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Eyes That Can See in the Dark	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4287 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Balancing on the Tripwire

            Draco lifted his head and sniffed carefully. After four months with the pack and a week alone in the wild so that he could wrestle with his wolf without anyone else about, he could tell when someone’s scent was edged with anxiety and panic even in human form, whose scent it was, and how serious the situation was.

            The most unusual thing about the scent he was smelling now was that it came from Harry.

            Draco continued brewing until he reached a stage where he could safely stop—no sense in ruining a batch of Wolfsbane when he knew from the smell that Harry was in no immediate danger—and then laid aside the stirring rod and ladle he’d been using to walk towards the smell. Hyacinth was out of the forest altogether for the moment, apparently visiting one of her few relatives who would still have anything to do with her. Leila had vanished into the depths of the trees with a book as she often did, and Celia and Josh were asleep. That left Draco to tend to Harry.

            Not that he minded.

            He tracked the floating emotions to one of the houses under a Disillusionment Charm which Draco had noticed the first time he came to the pack’s clearing. The buildings were tiny and not often inhabited by the pack, but Harry insisted they have them to help further balance their wolf and human sides. Draco, who had hated sleeping in the rain the most during his week alone—not even Impervious Charms kept off the water as well as blankets and a roof—was grateful for his.

            Now he ducked his head and peered tentatively into Harry’s house. Sometimes Harry snapped and snarled when someone violated his rare moments of privacy.

            Snapping and snarling would have reassured Draco at the moment. Harry lay with his head facing away from the door, so that Draco couldn’t see his expression. He had his arms wrapped around his head, and he crouched very still. The anxiety was a stink in here, to the point that Draco wanted to hold his breath when he whispered, “Harry?”

            A vibration ran through Harry, and he lifted his head. But he continued staring ahead, so that Draco couldn’t catch his eye, and only said in a low, neutral voice, “Draco.”

            His scent couldn’t lie in the way that his tone could. Wards shrieking in alarm would have frightened Draco less than his scent.

            He slid into the house without further thought. Harry kept his home small on purpose, with barely enough room for the bed he lay on, but Draco had shared it with him several times by now and didn’t care. He draped himself over Harry instead, pressing his chest to Harry’s back, entwining Harry’s arms with his, and pressing his forehead against Harry’s shoulder.

            “I’m here,” he said. “No matter what. I won’t let whatever’s wrong consume you. It can’t harm me. It won’t swallow me.”

            He repeated those words, and many others, to the point where they sounded in his ears as nonsense. He could smell the anxiety dimming, and that was the only thing he cared about.

            Finally Harry sighed and rolled over under him, lifting his arms to embrace Draco. Draco stared into his eyes and saw shadows there that he cursed himself for not noticing earlier. Harry should never have walked around carrying this burden—whatever it was—alone for so long.

            “I’ve been struggling,” Harry admitted slowly, without Draco having to convince him to say anything, “with how to balance my wolf and my human. I had it mostly under control. And then, when I murdered Lucius, I gave in too much to my wolf. These last three full moons, I’ve felt the beast inside me howling to be let out and kill indiscriminately. It even fights the Wolfsbane, which it never did before.” He shuddered, and Draco thought he would have rolled over again and buried his head away, but Draco let himself go limp so that Harry couldn’t push his weight aside so easily.

            Draco spent a careful few minutes considering what he should say. He couldn’t apologize for asking Harry to kill Lucius. He had needed his father to suffer in much the same way he had. And he had needed him dead, to bring about closure of some sort. He would always have feared that Lucius was out there if that didn’t happen, hunting him and threatening to expose him to the rest of society as a werewolf. It didn’t matter how impossible it would have been for Lucius to figure out what pack had taken him if they had simply snatched him in the middle of the night. Knowing his father and his obsession with Dark magic that could accomplish the near-impossible for a steep price, Draco knew he would have found a way.

            He couldn’t say that he was sorry that his needs had caused Harry’s wolf to rebel, when he would ask the same thing again. But he could share the burden.

            “Then focus your wolf on me,” he said quietly.

            Harry shifted and stared up at him. The gold in his eyes had eaten the green, which was a frightening thing to see a week out from the full moon. Harry shivered and shook his head. “What kind of monster would I be if I ate you, Draco?” he asked. “I would rather suffer any fate than that.”

            Draco stroked his face for a moment. He understood, but he didn’t think Harry did. “I’m not asking you to eat me,” he said. “I’m asking you to think of me when you feel that your wolf might burst the bounds. I’m counting on your feelings for me—” he still didn’t want to say the word love often, because sometimes he wondered if it was love and because he felt that would make it less special “—to restrain it and make it realize that it wants to protect instead of eat me. That should make it easier to control.”

            Harry looked up at him, so motionless that Draco wondered for a moment if he’d made the offer in the wrong tone, or in a way that would force Harry to despise him, or—

            Harry’s hand shot up, fingers tangling and winding in his hair. He yanked Draco down and kissed-bit him, so hard that Draco opened his mouth with a gasp. In a moment, Harry’s tongue was tangling with his in the same way that his fingers tangled into Draco’s hair, and then he rolled over and pinned Draco to the bed beneath him.

            Draco went willingly. Harry had the hot metal smell of lust now, and the anxiety scent had vanished entirely underneath it. Draco even opened his legs more widely and hunched up, wanting to remind Harry he had an erection ready to be rubbed against.

            Harry refrained, as he had the most maddening habit of doing at times. He had explained that, when he was fucking Draco, he became completely immersed in the fucking and ignored the outside world. He wasn’t always ready to let such an overwhelming emotion flow across his mind. Draco thought he could stand more of it, especially since no one else was in the glade right now who could demand his attention, but he didn’t argue when Harry broke the kiss, lowered his head, and licked Draco’s cheek. This was so much better than what Draco had envisioned him doing when he first smelled him—biting into his own skin, probably, or tearing at his face with flying fingers the way he had once confessed to Draco he had done immediately after Greyback had bitten him, wildly thinking that he could claw the wolf out from beneath his skin.

            “Thank you,” Harry whispered.

            Draco shivered. The words were heavy and coiled around his ear, mouthing it, like a snake. He could listen to Harry say things like that forever and never grow tired of them.

            “I never knew that I could have someone who would listen to me so closely,” Harry went on, his hands sliding up and down Draco’s skin, creating trails of heat and friction that made Draco want to curl closer to him. “Most of the time, I have to take care of the rest of the pack. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time for helping myself. I was thinking that I needed to keep the news of my wolf rebelling to myself, because it would unnerve Celia and Josh and make Hyacinth think that she might need to challenge me.” His hands slid up to Draco’s shoulders and pressed down, while his eyes shone with a fire that made Draco wriggle in both excitement and dread. He had never had to cope with someone looking at him like that until he met Harry. “But you.”

            “What about Leila?” Draco had to ask, since he had noticed the name missing from recitation of the pack members.

            “She’s the least in tune with her wolf,” Harry said simply, “because she’s the weakest of us, and she came the latest to the change. She told me once that some part of her always remains human, and she’s horrified by what she’s doing when she hunts, while all I know is enjoyment at the time.”

            Draco frowned, thinking of something. “But she was able to use her magic to help you enter the Manor, which you said required the pack to be able to command their wolf magic while they were in human form. I think she’s more in tune with the wolf form than you believe she is.”

            Harry blinked startled eyes for a moment. Then he smiled ruefully and dipped his head to rest against Draco’s shoulder, lightly nipping at and tasting the skin. “You’re right. I shouldn’t need someone to tell me things like that about my own pack.” His grip tightened again. “But since someone has to, I’m glad it’s you.”

            Draco turned his face towards Harry. “And will you do your best to control your wolf by focusing on thoughts of me?” he asked quietly. He winced as Harry’s teeth brushed past his ear. His lobes were still missing, and so Harry would never be able to bite him there. But Harry didn’t halt or say anything to make him feel self-conscious; he nodded instead and sighed.

            “Yes. It’ll be difficult. It had one taste of human blood, and it wants more.” Harry grimaced at that and shook his head a moment later. “No, that’s not true. To the wolf, human blood doesn’t taste any sweeter than the blood of rabbits or deer. I believe, and other people believe, that werewolves especially murder humans, and that influences what the wolf wants.”

            Draco stored that useful piece of information away. It had hardly been a secret before, but this was the phrasing that made the most sense to him. Maybe he could change what his wolf wanted by changing what he believed.

            “Then think of me,” he said, sliding his hand across Harry’s cheek. “And remember that I will never be sorry that you killed Lucius, whatever the results were.”

            Harry sighed again in answer and pressed closer, but said nothing. Draco suspected that he bore guilt he wouldn’t talk about, purely human guilt.

            Well, perhaps Leila can help him with that.

*

            “Draco? May I speak with you a moment?”

            Draco had never heard Leila’s voice sound so diffident. He set aside the book on Muggle history he was reading—Granger had lent it to the pack, and he was constantly surprised by what the Muggles had got up to around the time of Grindelwald—and focused on her. “Yes? What’s the matter?”

            Leila sat down in front of him with a frown, her grey-streaked hair hanging around her face. Alone of all the pack except Hyacinth, she seemed indifferent to the fact that she might look wild in human form as well as in wolf form. Her clothes were ragged, too, peeling back from her limbs thanks to branches and thorns and underbrush.

            “You suggested that Harry should talk to me.” Leila folded her arms and cocked her head to the side. Draco could see the wolf’s curiosity in her motions, especially now that the full moon was coming close again, but her eyes didn’t turn yellow and she didn’t growl at him. He decided those were good signs. “Why? I’m the smallest in strength of any of the pack, and I haven’t taken to this life as well as the others.”

            “Because I think that you might understand some of his struggles,” Draco said, with a small shrug, wondering why she had sought him out. If she knows that I sent Harry to talk with her, then it’s not as though she can be afraid I’d be jealous. “That’s all.”

            Leila stared away from Draco into the forest. Her eyes were narrow and distant, and her voice had lowered. “I’m nothing in strength compared to you or Hyacinth. You’re the right confidants for him, the ones who would understand him best.”

            Draco snorted. “Who told you that? Hyacinth?”

            Leila faced him and blinked. “It’s simply the way it is. Harry explained to us when we first joined the pack that the strength of our magic would help determine our ranking—”

            “Maybe your magical strength determines which fights you would win and what kinds of animals you could hunt,” Draco said, with strength that surprised him, “but it doesn’t determine who you can talk to or how much help you can be with ordinary problems. Why would it? I know that you’re less wolf than some of the others, but you seem to be taking the animal more seriously than any of the others do, and letting it limit you.”

            Leila sat backwards on the grass in surprise—she’d been crouching on her haunches so far—and then winced, probably because the motion had re-aggravated her old wound. Draco flinched in sympathy. He knew what that was like.

            “I didn’t think of it like that,” Leila muttered. She wrapped her arms around her legs and shook her head. “When one looks at Harry and Hyacinth, one can’t help wanting to be like them, to become them, no matter what the price is for carrying that magic.”

            Draco snorted again. “I’m sure that Hyacinth would like nothing more than for you to believe that. She fears that power and revels in it at the same time. She’d like other people to fear her so she can feel powerful and respected.”

            “But Harry?” Leila peered between strands of hair at him, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

            “Harry…” Draco shook his head. He wanted to convince Leila, but he was not about to betray things he knew about Harry from Hogwarts or from sharing his bed, which Harry might regard as secrets.

            “Harry is different,” he said at last. “I don’t know how much you heard about him, since I don’t know when you were turned—”

            “Very soon after the Battle of Hogwarts,” Leila said. “I heard enough to know what he’d done, and of course he was a beacon of hope to all of us during the war.” She looked faintly wistful for a moment. Draco wondered enviously what that would have been like, being able to think of Harry as a beacon instead of a feared and deadly enemy who would make their lives even worse if he managed to destroy the Dark Lord.

            “Imagine all the stories that you’ve heard about heroes,” Draco said. “Not the way they are, the way they should be. The way you want to imagine them. Humble and heroic at once, compassionate at heart and uneasy with the honors that they receive for their exploits. People who duck away from cameras even though they don’t have any choice but to put up with the cameras following them around all the time. People who make you feel that celebrity really could be a trial, instead of the glamorous life that you know it is and which most of the rich people who moan about it wouldn’t dream of giving up.”

            “All right,” Leila said after a minute. “I can imagine that. What do you want me to do about it?”

            “Imagine that all the stories are true, and embodied in one person, if no one else in the world,” Draco said quietly.

            Leila closed her eyes. “That makes it all the more impossible that he should want to talk to me,” she said at last. “I’m the most ordinary member of the pack, as both wolf and human.” Draco started to argue, but she gave him a fierce glance. “Even as far as being human was concerned. I don’t have a tragic story like Hyacinth’s. I wasn’t cut off at the height of my career like Celia; she was a dancer, and a good one. I’m not even remarkable for my personality, like Josh.”

            Draco shrugged. He couldn’t say that he had especially noticed Josh’s personality; Josh seemed so easygoing that one could assign any character trait to him and he would probably agree that he had it somewhere.

            “Try to think of yourself as someone extraordinary,” he answered. “After all, someone like Harry saw you as capable of controlling the wolf and decided to take a chance on you. He doesn’t do that with a lot of werewolves.”

            Leila looked at the ground, and a small smile grew across her lips. “It does help, to think about it like that.”

            “Good.” Draco patted her knee. He had found himself becoming closer to more people than just Harry in the pack, touching them more often; the wolf craved physical contact. But Leila was the first one he had touched deliberately, without pretending the brush of bodies or hands was an accident. “And if nothing else, think about it like this. You can brew Wolfsbane. The Potions masters who can do that are rare, to say nothing of the ordinary people who try to brew it and end up with a mess on their hands. There are reasons that the Ministry controls the major supplies of Wolfsbane in Britain, you know.”

            Leila gave him an innocent glance. Truly innocent, Draco judged after a searching look, not mockingly so. “But that’s a simple matter of following a recipe.”

            “There are people who aren’t capable of following instructions,” Draco said. He watched Hyacinth stroll into the clearing and show her teeth at Josh, who rolled his eyes and looked away. Draco shook his head. It was several days before the full moon now, and Harry had asked Hyacinth to refrain from abusing her dominance too much. “Here comes one of them.”

            Leila laughed, then blinked as if the sound had startled her.

            Draco grinned back.

*

            Draco slipped in silence out of his house and crouched down in the middle of the clearing, scanning with his eyes and nose until he could sense where Harry had gone. Then he trotted into the forest.

            His eyes had grown much better in the light since he was turned, but he was most startled at the difference when he tried to see in the dark. Wherever he looked, the night seemed to turn grey instead of black. He couldn’t make out as much in human form as in wolf, but he could still see hollows and humps that would have tripped him up before, and logs that might have broken his leg. He stepped over all of them and continued making his way towards Harry’s scent.

            Harry was sitting in the middle of a smaller clearing, his arms wrapped around his belly as though someone had tried to chew out his entrails the way he had chewed out a deer’s on their last hunt. Draco winced and hurried over to him. Harry leaned back against the tree behind him and stared up at the stars, the few visible through the gaps in the branches. He didn’t flinch when Draco sat down beside him and reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. Instead, he turned his head and nuzzled Draco’s fingers gratefully.

            “I did it,” he said. “It was hard, but I fought and won.”

            Draco looked carefully in several directions, but made out no blood on the grass and leaves. He hoped that meant Harry’s battle was entirely metaphorical. “Who did you fight?”

            Harry looked up at him with sly yellow eyes, his tongue spilling out of his mouth. “My wolf,” he said. “I confronted it with images of blood and gore and the way Lucius died—and then with images of you. It chose you. Always.” He reached up and put his hand on Draco’s forehead as if he was checking for a fever. His skin burned as warm as his power. “The same way I always will.”

            Draco leaned down and kissed Harry, too relieved and happy at the moment to think of doing anything else.

            Harry promptly wrestled him to the ground, growling and biting playfully at his left shoulder. He seemed shy about touching the right one, where he had bitten Draco, but Draco grabbed his head and guided it there. Harry paused and looked into his eyes. Draco nodded once, giving him silent permission to touch it.

            Harry drew back Draco’s shirt to worry at the bite at the same moment as he slipped his hand into Draco’s trousers and gripped his cock.

            Draco hadn’t been conscious of being hard, but now he was, no question about it. He writhed under Harry’s imprisoning weight and the grind of his teeth, caught between sky and earth, his gaze wandering back and forth between Harry’s eyes and the stars he could see scattered here and there. Then Harry ground down with his entire body weight at once, and Draco cried out and came wetly.

            He wasn’t sure how long he lay there before he began to fumble in a daze for Harry’s erection. Harry shook his head and kissed his neck, lapping in long strokes at his pulse. “Came when you did,” he muttered.

            Draco smiled and draped his arms around Harry’s neck in exhaustion. He felt a bit of shame that he hadn’t lasted longer, but not enough to embarrass him. They had enjoyed longer sessions with each other, and times when Harry had fucked him until Draco was raw with need and happy with the lightest touch. A quick grope and fumble once wasn’t a crime.

            The moon wasn’t full enough to cause trouble. Draco was lying in a fairly comfortable spot, and Harry’s skin and magic chased away all thoughts of cold. Draco shut his eyes and slept, guarded and safe.

            The wispy figure of Lucius sometimes showed up in his nightmares, but even there, Harry was present, sometimes as a bright-eyed human, sometimes as a black wolf, to stand between Draco and all danger.

*

            yaoiObsessed: Thank you! Hyacinth challenged Draco simply because she wanted to see who was stronger and to make him earn his place in the pack.

            Thrnbrooke: Hopefully, yes.

            SP777: Thank you!

            And yes, you’re exactly right. Hyacinth’s wolf wants to know where Draco stands, and she can’t if they don’t directly struggle.

            polka dot: Explicit smut will be in the last chapter.
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Eyes That Can See in the Dark