Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Four--Bargain Them Down
            "So, why did the Ministry really send you here?"
            Draco turned around, raising his eyebrows. A member of the pack he didn't recognize had landed on the bench next to him. His hair was white, his yellow eyes so bright that Draco thought he would see them reflecting out of the dark forest even in human form. He had heavy, curved nails on his hands, too, and the way he smiled seemed to reveal too many teeth. Draco nodded to himself without changing his pleasant expression. Here was someone who had spent too much time too close to the animal, like Fenrir Greyback.
            "I was sent to negotiate with your pack leader and try to persuade him not to adopt Tyr Thornsberry," Draco said. It was even close to the truth.
            The man snorted and leaned back on the heels of his hands, not taking his eyes from Draco's face. "What are they, fools? They should have known that you don't negotiate with someone like Harry Potter."
            Draco said nothing, only sipped a little more of his drink and waited with an open expression for whatever the man wanted to tell him.
            "You have to conquer him," said the man, and his eyes went to Potter, who was now whirling around the dance floor with the woman who had greeted Draco in the woods. "He doesn't respect anything else."
            "Not even the rules and traditions of the packs?" Draco murmured. In truth, he had known that already. It was evident in the way Woolwine had talked about Potter. And Draco had certainly never heard of any other werewolf pack leader throwing a welcoming feast for someone who had been sent with such a blatantly oppositional mission, or acting as though he had been friends with one of his former enemies for years.
            "Especially not them." The man leaned forwards. "I'm someone who tried to befriend him when he first came here, after failing to live in several other packs. And you see how he thanks me."
            "I don't, actually," Draco said. "Given that I haven't seen you and him interact at all, and you haven't even told me your name."
            The man blinked as if surprised to find that Draco had a backbone, then showed his teeth in what was probably a friendly grin and held out his hand. Draco took it, careful to avoid a scratch from his nails. "I'm Frederick Ninian. Can't blame you for not knowing me. I'm not famous outside the packs. Unlike some people." Again his eyes went to Potter, and his nostrils widened and flared.
            And so an opportunity to undermine Potter marches right up to me and lands itself in my lap. Not that Draco simply intended to launch himself into planning conspiracy with Ninian. He wasn't an Unspeakable, and distrustful of others' motives, for nothing. Ninian wouldn't just walk up to someone who could hurt him and start talking like this. He either thought Draco was stupid, or his hatred overpowered his good sense. If it was the latter, he might make an unsteady ally.
            "It must be hard to have someone simply walk into your pack and think that he can command it because of his fame," murmured Draco, in a tone that he could describe as flat later, in case one of Potter's loyalists overheard him. He was already thinking much faster than his voice implied, though. He could convince Potter to abandon his plan to adopt Thornsberry, or he might simply replace him with another pack leader, one more responsive to the Ministry's plan to keep Thornsberry a loner.
            "It is." Ninian leaned insistently forwards. "And what does he do, but defeat the old leader in a challenge that wasn't even sanctioned by our ancient traditions? He thinks he can do anything he wants, and he does it, as neat as you please." He sneered, and his hands tightened on the bench, making it creak.
            Draco sighed a little. "Well, one thing doesn't make much sense to me. If you dislike him and the majority of the pack dislikes him, why not just overthrow him? You know the traditions, and he doesn't. It should be easy to defeat him."
            Ninian stared at him. "This is the Chosen One! You don't just walk up and duel him and expect that you're going to get away unscathed."
            Draco looked down into his goblet, to hide his eyes, in case some of his contempt was escaping him. "I thought werewolves engaged in single combat with hands and teeth," he said quietly. "Not formal duels. Forgive my ignorance."
            Ninian snarled softly, and turned to watch Potter and Woolwine again. "He always sets it up so that it's a formal duel to first blood. He says it's because he doesn't want to kill members of his own pack, but it's clear that he just uses the situation to his advantage. The pack leader can pick and choose like that. But he's not the right pack leader for us." His eyes glittered, and Draco thought he spied some of the hairs on the old werewolf's neck rising.
            Draco held back another sigh. Ninian had already contradicted himself. If the pack leader could pick how challenges for leadership went, then that suggested Potter had either won under the rules against their old leader, or the old leader had been stupid enough to pick a situation that didn't favor him. Either way, Ninian shouldn't resent Potter so much.
            But it wasn't Draco's place to explore the internal contradictions of the werewolf pack's approach to Potter. It was his place to exploit them. "Would you be willing to help the Ministry, then? I could put in a good word for your pack with them afterwards, as long as you didn't adopt Thornsberry."
            Ninian turned to him with that fluid quickness Draco found almost more disconcerting than the glow in a werewolf's eyes. "Why would you do that? The Ministry sent you here to negotiate with Potter."
            Draco smiled peacefully at him. "No. The Ministry sent me here to solve a problem." He left the obvious conclusion to hang unspoken in the air, and after a second, Ninian grinned and nodded, a swift bob of his head.
            Of course, he then had to make it spoken. "And if the problem is solved, the Ministry doesn't care how." Ninian stared hungrily at where Potter circled. "I don't want to be leader myself. Too much work. But I know the right person to put in Potter's place, so we can start talking in more detail about what it's going to take to replace him."
            "I'm sure you know best how it's to be done," Draco said, holding back a yawn of boredom this time. Good God, sparring with Potter, as confusing as it was, could at least entertain him better than these juvenile conspiracies.
            But he wasn't here to be entertained, either. He was here to explore different methods of solving the problem that Potter represented. Frankly, he should be glad to have so simple a method saunter up to him. And while Ninian had a certain measure of intelligence, it seemed that it would be that simple. Ninian was smart enough to seize the first chance that came along; that didn't mean he would be graceful about it.
            "The Ministry will protect us and let us keep living here?" Ninian turned his head to stare sidelong at Draco. "There were rumors that they were going to try and pull us out of the Forest to protect Hogwarts's students."
            Another problem with me being appointed by someone other than the Unspeakables to negotiate, Draco realized. But what the Ministry did after he was gone and the immediate problem resolved was no more his business than who became leader of the pack after Potter's fall. He only nodded and said, "I can put in a good word for you. After all, why would the Ministry want to harm a friendly pack?"
            "Why indeed," mused Ninian, and his hands twitched a little. He looked back at where Potter was dancing with Woolwine, and then smiled. "I think we can prove ourselves friendly to the Ministry in more than one way. They've been trying to get rid of Potter for years, haven't they?"
            "Have they?" Draco asked before he thought, and saw the suspicious way Ninian's eyes turned to him. He hadn't meant to phrase it exactly like that, as if it was a revelation. He was supposed to be the politics expert here, after all.
            But it had been a bloody revelation, and one he didn't much like. If I've missed something essential about the way the Ministry deals with Potter because I spend all my time down in the Department of Mysteries rebuilding artifacts...
            He dismissed that a minute later. That was the career he had chosen, and for more reasons than one. A Malfoy paying too much attention to politics didn't mean the same thing after the war as it had before. It was probably a good thing that he'd distanced himself from all but a few old friends and applied himself to his job.
            At least, good when it came to most of the people in the real world, the one of the Ministry, the people he had to convince. Ninian was watching Draco with cautious eyes now, as if he assumed that Draco would run over right away and warn Potter.
            Draco shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I didn't know that they were still pursuing such open tactics," he said. "I thought they'd turned to more subtle ones. The way I have."
            Ninian examined him minutely for a second, then huffed and relaxed. "Yes, perhaps. But you smelled as though this was a surprise."
            I bloody smelled, Draco thought. Suddenly, some of Potter's reactions to him made a lot of sense. He would have been able to sniff out, literally, the things Draco was trying to hide, his confusion and scorn.
            He hadn't said a word, but that meant not a word to Draco, not to the rest of his pack. Draco closed his hand around one of the artifacts that hung in a pouch from his belt, a small bracelet of several crystal spheres joined together, and only barely refrained from squeezing too hard. He had brought this one mostly as personal defense, not anticipating another use for it, but the more he envisioned Potter smirking and laughing to himself and not telling Draco the very simple secret, the more he wanted to use it.
            "Unspeakable Malfoy?" Ninian brought him out of his trance. "Are you all right? You've been glaring at our precious leader, and that'll make your animosity obvious."
            Draco smiled and turned his head. If he couldn't hide his emotions, he would have to find other reasons for them, and luckily, he had the reason for this one already in place. "I used to be Potter's rival in school. Another strange reason for the Ministry to choose me." Unless they have the plans that you think they do.
            Ninian let the unspoken remain unspoken this time, luckily. He nodded and chuckled, and said, "Fine. I can count on your willing participation?"
            "I have no desire to lead a werewolf pack," Draco said, his fingers rolling the crystal beads against the cloth of the pouch they hung inside. "But a great desire to get even with Potter."
            And I'll make sure that I don't play into his hands. Strange magic or not.
*
            "You never play by the rules," Woolwine snarled softly to Harry as they whirled through the last steps of a formal dance. Woolwine maintained a false, pretty smile, but anyone who was close enough could see through it, or smell the anger musking off her body. Harry wondered why she bothered with the smile. "Even in situations where you really should."
            "What makes the situation with Malfoy so different from the other ones where I've shown my disregard for the rules?" Harry turned her in one more circle, and stopped dancing with a bow to her. She had to do the same--not because anyone compelled her to, but because those were the social rules she so valued. "I know what I can do and what I can't do, and I've always got results."
            Woolwine glared at him some more, then shook her head. "You don't recognize in Malfoy the Ministry's latest attempt to destroy us?"
            Harry shrugged. He had always known that the Ministry wasn't happy with a large werewolf pack settled in the Forbidden Forest, but they hadn't cared enough to do anything about it until he became the leader. Then suddenly, it was a focus of efforts from "concerned citizens" to persuade the Ministry to move them out or outlaw werewolves living so near humans.
            "I have to admit, I don't know why they would have sent him in the guise of a negotiator if their goal is just to destroy us," Harry said.
            Woolwine glared some more at him, then stalked off. Harry let her go. She was someone he had to keep up the pretense of good relationships with, but that was one refreshing side to the rules in a werewolf pack: if someone got upset enough, they had to either retreat or challenge him. And Harry was going to win any physical or magical challenge they marshaled against him, and individually they didn't have the wit to make an effective social one.
            They could have got together and challenged him that way, but they all wanted to be the puppets behind the new leader. They couldn't agree.
            As Harry stepped off the dance floor, he glanced around. There was a flash of white hair from beside Malfoy. Harry smiled. He was only surprised that it had taken Ninian this long to find Malfoy.
            Ninian's glare at him wasn't unexpected. He had been one of the most persistent werewolves behind the old leader, too physically infirm from ancient wounds to fight himself, but content in his position. He didn't like it that Harry barely listened to him.
            Harry paused when he saw Malfoy's expression, though. I thought he was too smart to listen to Ninian's rumor-mongering.
            Which left the possibility that he had some reason of his own for being against Harry.
            Harry sighed. This meant more complications than he had looked for, and he would probably have to devote some attention and emotions to Malfoy that he had counted on being able to divert to his pack and Thornsberry instead.
            But he could feel a smile working its way across his face even as he considered that. Since when had complications ever deterred him? Defeating Voldemort by taking down his Horcuxes had been pretty damn complicated, but he had managed it. Sure, other people had helped him and he'd been lucky, but if his time as the leader of a werewolf pack had taught him anything, it was that he should take advantage of any help people and luck could offer. He would use it more effectively than if he stood around saying that he wasn't the Chosen One and he couldn't do anything.
            He strode towards the table where Ninian and Malfoy sat. Ninian sat up when he saw him, and assumed a pious expression. Harry didn't roll his eyes, but not because of social rules. He just wasn't stupid enough to let Ninian on to what he suspected.
            Malfoy didn't move, but this close, Harry could pick up on the stink of anger, and see the way his hand stayed on a pouch at his belt, rolling and fondling something. Harry thought it was a string of magical beads.
            "If you brought a gift for me," Harry said, nodding to the pouch on Malfoy's belt, "you shouldn't have. I don't require that kind of thing from wizards who negotiate with me."
            Malfoy gave Harry a smile that, for the first time all evening, was like the smiles Harry used to get from him. Harry smiled back. He couldn't help it. Malfoy might think that Harry was mocking him with the return smile, but he would have to think that and deal with it.
            "But what about from werewolves?" Malfoy whispered. "Or centaurs? Or dryads?" He looked around the feast with a flicker of his eyes. "You seem to have gathered quite the group of magical creatures here. How would the Ministry react to that? Do they even know? Or are they waiting to be informed by someone who could come here and convince them?"
            Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see that Ninian had scrambled prudently away. He couldn't blame him. Injecting himself into the contest that was going on between Harry and Malfoy, a contest years old, wasn't a smart idea.
            "They know what they need to know," Harry said, because he knew that the combination of the mysterious answer and the flat tone would infuriate Malfoy.
            "Do they?" Malfoy was on his feet, moving around the bench. His legs were long and graceful, his hands likewise. "What would happen if someone told them more?"
            His face was almost pink, his hand, still on the pouch on his belt, shaking. Harry wasn't surprised. Dryad wine was notorious for loosening the tight holds that someone kept on their emotions, making the feelings sweep through you as freely as the winds in a forest. And no one could keep as tight a rein on themselves as Malfoy had been for years, Harry thought, without sometimes making their hearts explode.
            "I don't know," Harry said. "I suppose you could tell them, and we'd both find out." He held out a hand. "But in the meantime, I'll take the gift you're so eager to give me."
            Malfoy gave a shaky laugh and tore the pouch open. "Take it and welcome," he said, and dragged out the glittering ring of crystal beads.
            Harry only had time to see that much, that it was made of the small, round crystal balls, before they got flung at his head. They shimmered with a savage magic.
            Well, my magic is savage, too, Harry thought, and calmly put up his hand to catch them.
*
Kafica: Thanks! Harry will tell Draco the truth, but Draco will put a suspicious construction on it, as usual.
delia cerrano: Harry doesn’t care much what the werewolves do in most details of their day-to-day lives; he’s not a micromanager. It’s the big things where he takes charge. And Draco is not cowed so much as severely repressed, mostly by the culture in the Department of Mysteries.
SP777: No, the Fox and Wolf series is not finished yet. And AFF won’t let me edit my profile. Every time I save it, I can see the changes, but the public page just goes back to what was already there.
CareLessLover: Thank you!
- 3
- 4
- 5
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

Keep This Wolf