Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Contracted	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18657 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 22
- 23
- 24
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Three--In Repeated Chimes of Seconds

            "Harry!"

            The sharp call came from the direction of his door, Harry thought, opening his eyes, not his Floo. That was good, wasn't it? Not coming from the direction of the Floo meant there was less chance that he would have to deal with Malfoy this early in the morning, while the person standing at the door was likely to be--

            Someone from the Ministry, or one of his friends.

            But that recollection only came to him after he had opened his door and stood back to let Hermione in.

            She swept into the middle of his drawing room like a storm and turned around to stare at him. Harry, his hand still on the open door, watched her and swallowed slowly. He wished that he could say he knew what she had come here for, either to renew their friendship or to tell him that she would never trust him again, but he had given up thinking he knew her. She didn't know him, which meant their friendship hadn't gone two ways for seven years.

            "Sit down."

            Harry shut the door and took a seat on the couch, watching her. His hand was exactly three inches from his wand. He hated knowing that, but on the other hand...some of what Hermione had said and wanted to do had made it sound like she might attack him. If he had inflicted a gaping wound like that on a political ally, Harry would have assumed they had instantly become an enemy and he'd have to watch his back. And reading politics had been most of his life for the past seven years.

            Hermione surveyed him, eyes critical and also strangely neutral, that expression on her face that hid her intentions. Then she nodded and took a seat on the chair where Zabini had sat that night Harry had all three Slytherins over for a conference.

            "Who came up with the idea that I fancied you?" she asked abruptly.

            Harry blinked. "The rumor I spread was that I fancied you, and Ron and you found out and got angry at me," he said. "It's already got corrupted in the telling, I see." I wonder how Sandborn thinks he has an accurate grasp on the situation at all. Or did he change it on purpose?

            Hermione shook her head. "I still want to know who came up with it."

            "Malfoy had the initial idea," Harry said. "We refined it together."

            Hermione slammed her hands down in the middle of the table. Harry jumped and then looked back at her, hiding most of his emotions under his own neutral mask. He had no idea what half the signals Hermione was giving off meant: the way she breathed, the way her eyes darted back and forth, the red tone to her cheeks, the determined heft to her chin that she gave when Harry assumed she would stand and leave the room.

            "I'm not asking for much," she said. "But can't you realize that Malfoy is the root cause of all of this? He's the one who comes up with ideas like this and uses them to turn you against your friends for a lark."

            "No, I'm the root cause of all this," Harry correct her, quietly but stubbornly. "I'm the one who came up with the contract and talked Sandborn into signing and guaranteeing me some things in return for my performance. That isn't the same thing. Malfoy is the one who leads the group of Slytherins that found out about the debt and decided to help me. But no matter how many nasty ideas he came up with, I'm the one who chose to put them into operation."

            Hermione leaned back in her seat and stared at him. Harry stared back. He would be happy to agree with lots of things she said, and disagree with the rest. His heart was pounding, but for some reason, his defensive instincts had calmed down now, and he didn't think they would actually react again unless she hurled a curse at him. For some reason, it was just--this was a conversation with his friend that he thought he could expect to finish reasonably.

            "Why did you spread that particular rumor?" Hermione whispered. "You ought to have known that we would keep the news of the contract to ourselves."

            Harry shook his head. "I don't know. Anything I did in reaction to you might have been presumed to be controlling you. And if you're hurt enough not to forgive me, then you might have spread the news of the contract."

            "We wouldn't do that to you." Hermione stared at him with her mouth set down firmly. "No matter what you did to us."

            "That's good to know," Harry said, because he had no other words.

            "So take the rumor back," Hermione said.

            "When I'm free of Sandborn, then I'll be glad to," Harry said. "Until then, it's serving its purpose as a story distracting him from the real seeds of my argument with you. I'm sorry," he added, when Hermione flushed. "But it's too useful that way. And if I tried to spread another story now, he would probably decide the first one was a lie, and start digging under that to see what I was hiding."

            "Is your freedom worth any price, then?" Hermione asked with a soft gust of breath. "Even hurting us?"

            "I don't want to kill anyone," Harry said. "That's a price that I won't pay, and believe me, murdering Sandborn would be the simplest solution in some ways. But I'm not going to hurt him," he added hastily, because Hermione's eyes had widened in a way that said she might not believe him. "He's--he's not my friend, but he's only done what he promised to with the contract, all the times that he had to. I want to be free of him, and I know he won't let me go free if I ask. That's the only reason we're enemies."

            "But you'll hurt us."

            Harry nodded. "I always knew that revealing the contract would hurt you, so I made that choice a long time ago. Sorry."

            "You don't sound sorry."

            Harry sighed, and decided that he could explain his three souls. He put it into words as best he could, while Hermione sat listening with shadowed eyes. She broke in only once, when he was describing the difference between his first soul and his second one. "You were lying when you were with us? All the time?"

            "What you saw and heard, yes," Harry said. "Not my emotions." Then he hesitated, because he wasn't entirely sure that his shallow versions of enthusiasm and excitement and love--shallow when compared to what Malfoy clearly felt for his friends--would count. "Maybe my emotions, too. I don't know."

            Hermione closed her eyes and gestured for him to continue. Harry finished up with his third soul and the way he could only express it in private, at least until the point when Malfoy stirred him up and he started learning about all the things that he'd put off as best he could. She shook her head then.

            "Why was Malfoy the one who could wake you up?" she whispered. "Why not one of us?"

            "Because he knew about the contract." Harry groped for words again. "The contract was a prison that was keeping me in. Anyone who approached it from the outside could see ways to break its walls, I think, but I couldn't, because I'd got too used to being trapped inside it. So he overheard the conversation, and he got indignant about it, and he broke me free. He used the debt as a justification, and hell, maybe it was his only reason when this began. But I don't think it's his only reason now," he added quietly, savoring the soft, uncertain certainty that was starting to bloom in him.

            "It has to be," Hermione said, and squashed the hope. "Someone like him isn't capable of--of disinterested generosity, and friendship."

            "The way that someone like me isn't capable of lying to his friends for seven years?" Harry asked.

            Hermione flushed a deeper red than he'd seen her face attain yet. Her mouth opened, dangled for a moment, and shut again.

            "I think we need to abandon the classification of people into Slytherins and Gryffindors," Harry said. "It hasn't done us a bloody bit of good since we left Hogwarts behind. I call them 'the Slytherins,' Malfoy and his friends, because it's convenient, and they like to call themselves that because it makes the fact that they feel they owe me a debt more understandable."

            "And they are Slytherins," Hermione pointed out, in the voice of someone who'd been bursting with that information for the last five minutes. "I think we should still keep that in mind."

            Harry shrugged. "Malfoy's spent too much time on this for this just to be a lark to him, and he's involved other people in sending Callia away, and tricking Sandborn, and trying to baffle you. This is a big operation. At some point, I would have expected the inconvenience to make him toss me away. But it hasn't."

            Hermione shook her head. "You're becoming more like him. I think that's the reason you hurt us."

            Harry glared at her, truly angry for the first time since he'd told her about the contract. "Blame me," he said. "I was the one who made the stupid decisions, Hermione. I was the one who was ready to sacrifice you and Ron and your pride, and even Callia, and even the family I'd always wanted, to the contract. Malfoy is the one who saw through that and made me wake up. Maybe it'll turn out that he was stupid to help me in the end, because he's poured so much of himself into this and I can't give him much in return. But I don't think so. I think that he took the risk to help me, and I owe him. I'll repay him by passing the risk on to other people. He told me he was honest, and I have to be honest in return. If I'd kept lying to you about the contract, that would have dishonored his sacrifice."

            Hermione stared at him with her mouth open by the end. Harry blinked at her. "What?" he asked.

            "You're talking about him like you're bloody in love with him," Hermione said in a faint, shocked voice. "I--Harry, you can't really."

            Harry shook his head. "I did a lot of things in the past few years that I shouldn't have, that I wouldn't have if I'd been thinking about you instead of myself. This isn't one of them."

            Hermione reached out and clutched his hand. Harry held it back fiercely. She would probably remember in a minute and take it away, but for now, it felt damn good to touch a friend's hand.

            "I want you to be with someone who can make you happy," Hermione whispered, rapid eyes scanning his face as if she would see something different in him if she looked at him multiple times. "I want you to be with someone who can change things for you. Malfoy won't give you anything permanent, you know that. He can't manage a relationship with someone longer than a year!"

            "Thank you, Hermione," Harry said, and smiled at her. There was a painful ache behind the smile, but he managed it. "It means--a lot--that you still care about me."

            Hermione flushed again, her spine straightening, but she said, "Harry, please. Think about it."

            "I don't know if there's going to be anything permanent between Malfoy and me yet, friendship or otherwise," Harry said. He briefly debated telling her they'd slept with each other, but decided that there was a difference between honesty and gossip. "But--even if there isn't, Hermione, he's the reason that I'm going to be happier. And that you and Ron are going to be happier, too, I hope, no matter what you decide on."

            Hermione pulled her hands away as though she'd been burned. "I want to be," she said, tone frigid. "But I wish that you wouldn't say anything about it. It's thanks to you that we're hurting right now."

            Harry nodded. "I know."

            Hermione squirmed in place for a moment, kicking her foot, which made Harry wonder what she was thinking. Then she burst out, "How can you just sit there and calmly say that? It makes you sound like you really don't care about us at all! Like you're just indulging us!"

            Harry sighed and rubbed his face. "I don't have the right to get angry at you," he said. "Unless you try to hurt someone like Malfoy who really wasn't involved in this like you think he was," he had to add. "So yelling at you would make it sound like I was trying to force you to forgive me, being calm makes me sound indifferent, and being sad and guilty makes it sound like I'm trying to guilt you into forgiving me. There's no way to react well to this, Hermione. The situation was my fault. But what you choose next really has to be your free choice. Not up to me."

            "You could be a little sorrier," Hermione muttered, folding her arms and looking away. "Or aren't you?"

            Harry grimaced and nodded. "Yeah. Sorry as hell that I didn't tell you earlier. That at least might have meant that you had more time to recover from it. Sorry that I made the contract in the first place. Sorry that you had to do some investigating of your own before you came to me. I would have preferred it if I'd had the courage to tell you about the contract on my own, and not for any outside reason."

            Hermione glanced back at him. "That sounds a little better," she said, and then tightened her lips again. "But--Harry, I don't know if we can forgive you that easily. I want to, but then part of my mind points out exactly what you did, and that makes me angry again."

            Harry nodded. "Wait. Take your time. If it takes you some time to forgive me, that wouldn't be at all unusual."

            "If we never forgive you?"

            Harry tried to swallow. He couldn't. He wanted to reach out and hold Hermione's hand, but he couldn't do that, either, though for different reasons. "Then--I'd say good-bye and good luck," he muttered at last, when he had the spit for the words. "And I'm sorry."

            Hermione studied him with a gaze that made him wince for its sharpness for a few minutes, then nodded and stood up. "I believe you, for a wonder," she said dryly. "I hope that you contact us if you change your mind."

            "About?" Harry stood up, too, following her as she walked to the door. His heartbeat was calming now, and he felt a bit of cautious happiness that he wouldn't let himself investigate too closely. She had sought him out of her own free will, after all. Ron hadn't come with her, but it sounded as though Hermione was speaking for both of them. And she had touched him and acted sincerely concerned for his happiness.

            "About Malfoy." Hermione's face was pale and set. "I think he has a lot more to do with this than you believe."

            Harry felt free to roll his eyes this time. "Hermione, will you give it a rest? Malfoy didn't put me up to the contract. He did goad me into confessing, in a way. I would never have had the courage to, if not for him. But he isn't mind-controlling me or whatever you think he's doing."

            "There's more than one way of mind-controlling a person," Hermione muttered, but lifted her hand when Harry glared at her. "Fine. But come and speak to us when you learn the truth."

            "Good-bye, Hermione," Harry said, and shut the door when she was gone, and leaned against it, rubbing his eyes.

            He understood why she wanted to blame Malfoy. She still couldn't reconcile Harry's behavior with the person she'd known. It would be so much simpler to say it was Malfoy's fault, because she'd always mistrusted him.

            But that didn't make it right for her to do so. If Harry had done this, the consequences should fall on him. Not on other people.

            He stood there, debating, for a few minutes, and then sighed and went to the Floo. If there was a chance that Malfoy could be in danger of being accused, whatever Harry's friends decided, then Harry needed to warn him.

*

            Draco leafed through Callia Greengrass's diary one more time before putting it down and rolling his eyes. That had been a waste of the favor Daphne owed him for fucking up.

            Callia wrote down every detail of her days, yes, and her own emotional reactions, which had been better than Draco had thought; he had pictured her as one of the people who uselessly noted events but nothing else. But those emotional reactions were so understated that Draco thought an etiquette violation would have earned more outrage from her than any murder she witnessed. She was disgusted when the taste of her tea was off. She was looking forward to her marriage with Potter. The latest gown she had bought did not fit her and she would have to have it refitted.

            Nothing that would have brought Potter alive, in all his glowing fire-colors, before Draco's eyes. Of course, Draco knew that she probably had never seen that fire, but how could one remain around Potter for so long and not see at least a trace? Potter was well-rid of someone so oblivious that she would spend less time noting Potter's latest arrest than the gown that didn't fit.

            His fireplace flared with the pattern of fire that Draco had come up with for Potter: three long and then three short, symbolic of the public show he put on with the private one hiding beneath it. Draco found himself smiling as he reached out and gave gracious permission for the Floo to open.

            Daphne might be on to something after all when she said that he was more invested in Potter than in others he'd courted or slept with.

            "Something wrong?" Draco asked lightly when Potter's face appeared. Potter looked distressed. Then again, that was his most common expression. Draco sometimes feared that Potter would never get the natural tone of his muscles back when he was free and learn to laugh and smile again.

            "Hermione just came over to talk to me," Potter announced.

            "Yes, that is wrong," Draco agreed, worried for a moment that Sandborn was more impressive than he had appeared. "She shouldn't have come near you until her little indignation play wore down. Did you check for Polyjuice?"

            Potter rolled his eyes, and Draco felt comforted. If he had recovered his natural faculties of irritation and outrage so easily, then perhaps Draco need not worry over whether he would do the same thing with joy. "No, you git. That isn't the problem. But she still wants to think that you're behind the contract, or that you corrupted me somehow, and I'm worried about what she might try. I don't even want to try to predict her now."

            "Because that would somehow constitute controlling her behavior?" Draco snorted. "You're too delicate, Potter. Of course it's fine to try and work out what someone is going to do, particularly when that person is threatening you with exposure. Or an ally with exposure," he had to add, because he doubted Potter would see a threat against Draco as the threat to himself it could be.

            Potter shook his head. "I don't want to give myself false hope by pretending she might come back, if she's not going to," he whispered, looking like someone whose brand-new Crup puppy had drowned.

            "Oh, stop feeling self-pity," Draco said, rescuing the Crup puppy and setting it firmly back on dry land again. Potter gaped at him, and Draco rolled his eyes. "Listen. You've agreed that you needed to go on fighting for your freedom whether your friends decide to join you, stand on the sidelines, or join your enemies--"

            "They wouldn't," Potter said, with utter certainty. "Not Ron and Hermione."

            Draco tactfully refrained from pointing out that his Gryffindor friends were also supposed to be above conflating members of their Houses with those Houses and assigning blame to innocent people. "What they do doesn't matter as far as pursuing your freedom goes," he said. "You ought to come over here so that we can plan the next step."

            "Hermione also said that Sandborn is changing the rumor," Potter said, which missed a hint so broad Draco thought it impossible not to walk into. "That now she fancies me instead of the other way around."

            Draco nodded. "That's good."

            Potter peered at him. "Why?"

            Draco shrugged. "Other people who pay attention to it will know that it's probably a rumor, since it exists in multiple versions. That makes it less likely they'll believe it, and so your friends are less likely to be hurt." Of course, that was really only a desirable result to someone like Potter, but he seemed to need it, so Draco would pretend that he believed it, too. "Sandborn thinks he knows the truth and he's just making you look better. He'll probably focus more on you, not so much on your friends."

            "You think so." Potter was relaxing.

            "Yes," Draco said. "And so do you. Honestly, Potter, some of these things I'm telling you are truths that you would understand for yourself if you just paid attention. Why won't you?"

            Potter flushed. "It's hard to think about things like that when your best friends are angry at you and your life is crumbling around you," he snapped.

            "Crumbling around you to make way for a new, better one." Draco picked up Callia's diary and flourished it at Potter. "If you come over here and read this, you'll see just how much better."

            "What is that?" Potter looked as if he might really believe that Draco had a secret set of instructions for overturning the world. Draco refrained from cackling and rubbing his hands together, in the interests of not getting a noseful of Potter's wand.

            "Callia's diary," Draco said. "I recovered it because I wanted to see if she ever knew the real Potter. She knew some construct, I think, but it's hard to tell because she focuses so much on herself." He gave Potter a smile that he knew was pure temptation, because several people had told him so. "Don't you want to know what she said about you? It might cheer you up, knowing how thoroughly you escaped."

            Potter stared at him. "You read a diary," he said. "Without permission."

            "You're right," Draco said. "That's much worse than making your fiancée believe that she'll die if she has your children."

            Potter buried his head in his hands and gave a laugh that sounded mostly exasperated. "You have me there," he muttered. "Sometimes I wish that you weren't so honest."

            "Sorry, Potter," Draco said. "That's the one thing about me you'll never change." He smiled at Potter, content in a way that was difficult to describe. He hadn't felt this way with Astoria, who he had stayed with longest, or with Peter, his most recent lover. He made a beckoning gesture, and this time Potter took the hint and picked up the Floo powder.

            "It's ridiculous, how much comfort I get from you," he told Draco, when he was standing on Draco's carpet and brushing off the soot.

            Draco made a little moue at him. "Let the house-elves clean that up. Come here and read this with me."

            Potter settled on the couch beside him, and Draco tilted his head to the side so that he could breathe in more of the brewing scent around the man. Sweat, and sleep, and the rough wool of his robe.

            I don't think it's ridiculous at all.

*

            polka dot: Ginny has gotten used to Luna, besides loving her.

            SP777: Thank you! And, well, I think the souls are pretty well summed up as "political," "friendly," and "private."

            Harry wants the rumor there for Sandborn's sake, more than anything else. And if Ron and Hermione choose to jump the way of telling the truth to everybody, then at least it confuses the issue.

            kit: Thanks! While I do think that Ginny's stance is the more sensible, I think Ron and Hermione are following their principles to their logical ends. They want to be honest, and they want to earn things fairly, and for other people to earn them fairly, too. Maybe Ron cheated someone else out of a place in the program because he got accepted only through Harry's influence. It's hard to tell.
- 22
- 23
- 24
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Contracted