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Contracted	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18657 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Eight—In a Moment Change

            “Potter. I want to speak to you.”

            Harry turned around. He had barely entered the Ministry party tonight—which was in celebration of a heroic deed by one of the past Ministers, when he had faced down a rampaging army of Dementors—when Sandborn accosted him. Harry kept his arm and his face both stiff, partially because Callia was on his arm and he didn’t want her to feel his emotions. “Minister?” he asked as he bowed.

            “You heard me.” Sandborn jerked to a stop in front of Harry. Harry surveyed him. He had high color in his cheeks, more than usually showed unless he was at a gala where he thought he could lower his guard and drink, and his hair looked as though he’d used the back of the comb instead of the teeth. Harry held back his twitching lips and slammed his first soul into place like an ice mask.

            “Yes, Minister.” Harry looked sideways at Callia. “Is it something my fiancée can’t hear?”

            “Yes,” Sandborn said, and his gaze was so direct that Harry raised his eyebrows. Callia, he noticed from the corner of his eye, had her lip curled at such open expression of emotion. She touched Harry’s arm with her fingertips canted at a slight angle and moved away towards the table of food. Harry bowed to Sandborn again and followed him across the large open room where the party was taking place so that they stood behind a stage. The musicians who would play on it hadn’t arrived yet.

            Sandborn spun around the moment shadows enclosed them and fastened his fingers like talons on Harry’s shoulders. Harry glanced at them and then back at the Minister’s face.

            “Minister, you look flushed,” he said.

            Sandborn blinked, then nodded and closed his eyes. Harry knew he was struggling to gain control. If Harry had noticed, others could, and Sandborn was far more attentive to the eyes of enemies than even Harry.

            A Dark wizard might kill Harry on the battlefield, but no one in the halls of the Ministry could challenge or change his arrangement with Sandborn. He had no reason to be as wary of them as Sandborn had to be.

            He had thought.

            Harry abruptly swallowed back some of the cascade of dread that had flooded his throat. Did he have to worry about them? If Malfoy and his Slytherin friends could find out about the contract, could make Sandborn run and stamp like this, could someone else?

            Harry hadn’t thought about it, but emerging from Sandborn’s protection would mean that he suddenly gained a large bunch of determined enemies. He tried not to let the realization show on his face.

            Once, he would have had no trouble doing that. The existence, the possibility, of hope had changed him.

            And Sandborn, Harry was reminded as the Minister stepped back from him and gave him a normal smile. Harry was weakened, stumbling about in this changed world, but Sandborn was much the same. Harry no longer needed to think of him as an invincible opponent he couldn’t move or annoy.

            Change. Harry had forgotten how terrifying he found it.

            “Thank you,” Sandborn murmured. “I went to retrieve a copy of our papers from my private safe, and found them gone.”

            Harry stared at him, hoping that his first soul would show surprise and horror as well as his third one could. The third one was reeling.

            Malfoy stole the contract. Or arranged for it to be stolen. What? Why in the world? Does he think he can publish it and discredit Sandborn that way? I’d hope he wouldn’t be so stupid, but I don’t know him that well.

            “I thought so,” Sandborn said, with a faint bob of his head and an even fainter smile. “The solution would be too simple if you knew who had taken it and how to get it back.”

            “I’ve received no demand,” Harry said. “Minister—forgive me, but could you have overlooked it? Perhaps stirred it into a larger bunch of papers and then decided that it was nowhere to be found?”

            Sandborn gave him that look of slow-burning contempt that he’d perfected ages ago. Harry straightened his back in response. Perhaps it was all right to let his first soul continue to guide his actions. He had to pretend that he didn’t know anything about the Slytherins’ “help,” or even that the events they engineered were connected.

            “I always know where our papers are,” Sandborn said. He would not speak the word “contract” aloud where anyone else could hear it. Then again, neither would Harry. “It’s gone. I wanted to know if you had borrowed it. But I see from your expression that you didn’t.”

            “No,” Harry said, leaving aside for the moment the fact that he didn’t have free passage through Sandborn’s wards and didn’t know where he kept most of his copies of the contract. “But, Minister—it makes no sense. To steal it, someone would have to know that the papers existed.”

            “Yes,” Sandborn said. “I know that I let slip no clues to anyone. That means that you must have done so, Potter.”

            Shit. But Harry had spent years fighting for every small advantage he could, and being able to keep his true emotions banked in Sandborn’s presence was a considerably larger advantage than it might seem on the surface. He maintained his expression exactly as it was and shook his head. “My friends know nothing, sir. Could you believe that they would have left me in this situation if they did?” He judged it right to let a sliver of bitterness enter his voice then. Sandborn wouldn’t believe in perfect calm.

            “Perhaps your enemies decided to help you.”

            Harry laughed. A small huff of breath, but it was enough to make Sandborn focus on him and not on the dangerous thought he’d started from hiding. “My enemies, sir? Death Eaters who want me dead because I killed their Lord? Wizengamot members who tolerate me only because they believe me under your control?”

            “That’s right,” Sandborn said. “They don’t know that we really work as partners.”

            Harry tilted his head to let the shot glance off him, and continued. “Those family members of Dark wizards who refuse to believe in overwhelming evidence and continue to insist that those I’ve put in Azkaban have done nothing wrong? Sir, I don’t know what you want me to say. They’re more dangerous to me than to you.”

            “Then perhaps my enemies,” Sandborn said. “Rettern has held an unreasonable grudge against me for months now. She could have started the investigation into long-settled financial matters as well as stolen the contract.”

            Harry hesitated for the barest fraction of a second. He didn’t want to encourage Sandborn to think those events were connected. On the other hand, Rettern made a handy culprit, and Harry trusted her to handle herself against the political pressure Sandborn could bring to bear.

            “I did hear something,” he said, and then glanced away. Sandborn could probably see the deception in his eyes if he looked hard enough. Harry had learned to lie, but more by omission than directly; it was necessary to dance around his friends’ ignorance of why he served the Ministry.

            “You will oblige me by telling me.” Sandborn’s voice had lowered, the veneer of calm flaking away from it like paint from steel. Harry didn’t curl his lip, but he felt the impulse. Moments like these proved the happy mask Sandborn wanted to live under false. He urged Harry to consider him a friend, until something threatened the chains he had around Harry’s neck.

            Chains I put there. Harry felt doubt throb in him like a wound. Did he really have the right to break his sworn word and turn against the Minister when Sandborn had done so much for him?

            Dangerous thoughts, thoughts that didn’t belong to his first soul. He murmured, “I had heard that Rettern had employed Alex Spender before we brought him in.”

            Sandborn’s shoulders dropped the way they had in his office the other day when he thought he had Harry’s attention. His answer was a mere sigh of breath, traveling so fast over his parted lips that Harry wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t already been listening for it. “Ah.”

            Harry nodded.

            Alex Spender was one of the more dangerous wizards he and Ron had hunted in recent months, one who’d made a specialty of spells that twisted the mind. They weren’t the Imperius Curse, which meant they weren’t illegal. Harry had never understood that—there was still plenty of space for Dark Arts between Unforgivable Curses and ordinary spells—but that was the Ministry for you. The same thing tended to happen with pain spells that were less severe than the Cruciatus.

            Spender had made himself expert at creeping into a wizard’s mind, taking a few memories or perceptions, changing them, and then convincing the victim that they had always been that way. He had made a mother turn away from her son under the conviction that he wanted to kill her new boyfriend—Spender—and a father beat his daughter almost to death by rendering his temper more unstable. Soon his victims trusted only him, and would willingly sign away their valuables to him on his say-so. Twice that Harry and Ron had been able to prove, they had committed suicide with Spender as their only beneficiary under the will.

            He might have been able to do it to Harry and Ron, but Harry had slipped through his nets with an ease that astonished him. He thought it might have something to do with the different parts his mind was split into, his three souls. Either way, Spender hadn’t lost the stunned look on his face before Harry had Stunned him.

            Sandborn smiled at Harry. “That would explain a great many things. You would recognize Spender’s work most easily, Auror Potter. Would you speak to Madam Rettern and see what you can find out?”

            Harry blinked. It was the logical course for Sandborn to take, considering his lie, but Harry hadn’t expected he would assign the task to Harry. “Sir? I don’t have a reason to visit her. She would suspect something.”

            “Not if you go with a dispensation from me.” Sandborn’s voice was soft enough to sound caressing. “Not if you go as the emissary for a peace treaty between us, in fact, and a bargain. A contract.” He gave Harry a small smile as he spoke the dangerous word. Harry didn’t smile back, but then, Sandborn wouldn’t expect him to.

            He breathed gently, against the surge of fury that sometimes built up inside him when he dealt with Sandborn even now, despite the division of his souls. He had no right to be angry, he reminded himself again. Sandborn had kept his bargains, and had offered only what Harry had been prepared to accept when he proposed the bargains in the first place. And Sandborn was an effective Minister, holding the whirling factions in equilibrium, able to convince those he dealt with that he had promised something far more than he really had when he smiled or winked at them, or simply shared a glass of wine and a short time in the evening with them.

            He wondered, again, if he had the right to break his word to someone who had done such a good job of holding the wizarding world together. This was larger than him, larger than the measure of his single contract with Sandborn. Go up against the Minister, and what would happen? He would introduce chaos into a delicate system.

            Sandborn’s smile sharpened, and Harry shook his head. He had already made the decision to accept the Slytherins’ help. He had lied to Sandborn about Rettern. He would play the game out now, and surrender only if it became clear that there was no way he could keep the gains he’d made without the contract.

            “I’d be honored, sir,” he said. “When will you send over the justification I can carry?”

            “In the morning,” Sandborn said, and let his hand rest on Harry’s shoulder for a moment, as if they were friends. Harry hated that, but he kept his face immobile. “For now, go and join the party. I hope that you’ll enjoy yourself.” He smiled and looked over Harry’s shoulder. “Callia is waiting for you.”

            Harry turned and found that she was, head bowed, looking serious as she contemplated her hands. But when he stepped towards her, her eyes came up and flashed over to him with a speed that made it clear her hands couldn’t hold her attention.

            Harry nodded to Sandborn, murmured his thanks, and waited for his dismissal. When it came in the form of Sandborn turning grandly away from him, he stepped back over to Callia and took her arm.

            “Shall we dance?” he asked. Callia often wanted to be seen on the dance floor in his company. Harry understood why, but at the bottom of his third soul, he was amused that she thought someone might steal him away or try so hard to prevent their marriage. He wasn’t exactly the hero he had been when he was young, and few women would want the perfectly-trained Minister robot. And the kind who did wouldn’t pursue him openly while he was engaged.

            “I don’t wish to.”

            Callia spoke with her head bowed and her words falling heavily. Harry’s mind went back to the other night when she had visited him, and he nodded.

            “All right. Then let me get you something to eat.” He guided her adroitly over to one of the tables in the corner of the room and began piling the plate high with delicate little sandwiches, cuts of cheese, and fruit. His churning stomach had taken away his appetite, as usual. Callia made sure that she had some kind of physical contact with him even when both of his hands were full, continually leaning on his shoulder or clasping his arm with one hand as if it was a manacle.

            Harry kept from rolling his eyes, but with an effort. Parkinson was married, Callia couldn’t know about the real purpose of those rumors that Parkinson had hinted existed, and it wasn’t as though efforts to separate them were an everyday thing, not when they had Sandborn’s tacit approval. She was being paranoid.

            “Potter. I’d like to talk to you.”

            Harry turned around with a blink. Malfoy stood behind him, and he gave Harry a faint smile, tempered with boredom. He looked at Callia, and the boredom grew in his eyes before he lifted his glass to take a drink and masked his face with it. “Alone,” he added.

            Weirdly, the first thought that came to Harry was, Maybe she’s not paranoid after all.

*

            Draco could practically feel Pansy hovering behind him. They’d come in to the celebration late, and Pansy had sought a shadowed corner, so that Callia wouldn’t see her coming. The minute Draco drew Potter away, then she would pounce.

            Draco had to approve of that when he saw Callia’s flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. Either she’s drunk already, this early in the evening, or she shows too much of what she feels. Either isn’t good for Potter’s partner.

            “I have a right to hear anything that you want to say to my future husband, I think,” Callia said.

            “Ah,” Draco said, and held up one finger. “You might think that, but you would be wrong.”

            “Stop it, Malfoy.” Potter moved forwards, and Draco felt laughter bubble in his throat when he realized Potter was angling his body between Draco and Callia. Apparently he was serious when he said that he didn’t want her hurt. Strange for him to have morals on that score when they hadn’t troubled him for so long.

            “Social games such as this hold no interest for me,” Draco said, proud that he didn’t burst out laughing as he told that outrageous lie. “Come with me, and we can conclude our business and you can return to your lovely fiancée.”

            “Don’t trust him, Harry.” Callia’s fingers were digging into Potter’s skin, and Draco mentally took away all the points that he’d given her when he saw her sail in on Potter’s arm, her face distant and her gown billowing around her like the sails of a ship. “You know that he’s friends with the bitch who threatened me.”

            Draco held his face neutral, although he wanted to react to the word. He would only confirm Callia’s suspicions if he said something, and he wasn’t interested in doing so.

            “I know they’re friends,” Potter said, and his eyes shone briefly with contained fire of the kind that Draco had seen in him the other day and when they were speaking through the fire. How long had he been missing that? “But it doesn’t mean that he has anything to do with Parkinson’s attack on you.”

            “Pansy wanted to duel you?” Draco intoned. “I’m sorry. I feel sympathy for anyone she goes after,” he explained, when Callia stared at him.

            “Not a duel,” Callia muttered, but she obviously wished that she could say something else, if the way her hands fidgeted on Potter’s arm was any indication. She moved away from him at last with a tiny sigh and spread her delicately manicured fingers as though calling on the whole room to witness what she was giving up, an hour of Potter’s company. “Very well. Come and find me when he lets you go, Harry, and I’ll heal your wounds.” She gave Potter a melting smile and turned her back.

            Draco stepped close enough that there was no chance anyone else would hear the buzz of his words beyond Potter’s ear. “How did you get tricked into marrying that one?”

            “I haven’t married her yet,” Potter said, with a heavy look in Draco’s direction, and walked back to the food table. “What did you have to say to me? You realize that approaching me in public attracts the attention we wanted to avoid.”

            “That you wanted to avoid,” Draco said, walking beside him. “I see no reason not to attract it, as long as Sandborn doesn’t guess the real reason I’m helping you.”

            “Then what excuse did you have prepared?” Potter stared at him out of the corner of one eye and picked up a tiny sandwich. Draco wondered why until he saw him holding it so that it blurred the shape of his lips from a distance. Someone who could read the movement of those lips would find it more difficult now.

            “Your lovely fiancée has laid the ground for us already,” Draco said. “Kind of her. I intend to spread the tale that I’m madly in love with you and want to prevent you from marrying her, or at least make sure that you’re unhappy in marriage.”

            Potter choked. Draco patted his back and let his hand linger deliberately too long. He smiled. Whether or not Callia had seen it—and she might not have, with Pansy busy at her—it would provide fuel for the gossip she couldn’t help but hear.

            “You—no one will believe that,” Potter said, stepping away at last and looking at Draco with a pale face. Draco smiled up at him.

            “You underestimate the eagerness people have to believe in a good story,” he said.

            “This isn’t a good one.” Potter’s voice was flat, and he looked as though he’d like nothing better than to cower in a corner and scrub at his lips. Unkind of him, Draco thought. He hadn’t attempted a kiss yet.

            “Yes, it will be,” Draco said. “Once we dress it up in the proper lies. Enemies during Hogwarts? On opposite sides of the war? We saved each other’s lives? Obviously I wanted to be with you, but couldn’t because my father had dastardly plans for me. But all that has changed now, and I have only the barrier of a proper marriage to pine away at. Difficult for me, embarrassing and awkward for you. Any such behavior that you show around me will have a proper explanation in everyone’s minds. They’ll make it up themselves.”

            Potter stared at him for a moment. Then he gave a hard smile, which was not at all the reaction Draco had expected, but was better than spluttering and more productive than disagreement. “I know all about that,” he said softly. “The lie of a hero about to marry a pretty woman and acting in accordance with the wishes of a heroic Minister is a powerful one, too.” He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “It won’t do you any harm with your friends? Or do you have a lover?”

            Draco sighed. “Your past has made you too bloody protective of everyone else,” he told Potter. “Do what you want for once, and you might actually find that it’s more pleasant than you believe it is.”

            “This has nothing to do with being protective,” Potter said. “I don’t want someone to disrupt the plan with protests or jealousy. I’m already dealing with Callia’s jealousy. Will you have problems or not?”

            “I wouldn’t have suggested the story if I did,” Draco said. “Give me credit for that much sense.”

            Potter nodded. “All right. Should I act outraged or intrigued?”

            Draco paused. “I should have realized,” he murmured a moment later, when the protests still hadn’t started and Potter simply stood there and watched him. “You’re more of an actor than you used to be. This is another role for you to play, not a violent outrage.”

            “Not much outrages me anymore,” Potter agreed calmly. “But right now, I need to know the role.”

            Draco shook his head. “I think I prefer the fire that you show when something truly startles you or pushes you beyond your boundaries.”

            “You may,” Potter said. “I don’t. That makes me dangerously unpredictable. Now. Will you tell me what I should do, or do I have to stalk away in disgust and pretend to Callia on my own initiative? She’s coming up again, by the way. I don’t think Parkinson managed to distract her for long.”

            Now that Draco thought about it, he could hear the stiff clash of Callia’s skirts as she came nearer. He nodded. “Act a mixture between the two. You’re pushing me away, because anything else would be absurd, of course. But you keep casting glances back at me. You wonder if perhaps excitement is what’s been missing from your life, the excitement that an unsafe love affair could provide you with.”

            “Right,” Potter said, and then sneered. The sneer was so realistic Draco fell back a step before he thought about it.

            “Stay away from me, Malfoy,” Potter said, loud enough that several other people turned around from their conversations, low enough that those who wanted to could pretend to ignore it. “You don’t want to know how burned you’ll get, playing with me.” He snapped his fingers in Draco’s face and stalked over to Callia.

            But he paused for one glance back, and Draco saw curious eyes take note of that, too, and greedy smiles spread across lips.

            Draco shook his head. Potter would do as Draco asked of him, fully committed now that he had chosen his side. But Draco would be glad when the contract was broken and Potter free to act like his normal self, whoever that was now. This man he was when he acted unsettled Draco and made him wonder what else might be hiding behind his façade.

            Then Draco grinned.

            At least I’m not bored anymore.

*

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