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The Long-Desired	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 12097 -:- 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.

Chapter List
- 1-The Long-Desired
- 2-Part 2
- 3-Part 3
- 4-Part 4
- 5-Part 5
- 6-Part 6
- 7-Part 7
- 8-Part 8
- 9-Part 9
- 10-Part 10
- 11-Part 11
- 12-Part 12
- 13-Part 13
- 2
- 3
- 4
Thank you again for all the reviews!

�� Harry.
This is�a surprise.�

�� Hermione�s
voice was soft and cautious, which made Harry glad that he had decided to
contact her first through a firecall. He smiled, hoping that he managed to make
it the rueful, contrite one he�d been practicing in the mirror, and leaned
forwards so that his head went further into the flames.

�� I know,�
he said. He drew a deep breath and rubbed his hands as if he were nervous. In
fact, that didn�t require a lot of acting. �I thought about what you said after
you left, Hermione, and I�I scared myself.� He lowered his eyes and took
another deep, shivering breath. �I suddenly realized that I was willing to do
anything to be free of the Long-Desired bond, and I don�t want to do anything. I always want to have some limits. I don�t
want to go crazy.�

�� He rubbed
his fingers over his mouth and let a remnant of the feeling he�d had last night
come back to him. Hermione seemed convinced, because she made a strangled noise
and knelt down on the carpet in front of him, her eyes wide and anxious.

�� Harry, are
you all right?�

�� I nearly
wasn�t,� Harry answered honestly. I don�t
know what I would have done if I hadn�t realized that I could still escape by
hunting Malfoy. �But that was what scared me the most, Hermione, and made
me realize that I do want to listen to you.�

He put his hand through the flames,
and Hermione grabbed it. Her eyes were full of love and tenderness that made
Harry despise himself for just a moment.

Then he remembered that the hunt
only encompassed the way he would escape from Malfoy. It didn�t mean that he
needed to leave his best friends behind. So he wasn�t really lying to Hermione
when he said that he didn�t want to go mad.

�Harry,� Hermione whispered. �I�m
so glad that you�ve decided to come to me.� Her fingers rubbed over and over
his palm. �Will you trust my judgment and try to come to terms with Malfoy
through me?�

Easier
than trying to come to terms with him on my own, when I would probably betray some
sign of what I was thinking.

Harry nodded, and Hermione smiled
at him and sat back. �Come through the fire,� she said. �We haven�t had you
over for dinner in so long, and I know that Ron will be happy to see you.�

�� He will?�
Harry asked. He remembered the way Ron had slammed his hands on the desk the
last time they spoke. It had certainly looked as if his best friend was ready
to turn his back on him for good.

�� Oh, Harry.� Hermione tugged at his hand. She
was smiling, but her eyes shone as if she would burst out weeping in a moment.
�Of course he wants to see you. He just didn�t know how to reach you when it
looked as if you were slipping into madness and obsession about vampires and
wouldn�t come back to us. He thought maybe seeming to give up on you would get
you to realize what you could lose. When it didn�t work, he was in despair.�
Her fingers pressed down, causing Harry to wince. �But I wouldn�t say anything
about Malfoy yet. I haven�t mentioned him, because I didn�t know how Ron would
react.�

�� Harry
carefully tucked away a small piece of hope into the back of his soul. If his
own efforts failed, then maybe he could ask Ron to help him kill Malfoy.

�� That�s
fine,� he said. �What time should I come over?�

�� Around six
would be fine.� Hermione�s smile grew deeper, and the tears vanished from her
eyes. �I presume that you won�t object to vegetarian dishes? I stopped eating
meat a few months ago.�

�� Harry
swallowed. Once, that was the kind of thing he would have known about Hermione
immediately, and included in all the future thoughts he had about her. Now, he
had gone months not only not knowing but not caring.

�� Look what Malfoy has made me. I don�t want
to be that man.

�� Yes,
that�s fine,� he said. �As long as you don�t try to make me eat spinach because
it�s good for me.� He had distinctly unfond memories of spinach after the way
that Dudley had held him down one day and forced handfuls of it into his mouth.

�� Everyone
can have the vegetables they like,� Hermione said placidly, and rubbed his hand
one more time before she gave it back to him. Then she grabbed it again and
squeezed it hard enough to make Harry gasp. �I�m just so glad that you�re
coming back,� she explained, blushing a little, when Harry blinked at her.

�� Harry
nodded and spoke a few more meaningless words before he pulled back through the
fire and shut the Floo connection. Then he ended up sitting on the floor in
front of the hearth for a time, his eyes closed and his hands resting uselessly
in his lap.

�� I didn�t know that I would come so close to
losing them.

�� I didn�t know that the thought of losing
anyone who wasn�t Ginny could still affect me in that way.

*

�� Draco
paused when he came to the outside of the wards and realized that there was no
trace of Harry�s presence in the house tonight. He leaned on the boulder and
sniffed carefully, seeking some explanation. Of course, there were several
possible choices. Harry could have gone to the Ministry to do his paperwork, or
maybe he had chosen to search for books that described vampires in a library,
so that he wasn�t dependent on Draco�s goodwill to learn about the Long-Desired
bond.

�� Or maybe he
had gone on another hunt.

�� Draco
growled softly beneath his breath. Harry was skilled, but he simply didn�t take
enough care with his life when he confronted nests. He had nearly died in his
confrontations with both the Collector and Caspar. Draco didn�t want that to
happen again.

�� He wondered
idly if Harry knew it was happening,
or if he counted any hunt as a victory that didn�t end with his death. He
suspected the latter. Harry seemed to believe that he was indomitable when it
came to vampires simply because he could resist the thrall.

�� He won�t even look back at the hunt against
the Collector and realize that he did well, and conquered her in a single
night, because I was at his side.

�� Draco put
down the books he was carrying on the boulder, so that he wouldn�t crush them
to powder with his grip. He picked up a pebble and crushed it instead, watching
with intellectual detachment as fine milky dust slid through his fingers. His
skin was already pale again after the fire-charring of the night before, thanks
to the blood he had drunk earlier tonight. Nothing Harry did could affect him
for long.

�� Except
yielding, and finally giving Draco permission to make him his permanent donor
and partner.

�� Draco
leaned against the boulder, weak with the thought of the pleasure he would feel
when that finally happened. He was so caught up in the imagined sensations that
at first he thought the voice speaking to him was also part of his imagination.

�� Malfoy?�

�� Then Draco
started and leaped to his feet. Yes, Harry really stood by the boulder, and his
mouth was squeezed shut in distaste and his hands were held stiffly out in
front of him as if he didn�t want to be associated with them, but he was still
holding out his hand to Draco.

�� Draco stilled
his muscles so that he wouldn�t approach at once. This might be a trap, and he
wanted to avoid pain if he could, despite being willing to endure it to show
Harry that he couldn�t break the bond with curses. �Why have you come out?� he
asked, letting his voice sink.

�� Harry gave
a tiny nervous flinch with his shoulders and skin, but managed to quiet himself
in a moment. His voice was steady when he said, �If you�re right�and I want to
read those books you promised me before I say that you�re right, if you even
brought them��

�� Draco
picked up the books from the boulder, holding them out in silent evidence of
his ability to keep a promise. He was too stunned to say anything about it.

�� Harry
nodded. �If you�re right, then it
would be stupid to keep struggling against this.� His flinch was more violent
this time, and Draco smelled distaste rising from him like a foul odor off
carrion. �I want to know some way that I can make this bearable, instead of
being dragged into it.�

�� Draco found
himself making a crooning noise, high and sweet, rather like the piping of a
baby bird when it was hungry. He hadn�t known he was capable of that, but he
understood its purpose when he saw Harry�s eyelids flutter.

�� I�m more
than happy to accept that,� Draco whispered, �to give you the books, to touch
you, to help you bear it in any way I can.�

*

�� The
crooning noise seemed to have got into Harry�s head and to bounce around from
ear to ear, from fold to fold of his brain. It echoed everywhere, and it gave
him the first relief from the tension he had carried with him throughout the
dinner with Ron and Hermione, when he had been sure that he would slip up at
any moment and give away his plan to only pretend
to comply.

�� Suddenly
the reverberating doubts and thoughts were quiet. Suddenly he could think of
something other than the next step in this drama, this deception. Suddenly he
no longer thought he was about to go mad.

�� He tried to
resist the influence of that croon�of course it was only another vampire trick
to try to make him into a slave�and the way that Malfoy was looking at him now.
His gaze was intent and longing.

�� Harry
hadn�t ever had someone look at him like he was the center of the universe.
Ginny had been too wise to do that, and their relationship wouldn�t have
survived if she had. His parents were dead too early for him to remember if
they�d loved him with that possessive, greedy kind of love. Hermione and Ron
were the closest to him, but they had their own lives and their own work; Harry
knew that he couldn�t have demanded that kind of devotion from them.

�� But here
was the devotion being handed to him without his having to ask for it. And
Malfoy was a vampire, without the ties of other affections, just as he had told
Harry last night, and with a deep native selfishness, so that it wouldn�t
affect him adversely in the same way that it would a human.

�� The dream was
deep and tempting and perfectly dark. Harry could see why some humans might
agree to be the Long-Desired of a particular vampire, why Lucy had probably
agreed before the Collector had bent and twisted her mind into a malleable
frame.

�� He licked
his lips and tore his gaze away from Malfoy�s with an effort. He had to
remember that this was only a
temptation, and thus like other temptations: false at the bottom, without a
reality that would match its promise.

�� At the same
time, he couldn�t reject it outright, because he had to keep up the lie that he
was cooperating with Malfoy now.

�� So he
murmured, �I�ve never had someone who would do that for me. I�m not sure I know
how to relate to someone who would.�

�� Malfoy
crooned again. Luckily, this time, Harry was expecting it and it didn�t quite
numb his mind like it had before. He still had to swallow against the
temptation to yield and stand there with his eyes closed, absorbing and
enjoying the peace.

�� Yes,�
Malfoy whispered. �You�ve given me your blood three times now, and I haven�t
given you enough in return. Anything you want, Harry. Only let me.� His voice was thick and eager, as if he were speaking
through clotted chunks of something in his throat.

�� Harry
focused on that thickness and used it to pull himself out of the trance that
waited for him. �Yes, well. For now, you can hand me the books and then leave.�
He cleared his throat, though he wasn�t the one whose voice sounded as if he
needed it.

�� This time,
Malfoy hummed, and the sound made Harry sway on his feet. But Malfoy backed
away with a single nod, as though this was something he had planned himself.
When he picked up the books and held them out, Harry realized that he would
have to come forwards to take them from him.

�� He did so,
staring Malfoy insolently in the eye all the while. His head might swim from
the sounds Malfoy had made, he might feel as though he was being enthralled by
a vampire for the first time, but he still had the ability to look proud. He
would hang onto that as hard as he could throughout this deception that would
probably involve him submitting to Malfoy at some point.

�� Malfoy gave
him the books, and Harry looked down so that he could count them and note the
thickness of their bindings and the flakes of dust and gilding falling from
them.

�� In a
moment, Malfoy stood next to him, arms wrapped around him and lips pressed to
his. Harry growled under his breath, but stifled his first impulse to break
away. He should take this as more proof that Malfoy was a selfish bastard, he
told himself. The vampire claimed he would do anything for Harry, like most
vampires did when seducing their victims, but the next moment he was stealing a
kiss.

�� Malfoy�s
tongue scraped along his lips, sharply-pointed at the tip, cold and stinking of
old death�and fresh death. Harry shook for a moment as he imagined the victims
Malfoy must have drained this night. It was nearly enough to make him decide to
forget about his plan and stake Malfoy now.

�� But then he
thought of what would happen if he failed to kill Malfoy, the way he had
before, and he escaped to drain more people. He would probably do it more
viciously, in order to punish Harry with the thought of his doing it.

�� So Harry
stood still and submitted to the kiss, though every muscle in his body was taut
with rejection and disgust.

�� Malfoy
didn�t linger, as though he was offended by the disgust. He ran a finger up
Harry�s nape instead and stepped back, his eyes bright and wild. Harry felt
saliva rise in his throat, and swallowed it back; he didn�t have to taste
Malfoy�s tongue this time, so he wouldn�t actually spit in front of him.

�� No matter
that the avarice with which Malfoy watched him swallowing made him want to.

�� Go away
now,� Harry said, cradling the books close to his chest. �I don�t want to see
you again for three nights.�

�� Am I to be
denied the luxury of your presence for that long, then?� Malfoy didn�t sound
concerned. He swiped his tongue over his lips as though they retained a taste
of Harry and gave him a slow smile.

�� Yes, you
are.� Harry made his voice firmer. He wanted to seem as if he were
surrendering, but gradually; Malfoy would never believe him if he gave in and
seemed to lose his scruples all at once. �I need some time to consider these
books and read them, and I work during the day.�

�� Malfoy
hummed again, but this time the sound seemed to affect Harry less. He ignored
the suspicion that Malfoy was merely humming in thought, rather than making a
noise that would enchant him. �Very well. Three nights. And then I�ll come
back, and we�ll talk about what you�ve learned.�

�� He leaped
straight upwards and apparently came down so far across the moor that Harry
couldn�t make him out no matter how he stared. And though Harry stood with the
books in his arms and waited for ten minutes, Malfoy didn�t come back.

�� Harry
stepped slowly behind the wards and dumped the books on the table in his front
room. They sprawled, one of them falling open so that Harry could see a page
headed Vampires and Mystical Connections
to Humanity.

�� The place
chosen by chance was as good a one as any, and Harry knew that he wouldn�t be
able to sleep for hours. He pulled up a chair and sat down to read.

*

�� Draco
leaped and leaped long past the point where aches coiled in his muscles and he
would ordinarily have stopped, because the sheer joy he had from Harry�s
presence and willing compliance filled him with the energy to do so. He came
down at last on top of another boulder and sprawled there, laughing so loudly
that he awoke a Muggle dog who barked at him.

�� Finally.

�� Draco had
known that his Long-Desired wasn�t stupid, but he hadn�t been entirely sure
that his intelligence would overcome his stubbornness. But if he was yielding,
if he could only be persuaded to think about it a bit more while coming in
range of the pleasure Draco could offer him�

�� He didn�t even react when I stole a kiss
from him. Oh, I know that it didn�t taste good to him, but he didn�t pull away
and declare that he wouldn�t meet with me again.

�� Harry�s
mouth had tasted like blood and wine, or the way that Draco remembered wine
tasting, even though Draco had not bitten him. The thought made him rise and
spring off the boulder again, twisting and finding his way into the sky the
moment his heels touched the ground.

�� Leaping
high like this was its own pleasure, with his hair ripping out on the wind and
his body doing exactly what he told it, so that he could change directions at a
moment�s notice, or flatten himself and pretend to be gliding, or roll over
thirteen times before he returned to the earth. And then the earth acted like a
springboard to bring him instantly back into the sky, and he could take deep
breaths of air colder than he could ever have endured as a mortal, and the land
beneath him was a sleeping mass of black and lights, with every light
concealing a fragile human life that he could end as he chose.

�� It was the
essence of freedom.

�� And Harry�s
face hovered in front of him every time he turned about or commanded his senses
to reveal the green of the grass beneath him, the color of the grass bleeding
into his eyes.

�� Draco
didn�t find the image of the face a restriction to his freedom�quite the
opposite. If Harry was with him, then he was stronger, swifter, and sympathetic
to at least one person besides himself.

If Harry was with him, then his
horizons expanded, and he could imagine himself dancing like this all over the
world, and centuries in the future.

Alone, a single night could
sometimes seem too long.

*

A
Long-Desired bond is not exactly like the bonds known to prevail among other
magical species. There are various theories as to why this should be so. The
present author�s belief is that vampires are incapable of feeling the love and
the urge to reproduce that are constants in other bonds. Their hearts beat for
survival and pleasure; their wombs will bear no children, their seed sire none.
They stand in a halfway house between life and death, barred from ever
returning to the daylight and the company of mortals. To remain in the house
and keep from departing on the other side into oblivion, they require
companionship.

Harry smiled and dug his fingers
into the sides of the book. It sounded as though this author thought like him.
Vampires were unnatural. Vampires didn�t understand the most basic human urges.
Any bond they took on was only a means of keeping them alive and giving
themselves what they wanted.

If any book could tell him how to
escape the Long-Desired bond, it was this one. The others had been a
disappointment, simply stating that escape was impossible because the vampire
and the Long-Desired couldn�t kill each other and then setting out to explore
the nature of the bond. Harry had no interest in that. Why would he want to
admire the trap when its sides were closing in on him? He wanted to leap out of
it instead, and see the stars shining above him, and go back to the life he was
used to.

�� Of course, some may object that vampires
find companionship in one another, and in their nests. But the nest formation
is truly desirable only for the master vampire who guides it. The spawn, who
are slaves, revolt as soon as their sire dies and they have some independent
sense of self. Many of them refuse to return to a nest for the rest of their
existence.

�� Harry nodded
impatiently. Yes, this was the way he felt, but it was also something he knew. He wanted the author to start
telling him something genuinely strange and startling, like the way that the
Long-Desired bond was limited.

�� Vampires who have become masters because
their sires have died are the ones most likely to seek out their Long-Desired,
though many of them do not know what they are looking for until they find it.
Then they will court and woo the Long-Desired incessantly, seeking first permission
to bite, then continued permission, and finally the completion of the bond in
an agreement of lifelong companionship. A master vampire seeks an audience, and
a permanent donor, and a source of magic.

�� Harry
snorted. He had known that Malfoy talking about affection and all the rest of
it, respecting Harry even if he didn�t respect other mortals, was a load of
bollocks.

�� But to have all those things, the vampire
must keep the Long-Desired happy. And that means that he or she will yield with
joy to the whims of the mortal tied to them; will share the magic; will, in the
end, come to feel something like love. It is not love; it is a replacement for
it. That replacement has overtones of possessiveness, of idolization and
idealization, of selfish seeking after pleasure. But it will become the
strongest emotion and the strongest motive in the vampire�s life. Vampires
prolong the lives of their Long-Desired because they cannot imagine, in the
end, existing without them. And because the link never forms except between a
vampire who requires such a mortal and a mortal who needs the intense focus of
such a vampire, it cannot be broken.

�� Harry flung
the book from him. It cracked open against the far wall and scattered pages
about the way the books he had searched through for a way to poison his blood
had.

�� No. I�m still not going to spend the rest of
my life being a�a plaything and a possession.

�� With the
coldest detachment he�d ever been able to muster, Harry considered killing
himself. It was the one way to properly foil Malfoy�s designs.

�� But he
still didn�t want to give up his life. That would mean leaving more vampires
unpunished and his best friends mourning, and in the end, it would be admitting
that Malfoy was too powerful for him.

�� Harry
nodded slowly and turned his head at last to look at a small trunk at the foot
of his bed. It was covered with locks and twists of chain, as well as wards
that would mask the stink of Dark magic.

�� I�ll have to look in one of those books for
a solution after all.

*

�� hieisdragoness18:
Yes. None of his choices are very good.

�� Snivelly:
Thank you very much! I�m tired of romantic vampires being the only kind on display. (I�ve found a few
darker vampire fics, but they all seem to be stories that end with death and
nothing else).

�� Yes, the
Long-Desired is my take on the mate theory. I like the concept but not the execution
that it�s given most of the time.

�� Sire� is a
term that I�ve seen used in other vampire stories, ditto with �nest.� �Get� I�m
not as certain about. But the interactions in a nest are my invention as far as
I know.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thank you!

�� InuyoukaiMei:
Yes. That�s one of the reasons that Draco is responding the way he is, and also
the reason that Harry has altered his behavior towards Draco a bit.

�� And no, I
can�t answer that yet. Sorry.

�� SP777: I
would tend to agree. Though of course reviews are pleasant.

�� Draco�s
becoming a vampire helped a lot. The book Harry reads in this chapter is
essentially correct: vampires are focused on survival, and will do anything for
the humans who help them ensure that survival. So he�s paring away a lot of the
concerns, like their old rivalry, that are tripping Harry up.

�� I�m looking
forward to the movie, but probably won�t see it for a while.

�� JtheChosen1:
Thank you! I think Harry is becoming a bit more sane in this chapter�but not
necessarily because he�s trying to.
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The Long-Desired