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The Long Defeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30612 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Eight—Attention Attracted
            Lucius, on his way past the sitting room on the second floor, paused and turned back to look in. His son sat there alone, his elbows propped on his knees, his eyes blank as he stared into the fire.
            Lucius tapped the cane thoughtfully against the floor for a moment, and then strode in. Draco turned his head to acknowledge him, but did not rise to his feet and nod to his father respectfully as he usually did. Lucius didn’t need that, so instead he stood in front of the fire and tried to figure out what was wrong by studying Draco.
            Draco stirred restlessly before too long a time had passed. Lucius hid his smile. Draco had never been good at the arts that required sitting still, and Lucius supposed that he could not blame him. Draco was far more light and air and motion than Lucius or even Narcissa were; Lucius had never played Seeker.
            “What do you do when you find out that you don’t want someone to submit?” Draco asked him.
            Lucius blinked and stared at him. Of all the things that should concern Draco, he thought, it would be the one that he wouldn’t have imagined with a hundred years to guess.
            “You know that this simulacrum of slavery is only temporary,” he said quietly. “And when it is done, then Potter will be gone.”
            Draco’s hands clenched when he spoke the words, and Lucius paused, turning his head so that Draco would see only a smooth side of a profile while he worked out what that meant. Oh. So it is like that, is it?
            And this, perhaps, he could have guessed. Draco had been denied a successful rivalry and friendship, both, with Potter. Nor had they ever met in a formal duel or arranged a bargain between themselves the way Potter and Lucius had settled on the weregild. So when Draco saw Potter in a new context, it made sense for his mind to turn to this way of settling the matter.
            “If you do not wish to see someone submit,” Lucius said, “then you are a different kind of man than the Dark Lord was.”
            Draco bowed his head. Lucius thought he could feel his wife’s approving gaze through the walls. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, he said the words right the first time.
            “But there are ways of making a partnership joyous,” Lucius added. “When I was courting your mother, I had no success in making her look at me with liking until I brought her joy, instead of simply trying to impress her.”
            Draco looked up swiftly. “But you never had—I mean, Mother was interested in normal things. Not just dueling all the time.”
            Lucius turned his hands palm-up, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “I still had to find out what she was interested in. I mistook it for Muggle-baiting, house-elves, and the pride of her family before I found out what it was. The process of discovery will teach you much about the person you want to court.” Perhaps better to go no further than that word for now.
            Draco bit his lip, looking at him. “So you didn’t have any clues?”
            Lucius smiled. “Very good, Draco. Yes. At that time, her parents were alive, and I asked her father what she would like. And before she ran away to marry a Mudblood, Andromeda Tonks showed some good sense. She advised me what Narcissa might like as well.”
            “Potter has no family to ask about that, though,” Draco muttered, half-petulant.
            “Then I suggest you ask his friends,” Lucius said, and as Draco stared at him in horrified disbelief, turned his head further to show Draco only his profile, and not the small smile tugging at his jaw.
*
            Harry felt better when he’d written back to Ron and Hermione, a great torrent of complaints and huffing and explanations about why he continued to stay with the Malfoys instead of just breaking free and going elsewhere. Well, of course they knew why, because it was the same reasoning that he would have used if it was the goblins holding the leash, but it felt good to get it out.
            That done, and a short nap behind him, he decided that he might as well go down for dinner. He doubted anyone but Narcissa would bother to meet him. Well, that was okay. He could deal with a lot of food and not much conversation.
            But the whole Malfoy family was around the table when Harry walked in. Harry ignored the impulse to retreat and served himself from the side table: poached eggs, fresh fruit, fresh salad. It was what he felt like. The house-elves had probably already served the Malfoys, but the elves were showing a tendency to be extremely confused about what they should do with Harry, who wasn’t a house-elf, but also wasn’t technically a master, and in the end, Harry and Narcissa had agreed not to bother them about meals.
            Harry sat down in his chair and took a bite. Then he looked up, because Draco was making a motion across the table.
            Draco was pushing a glass of pumpkin juice at him.
            Harry stared. No house-elf had popped up in the room—he would have heard it—which meant Draco must have poured the glass himself. Not hard when the jug of pumpkin juice stood right by his hand, but still. It was unusual.
            Harry nodded slowly and took the glass from Draco, refreshing himself with a small swallow. He kept watching the Malfoys, though, ready to move if it turned out that something was wrong here. He didn’t think they would hurt him, but Draco was staring at Harry and apparently holding his breath, while Lucius went on eating his dinner and Narcissa—hid a smile?
            Harry wondered for a moment if the pumpkin juice was part of a joke, but he honestly didn't think Narcissa would do something like that to him. Among other things, it didn't seem like it would fit him into the family, and Narcissa wanted that, for reasons that had yet to make sense to Harry. So he enjoyed his juice, and his breakfast, and tried to ignore the fact that Draco looked like he was sitting on the edge of his seat.
*
            He didn't even say thank you.
            Draco didn't put his head down in his hands and sigh, but only because he knew that would be silly, would earn him Harry's scorn and his father's, and would make his mother look at him mildly under her eyelashes. He sat back, nursed his own tea, and thought about the other things he had sometimes seen Harry enjoying.
            Privacy. Flight. Quidditch. His friends' company. Certain kinds of sweets. Beating up Slytherins.
            And none of those were in Draco's power to give him. Draco checked another sigh and watched Harry eat his grapes one by one, as though they might betray him and scurry off to the corners of the table if he chewed them faster. Draco bit his lip thoughtfully and wondered if something else to eat would help. He had thought Harry enjoyed some kinds of sweets; could he remember specific ones?
            A cudgeling of his brain made him remember that sometimes Harry came back from Hogsmeade with a certain box of chocolates from Zonko's. Draco waited until the end of dinner and then escaped as the elves cleared the table, heading straight for the Owlery and mentally counting the Galleons he kept in his bedroom drawers. The chocolates were certain to be expensive.
            Well, that made them all the more suitable as a gift for a Malfoy to give someone whose attention he wanted to attract.
*
            Harry's attempt to bribe the raven with cheese was more successful this time, and it settled on top of the headboard and ate in contentment while he tore open the letters it had carried.
            Dear Harry, Hermione had written,
            I wish I knew what to tell you. The Malfoys do seem like they're treating you decently, but decent treatment as a slave is no substitute for having your freedom back. Is there any way they could extend their wards and glamours around the gardens, so that you could at least go out for exercise without being seen? It doesn't seem like it should be impossible. I know they want to avoid trouble with the goblins, but they're going to have trouble with you if you don't get some fresh air soon.
            Harry grinned. Hermione was always phrasing things the way Harry wished he had. He would show the letter to Narcissa. Maybe she could think of something that would persuade Lucius.
            Ron's letter included several creative suggestions for revenge that made Harry sigh over it. He wished Ron had thought of that when Harry was in danger from the goblins. They were the ones he blamed for this current situation, not the Malfoys. The Malfoys were just the ones making it difficult.
            Someone knocked on his bedroom door. Harry stood up with his wand in his hand, anticipating another visit from Draco to arrange a practice duel, and then realized the tapping came from the window instead. He turned around.
            A magnificent owl hovered there, grey with streaks of white on its wings. Harry would have been already calling to Lucius if he hadn't recognized the bird as one from the Malfoy Owlery. It did make him wonder what the family had to tell him that they couldn't have sent a house-elf with, but he went to open the window anyway.
            The owl flew in and alighted on his bed, staring at him expectantly. Harry rolled his eyes and reached for the letter it carried.
            But it wasn't a letter. It was a package, a rectangular, almost flat box from Zonko's. Harry stared at it, and then his eyes gradually narrowed and his heart rate picked up. It was a box of Wizard's Wands, which he hadn't tasted since his sixth year at Hogwarts.
            Someone is fucking with me.
            The owl hooted and flinched through all the spells Harry cast on it, spells that were meant to detect the multiple kinds of hexes you could put on food. But the chocolates were still intact at the end of it, although the box looked a bit battered. Harry looked down at it and bit his lip. Perhaps it was what it seemed to be, a peace offering.
            He would still ask the Malfoys about it, of course. They were the only ones who could have sent it, but it seemed strange they would have. Unless Draco was continuing whatever plot had begun with pouring him the pumpkin juice that morning.
            A strange plot to involve so much food.
            Harry dismissed the owl, which hovered outside the window for a few minutes until it realized he was really giving it no message to take back, and then vanished with a disapproving shriek. That left Harry to bite his lip and keep staring at the box before he flipped open the lid and undid the expensive, gold-colored wrapping on the inside.
            The chocolate wands inside had dozens of different kinds of tastes, though unlike Every-Flavor Beans, Harry actually found most of them appealing. He picked up a hazelnut one and closed his eyes as the sweetness seared his tongue.
            Yes, he would have to ask Draco about this.
*
            "So, I know you sent chocolates to me. I just don't know why, or why you picked expensive ones that you knew I liked."
            Draco had just come in through the door to the dueling practice room, and it seemed stupid to walk right back out again, even though Harry’s words made him want to. He settled for folding his arms and frowning at Harry, who frowned back.
            “The answer is in the words you just spoke, idiot,” Draco finally said. He would have to hope that Harry wouldn’t require wooing with sweet words. “What does it usually mean when someone picks expensive chocolates that they know you like?”
            “That they’re trying to slip me a love potion.”
            Draco paused, and then sat down on a chair behind him and nodded. “When you’ve been Harry Potter all your life, I reckon it does.”
            Harry stepped forwards, and if Draco had hoped to attract his attention, at least he had it now, all to himself, with Harry’s eyes wide and focused as if he was hoping to trick Draco into confessing his secrets that way. “Tell me what it means when you do it.”
            Draco licked his paper-dry lips and stood up. Fuck if he was doing this from a seated position. “It means,” he said, carefully, “that I really want you to stay in the wizarding world, and I thought you might if you liked me enough.”
            Harry looked at him as though he wished he had let the wizard he’d stopped in Diagon Alley curse Draco. “Why?”
            “I don’t know why,” Draco said. “Except that I think it’s stupid and unfair that you’re letting other people drive you away, and you’ve already paid a greater toll to stay here and have the run of the wizarding world than any of the people who were ready to sacrifice you to Gringotts did. And it’s like letting them win if you go. And I want you to do something other than bodyguard for us and pretend to be our slave.”
            “That was the deal,” Harry said, turning away to walk towards a series of targets on the other side of the room. “Until the end of the year. And tutoring you, of course.”
            “I don’t want you to do that if you don’t like it,” Draco said.
            Harry paused between one step and another. Then he brought his foot down and stood there with his arms folded, facing the targets, counting them. Or he looked like he was counting them. If he was, Draco didn’t think he needed to spend that much time making sure how many there were.
            “Why would what I want matter to you?”
            Draco stared at his back. “Most people don’t require an explanation of that,” he said, because it was the most neutral way of saying what he wanted to say.
            “Most people aren’t slaves, either,” Harry said.
            “You can’t attribute this to just being Harry Potter, the way you could the chocolates and the love potions,” Draco said. “You haven’t had people trying to enslave you all your life. I know you haven’t.”
            He didn’t expect Harry’s laughter, or the way his shoulders twitched as though he was trying to keep himself from vomiting. After a few minutes, though, Harry stopped laughing and straightened up with a deep breath.
            “True, to a point,” he said, still without facing Draco. That was starting to get on Draco’s nerves. “But living as the Chosen One was more than a bit like being a slave. I didn’t realize that until it was over, or I would have rebelled earlier. But it was all about what I had to do, my duty, and not what I wanted. That was going to be for after the war.
            “Then I found out that it wasn’t, that the debts I owed weren’t done. So I told myself I would pay this final debt, and that would be it.” He turned around, shaking his head. “You want me to stay here, where people think I owe them and they own me? Fuck you.”
            Draco’s breath caught, and he took a step forwards, staring. “Fuck yes,” he said, without meaning to.
            Harry turned his wand so that it pointed at Draco’s belly, and having seen all the spells Harry knew that Draco had never even heard of, Draco knew to take the threat seriously. “And now you’re making fun of me.”
            Draco shook his head and let his tongue have free rein. That was never a good idea with his parents, but if Draco was right, both he and Harry could get lots of things from each other that they would never get from anyone else in their lives. “No. No, I didn’t mean to. I just mean that I like seeing you angry and paying attention to your future instead of curling up and acting like you’re ready to die.”
            “I never did that.” Harry obviously measured the floor space between them with his eyes.
            “Oh, right, not literally,” Draco said. “But you gave in and you went along, and that’s not you. If we hadn’t rescued you, you would have let the goblins have you and treat you as their slave, wouldn’t you?”
            Harry’s wand shook as he clenched his fists. “What else could I have done, given what they were threatening?” he asked, not quite snapping.
            “You could have fought back and got away,” Draco said. “That’s all. That’s what a lot of people would have done. I’m not saying that you’re wrong for agreeing to be a slave—”
            “Yes, you are.”
            Draco had to smile. “All right. But you didn’t protest as much. You shut down, and I know you have dangerous magic, but you didn’t argue. You went along with it for the sake of others, because that’s what you always do. If you’re feeling different now, I’m glad. Because I don’t want to be one of the people you simply go along with.”
            “Or someone I martyr myself for?”
            Draco nodded. “Precisely. I want you to duel me because you like having someone to train, or because you like seeing me writhing in pain.” He saw Harry flinch, and hurried on. Maybe that had been a bad thing to mention. Harry wasn’t a sadist, except towards himself. “I want you to have fun thinking of all the ways to fool the goblins.”
            “There’s not much I can do, when I have to wear chains whenever they come to visit you.”
            “But you can be more creative with it,” Draco said. “You can come up with tricks and lies that we would never think of, because it’s not us having to wear the chains. You could work with us more than you have.”
            Harry just looked at him. Then he said, “I hate the goblins. I want to kill them when I see them, not think of how to fool them.”
            “Then daydream about killing them when they’re in front of you, and plan the rest of the time.” Draco was starting to wonder how Harry had survived some of his adventures at school, with emotions that strong. Maybe Granger had told him to shut up and let her plan. “Come on, Harry. I know you can do better than this.”
            “I shouldn’t have to.”
            “No,” Draco agreed. “And at the end of the year, if you still want to leave the wizarding world, I can’t stop you. But it seems you think the year until then has to be one of suffering and misery, and it doesn’t. I promise. I can help you. Tell me what you’d like and I’ll try to make sure it happens. And you can make the deception easier on yourself.”
            “It’s—it has to be a bargain, Malfoy.” Harry spoke as haltingly as though trying to read the language off a complex legal document in front of him. “The way I made with your father, about Ginny and the weregild. I’m not going to trust any of you without a bargain.”
            Draco stood up straighter. “If you want to make a bargain, then lay the terms down,” he said. “I’ll accept them, unless you require me to betray my family.”
            Harry stepped away from him, as though he had tried to brace himself against a wall that suddenly vanished. “Fine,” he said, through his teeth, not turning his head to look at Draco. “I want you to promise that you’ll help me the way you said you would.”
            “Fine,” Draco said. “What do I get in return?”
            Harry fidgeted back and forth until Draco wondered if he would get an answer today. Then he said, “I’ll think about staying in the wizarding world at the end of the year. Only think,” he snapped, as if he had seen Draco’s mouth opening from the corner of his eye. “I didn’t say that I would stay here.”
            “Just thinking about it is enough for me,” Draco said. There are so many things here that he loves, and so many people he loves. I can’t believe that he’ll abandon them without looking back.
            Maybe I can even become one of those people he loves.
            It was a more daring plan than any Draco had envisioned before, one that left him breathless and panting, and he nearly missed Harry’s words. “Really? Even though you can’t read my mind and know that?” He turned to Draco and raised his eyebrows at him.
            Draco nodded. This was something important, he knew. He couldn’t fuck it up. He held Harry’s eyes and kept his voice level and low. “I trust you. You’ve kept your word to my family so far, in a situation where lots of people would just run away. You accepted the bargain you talked about with my father, even though I could see the reasons it would repulse you. And you saved the world. I trust you.”
            Harry bit his lip and whirled away, arms folded around himself. Lots of people wouldn’t have recognized the gesture. Draco, who had held himself like that and rocked in a corner of the Manor’s rooms when the Dark Lord was at his worst, did.
            “All right,” Harry whispered at last. “That’s our bargain, then. You try to help me fool the goblins and get better at it, and I’ll think about staying in the wizarding world.”
            “You do that,” Draco said. He made his voice simple, he hoped, without the cutting edge of mockery that Harry would be looking for. “In the meantime, I have one idea about the goblins already.”
            Harry tilted his head at him, eyes sparking. “Yeah? What is it?”
            And Draco told him slowly, for the sheer pleasure of watching Harry’s eyes widen and his lips part.
*
delia cerrano: I don’t think many people (including goblins) spend enough time thinking about what could have happened. The goblins just know what did: that Harry fooled them and broke into their bank.
SP777: Well, Draco doesn’t want him to, and he may be in the long run to convincing him?
Jester: Draco doesn’t want Harry to stay a slave, but he really wants him to stay.
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The Long Defeat