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Loup-garou	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8101 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Six—Home Ground

            Harry leaned back and stared hard at the ground he’d chosen, trying, for the sixtieth time in the past few hours, to estimate its weaknesses and strengths as a confrontation site for facing Malfoy.

            It was a small, dusty hollow, dipping down into the ground perhaps seven feet, sheltered on either side by thorn trees that didn’t look native. There was nothing to distinguish it from anything else in the bleak country where Ron and Hermione had chosen to plant their house, except that Harry had found it and noted that it had a strong, humming sensation about it. He hadn’t been able to analyze it at first, but since then he had cast a few spells and thought he understood.

            Now he used one more spell, closing his eyes and envisioning, as he often did when he used an incantation he had picked up during Auror work, the face of the witch he had stolen it from. Harry had brought her in for arrest, rather than letting her die during it; rotting in Azkaban with her wand broken was all she deserved, for the disembowelments she had used as her primary means of killing. “Praesciscocognationes,” he whispered.

            The ground in front of him lit with a dazzling yellow light, like an unflickering fire, though Harry knew that, even if anyone else had been nearby, he was still the only one who could have seen it. He wrenched his eyes open and watched the flames leap and soar, still higher, freezing when they formed a slender column of gold. Harry walked around it and studied its thickness, its base, and its shine.

            Then he smiled. Yes. At some point in the past, someone had performed Dark magic here, magic that was congenial to the way that Harry worked. Of course, that might mean the place had some kinship to Malfoy as well, but Harry didn’t think so. Malfoy seemed much more about using other people’s magic, through the Marks and the artifacts he had created, rather than casting his own spells.

            Harry shifted uneasily then, as he remembered the way Malfoy had altered the Mark and poured the magic back into him so he wouldn’t die during their combat in the half-imaginary place between worlds.

            Yes. But he still had to use the magic I gave him to do that. He has little power of his own.

            Reassured, Harry stepped back, behind one of the thorn trees, and then laid his hand along the Mark, flinching as he did so. The skin felt scarred beneath his fingers, and he’d had enough of scars to last for a lifetime.

            He’d never called out to Malfoy before—he wouldn’t be so insane—but when he really concentrated on the Mark, he found that his mind squirmed and bent into the required patterns naturally. Or unnaturally, if you wanted to look at the Mark as unnatural—and Harry did.

            Malfoy, he said, and listened to his voice echo in silence down endless corridors before Malfoy’s reply came to him, languid as a great cat’s.

            Harry. Could I convince you to call me by my first name? I don’t think your loathing would come through quite as strongly there.

            Harry sneered. You’ll eat my loathing and like it, if I choose to feed it to you.

            I have missed your defiance. Malfoy’s voice was no longer languid, but sharp in the way that Harry knew his erection must be. He shuddered. He hated knowing that Malfoy was aroused by him. Why would Malfoy want someone he had reason to hate and be exasperated with? Yes, I take it that you have found a place.

            Yes. Harry took a step back and fixed his eyes on the bottom of the bowl in the earth, making sure that he had a firm picture of it before he sent it to Malfoy. He felt the flicker of acknowledgment that was probably as close as Malfoy could come to a nod in this in-between state.

            Very well.I will be there in a few moments, Harry. We will be together again. His voice was hard with longing.

            Harry didn’t bother responding, simply dropping his hand from the Mark, taking another step behind the trees, and bringing up the spells that he would need to the forefront of his mind. This had to be done quickly and precisely. On the other hand, it was a good reason for choosing the bowl in the earth the way he had.

            Now he only had to hope that Malfoy didn’t suspect a trap, or land looking for a fight. Harry was not sure he could best him, especially if he had brought along some of the bracelets he typically stored his stolen magic in. But he would have to try.

            Especially if I’m to have the freedom that matters more to me than anything else.

*

            Draco knew it would be a trap, of course. With Harry, how could it be anything else? With one leg in a snare, he would be looking to snare the one who had done that to him. He couldn’t envision the Mark as a circle where they might both meet in power and pleasure, where Draco was as confined as Harry was.

            But he had to admit that Harry had done it very neatly. When he Apparated into the bowl that Harry had shown him, a net immediately settled around him, covering the surface of the bowl and weighing him down. Draco studied it and nodded. He could throw off the bonds that wrapped him if he tried hard enough—though it would take strength that Draco would prefer to save for the struggle with Harry—but the one that spread across the hollow from side to side was anchored on the earth and the trees. It would take him hours to work loose.

            Unless…

            Draco forced himself to remove his hand from the bracelet in his pocket. He had come to deal in good faith, to tame his wild beast with compassion and companionship. He wondered if Harry had the least idea how lonely he was, as someone powerful and Dark who had been feared or envied or worshipped by far too many people in Britain to have close friends. And the extra magic that their connection had added would only make things worse, not better.

            “Harry?” he called, turning in several directions, although Harry’s Mark had blazed at him almost instantly from behind one of the trees on the small hill above. “Was there something that you wanted to speak with me about?”

            “Malfoy.”

            Draco hadn’t realized what hearing that voice again would do to him. His cock rose so fast that he bit back a gasp of pain, and his nipples hardened to match it. He turned in the right direction, and Harry stepped out from behind a tree. He’d been rubbing at his shoulder, as if Draco’s emotions through the Mark were hurtful, but he dropped his hand in an instant and stared down with a blank face.

            Draco studied him hungrily. God, but Harry was beautiful. That hair was darker than he’d seen it before, or else he hadn’t picked out all the colors last time. Those beautiful, wild eyes, with their shadows, made his balls ache. And all it took was imagining the way Harry’s cock had looked, the first time he had seen him half-naked, and he had to bend at the waist in an effort not to come.

            Something else was adding to his arousal, or so Draco managed to think through the haze that he was steadily burning off in his mind. The power that beat around Harry was the added magic that Draco had poured into his core. It answered the power that had come to him, arising out of nowhere, born from the collision of their wills and desires. They sang to each other on a level that was partially mental, partially magical, partially physical, and it made Draco need to fuck Harry, to hold him, to touch him.

            Harry, from the way he swayed backwards as though against a cordon of ropes around the hollow, was feeling it, too. But he mastered it far faster than Draco had. Draco wondered if that was because he felt less—which Draco could not believe—or because he refused to acknowledge that he wanted it. He resumed the blank face and said, “You wanted to talk with me about things. Talk.”

            “If I can think,” Draco said wryly, and swallowed his own saliva several times before he felt composed. Even then, it was best if he kept his eyes on Harry’s and away from his groin. “Now. I invented a spell years ago that was meant to tell me if new magic was ever created around me. Some of the old books insist it’s possible, but I didn’t believe it. This time, the spell worked.” Harry opened his mouth, doubtless to say that he wouldn’t trust Draco’s spell if Draco paid him, and Draco hastily added, “And you feel stronger than before, don’t you? The benefits of having magic poured back into your core, or so it should be. But it hasn’t gone away. You haven’t got used to it, either.”

            Harry’s head came back and up, and Draco ached again. God, he wanted Harry to look him in the eye that way, he wanted Harry to move towards him, brought by the cords of kinship stretching between them, unable to help himself, brought and tamed and trained and dragged—

            “Get the fuck out of my head, Malfoy,” Harry snarled, moving a step away. “I know that you can feel my emotions through the Mark and force me to feel what you do, but they’re disgusting emotions.”

            “They’re inspired by you,” Draco said. “Are they really disgusting? You have no idea how much I want you, Harry.” His voice was thick. He swallowed and shook his head. “Do you think I would show this much weakness to you, if I had a choice? Hardly. I want you and you can crush me with your refusal.”

            Harry sneered. “Have you been reading Muggle romance novels? That’s hardly the sort of language that’s likely to make me yield.” Then he shook his head and visibly wrenched his attention back to the path they had been going down before. “Anyway, since you can read my thoughts when you want to, I don’t believe you about that core business. You could have known I was still unsteady on my feet from our fight and made up that lie.”

            Draco smiled. “But you gave me greater strength, too. Allow me to demonstrate.” He paused, then added courteously, “You may want to strengthen the spells over the hollow. I suspect I’ll destroy them.”

            Harry sneered back at him. God, his mouth is made for using, Draco thought, and knew he was staring unabashedly, and didn’t care. “You couldn’t do such a thing unless you were using one of your bracelets.”

            Draco splayed his hand out in front of him, showing that his fingers were empty. “Strengthen them, Harry. It’s fair warning. And it’s also fair for you to accuse me of lying, after everything I’ve done and said to keep you, so feel my emotions now. I won’t use one of the artifacts that I could. This is my own power.” He tried to envision clarity and honesty flowing like a stream of clear water through the Mark.

            Harry rubbed his shoulder again and stared down at him, teetering on the edge of doubt. Draco tried to keep as still and patient as he could. Harry invited him to dance on that same edge, he thought. He would take this trouble for no one else. He would conquer them or ignore them and go back to Britain. Either way, it would be done.

            But there was no prize in the world like Harry, and for him, Draco was willing to take his time.

*

            Malfoy was hard down there. It was disgusting. Harry didn’t understand. How could Malfoy want someone who had tortured him and done his best to kill him? And if he despised weakness, why didn’t he despise Harry for trying to commit suicide by draining his core?

            But those questions didn’t have answers. Malfoy was offering him one that did. Harry had to admit that he was curious to see how strong Malfoy was after this transfer of power between them. He took a step back and nodded sharply. Malfoy smiled up at him, then turned and faced the far side of the hollow. He closed his eyes.

            Harry noticed that he didn’t have his wand out. He was about to tell Malfoy that so he could remedy the defect when a blaze of pure white fire flowed out of Malfoy’s hands and struck the far wall, roaring as it melted down sand into slag.

            Harry stared. The fire didn’t behave like ordinary fire; it flowed and splashed and dripped, like water, the drops sizzling when they touched the ground and then creating their own small streams instead of separate flames. Harry realized the noise was less than it should have been for a fire that large, too, and there was no sensation of heat, although he could see the sand turning into glass by now. Harry knew of no spell or class of spells that would produce flame like that, and while it was always possible that Malfoy had read books Harry didn’t know existed, he didn’t think so.

            Besides, Malfoy wasn’t using his wand, and if he had been able to perform wandless magic of this class and power before, Harry knew he would have used it.

            Malfoy ended the fire with a simple movement of his fingers. Then he turned and looked up at Harry.

            “You see?” he asked.

            Harry nodded unwillingly. He did. Malfoy had most likely envisioned fire that behaved like that, which was why it had. It meant that he hadn’t really used a spell at all, and so the power in his core had increased somehow.

            Which was supposed to be impossible, at least without a corresponding drain on someone else. But Harry could attest to the fact that he was humming with more magic than usual, not less.

            But there was another objection to be made, and so far as Harry was aware, Malfoy hadn’t addressed it. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “If you can do that, why do you need me? You’re powerful enough on your own to set your Marked ones free and get rid of all your artifacts and suffer no loss.”

            Malfoy’s smile quirked the side of his lips up. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” he murmured. “My power is still limited by the limits of my body. If I get hungry or tired enough, then I’ll collapse, and someone else could take me. I’m interested in allying with other people and becoming stronger than I am. I want no limits, if possible.”

            Harry made a thick sound in the back of his throat. “I should have known,” he said. Then he pointed to the Mark on his shoulder, which had been burning with a low, simmering fire ever since Malfoy had appeared. “And this isn’t what I would call the badge of an alliance, exactly.”

            “What would you call it, then?” Malfoy took a step forwards, his eyes locked on Harry, as though he assumed it would be easier to disrupt his containment spells from there. Or as though Harry would have a sudden change of heart.

            “Enslavement,” Harry said promptly. “You took no one willing. I think that makes you get off more on it.”

            Malfoy tossed back his head and laughed. The laughter set up sympathetic twinges in Harry’s Mark and belly, and envious ones. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that.

            Malfoy calmed down to a chuckle in a moment, and shook his head. “Yes, you’re right,” he murmured. “But the weakness I despise is that which makes someone stop striving and fighting. Lisa gave up. I don’t have any reason to offer her the kind of alliance that I’m offering you. Let me come up to you, Harry. The moved Mark is a connection, but not as strong as before. I can no longer send pain through it.”

            Harry stared down at him, eyes narrowed. “That’s stupid,” he said at last, when long moments of such staring still hadn’t told him whether Malfoy was speaking the truth. “Why would you give up a weapon like that? And why would it be true when I can still sense your emotions?”

            “I created the pain with magic,” Malfoy said. “Thus the link to the magical core. But the Mark is only bound to our souls now. That means that you receive my emotions and whatever else normally flows through it.”

            It sounded plausible. But so had many of Malfoy’s other lies. Harry shook his head. “Let me go, and we’ll call it even. I won’t try to destroy you, the way that I could.” He didn’t think he was boasting. If Malfoy had grown stronger, so had he.

            Malfoy gave him a fascinated smile instead, the fires in his eyes burning low. “I want you too much,” he said simply. “Yes, I want to persuade you to have a willing alliance with me. But if you won’t, then a connection that you can’t ignore is better than nothing.”

            “There’s nothing I could offer you even if I allied with you,” Harry said stiffly. He didn’t understand this at all. Malfoy’s lust for power, yes, all right, but he was having too much of a physical response to Harry, one that Harry hadn’t seen him have with his other Marked ones. “You can use the others for power boosts. You can use the stored magic plus your own power to become the worst Dark Lord the world has ever seen.”

            “But I don’t have a goal right now,” Malfoy said, voice so soft that the crunching of his boots on the sand as he walked closer to Harry almost hid it. “That’s what you taught me. I want to direct this power somewhere. What do you want, Harry? What can I help you get that you don’t have right now? I would consider working with you privilege enough.”

*

            Harry froze in a way that he probably didn’t notice, or at least he must not know how revealing it was, because he would have done something to hide it, Draco was sure. His eyes widened, and his hands twitched at his sides. Then he shook his head.

            “You aren’t going to catch me that easily, Malfoy,” he said. “There’s nothing I want to destroy, which seems to be your specialty.”

            “Really?” Draco asked in the light conversational tone that commanded Harry’s greatest, if unwilling, interest, perhaps because it was so unlike what he expected from a Dark Lord who had captured him. “Not the Ministry, which condemned you? Not those in Britain who turned their backs on you, shunned you, made you feel as if you were a worthless piece of shite for making a mistake? Not the ones who call you a Dark wizard and make you feel that you can never return home?”

            Harry flushed, and Draco caught a flash of anger through the Mark before he hid it, expertly. “The only one who hurt me personally is Robards,” he said, “And he’s dead. There’s nothing else I want, Malfoy.”

            Draco nodded, conceding the point. “Not to destroy, then. But you would like a home, I think, somewhere where you could slow down and think, somewhere you could feel safe. I could make that for you.”

            “Not in Fox Valley,” Harry said at once. “It’s not—no.”

            “I understand,” Draco said. “We could make a home here, if you wanted to stay close to your friends.” He was watching, and so he saw Harry’s flinch. Who has hurt him? Draco hardened further at the notion of hurting someone else because they had caused Harry pain, or holding Harry because he needed comfort, but he thought he kept the huskiness out of his voice. “Or elsewhere. It doesn’t have to be in Britain.”

            “You know what I want?” Harry asked harshly, his voice ringing with a determination that said he thought he had something that would push Draco’s attempts at comfort away forever.

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “What?”

            “I want a way to stop being a murderer,” Harry said. “To stop being a Dark wizard. To stop feeling like shit when someone looks at me with wide eyes and insists that I would never do something like that, that they knew me better than that, that I would obviously have come to them for help or killed myself before I did anything so horrible.” He ran his hand through his hair and began to pace back and forth. Draco didn’t take his eyes from Harry and didn’t want to try. The emotions were flowing faster and faster through the Mark, now, and he knew how it would end. They were close to a solution. “I want a way to look at myself and decide what I am, hero or villain or neither, and then lay down any magic that doesn’t fit with the conception I choose. That’s what I want.” He swung and stared at Draco again, his eyes so beautiful in their desperation that Draco had to bend at the waist again. “And there’s no way that you can give it to me, Malfoy,” he finished, with a smug twang in his voice that Draco longed to hear vanish.

            “That’s where you’re wrong,” Draco said, when he thought he had control of his tone again. “Of course I can give you that.”

            Harry’s eyes widened. Then he shook his head. “In return for whoring myself out to you, I suppose.”

            “No,” Draco said softly. He had made a mistake; he could admit that now. He should have explained his new understanding in-depth to Harry first, and then made the offer of help. “I know that you would rather destroy yourself than submit to me. I had that pounded into my bones the last time we—communed. I want you alive, Harry, and if that means giving you what you want without getting everything I want, well, that’s fine, as long as I get to have something. If you’re alive, you can still make decisions and change your mind.”

            There was a long silence, while Harry carefully scanned his face and Draco tried to project as much honesty as he could.

            “But how could I ever trust you?” Harry asked at last.

            Draco felt light-headed. The solution had come to him in his dreams last night, but he hadn’t imagined that he could propose it so soon, because he hadn’t thought he would get Harry to listen so soon.

            “You could Mark me,” he said. “Something with the same effects and the same level of control over me that I have over you.”

            Harry fell back a step. His face had gone utterly still. Then he shook his head and croaked, “Malfoy—you’re sick. I can’t—no.”

            “Why not?” Draco edged forwards, wondering if Harry would let the net spells weaken so that Draco could spring out of the hollow and land next to him. Just one touch to that skin, just one embrace. That was all he would ask for.

            “Because I can’t enslave someone else,” Harry snapped, his hair flying around his head as he shook it again. “No, I never will.”

            “It’s not enslavement if I willingly choose it,” Draco said. “I would even let the Mark go if I could trust you not to run away. But I don’t think I can right now. That’s the only reason you still bear it.”

            “No,” Harry said, and then Apparated out. The spells holding Draco captive fell to pieces in the same moment, and he stood where he was, reaching towards Harry through the Mark. Nothing came back to him.

            Draco smiled a little before he went back to Thylacine’s Lair. The sound in Harry’s voice was familiar to him—not the sound of someone reeling in utter horror and rejection, but the sound of someone being tempted beyond his limits.

            The hook was set. Harry would be his.

            And he would be Harry’s, which Draco had to admit would not have been his first choice, but as a price, was far less than what he would have been willing to pay.

*

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