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Secrets & Lies	By : Digitallace Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14570 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything associated with the fandom, nor do I get paid to write or post this work.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Author's Note: Thanks to Cris for looking this chapter over for me and thanks to all who have reviewed so far.

Chapter 6 It Begins

Malfoy Manor spun into view and Malfoy's body pressed closely against his own as the queasy feeling he often got after Apparition slowly faded. Before Harry even had time to catch his breath and regain his bearings, Malfoy's body was slammed against his, pushing him toward the stairs while Harry made a soft sound of protest.

"Drink," Harry managed to gasp out just before Malfoy's lips touched his own. "We should have a drink first. You interrupted mine, after all."

Draco blinked, looking slightly bewildered by the sudden change in mood, but seemed to take it in stride, always ready to play the part of perfect host. "Of course. How rude of me. What would you like?"

"Firewhiskey if you have it," he replied, following Draco into room with floor to ceiling windows, beautiful marble floors and elegantly tufted furniture. It was the first time he'd been to Malfoy Manor since he was brought here by the snatchers, and it was far brighter than he remembered, though the ever-looming presence of the Dark Lord had a way of making the sunniest room seem basked in shadows.

"Of course I have Firewhiskey," Draco huffed, gesturing for Harry to have a seat as he glided over to the well-stocked bar in the corner, pouring two glasses of amber liquid. There were two high-backed chairs and one curling chaise lounge to choose from, and while Harry was tempted to take one of the chairs, he knew he had to get close enough to douse the blond, before things went too far, and took the chaise instead. He watched anxiously as Malfoy poured their drinks, stopping briefly to swat at a pesky fly and then diligently resumed his task. While Draco was occupied with their drinks, Harry feigned an itch, bending down to slip one of the vials Hermione had planted on him from the hiding place around his ankle. He palmed it moments before Draco padded over and took the seat beside him, and graciously took the offered drink with his free hand.

They stared at each other across the small expanse for a long moment while Draco sipped his drink and Harry practically gulped his. "Nervous, Potter?" Draco drawled, his voice low and seductive with a hint of amusement.

Harry only spared a single narrowed glare for his rival before shrugging slightly. "Not for any reason you might be suggesting," he replied at last.

He momentarily enjoyed the look of surprise on those haughty features before Draco's grey eyes shut down and gave nothing but indifference. "Well, I promise to take very good care of you," he offered, smirking deeply.

Harry forced himself to return a smug grin of his own and shift forward, hovering in Draco's space and stealing a hitched breath from the blond. Drawing the Slytherin's attention to his eyes, Harry quickly tipped the contents of his vial into Malfoy's glass. "I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise," he whispered hotly along the shell of Draco's ear before backing away and taking another sip of his drink.

Trying at inconspicuous, he averted his gaze as Draco brought the glass to his lips, taking a deep sip of his drink and imbibing more than enough of the sleeping draught to send a pulse of mild relief through Harry. Feeling slightly emboldened, Harry moved to straddle Draco's lap, relishing the tiny noises the action pulled from the blond's lips before he leaned in, his mouth hovering mere inches above Draco's. Harry could feel the Slytherin's hot breath mingling with his own and it gave him a rush he hadn't felt in a long time, if ever.

But before his mind could commit to an act of cheating on his own morals and his well-meaning girlfriend waiting back at home, the breath ghosting across Harry's lips shifted into a deeper, more even huff. He opened his eyes to see Draco's were closed, lightly fluttering in his sleeping state. "Sorry," Harry muttered as he removed himself from the blond's lap. "You're going to have one hell of a headache in the morning."

Potion induced sleeps tended to do that, especially with the amount Harry had drugged him with. He transfigured his blazer into a soft cashmere blanket and draped it over the sleeping figure, marveling at how angelic the manipulative prat looked in his sleep.

With a light scoff he pushed the thought from his mind and began moving methodically around the manor, starting in the room they were in and slowly working outward, checking every wall for a hidden latch or cubby and every painting or tapestry to make certain no safe was tucked away behind it. He found plenty of hidey holes, but when he slipped through the wards and broke the carefully constructed locking spells, all he found were financial documents, family heirlooms and various stashes of money or trinkets - nothing of any value to a case against Malfoy and nothing containing any detectable dark spells or curses of any kind.

"Fuck," Harry grumbled as dawn crested over the landscape and filtered in through the windows. Running a dusty hand through his even dustier mane, Harry had no choice but to pack it in. Six hours of searching had yielded him little more than an ache in his back and a yawn that seemed to stretch out for days. He knew that a report showing Malfoy was squeaky clean wouldn't appease his boss, and he certainly didn't relish the idea of having to continue this twisted game with his old rival.

He would just have to put his foot down and demand to be reassigned. What was the worst Fledgecraft could do?

Wincing at the images filling his head of even worse assignments than seducing Malfoy (though, admittedly, not much worse), he triple-checked his steps, making sure everything he'd riffled through looked completely undisturbed, returning every ward to its original state before leaving the manor, only a small glance spared for the blond sleeping peacefully on the settee.

"Unacceptable!"

The outburst nearly rattled the windows as Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other in turn, barely able to restrain the need to roll their eyes. As expected, Fledgecraft was less than pleased by Harry's assessment that Malfoy appeared to be an upstanding citizen of the Wizarding community.

"I certainly can't make him do anything illegal," Harry pointed out in as level a tone as he was capable of when being shouted at.

"You don't have to make him. The man practically exudes evil. There has to be something he's hiding but you're just too incompetent to find it!" his boss seethed, his fat fist pounding the table between them.

Harry stood, cheeks turning crimson with anger, and rounded on his superior. "Incompetent? I've done nothing but bend over backwards to complete this mission for you, breaking my own moral integrity in the process and you want to call me incompetent, you f-"

Standing abruptly and shoving ahead of Harry, Hermione stopped her friend before he could finish whatever demeaning diatribe he'd begun and interjected. "I believe what Harry means to say is that he's reasonably satisfied the terms of the assignment and has found nothing for which charges can be pressed. It would be a breach of ethics to continue on this route, Sir. If you still believe Malfoy to be guilty of something, we should find other means to pursue that information," she added, eloquent as always.

Fledgecraft eyed her with obvious distaste before sinking back in his chair and looking thoughtful. Harry relaxed a bit and eventually resumed his seat between his friends, which seemed to be exactly what their boss had been waiting for. "First," he hissed in a malevolent tone, "you will not dictate orders to me. I will decide when an assignment has been fulfilled properly. Second, although brash and inappropriate, Miss Granger makes a good point.

Before Hermione could finish preening, Fledgecraft pushed forward, leveling Harry with a dark gaze. "This assignment needs to go in a new direction."

"Excellent, so it's settled then, the Malfoy case can be reassessed and given over to a new team," Hermione reasoned, beaming at Harry as if she'd saved his life.

"Oh no, that's not what I meant at all, Miss Granger. Potter will stay on the Malfoy case, only instead of creating convenient methods to search the manor, he'll need to go deeper. Start a relationship with Malfoy, make the sneak trust him until he spills all of his secrets," Fledgecraft purred, as if eating a a decadent slice of homemade pie. "Potter will ruin him so thoroughly he won't know what hit him," he plotted deviously.

"Absolutely not!" Harry was on his feet again, shouting and shaking his head furiously. "I don't care about your approval any longer. I'm off this fucking case. I'll take it up with Shacklebolt if I have to!"

"Oh yes, always running off to your precious Minister. If the man is so deep in your pocket, Potter, why don't you have my job yet?" Fledgecraft hissed, standing to meet Harry's gaze.

With narrowed eyes, Harry nearly ground out the words. "Watch your tongue, Fledgecraft or you just might regret those words."

"Is that a threat, Mr. Potter," his boss growled, amusement in his beady eyes.

"Harry doesn't have to make threats," Ron piped in, rising to stand beside his best mate. Hermione cursed softly under her breath before standing as well, though her lips kept a tight line, not uttering a word.

"Is it a coup then?" Fledgecraft murmured delightfully. "Oh how the Ministry officials would love to catch wind of that. Golden Trio attempts to overthrow Auror Department. Skeeter would have a field day."

Harry only faltered for a moment, his eyes still narrowed to slits. "No, it's pretty clear that the Ministry has no room for change. It's too busy choking on greedy bastards like you," Harry bit out through clenched teeth, his heart feeling hollow at the idea.

"All this over a Malfoy?" Fledgecraft spat, shaking his head. "I'm astounded at the lot of you. I thought you wanted to be Aurors!" he declared, pushing on before they even had time to answer. "Well, sometimes that means being thrust into uncomfortable situations. Would you put up the same stink in the field under wandfire? That's a hundred times more dangerous than what I'm asking. Do you want to be Aurors or not?"

"Not if it means blindly following a man with an obvious vendetta. I didn't follow Voldemort and I won't follow you," Harry ground out. "I quit."

"Me too!" Ron shouted, blinking after a moment as if he hadn't realized what he'd said.

"And me as well," Hermione added firmly, chin raised high.

Together the trio stalked from Fledgecraft's office, filing one after the other with Harry in the lead. As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, the entire office was buzzing. "Bloody hell, Harry. I didn't know you were going to quit."

"Didn't you?" Hermione chimed in. "I could see that move from a mile away and it was stupid, Harry. Very stupid."

Harry and Ron both rounded on her. "Stupid?"

With a strained sigh, Hermione shook her head. "I'm surprised at you both, really," she huffed in the way that made everyone around her feel tiny and ignorant, like she was telling a brilliant joke that they just couldn't grasp the meaning of. "For purported Wizard's Chess Champions you let that man play you like a pawn. Couldn't either of you see that this was what he wanted?"

"Then why did you go along with it?" Ron pointed out indignantly, as if he'd spotted some obvious flaw in her plan.

"I couldn't very well leave the two of you dangling out there like idiots, could I? We're a team," she huffed and turned toward their cubicles. "Now, we need to go to Shacklebolt, explain everything and get our jobs back."

"No," Harry growled. "I will not answer to that man anymore. He's an arse and he doesn't deserve the position he's in."

"Of course he doesn't, Harry, but sometimes being an adult means taking orders from other people, even if you don't agree with those orders," she pointed out.

"Just drop it. I'll arrange a meeting with Shacklebolt for you two if you want, but I'm not coming back. I'm done," he grumbled, packing his personal effects into a conjured box.

"We can schedule our own meeting, Harry, thank you very much," Hermione huffed in the way she always did when someone was being obstinate. And as usual, that someone was Harry.

"Fine," Harry bit out, rolling his eyes. "I guess I'll see you both around then."

It was Hermione's turn to roll her eyes. "Of course you will, you great prat."

Harry opened his mouth to tell her off but could only laugh in response. "Yeah, alright." With another nod of his head, Harry hefted the box to his hip and stalked from the Ministry offices, ignoring the chattering voices that followed after him.

Draco woke with a terrible headache, his vision spinning as he tried to blink away the foggy haze that coated his vision. He groaned and shifted, nearly falling off the sofa as he did. "What the f-" he croaked, feeling parched as he took in the blanket tucked tenderly around him and the empty Firewhiskey bottle on the coffee table.

He hadn't remembered drinking so much, but as he tried to extract as many memories as he could from the night before, his head pounded ruthlessly in their wake. Gods. He'd gotten Potter back to his place and they'd flirted madly before…before what?

"What the hell is wrong with me?" he rasped, prying himself up and hobbling toward the kitchen where he kept the remedial potions. "I get Potter within my grasp and then blow it by drinking too much?" That wasn't like him at all and for a moment he held out hope that Potter just wasn't a very memorable lay, but the state of his immaculately dressed body was a clear enough sign that nothing happened between them last night.

Shaking from the nausea that came with drinking the hangover potions, Draco let out a relieved sigh when it began to work and the only thing that remained was the deep, coiling need to see Potter again. Feel him. Taste him.

He knew he was being reckless as he put quill to parchment, intending to send the Gryffindor idiot a personal invitation to his home. Such an invitation could easily be sold to the media, tearing his carefully constructed lies apart and eventually reason won out. He would leave it be and if fate put Harry Potter in his path once more, Draco would seize the opportunity with both fists.

'HARRY POTTER FIRED FROM MINISTRY'

Harry's angrily shaking grip on his tea cup sent splatters of dark liquid to mar the surface of the paper. Below his own article, a photo of an elderly woman opening the third location of her small bakery glared balefully up at Harry as she wiped the tea droplets from her blouse and then the photo went back to playing the same loop of her waving and cutting the ceremonial ribbon. "I wasn't fired," Harry seethed.

"No. You weren't," Ginny chimed bitterly from the other side of the breakfast table, unabashedly flipping through a bridal magazine. "You quit," she huffed, sounding very put out over it.

Harry let the paper droop so he could see her, shifting his irritation to a new target. "I would have thought that you of all people would be happy. You hated all the long hours I put in at the office," he pointed out.

"Yes, I did," she huffed, finally looking up at him, "but that doesn't mean I want you lying around the house like an unemployed bum instead."

Glowering, Harry tried to ignore her words, but he had to admit he'd been extraordinarily lazy these past few days. His hand reached up to scruff along a shade of chin stubble and he was still in his night clothes at half past ten. On the other hand, Ginny moving in had been more exhausting than a long shift at the office. Her things were everywhere and she was an insistent buzzing in his ear throughout the day. Harry would try reading long-neglected books and she would interrupt, asking where she could put this or that. When Harry set everything aside and tried to help, she would snap at him that he was folding things wrong or that the books needed to be assembled by color or that…honestly he tuned out all of her complaints after awhile.

"What would you have me do?" he asked with a plaintive sigh. "Crawl back on hands and knees, begging for my job back? I don't even want to work there if those are the kinds of things expect of me."

Ginny took a dainty bite of her grapefruit and shook her head. "You know you wouldn't have to beg. If you took just one of Kingsley's Floo calls you'd probably find he's ready to beg you to come back."

"Maybe," Harry huffed. "But I've made my decision."

"Fine," Ginny huffed in return. "Well, if you're going to be free today, could you pop in Diagon Alley and pick me up a few things?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, actually relieved with the request. It would be nice to get out of Grimmauld Place for awhile and away from the mess his once clutter-free home had become. Maybe when he got back Ginny would be more settled in and things would get back to some semblance of normalcy. Ron and Hermione were supposed to come over for dinner and he really didn't want the house to be a wreck when they got there.

"Thank you, sweetie. The list is on the fridge," she informed him, beaming as she nipped forward to kiss him chastely on the cheek before turning back to her magazine. Harry blinked at the return of her usually sweet demeanor, pulled himself away from the table and trudged upstairs to shower and dress for the day.

Author's Note: So, not too many of you wanted to be a fly, and I can't say that I blame you...so how about this time I offer you a giant boot with which to kick Ginny out of the house with....oh wait....can't do that...yet *evil cackle of evil doom*
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