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Keep This Wolf	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20229 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Eat the Feast
            Draco arranged the wards on his trunk once more and gave it a dubious look. He had to admit that he wasn’t entirely sure he should trust in the strength of wards provided by his “hosts.” Presumably, if they wanted to bypass them and enter the trunk, then they could.
            Which meant the only sensitive things he carried, his wand and the artifacts that he had changed and adapted for the Unspeakables, would stay on his person. But he had of course arranged a few papers in the trunk that looked interesting but weren’t really, just to see what Potter would do.
            It would be interesting to see—although perhaps hard to tell if the wards on the trunk were breached.
            Draco turned to one of the luxuries Potter hadn’t mentioned the house containing, perhaps because he assumed that Draco would treat it as a matter of course. The mirror told Draco his hair was smooth and flat, and added, with an envious little sigh that made Draco curl his lip, that his lovers didn’t know how lucky they were.
            “When I have a lover, I’ll be sure to tell them that,” Draco said, and stared into the mirror for one more moment. No, he could see no sign of the weakness that would have made Potter treat him so casually. It must have been in his expression and the way he moved only.
            Shaking his head, he turned up the cuffs on his Unspeakable robes and cast the spell that would line them and the hems with decorative gilt embroidery. It was the only concession he intended to make to this feast that Potter had been talking about. And had the rest of the pack known they were giving it? From some of the stares that they’d given Potter’s back, Draco wondered.
            There was one potential source of friction, one way to undermine Potter’s authority. It seemed that some of his pack, like Woolwine, were less than happy with all of his decisions. Woolwine at least struck Draco as someone who would like to lead her own pack and make her own decisions. If Draco could make Potter pay too much attention to the werewolves he already had under his command to worry about Thornsberry, that would serve the Ministry’s purposes, though in an indirect way.
            But then, Unspeakables rarely worked any other way.
            Draco cast one final charm to repel mud and fallen leaves from the bottom of his robes, and then stepped out the door and walked calmly in the direction of the feast. There was no doubting what direction that was, not when lights shone through the trees and someone had already lifted their voice in a rather rude drinking song.
            Draco half-smiled. Either Potter enjoyed that kind of merriment, in which case Draco could think of other ways to undermine him, or they were singing it against Potter’s wishes, which was an excellent sign of rebellion.
            “Unspeakable Malfoy.”
            At least Potter had sent someone who knew how to be courteous, and was noisy enough that Draco didn’t bolt in surprise when he stepped out of the shadows. He looked like he was an older werewolf, at least given the grizzle on his chin and the way his orange eyes had sunken back into his head. He bowed his head and murmured something that Draco suspected were instructions for following him. It would be strange if they were anything else, really.
            He dodged around trees, past gardens, and past what looked like a pit of seeping mud. Draco wasn’t sure that he wanted to know what the werewolves had been doing there. Some of them, he saw, had left muddy footprints behind them. Perhaps the gilt he had conjured onto the edges of his robes made him overdressed for the feast.
            Draco raised his eyebrows a little at his own thought. He didn’t need to think that way. What mattered was meeting his own standards, and he would do that even if no one else in the pack did.
            Then the trees and shadows that still blocked the way seemed to fall off abruptly, and Draco stepped back into the big clearing. This time, large tables and benches, reminiscent of the House tables at Hogwarts, had been pushed together in the center to replace the chairs and hammocks. Draco studied the tables’ legs and thought he knew how much of the dirt in the clearing had been packed and smoothed down.
            Werewolves sprawled on the benches, toasting each other and eating from huge plates of nearly raw meat and what looked like mountains of honeycakes. Among them moved centaurs, and a few flickering creatures that Draco made sure to watch only from the corner of his eye. They looked like dryads, and while the artifacts he carried might make Draco safe from their charms, he wasn’t sure enough about that to be all that happy looking at them.
            “Welcome, Draco!”
            Draco started again, but this time he thought he had reason. The thought that there was someone here who he would know well enough to let them address him by his first name…
            Then he realized that there was no one here he knew that well, but simply someone who had claimed the privilege. Potter came bounding through the light of the bonfires that flickered in the center of the clearing, and the swaying lanterns hung from ribbons that spanned the branches of the trees.
            “Glad you came!” Potter chirped, and shoved the large wooden goblet he was carrying into Draco’s hand. It sloshed, and smelled worse than Firewhisky. Draco tried to press it back, but Potter had whirled away, and it was hold it or drop it. Draco knew he would have looked sillier dropping it, and he ducked his head and hung on as best he could. “Come! What would you like to eat? Or would you prefer dancing? I know some people don’t dance after they eat, but some people prefer it.”
            “I didn’t intend to dance at all,” said Draco, rattled but holding it back. No, he hadn’t thought that this feast would include dancing. If anything, it looked like the bold parties he had read about some Old Norse wizards throwing in the far distant past, not the elegant galas that Draco sometimes attended at the Ministry. “Why would I? I don’t know anyone here who could partner me.”
            The way that Potter smiled at him a moment later made him rethink having said that.
            “Really?” Potter was looking over Draco’s shoulder at someone behind him, but Draco refused to turn and see who it was. He didn’t think anyone would dare try to kill him in the middle of this celebration, and that was the only threat worth paying attention to. “You don’t think I could give you a challenge?” And he turned back and used those devastating eyes on Draco to their best effect.
            Draco’s pulse was high and harsh in his throat. Yes, he was regretting having said that. But since he had said it, the least he could do now was be gracious about it.
            “I don’t know you well enough to dance with you,” Draco said. He thought it a smooth recovery. The spark in Potter’s eyes said he disagreed, but Draco was going on, even more smoothly, slick as oil. “Besides, you and I might have to have some very unpleasant discussions about Thornsberry soon. It wouldn’t be wise to taint those discussions with anything from this.”
            “Taint?” breathed Potter. His hand came to rest on Draco’s forearm, and squeezed. His smile was deep and dazzling, and so much like a smirk that Draco wondered who had taught him that. Gryffindors didn’t smirk. Potter didn’t smirk. “An interesting word. Do you think I’m incapable of keeping business and pleasure separate?”
            Draco looked around the feast.
            Potter laughed aloud, and drew still more eyes and more attention. Draco had known he would be the center of observation in the middle of a werewolf pack, though, the one wizard here who wasn’t already part of them, and put up with that easily enough.
            The curl of Potter’s arm around his waist a moment later was something he jumped away from. But Potter just readjusted his stance and smiled at him.
            “I don’t want to make an enemy of the Ministry,” he murmured to Draco. “And I don’t want to make an enemy of you.”
            “Embarrassing me will,” Draco warned him. He had already shown so much of himself that he thought saying this was the best way to use the emotions as leverage.
            “And that’s the last thing I wish to do, either.” Potter’s arm and smile both became crooked at the same moment. “Won’t you partner me? I promise that I’ve learned better steps than I knew when you saw me dancing at the Yule Ball.”
            That had been the last thing Draco had thought Potter would bring up. But he knew now, now that he thought about it, that that was the way Potter worked. He was comfortable in his skin, settled into his power. Stinging Draco with reminders of the past that didn’t sting him was one way to win this contest.
            Draco didn’t intend to lose, and now Potter had physically left him no way to back out. He half-inclined his head and said, “I was taught to lead on the dance floor. May I?”
            “Oh, yes, why not?” Potter shrugged a little as he led Draco towards the center of the clearing, where the benches were shoved back and the dirt was flattest. Dozens of eyes watched them go. That sensation, at least, was familiar to Draco from years ago, and still sometimes from the meetings that the Unspeakables held to demonstrate the uses of some of their artifacts. “My training wasn’t that formal.”
            That could become a very annoying weapon, if I let it, Draco thought, as he turned opposite Potter and reached out to gather his hands. That ability to turn every situation to his advantage and make sure he’s the comfortable one.
            But Draco didn’t intend to let Potter take over the lead that way, and he made his case when he heard the music start. It was an old wizarding tune, one so old that it had hundreds of different variations as to the lyrics. A dryad was playing it by passing what looked like one long, twiggy finger over her leaf-stricken hair, her head bowed.
            Draco knew how to dance to that tune, no one better; it was the first one his mother had used to teach him, under the name of “The Three Cauldrons.” Draco turned to the left, now, and brought Potter with him to the right, and the dance began.
            There were gliding steps, leaping steps, steps where they had to turn under each other’s arms. Draco managed them all, and almost managed to forget his audience, although he could still sense the eyes watching him over the edges of mugs.
            His partner was the one who occupied his attention.
            Potter leaped easily over roots, smiled at Draco whenever they caught each other’s eyes, and twisted and turned as though he didn’t mind at all having an Unspeakable at his back. It was true that he didn’t know what some of the artifacts Draco carried could do, but that would have made Draco more cautious, not less.
            Potter just danced as if he wanted to…have fun.
            Draco nearly stumbled when he realized that. Potter paused in the middle of a step that would whirl them around each other, his eyes curious.
            “A twinge in my ankle,” Draco lied, not letting his words override the music, and then he began to dance again, pulling Potter into it. Potter relaxed and went back to the dance with a lightened expression.
            Draco’s mind was racing faster than their feet were. Did he just start this debate over Thornsberry to have fun? Is his definition of having fun bedeviling the Ministry?
            But that made it all the stranger that he’d want to annoy the Ministry by dancing with Draco. He ought to know that the Ministry wouldn’t care about that at all, whatever the inconvenience to Draco himself, and that Draco wasn’t the whole Ministry in his own person, only his mission and the Unspeakables.
            Draco sighed soundlessly as they passed over one more pair of roots and ended up dancing out into the middle of the clearing, whirling around each other a final time as the music came to a close. It seemed he had passed quickly through thinking Potter ignorant to assuming he must be possessed of all unusual knowledge. There was no reason for him to know how much Draco resented having this mission, or that it had been fobbed off on him.
            “Thank you for the dance,” Potter said, bowing to him, the precise distance that one pure-blood partner on the floor was supposed to bow to another. Draco eyed him. Potter flashed him another smile that ignored the implicit challenge and extended his arm, braced and steady. “Shall we go to the feast? Feeding you is the least I can do after the exercise I made you take.”
            I don’t know if he knows what he’s doing from one moment to the next, Draco thought irritably, and took Potter’s arm.
*
            Malfoy ate as though he had some sort of stomach-wasting disease.
            Harry, his plate full of venison and fresh carrots and the stew that Marion Jackson made well when something woke her up from her sunlight naps, swallowed his latest bite and leaned over to pour more wine into Malfoy’s goblet. Malfoy glanced flatly at him. He hadn’t made much of an inroad on the wine, and Harry couldn’t trickle in more than a few drops before he had to stop in case the goblet overflowed.
            “Was that really necessary?” Malfoy murmured, and reached for the goblet, lifting it smoothly, to down a single swallow. Harry watched his throat work. It was a handsome throat.
            “I wanted to do it,” Harry said, and settled back on his side of the bench. So far, he had seen one way Malfoy had changed, and that was to grow more stiff and formal. He still smelled of many emotions, like the shock that had made him stumble in the middle of the dance, but he was closing his reactions off since his surprise on arriving in the pack’s midst and finding Harry different than he’d obviously expected. The motions of his hands were short, precise. He didn’t turn his body towards a sound, only his eyes. He didn’t retreat from the werewolves that flowed around him, but seemed resigned. “And I think that you should stop treating us as though we’re about to kill you. Don’t you realize that that’s one of the things that might make us strike at you?”
            “You are the one who would have to make that decision for the pack, I think,” said Malfoy, and patted at his lips with a napkin, although he hadn’t got any grease on them that Harry’d seen, because he wasn’t eating anything. “And you seem too interested in me to order them to attack.”
            Harry blinked, then smiled slowly. It was true that one of the reasons he had invited Malfoy to dance was to see what he would do, and another because he wanted to see how well he moved in case Malfoy took it into his head to attack, but another reason was simply because he enjoyed the sight of him in motion. “You understand that interest?”
            Malfoy’s scent spiked and prickled, and he shook his head. “I know that you want Thornsberry in your pack,” he said, lowering his voice, likely in case the centaurs that tromped by, in the midst of a deep discussion about Saturn, overheard him. “But I still don’t really understand why. I was hoping you would explain more than you have.”
            “Business waits for tomorrow,” Harry said, and leaned back into his place. He could feel the currents of the pack, lazily eddying into place, focusing on him. Someone would demand something of him soon, probably before he went to bed tonight. “This feast is in celebration of your arrival here. I wish you could see it as a good thing, too.”
            “Frankly?” Malfoy stirred the wine in his goblet and took one more drink. “I would rather be back in my office working on an artifact that’s likely to kill me.”
            Harry snarled a laugh. Malfoy focused on his mouth while he did it, though Harry couldn’t be sure if that was real interest or just wariness of his teeth. “I thought you would say that you want to be sleeping in your own bed. Here are a bunch of werewolves who could kill you. Doesn’t that matter? What’s the difference between them and your precious artifact?”
            That was one problem Malfoy was having, at least, in Harry’s opinion. He had forgotten how to have any bloody fun.
            Malfoy stared at him, then shook his head. “You honestly don’t see the difference?”
            “Not much,” Harry had to admit, with a shrug.
            Malfoy sighed, loudly enough that he stirred some of the hairs on Harry’s jaw. “The artifact wouldn’t do it intentionally.”
            Harry leaned in before he could stop himself, and put his hand on Malfoy’s wrist. Malfoy started and looked at him. He hadn’t forgotten how to move gracefully, at least, and the way his pulse sped up under Harry’s touch was rather intriguing.
            “I promise that no one here is going to harm you,” Harry said. “Unless you do something to harm one of them first, and even then, I would insist on talking it out and not letting them just attack you. I don’t want to cause an incident with the Ministry. I don’t want to damage the chances of the Ministry eventually agreeing with me that Thornsberry can stay here and cause no harm, although it might take them a while to see that. And most of all, I don’t want to hurt you.”
            “Why not?”
            Harry fell back in his chair. So that was the difference, the real one, the secret, greatest difference, the one behind the way that Malfoy had stared at people, had shifted his weight, had eaten or not eaten, stirred or not stirred, all evening. He didn’t think that anyone in the pack held his life at any value. Perhaps he held it at only conditional value himself, thinking that he was only worth anything as long as he could serve the Ministry or work on his artifacts.
            “Because I want you alive,” Harry whispered to him, and leaned in again.
            Malfoy’s eyes shone slightly, but not with emotion, as much as with the light of the fires. His lips parted a little. The air between them was warm and full of smells: blood, grease, salt, hormones.
            Harry tore himself away. He was getting uncomfortably intimate here, and he didn’t want some of the pack to draw the conclusions they would, if he remained close to Malfoy.
            “Think about it,” he told Malfoy. “Think about when you became so paranoid that you assumed everyone you went to treat with was an enemy out to kill you.”
            And he left the table, and went to ask Sarah Woolwine to dance. She was fussing at the moment, but she was graceful, and would partner him well.
            If not as well as Malfoy.
            Poor Malfoy. Does he honestly not think all that much of himself?
*
            Draco lifted his goblet and swallowed some more wine. It was starting to make the fires and the people around him swim, not a good thing, but he needed a barrier between himself and what Potter seemed to have been suggesting just then.
            He didn’t even have words for what Potter had been suggesting, but he knew being drunk was less dangerous than listening to it.
*
            delia cerrano: I'm glad that it's at least a little different. One big problem of creature fics is how many times the plots are the same.
            Kafica: Thank you! And as far as Draco's concerned, the feast didn't go well.
            reba: Thank you!
            Jan: Thanks! Chapters will be posted every Tuesday.
            CareLessLover: Thank you!
            SP777: He will, but he also does feel genuinely sorry for him here.
            BAFan: He'd heard Potter had changed, but no one had told him how much.
            Anon: Thanks! At the moment, I think this will be a fairly long story.
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Keep This Wolf