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Wolf in the Making	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8561 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Two—The Most Dangerous Dance

            Harry sat on the boulder after he finished his morning exercises for a long time, eyes shut. Malfoy hadn’t come to observe him today. Maybe that was because Harry had disrupted his business last night.

            Maybe he had the sense to realize that, if he was really winning Harry over, pressing his company on him too soon would make him start back.

            Harry grimaced and stretched his arms over his head again, twisting back and forth without rising from his place. It was exhausting trying to think like a Dark Lord. He hadn’t had to understand Voldemort, most of the time. That had been simple. He just wanted to rule the world and kill everyone who was connected to Harry.

            But Malfoy thought. He took pride in making his plans subtle and complex, not because he was mad like Voldemort and couldn’t think in straight lines, but just for the fun of it. And he had goals that Harry suspected he would never entirely understand. Vengeance, sure, but Malfoy accumulated power and wealth and even slaves for—

            For what?

            You can do this, Harry told himself sternly. You’ve thought like Dark wizards before in order to capture or outwit them. You can do this.

            Here, though, the consequences were worse than just watching the commendation that should have been his for the capture go to someone else. Malfoy would hurt him, possibly kill him, if Harry did something wrong. And then he would be free to hurt his other Marked ones and the people he held captive in the Valley as well.

            A shiver of disgust slid down Harry’s spine. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to condemn him for that last part, given what my ultimate escape plan is.

            But distracting himself with thoughts like that would do no good. As wrong as Malfoy was in general, he had given Harry one new thing to think about that he agreed with: he spent too much time wallowing in guilt and not enough time coming up with plans to help people.

            As long as Malfoy concentrated on Harry, then he wouldn’t think as much about punishing others. Harry didn’t think he had inflicted severe pain on Lisa or anyone else since Harry had been here. So that was one thing he could hope to do that would weigh in the scales against what he planned to take from them.

            Should I go to Malfoy now or not?

            Harry bit his lip. He wanted to now, because he wanted to advance his plan. On the other hand, going too fast would awaken Malfoy’s suspicions, and Harry did not want that to happen.

            Then Harry smiled grimly and stood up. He had to start planting some seeds as soon as he could, or his escape plan wouldn’t be functional by the time they attacked the Ministry—which Harry badly wanted it to be. And he could take a risk as long as he displayed the appropriate reluctance. Malfoy was arrogant enough to believe that he was winning Harry over in spite of himself, that Harry was straying nearer and nearer to power and kind treatment because they worked just as Malfoy thought they should.

            Now I only need to be careful that I don’t slip over the brink and fall into the trap for real.

            But Harry could hardly envision that happening. Even if he wanted kind treatment, why would he take it from the hands of Malfoy, if all people?

*

            Draco felt Potter drawing nearer, of course. He knew where most of his Marked ones were when he concentrated, and he kept his awareness of Potter more frequently in mind than he did for anyone else. Potter was the strongest of them, the most dangerous, the one that Draco would do anything to own.

            But he saw no reason to show Potter that he had any power, unless that power came directly from Draco’s hands. So he kept walking back and forth across his office, dictating his orders to Lisa, who asked the occasional question but mostly scribbled. It was his latest plan to attract customers to Fox Valley, and Draco thought it would be successful. The observation lenses were there to show him his customers and act as a conduit for the draining of the magic, but what if they could do other things?

            Draco knew he hadn’t discovered all the possibilities and innate flexibility of mirror magic yet. That was no reason not to try.

            The office door opened. Lisa turned her head and stared. Draco had his back turned at the moment, luckily, and said only, “Why did you stop writing?”

            Lisa returned to her task without being told. Draco did approve of that. She had learned the lessons most quickly of anyone, except Oliver, who had been grateful for the Mark that offered him a permanent home. He could wish for a bit more of her intelligence in Potter’s head.

            But then, he thought with a sigh, part of the challenge of conquering Potter was breaking that stubborn will. Without it, he would not be half as frustrating—or half as attractive.

            From the sound of his boots and the position of the invisible Mark in Draco’s mind, Potter had leaned against the wall next to the door. He could do that. Draco didn’t mind. He kept dictating with a faint smile that he doubted anyone but Lisa would notice, and she would not understand. She thought that he wanted to destroy Potter, drive him mad with pain, break him. That was in her eyes when she glanced back and forth between him and Potter, in the tightness of her mouth and the way she breathed around them.

            With Potter’s eyes on his back, Draco’s words grew crisper and clearer. He laid out the rest of the plan, and Lisa nodded, her hand flying across the parchment as she created the words that would anchor his ideas. Draco experienced a rush of glory that left him breathless. Having someone hang on his every word, for any reason, would do that to him.

            It would do that to anyone, Draco thought, as he picked up the cup of cold water waiting for him on the edge of his desk and turned around. So it was only fair that power fell most often into the hands of people fit to hold it, like him.

            Potter was leaning forwards, staring at him. He had his arms loosely held as if they had been folded and only now dropped to his sides. His lips were parted slightly. His eyes had widened and darkened. It needed only more moisture and more heat in the cheeks to complete a picture of lust-stricken Potter that Draco had wanked to many times in the dark since he came to possess him.

            Draco shut his eyes slowly, so as to savor the sweetness more, and tilted his head back. Potter didn’t need to comprehend that Draco was flaunting the lines of his chin and shoulders, or showing off the way his throat worked when he swallowed, the same way that he didn’t need to comprehend the gentle touches of pleasure Draco gave him in the mornings. He would be affected by it anyway, and pulled into the net.

            Potter stared for another few heartbeats before he jerked his eyes away. A dark flush covered his cheeks, and Draco could have purred. You are climbing in. It won’t be long before you lay yourself down in my bed and demand that I do whatever I want to you.

            “Are you busy?” Potter asked harshly.

            “Not where you are concerned,” Draco said, and let a dollop of warmth into his voice, where he knew it would flavor his words like sugar in tea. “You haven’t had enough people who treated you with kindness and who had time for you in your life, Harry. I am trying to remedy that, though I admit it is hard when you resist me for no reason.”

            Potter only blinked, looked for a moment as if he would run a hand through his hair, and then didn’t. Draco approved. Perhaps he had finally learned how unbecoming the gesture looked on him. “I wanted to talk about our attack.” A flicker of a glance at Lisa said that Potter didn’t know whether she was included in the plans for Robards.

            Draco tilted his head at Lisa, and she left immediately, well-trained and highly attuned to his body language. Draco sighed as he turned to face Potter again. Yes, he appreciated such service, but it had not made him ready to encounter the stubbornness of someone like Potter, who would rather kill him than serve him. Perhaps he should have encouraged his Marked ones to be insolent to him at times.

            Perhaps I would have, if any of them looked as good as Potter when they did it.

            “Understandable,” Draco murmured. “Have you thought in more detail about how he treated you? Sending you here as an expendable means of gaining revenge on me? Expecting you to die, or not caring if you did?” It would be easier to conquer Potter if Draco could make him lose his loyalty to the Ministry, and at the moment the easiest target in the Ministry was Robards. That would change when he was dealt with, of course, but by then, Draco would have another plan in mind.

            Potter’s flush returned, but this time it had changed. “I don’t see how thinking about him would make me hate him more,” he said shortly.

            Draco clucked his tongue. “I’m only concerned that you don’t realize the full magnitude of his crimes against you,” he said, and sent a thought to Victor, asking him to come with another cup of water. “He owed you more than that, when you had spent so much time serving the Ministry and protecting the wizarding world.”

            “Why?”

            Faced with that simple question, and Potter’s suddenly interested eyes, Draco could only shake his head. It was the way he had reacted when he realized that Potter would accept no luxuries from him, not even the ones that his other Marked ones had. Potter spoke from assumptions that Draco didn’t share, never would share, and would have loathed himself for sharing.

            “Because,” Draco said, “you had sacrificed yourself for the world, for him, for the people who saw you as a hero or a disposable tool or never thought of you at all. Wouldn’t you honor someone who had done that? Wouldn’t you give them more than Robards gave you?” He leaned forwards, because Potter was looking thoughtful and Draco wanted to drive the point home while he could. “Wouldn’t you want better for them?”

            “It depends on their motivation,” Potter said. “Did they do it because they wanted honor? Did they do it because they wanted to walk among the cheering crowds and have people nod and smile and defer to them? Were they acting on survival instinct? Or did they honestly mean to be heroes and unselfishly save others? That would make a difference in what I thought they deserved.”

            Draco frowned and turned to the door. He could feel Victor approaching, and he was glad for the distraction. He had the feeling that he was losing this argument. “You could never know that about them,” he murmured, opening the door and nodding to Victor as he took the cup of water away. “They could lie to you, and because you can’t use Legilimency, you would have to accept what they said as the truth, if the lie was good enough.”

            “And that’s why I don’t mind that they don’t honor me,” Potter said calmly. “Because they have to trust the same thing about me, that I really am as modest as I claim to be. Robards may be a bastard, but I’m sure there are other people out there who listen to my words and snort and roll their eyes. Of course the fame had nothing to do with his actions, they say to themselves. Of course.” He gave Draco a faint smile.

            Draco shook his head. He hadn’t expected Potter to defend himself with words so rational, truth be told. He had thought he would get a heated stare and some Gryffindor proclamation about how Potter “knew the truth in his heart.” He held out the cup of water to Potter.

            “Here,” he said quietly. “After all that speech, your throat must need some refreshment.”

*

            Harry felt as if several muscles in his body had turned to ice, including his tongue.

            It had suddenly struck him that he’d been standing there and having a philosophical discussion with Malfoy.

            It was the sort of thing he would do with some of his Auror colleagues, or people that he met in pubs when he was under a glamour, so they wouldn’t realize that they’d been debating Harry Potter. But it had no place here. It would soften him up, make him more like the obedient slave Malfoy wanted, if Harry dared to let any unplanned words pass his lips.

            He wasn’t here for that.

            And he wasn’t here to accept favors from Malfoy, either, though he had almost reached for the glass of water before he thought better of it.

            “No, thank you,” he said sharply, turning his face away.

            The next moment, he remembered that he had come here in the first place to try and convince Malfoy that he was slowly yielding to the bastard’s persuasions. Talking to him as if he were a civilized human being and not a Dark Lord could have achieved that—if Harry hadn’t ruined it immediately afterwards by refusing the water.

            When he turned back, though, opening his mouth to ask for it after all, he saw Malfoy with a small, mysterious smile on his face. He set the water down next to his own cup on the desk and stepped back, as if inviting Harry to pick it up when he felt ready.

            That could be what I need, Harry thought, and bobbed his head in a brief nod. If I go too far too fast, he’ll be suspicious. But pulling myself up short of doing something that he wants me to do, combined with also participating in his ownership of me up to a certain part, is the way to be most convincing.

            Now the only question was whether he would go too far someday and actually act as if he were encouraging the bastard to own him.

            There wasn’t a question that could be answered right now, Harry thought, and therefore unproductive. “I’m ready to tell you about the wards on Robards’s office,” he said aloud. “If the most gracious Lord Malfoy has a moment.”

            “I’m glad that you aren’t calling me by my title yet,” Malfoy remarked as he moved across the room to pick up the ink and parchment that Lisa had abandoned. Does she know that she looked like a servant, scuttling out of here the minute he nodded? Harry thought. “I think it would sound wrong from your lips.”

            Harry tried not to start. Was that an indication that Malfoy might possibly have a grain of decency in him, and understand Harry’s desire for freedom?

            “It’ll sound so much better,” Malfoy went on, picking up the parchment, “for you to scream Draco when you come.” He flashed a look over his shoulder that Harry was sure was meant to look seductive, but only made him look as if he were thirsty and should just walk back across the room and pick up the bloody glass of water.

            Harry decided not to respond to that. “He uses layered wards,” he said. “Defensive on the outside, offensive on the inside.”

            “I’ve never heard of offensive wards,” Malfoy said, although he bowed his head and began to write. Harry watched the way his head bent, as if even now he was trying to show his profile off to best advantage, and wondered what had made him so vain. His parents? Getting away with crimes that he should have known would be discovered and held against him someday? Natural bad luck? “If they defend what’s inside, they should be defensive by definition.”

            Harry sighed. It was a common failing among young Aurors to think the exact same way Malfoy did, not seeing that magic didn’t always respond to human definitions and remained the same whether wizards thought they were casting a good spell or not. Harry usually countered the Auror madness by relating the tale of a wizard he had arrested who had thought she was using the Killing Curse to put people out of their misery and had thought she wouldn’t get Azkaban because of that. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option here. “Defensive wards set off alarms and cast illusions that should convince people breaking in to back off. Offensive wards attack the ones who are breaking in and try to shatter bones and cut throats.”

            Malfoy looked up, eyes locked on Harry through a sheer curtain of silvery hair. Harry liked him better at that moment than at any moment since he had come to Fox Valley, because the git looked properly focused on what they were discussing. “He doesn’t care if intruders end up dead?”

            “He reckons they deserve it for breaking into the Head Auror’s office,” Harry said, deliberately imitating the intonation he had heard Robards use on those particular words, and then sneered. Robards had looked so much like Malfoy when he said that, too, staring loftily over Harry’s head at the wall as if he were discussing matters that mere mortals couldn’t possibly understand.

            And all the time, he had been Malfoy’s slave, just like Harry.

            Harry paused. Shouldn’t he be feeling some sympathy for Robards? Thinking that he was a fellow slave and deserved loyalty? Plotting on how to get him out from under Malfoy’s thumb?

            No, Harry decided a moment later. He would feel no sympathy for me, and he betrayed me. Besides, his loyalty to Malfoy would remain in place if I couldn’t find some way to remove the Mark, and he would hate me when he discovered I had survived, which makes him dangerous to both me and the Ministry in the future. He needs to fall, no matter what happens.

            “That’s useful to know,” Malfoy said softly, writing several words down, and then smiled at Harry as if he was reading his mind. In practice, Harry thought, he was much less successful at that than his Legilimency would imply. “If you’re thinking that I might free you if I’m dead, you’re wrong.”

            “I know,” Harry said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. It didn’t matter, he told himself. Malfoy would be worried if Harry pretended to like his slavery. “You’ve bragged about your perfect Mark for hours. I would rather see you suffer than kill you.”

            There. Now when it looks like I’m yielding, he’ll feel even more smug and be even less cautious.

*

            Draco paused. There was a spark at the back of Potter’s eyes that he hadn’t seen before, a snap in his voice that he hadn’t heard.

            Doubt stirred in him for the first time. His other Marked ones had come to accept Draco’s rule after a brief period of fighting, or none at all. Draco could use pain as a bridle on them, and he had not hesitated to do so. He had no reason to fear that one of them would suddenly rise in rebellion the way he knew they sometimes dreamed of doing.

            But Potter…

            Had he made a mistake in holding off on pain? Perhaps that meant Potter didn’t respect him as much as he should. Perhaps a small touch of the lash would be good for him.

            But Draco changed his mind back a moment later. He had hurt Potter when he first put the Mark on him, and Potter had laughed at him, saying that he could resist the pain and would drive himself mad before he would surrender. Draco could still remember everything about the way he looked, from how his hands clenched to the spittle gleaming at the corners of his mouth.

            Instead, Draco thought, he should try a technique that he had used with full success but without much thought a few moments before: coaxing Potter into a normal conversation where he would forget himself so far as to smile.

            “Just so you know,” he said, and looked back at his notes. “How many layers of defensive wards and how many of offensive?”

            “Defensive on the first three layers in front of the door,” Potter said, his voice brisk. For a moment, the traces of their argument lingered in the echoes of a snarl, but they vanished as he spoke on. It was happening, Draco thought, keeping his head bowed as he smiled so that Potter wouldn’t notice. He was slipping into a “normal conversation” space in his mind, and that made him forget who he was talking to. “Offensive behind, for four. The ones embedded in the door itself I never had the chance to examine closely, but I think they were offensive.”

            “Probably to use the door as a weapon,” Draco murmured as he wrote, and listened intently for changes in Potter’s breathing under the scratching of the quill. “Embedding wooden splinters in someone’s heart would please him.”

            “You must be right,” Potter said, sounding startled. “There was a report of a smuggler found dead outside his office one morning, with so much wood in him that he’d died of blood loss before he could heal himself.”

            Draco stretched his shoulders with pleasure at the praise, but still didn’t look up. “Is there any spell that will release all the wards at once, or do you have to unravel them one by one?”

            Potter snorted. “Robards is much too paranoid for a single spell. Yes, a burst of power could do it, but the power would probably kill the wizard who tried it. Unless—” He broke off.

            Draco had to turn and look at him now. Potter was staring at his desk with a look of ferocious concentration. Draco raised an eyebrow. “Harry?”

            “I know you could do it,” Potter said, as if every word was being dragged out of him on heavy chains. “With your stored magic.”

            Draco nearly laughed. So that’s it. He knows that I’m capable of feats he’s not, and that galls him. He would never have a chance at revenge without me. Well, as long as he remembers that.

            “Yes, perhaps I could,” Draco said. “But causing such a cacophony in the Head Auror’s office is not something I wish to try. How long would it take us to unpick the wards?”

            “Hours,” Potter said, turning around with a shake of his head. His fringe dangled in his eyes, making him look untamed. Draco caught his breath in greed. Someone is coming to tame you, Potter. Be patient. “We may have to use the blast of power simply because I doubt we’d get a whole night to ourselves.”

            Draco hardened at the last phrase, and bit back a moan. He did wish that Potter would notice his condition soon. Then at least he would flush, and Draco could recover back some of his lost ground in innuendo.

            But for no reason he could explain, he didn’t want to do it now, although he could have. He wanted Potter to be the one to notice, the one to give him the opening.

            “We’ll discuss it,” he said. “Come back tomorrow afternoon.”

            Potter’s whole body stiffened, and he spun away from the order as if physical resistance would make it cease to exist. Then he stalked out the door.

            Draco adjusted himself, checked the time on the clock that hung over the glass cabinet containing the wooden fox, and then smiled and brought up the strongest wards over his door. He had time for a five-minute wank.

            This time, he came to images of Potter thrashing on the bed, crying out while his eyes were wide with surprise, as if he were amazed that he was doing such a thing.

*

            I think it worked. He’s on the right track, at least, thinking I envy his power and want it for myself.

            Harry headed down the stairs, consumed with visions of Malfoy staring at him, wide-eyed, when Harry broke free of his “rule” and showed his Mark to be nothing more than what it was: a paltry imitation of Voldemort’s, and no more enduring.

*

            thrnbrooke: Harry knows what he’s doing to a certain extent: he will give anything to be free of Malfoy.

            paigeey07: Thanks!

            mariahs_fantasy: Thanks so much! I always get nervous starting a sequel after a gap of time.

            I think the last two will be longer than the first one, but I don’t foresee a certain length for them yet.

            angelmuziq: Thank you!

            xam: Thanks!

            varjo: Well, one reason it would be difficult for it to follow the first path is that Harry really can’t break free of Draco’s Mark. Even death won’t free him. As for Draco being persuaded to take it off, later in the story you see his response to that.

            I can’t comment on your other speculations yet.

            You’ve got it! Your e-mail address is now on the list.

            purple-er: Thanks!

            mrequecky: It depends. Here, for example, Harry didn’t notice that he was being lured into “normal conversation” a second time.
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Wolf in the Making