proof against anything Harry could say.

            “Because I came closer and closer to you, and learned more, and realized that it probably wasn’t true.” Harry’s voice still sounded dull and dead to his own ears, but it could make Draco react, at least, from the way he stepped back with his eyes wide, and that was very satisfying. “I learned that you had tried to stay out of trouble since the war, and I believed that you had. It made it stupid for me to go on thinking you were Dark, and I had been wrong once before about you, in sixth year.”

            “You were right about me in sixth year,” Draco snapped. “I was up to something, remember?”

            “But not for the reasons I thought you were,” Harry said. “Everything was more complicated than I thought it was. That seemed to be happening again. And I was taking up time and money doing it, and I hadn’t uncovered anything, and Kingsley probably would have started noticing what I was doing soon. All of those were good enough reasons not to continue.”

            Draco shook his head. His eyes were brilliant, his lips set. “But you must have suspected something. You wanted to continue spying on me when I offered to hire you.”

            “I wanted to go with you when I saw you. And I wanted to have the contact information—”

            “Yes, yes, that’s what you said before!” Draco snapped, and then fell silent and shut his eyes.

            Harry watched him. Draco looked adorable even like this, when he knew that his thoughts were moving much more slowly than before because of the Veritaserum in his system. Draco with his head bowed, his mind catching up with the revelation that Harry must be telling the truth because of what he had said before, was beautiful. Draco when he turned around and faced Harry like someone going to his doom in front of the Dark Lord was even better.

            “Fine,” Draco said, his voice stretched to snapping point. “Let’s accept that I do think you’re telling the truth.” Harry would have opened his mouth to comment that Draco should accept it because it was his Veritaserum, but that hadn’t been a direct question, and he stayed silent. “But that means that I want to know something else.” He moved in until he was leaning directly in front of Harry, his nose only a few centimeters away. “What do you feel about me?”

            An easy question. Harry could feel the relief washing through him, and smiled. Draco took a step back at the smile, and then folded his arms and looked furious with himself. Harry could practically feel his brain racing with indignation that he had been made to look like a coward.

            The understanding spilled out into his voice. “I like you because I know you so well,” Harry said. “I’m amused by you because I know you so well, too. I like the way you look. You’re so fit. You’re trying to make your own life, and so many people never do that. You could even say that I didn’t do it for myself, since I became an Auror the way so many people expected.” He paused to take a breath. Draco stood there with his face unreadable, or trying for it. The way a muscle twitched in his cheek gave him away to an observer as experienced as Harry.

            “I like you,” Harry finished quietly. “For standing up, and being who you are, and continuing with me even though you’re scared, and even for the way that you forced me to take Veritaserum before you would trust me. You need the ultimate proof. That’s fine. I want to give it. I want to give you as much as you’ll allow me. You can talk to me all you like and think about it, but you’ll never drive me away.”

            Draco made a harsh sound that concerned Harry for his breathing, but then he was running, pelting across the room, towards what Harry thought was the door. Harry wondered how long he would have to wait for the Veritsaerum to wear off before he could go hunting. He wouldn’t do it while still under the potion, in case he met someone who would ask him an innocent question and the answer that came out was prejudicial to Draco’s interests.

            But Draco came back, fumbling hastily, with a potion that gurgled and sloshed in its container, and Harry understood when Draco held the vial to his lips and encouraged him to drink. It was an antidote to the Veritaserum. Harry swallowed obediently, and coughed a little as the feeling of normality returned to him, as he exhaled and inhaled and his skin felt once more like his own.

            Draco was mumbling something rapidly, and Harry had to strain his ears to listen. “I’ll never doubt you again. You didn’t—you came through that, and you put up with it, and you are loyal in the way you said you were—”

            Harry took Draco’s hand and held it to his lips, in silence. This was the response to the declaration he had made, then, to both declarations, really, and it was more than enough.

*

            delia cerrano: I think this is the last steps of working on it.

            And I can’t tell you yet.

            polka dot: Draco really doesn’t want his father free and interfering in his life.

            Diana: Here you go!

            Nightlo: Well, Harry is 100% on Draco’s side, so he probably won’t be supporting Narcissa’s plan to keep Lucius out of jail.
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