Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Viper	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7435 -:- 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-Viper
- 2-Part 2
- 3-Part 3
- 4-Part 4
- 5-Part 5
- 6-Part 6
- 7-Part 7
- 8-Part 8
- 9-Part 9
- 4
- 5
- 6
Thank you again for all the reviews!

            “What shall I do with you?”

            Harry, spinning slowly upside-down in a net he couldn’t see or feel that somehow still held him, knew what the Collector meant when she used that tone. It was the same thing any vampire would have meant when they used it. She’d already decided to torture them, to hurt them, but she wanted to make them focus on her and breathlessly await her every word. She wanted attention, adoration when she paused in her infliction of pain, fear when she resumed.

            Like any vampire.

            Harry had already discovered that simply hurling wandless magic against his bonds didn’t work. Nor did struggling against them with the small movements that Auror training had taught him when he wanted to slip out of ropes without his captor noticing. So he would have to give some attention to his surroundings, but at least he didn’t need to look at the Collector. Instead he directed his gaze past her, to the far wall.

            They were in the upper room of the tower; Lucy’s description of the inside had been faithful, of course. Harry could see a slice of night sky through narrow windows, stained with starlight. He couldn’t count on sunrise releasing them any time soon, since there were still hours of darkness left. He wondered if he could weaken the bonds between the stones. It would depend on how old they were and how they’d been laid. Yes, Lucy might have renewed the wards and charms on the tower for the Collector, but that didn’t mean her magic would be as strong as the original foundation spells.

            A slap hit his cheek, hard enough to snap his head to the side and almost break his neck. Harry controlled his immediate reaction to cry out by breathing slowly and steadily, and biting his lip. He let his lip go before he felt ready to face the vampire, but that was necessary. If he bit it too hard, it would bleed, and that wasn’t a wise idea.

            The Collector loomed in front of him, her eyes fastened on his. “Look at me when I ask you a question,” she said coldly.

            Harry could practically sense Malfoy’s outrage, even though he was hanging upside-down behind him in another net and Harry couldn’t see him. Malfoy would, of course, hate that someone else was abusing his Long-Desired, when that should be his exclusive province. Harry met the Collector’s gaze without fear and felt her thrall reach out and slide over him like a tide of slimy water.

            To no effect, of course. It simply drained out of his mind as though his mind were a sieve.

            Hermione would probably say that was true, Harry mused, and twisted his wrists again. Still the invisible bonds didn’t yield. He sighed. He had hoped that the Collector’s shock at not being able to enchant him might translate to a momentary weakening of the magic.

            “Immune to the thrall,” breathed the Collector. Oddly, her anger had vanished. She clapped her hands like a delighted child instead, and looked back and forth between Harry and Malfoy. “I see now why the Long-Desired bond has not been completed. You can’t take his mind, can you? And you probably can’t give him pleasure when you bite, either. He would be immune to the venom, as well.” She nodded wisely. “I see why you have chosen to play vampire hunter,” she said to Harry, something like admiration in her voice.

            Harry didn’t respond the way he knew she would have liked him to, with anger that his profession was being turned into play. Of course she would see it that way, since she considered herself all-powerful. And that was a weakness he should exploit, not draw her attention to. It was invaluable sometimes to be human, without a vampire’s arrogance.

            “Yes, I have,” he said, and then cleared his throat roughly and glanced away from her. “Though I never expected to be captured like this.” He would have to tell the truth, since she could smell lies. And they had taken most of his weapons away from him the moment they brought him into the tower, so he would have to use the very few that were embedded in his body. He didn’t want to reveal them before it was time.

            The Collector firmed her grasp on his chin and turned his face back to her. “You must never look away from me,” she chided gently. “I don’t like it.” For a moment, she ran her fingernails along his jawline, gazing at him, absorbed; then she nodded. “Yes. I will break you and take you as my own slave. Perhaps even spawn. Would you like that?”

            Harry didn’t have to hide his disgust and revulsion. If she did what he suspected she would now, that would even be an advantage.

            “No, you wouldn’t,” the Collector said. “But I have a mind to start a new collection, that of former vampire hunters. Killing McFadden and Gowan may have been a mistake.” Harry exulted silently, since, if he ever managed to return to the Aurors alive, his Pensieve memory would serve as evidence that he had been right. The Collector moved away from him, and abruptly Harry’s bonds loosened and dropped him to the floor.

            He landed badly, though he’d twisted so that at least he didn’t crack his skull open. His shoulder wrenched, and he caught his breath before he stood up and limped after the Collector into a tiny alcove across the room. The Collector lifted an absent hand as they stepped between its walls, and the shimmering curtain of a smoke-like spell obscured them from view behind.

            Malfoy must be going mad about now, he thought, and then focused on the Collector’s blazing blue eyes, and the Collector’s fangs.

*

            A sharp itch had broken out across Draco’s shoulders the moment the Collector laid her hand on Harry. He wanted to hiss and twist and fight much more than he had so far, but Harry’s calmness had paralyzed him. Harry didn’t appear to think that the wrong touch was wrong, so for the moment Draco had to pretend that it wasn’t, either. He was restricted to protesting as much as his Long-Desired protested.

            But then they went into the alcove, and he couldn’t see his Long-Desired any more, and the itching surged all down his arms and chest. He knew that the Collector was touching Harry, stroking him, perhaps draining him of the blood that was Draco’s alone. He bared his fangs, but the smokescreen obscuring the alcove didn’t notice or move. Draco howled silently and resumed his struggle.

            The itch spread to his fangs and made them ache in a different way. Draco stopped moving so he could figure out what was wrong with them.

            “You’re both very stubborn. I assume that’s why you haven’t completed the bond yet. You’re so pretty that I don’t think he could resist you if you were less stubborn. You want everything, and he won’t let you have anything.”

            Draco snapped his head around. He had forgotten about Lucy, who drew near him, smiling the dazed smile Draco had occasionally seen Caspar’s human victims smile right before he turned them. Draco wanted to snarl at himself now. Yes, there were immense amounts of venom in her system—amounts that none of his kind would have bothered to waste on a mere prisoner. He should have sensed something wrong from the beginning.

            “You can’t compromise, either of you,” Lucy continued in a low voice. “I’ve never seen a Long-Desired and his vampire at odds before.” She shook her head in wonder. “Why haven’t his instincts begun to urge him to accept you? My instincts told me to accept the Collector the moment she revealed herself to me.”

            Draco kept his thoughts, that that must have been something other than instinct, to himself. His books had reassured him that Long-Desired humans did not react so quickly. “He is too new to the bond. He—”

            “No,” said Lucy. “That’s not it. I can feel bonds, you know. It was one of my talents even before I became hers.” Draco ached with jealousy at the adoration in her voice, because he couldn’t imagine Harry ever speaking that way. “He should have yielded by now. You bit him months ago. And he still hasn’t given in?” She clucked her tongue and looked at Draco with pity. “You must be doing something wrong.”

            Draco threw himself against his bonds before he thought about it. Her throat was so temptingly close and he was so hungry. Harry’s blood had been enough to whet his appetite, not to satisfy him.

            Lucy skipped out of the way and looked at him with mild satisfaction. Draco hissed as he understood her tactic. They wanted him to weaken himself so that, if the moment came when they did something careless, he would not be able to take advantage of the situation.

            Draco deliberately froze his muscles into cramped postures and let his eyes unfocus, staring past Lucy at the far wall. His ears still strained for some sound of Harry in pain, though he knew he probably wouldn’t be able to hear it. He was utterly helpless to control that particular instinct. Harry was his.

            “Yes,” Lucy continued in a dreamy fashion, “something wrong. There are vampires who ruin any chance for a bond with their Long-Desired, you know. They push them too fast, or they bite them without their consent, or only with their grudging consent…” She trailed off teasingly, watching Draco with half-lidded eyes.

            Draco remembered—he could not help but remember—how Harry had only agreed to the first bite because they needed the magic that would result from it to defeat Caspar. He had not bared his neck for Draco eagerly.

            Could that be the source of all the conflicts and all the problems in their bond since?

            “That was it, wasn’t it?” Lucy clucked her tongue again. “Well, I am sorry for you. But what’s the incentive for him to agree to it if he can’t feel good from it? I know that I would have distrusted my Collector if there was no pleasure in her bite. Vampires would go hungry much more often than they do, for that matter. But it’s especially important for a Long-Desired, who is your food source. Imagine him, even if he yields, grimacing every night and baring his throat for you only because he feels sorry for you, or because he needs the power to succeed in other vampire hunts. You might benefit, but he won’t.” Her voice sank. “What’s the temptation for him?”

            Draco’s fangs itched again. He wanted to deny what Lucy was saying, but he didn’t think he could. He didn’t want to think of Harry in pain for the rest of his life. He wanted to think of him gasping and eager to be taken—

            The way he never will be. Even if he did not have a particular reason to hate vampires, you know he is too stubborn for that. You saw the way he refused to yield to his tears when he broke his arm in second year, though it would have been the rational thing to do.

            “You know I’m right.” Lucy sighed the way she might if she was taking care of a petulant child, and stepped closer to Draco, until she stood sideways in front of him, showing her neck provocatively. “You’ll never be comfortable biting anyone else, not compared to the way you feel when you take his blood, but at the same time, you know he’ll never willingly yield to you, and that means that you—”

            A shrill scream cut through the smokescreen. Draco bunched all his muscles in different positions again, to keep himself from trying uselessly to burst out and rescue Harry.

            But then he noticed that Lucy had spun around and was staring apprehensively towards the spell, her face paler than loss of blood could account for.

            Something’s gone wrong for her, too, Draco thought, and his predator’s confidence surged back in waves. If handling Harry is difficult for me, when I have a right to him legitimated by instinct, what made her think it was going to be easy for her mistress?

*

            “Do scream,” the Collector urged Harry, as she used a spell that moved down his body, pinching and biting large flaps of skin in uncomfortable places. “This is for science.” She leaned back in a chair, a notebook and pen on her lap, her eyes bright and attentive.

            Harry clenched his jaw and refused to give her the satisfaction. He had endured worse pain than this. In fact, the penetration of vampire fangs into his body was worse in one way. There, his disgust at the thought of giving up his blood to the beasts was so strong that it enhanced the pain.

            “I am disappointed so far,” the Collector said, and stood, prowling around him in a circle. Harry hung upright this time, presumably because the Collector was worried about him fainting if his head pointed at the ground, but still in an invisible net. The pinches and bites intensified as she drew nearer, and Harry squirmed in pure reaction. The Collector paused and wrote something down in her notebook, then regarded him with a disapproving gaze. “The greatest vampire hunters have empathy for us. They can imagine themselves in our position. They have something of a liking for causing pain. And they retain a fondness for their victims, a wish to remember them. You have none of those traits. I cannot fathom how you became so successful.”

            Harry stayed silent and kept his gaze fixed on the Collector’s neck and shoulder, without looking into her eyes. There was the chance she would be able to read his mind if he did that, even though he was immune to the thrall. It would be just his luck that the blending of vampire and human magic gave her some kind of instinctive Legilimency.

            Then the Collector smiled and shook her head. “Ah, well. Since I cannot fathom it on my first guess, I shall simply have to conduct more detailed tests.”

            She waved her hand, and the pinching and biting stopped. Harry had time to draw exactly one breath of relief before a searing pain began to cross his shoulder blades.

            It was like being pressed against a heated iron. Harry closed his eyes and tried to squirm away from it. That didn’t work. He tried to keep his screams inside. That didn’t work. A moment later he cried out and bowed his head.

            The pain stopped at once. Harry heard the busy scribbling of the Collector’s pen in her notebook. “Not only does he not like causing pain to us, he doesn’t have a very high pain threshold,” she remarked to her invisible audience. “More and more unusual. I find myself highly intrigued by this subject.”

            Harry did his best to soothe the trembling in his muscles and bury his instinctive flinch away from the Collector when she prowled closer again. His brain literally ached with the longing to use one of his body-buried weapons, but there was a reason he had never used one of them against a vampire. They should be saved for the last extremity, and he was not sure this was it.

            The Collector’s hand slid along his face, nails so sharp that Harry did not realize they had opened cuts until he felt the soft trickle of his blood down the side of his neck. The Collector groaned and then leaned in, snaking her tongue out. Harry shuddered. This was pure greed, since of course Lucy would taste best to her and she had drunk enough from Lucy to hold both Harry and Malfoy prisoner effortlessly.

            And then he realized, as her tongue licked along his neck and her fangs brushed against his cheek like the caress of a lover, that there might be other reasons to use his long-buried weapons than the last extremity. When he had a high chance of killing a dangerous vampire, for instance, perhaps the most dangerous he had ever faced.

            He concentrated and murmured the command word. Then he waited. The Collector was snuffling and licking and making grumbling noises. By now, one hand had locked in his hair, though with the magical net she had no need of that to hold his head still. She was moving closer. Her fangs slid into one of the cuts. Harry held his breath. Her absorbing his blood through one of her hollow fangs would be the most effective method, as the fangs were adapted for the most direct carrying of liquid.

            Then the Collector screamed and spasmed. Her hands dug into his hair and body instead of flinging her away, however, and Harry knew his weapon was working. He laughed without sound, and swayed in the net as the Collector convulsed again.

            He’d gone to a Healer who’d been turned away from St. Mungo’s to receive this weapon. The Healer had worked with the Death Eaters, and he was nervous enough about the threat of exposure—and greedy enough for Harry’s money—to do exactly as Harry asked. When he willed, Harry could make his blood become poisonous to vampires in the same way that strychnine was poisonous to humans. And strychnine death was debilitating and painful.

            He’d never used it before, because he’d mostly fought nests, and there was no point in killing only the vampire drinking from him when he would have another dozen or sixty to deal with in moments. But he thought the Collector was alone except for Lucy, and the sharp cries emerging from her lips were worth all the pain he had suffered so far.

            She’s going to die, he thought as her fangs pulled at his blood again, and then she can’t threaten anyone else. It would be worth it to die of blood loss just to watch that happen. She’s the most dangerous vampire I’ve ever met, even if she doesn’t lead a nest.

            Then the spell that had been protecting the alcove blew apart like the smoke that it resembled, and Lucy dashed in, her eyes frantic. She grabbed the Collector and pulled her fangs free of Harry with a strength that no human should possess. Harry blinked dazedly, a vague memory from the first time he had met Malfoy as a vampire coming back to him. He had said that he and Harry could be as gods. Presumably that meant some of the vampire powers would be granted to Harry, as well as some of the wizard magic granted to Malfoy.

            But then Lucy had steered the Collector’s fangs into place against her neck, and the Collector was sucking hungrily, and already her convulsions had stopped and her limbs had coiled of their own free will around Lucy’s waist. Lucy ran her hands down the Collector’s hair and murmured endearments.

            Harry concentrated hard, and murmured the other command word, the one that rendered his blood non-venomous again. Too much of the poison circulating through his veins, and he could grow as sick as a vampire. And the blood wouldn’t clot until he spoke the second command word, either, because it was meant to flow freely and temptingly for any predator in the room. Harry had no intention of dying if his death wouldn’t kill a vampire.

            The Collector gave a deep sigh several minutes later and stepped away from Lucy, wiping her mouth. Her face had grown sharper and more alive than it had been since Harry first saw her. He curled his lip. There’s another excellent reason not to give Malfoy any of my blood. I have no desire to improve his looks.

            Lucy, meanwhile, drooped in her arms, a drizzle of red down the front of her white dress. The Collector stroked her hair the way Lucy had stroked hers and nuzzled gently into the corner of her neck. It was a disgusting parody of a perfect lovers’ embrace. Harry rolled his eyes.

            The Collector looked up then, and her mouth and fangs were vivid with the blood, and she unhinged her jaw like a snake so that Harry could see further down her throat. Her voice was deep, relentless, rasping.

            “I find myself uninterested in starting a collection of vampire hunters,” said the monstrous thing that had replaced a human-looking woman. Harry gazed back as calmly as he could. He had expected this. It was one reason he had never allowed himself to be fooled by a vampire’s exterior appearance in the way that so many people in the Ministry were. They seemed to assume it must be human if it looked human. “I shall introduce you to one of my other collections instead.”

*

            Draco caught his breath with relief when Harry floated out of the alcove unharmed, but then he saw the bloody claw marks on his neck and shrieked with rage. The tingling ache spread through his fangs again, and he wondered if the Collector or Lucy had cast a spell on him that would render his prime ability—to suck blood from Harry and gain strength that way—useless if he did escape.

            Harry gave him a scornful glance. Draco quieted. He did not want to look weak in front of his Long-Desired.

            “Now,” said the Collector, and halted in the middle of the room, turning so that her robe flared behind her and she could stare at both of them. Her voice was deeper than Draco had ever made his in imitation of Caspar’s. “I will introduce you to another of my collections. Your Long-Desired—” and here she glared at Draco “—had the temerity to hurt me. I would have expected you to control him better.”

            Draco let a faint smile play over his lips. “And why should I wish to do that?” he asked. “You were trying to hurt him. I’m extremely pleased that he fought back, in fact.” If only to keep you from taking the blood that’s mine.

            The Collector’s eyes widened, and went on widening. Draco looked back, and showed his fangs when the eyes looked as if they would fall out of her head. For a moment, an exquisite tension hummed between them, the kind of tension that Draco only ever felt with another master vampire. He waited for her to cast aside the drooping girl she held in her arms and attack. His fangs lengthened and his fingers curved into claws as he waited. At the moment, it hardly seemed to matter that he was held in a net. He was still angry enough to defeat her.

            But then the Collector shook her head and said, “I was wrong to treat you so cavalierly, I see that now.” A sharp wag of her wrist made Draco’s net float after her as well.

            Draco took the opportunity to examine Harry. He could smell burned human flesh, and see bruises, though besides the scratches on his jaw, already clotting, he couldn’t see any open wounds. He growled nonetheless, and turned his head towards Harry, darting his tongue out to lap at the scent of the blood. “Where else are you hurt?” he asked.

            Harry looked at him with a blank expression. “I fail to see how that can be of interest to you.”

            Draco started to respond, but then their nets jerked to a stop and left them swaying sharply. The Collector laughed, but Draco couldn’t be sure if it was at them or in response to something that the faintly stirring Lucy had said. Then she gestured, and one of the windows in the tower spiraled wide. A silvery portal shimmered into being beyond that. Draco recognized it as modified wizardspace. The Collector was opening a door that hadn’t existed a moment before into a place that had existed, but was unreachable until then.

            I want to be able to do that. And I will, if only Harry is not so stubborn.

            “Enjoy yourselves,” said the Collector, and then gestured again. The nets containing both Draco and Harry soared forwards, through the door.

            And they were falling through space, and Draco could hear nothing save the soft, hoarse breathing of his Long-Desired, and the beating of his heart.

*

            orpiment99: Ah, I see. Well, it will depend on what Harry finds out about Draco towards the end of the story…

            purple-er: Thanks! And Harry is convinced that he’s more human than the vampires, which is all that matters.

            SP777: Harry will probably need to give Draco his blood to get out of this situation, but he still won’t want too.

            And hey, I made a point of having both Draco and Harry refer to master vampires of both sexes!

            Thrnbrooke: Part of the problem is that Harry thinks it would be worth dying if he can kill the Collector.
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Viper