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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)	By : Tommy-Lane Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13085 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any charactors from the books and I am not making any money off of this.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
- 9
"Ow Gin, stop it!"
Draco's foot halted in midair, his head cocking to the side as he came to a full stop before the opening to their shared cubicle. He could hear bodies scrambling just inside, the thunk of knees on a desk, the soft thwack of elbows in flesh - the ringing sound of a woman's snickering laugh and Potter's lame attempts to get her to stop. He clenched his coffee mug and glared at the gray partition.
It had been 11 years since Hogwarts and just the sound of her voice still made him feel like getting mauled by a hippogriff.
When Draco had first started working at the Ministry, and therefor with Potter, he had seen far too much of her. As the girlfriend of the famed man she liked to pop by just to shower him with kisses in public places and make sure everyone knew who he belonged to. It was like witnessing a dog marking her territory with her captive prey blushing like an idiot.
It didn't even matter if he was in a meeting with Draco, she would strut in, plop herself down on Potter's lap and smile her toothy smile with her lips that seemed far too pale in comparison to her fiery head - offhandedly flinging comments about like, "oh I'm sorry Harry, were you busy?" with a pointed look his way like Draco was nothing more than a speck of mud on Potter's boot. It had thankfully been over a year since the last time he had laid eyes on her, the ginger-headed attention whore slinking back to whatever mundane existence she lived when the man finally had enough of her and ended it.
Merlin the Prophet had had a field day over that, hounding Potter for weeks over the reason - to which he would just smile tightly, decline any comment, and turn and walk away. There were rumors though. One article suggested that Potter was too emotionally damaged from all he had scarified for the good of all to carry on a healthy relationship, another one offering up the idea that he was married to his work, another insisting that Ginevra had been a cheating slut and deserved to be sacked, and outlandishly enough another one hinting at a cross continent romance with some princess who resided in an exotic foreign land. They were all idiotic and each one tended to make Draco bite into his tongue while he read them over breakfast.
Honestly it was as if none of the authors had even met Potter before, even he knew that it couldn't have been any of the reason they had given.
"Just give it up Harry, you know I'll get it out of you one way or another." Ginevra Weasley taunted in a sing-song voice to which there was another thump and a quick curse from Potter.
"There's nothing to tell!" Potter insisted and his voice sounded constricted like something - or someone - was sitting on his stomach.
Ms. Weasley snorted. "Right, right, I'll believe that when George becomes the History of Magic Professor at Durmstrang. And you're forgetting that I know you Harry."
Draco's stomach clenched along with his jaw, the mention of Potter's past knowing an unwelcome reminder, even though it shouldn't have been. What did it matter that he had dated that tart? He had no cause to be jealous, Potter wasn't his in any way, shape, or form, unless of course one counted getting off in clubs and dark storage cupboards - which Draco firmly didn't. That was simply so they didn't kill each other.
"When did you - ow! - become so violent?" Potter grumbled but there was a laughing note to his tone that made Draco's hand clench even tighter, his knuckles white on the black mug.
"I'll have you know that I've successfully worked through my rage in those courses after you gave me the toss so you could suck dick."
"Ginny!" Potter squeaked in that horrified sounding voice of his just as Draco took an involuntary step closer. Merlin was that really why they had ended things? Or more importantly - because obviously Draco knew Potter did like to suck dick - had he actually given that as his reason for high tailing it out of their fairy-tale romance? Had he actually sat the wench down and said, "So Gin, I'm so so sorry but I just can't take another month of your fanny. I've got a gigantic craving for cock. So so sorry but yeah..." while blushing and shuffling his feet against the carpet?
Or more likely it came out as one big nervous fumble that didn't make any sense at all but still - didn't Potter know that you were supposed to lie when breaking it off with the fairer sex?
"What?" Ginevra laughed. "Oh come on Harry, isn't it about time you came out? People are bound to find out anyway if you insist on-"
"Ginny can we please not talk about this here." Potter pleaded and Draco could vividly picture the extreme blush that would be gracing Potter's face and neck and probably even his chest beneath his robes right about now.
"Fine, you tell me what I want to know and I'll seal my lips." She sounded so smug then, like Potter had just walked headlong into her trap.
"Low, Gin, really low." Potter grunted, a faint scrapping sound and the rustle of fabric. “It’s really n-"
"Ah you didn't have to wait for me."
"Merlin." Draco jumped, his coffee sloshing over the top of his hand as Weasley's breath ghosted over the shell of his ear as he spoke in a soft, chuckling voice. He whipped his head to the side quickly and fought a blush at the man's blasted knowing smile and twinkling eyes. He was standing just behind him with his arms crossed over his Auror robes and giving Draco a pointed look that said he knew exactly what he had just caught him doing. Bugger. "I was just..." He started uselessly.
Weasley shrugged, like that solved it all, as if he hadn't just caught Draco eavesdropping on his sister and best friend. "Don't blame you mate." He said quietly with a small lift of his shoulder towards the cubicle. "Ginny still loathes your slimy evil guts. Her words not mine. Best keep your distance unless you’re keen for another afternoon of Harry carefully reversing her hexes."
"I'll just work in a broom cupboard then shall I?" Draco snapped, annoyed that the she-weasel was there, annoyed that she had probably pulled Potter's secret from him, annoyed that he been caught, and frankly just annoyed that she simply existed at all. Wasn't there already enough Weasley's in the world without her souring their lineage?
"I suppose you could or you might just wait a moment and have Harry all to yourself. She's here cause we're meeting up for lunch. Your call though, I hear the cupboard on the fifth floor is rather roomy." With a crooked smile and wink at Draco’s incredulous expression, Weasley gave him a pat on the back and sidestepped him.
Draco watched him disappear with a pronounced frown, the light dusting of fine hair on his arms standing on end as the ice in his blood pumped faster with the course of his heart - his feet caught in a half turn as he debated what to do. Flee to Damaris's office for the next several hours or weather the weaslette’s unnecessary wrath for a few moments. All in all it came down to the question of would he rather smell boiled cabbage all afternoon or risk a hex and his eyesight on such a horrid woman? Perhaps he could sneak in and just retrieve the file he needed -
"Merlin's beard Gin what in the hell did you do to your hair?"
Draco turned sharply and started forward, the gasp in Weasley's voice sealing his decision - he sounded utterly horrified. Two beats later he was standing beside the tall man and staring with narrowed eyes at the woman perched on Potter's desk with her feet planted firmly on her ex-boyfriends chest as he sat stiffly in his chair - his own green eyes staring at her with no small amount of apprehension.
"Cut it." She replied flippantly without turning, which was an enormous understatement. The young Seeker's hair was shorter than his, clipped so close in the back that he could see the curve of her scalp, and slightly longer in the front so it swept sideways over her brow. But that wasn't even the most shocking - terrible as it was - no, the worst of it was the glaring blonde hue that had replaced her auburn tresses. No it wasn't just blonde, it was nearing white, boarding on Draco's own shade but completely missing the beauty of it. It looked dry, like her hair had suffered some sort of heat stroke, and conflicted so horribly with her skin tone that she looked like a washed out plastic shop dummy. "Now stop dodging Harry, I grew up with five brothers remember."
"Erm." Potter hemmed, rubbing at his neck, his gaze jerking over to Weasley and then to Draco with a pronounced jump of his shoulders. "How long...?" He croaked.
Ginevra swung her head around, following Potter's gaze, her lips curling into a rather familiar sneer at the sight of him. Merlin she looked even more frightening straight on, what in the world had she been thinking? "What are you doing here?" She spat.
"Working." Draco deadpanned. "You on the other hand seem to be lost, curse breaking is on the fourth floor of St. Mungos." He drawled with his signature smirk, his cool gray eyes sliding pointedly up to her atrocious hair.
"Laugh all you want Ferret but Witch Weekly did a full spread on my new look." She bit back haughtily, jerking her head as if to flip her long mane - of course she didn't have any hair left to flip so instead she just ended up getting a piece stuck in her eyelashes that she had to bat away grumpily.
"I can see how they'd use you as their fashion don't of the month." Draco retorted just as Weasley sputtered out an, "Oh fuck Gin, has mum seen you yet?" and Potter mumbled something completely unintelligible under his breath that sounded something along the lines of "It's...not bad." Which was a clear and utter lie, Draco knew that Potter found it just as repulsive as the rest of them - his eyes squinting in that way they did when he was faced with eating a meal that wasn't at all to his taste.
"Mum will love it and thank you Harry." She glared at him and Weasley and smiled at Harry all at once, a very odd look indeed.
"You look like a botched Veela Halloween costume! How did you even do that?" Weasley wailed, starting to look truly distressed.
Ginevra slipped from the desk and propped a fist on her hip, her long skinny frame just as boyish as ever. "Hair dye. It's a muggle thing." She explained, her face going quickly red with that rage she had supposedly worked through. "Besides I don't see -"
But Draco had stopped listening, inadvertently catching Potter's eye as he watched him from behind the desk, his skin pricking at the question in that gaze. Draco gathered up his courage and stared right back despite the fact that it was making the chill that hadn't stop blowing across his skin since the incident at the hospital kick up a notch. A shiver ran through him, his toes curling in his shoes, his one empty hand curling up into the sleeve of the thick cloak he wore.
He had done a stellar job of avoiding Potter since barging into his house that night, holing himself up in his flat over the weekend and then making sure they were never alone, never even near each other for more than a few moments come Monday morning. He had paid careful attention not to look Potter in the eye, not to let the other man touch him - not even the simplest brush of fingers on his arm - he was vigilant in keeping his head down and drowning himself in his research.
Book after book he consulted. Pages filled with script that had started to blur together the longer he looked at them and yet he still held no answers and whenever he closed his eyes those fuzzy images he had glimpsed while touching Olivia came fluttering back. So did the screaming. He felt like he was just as surely going to go deaf as he was going to turn into a pillar of ice. The only consolation he had was that there hadn't been another murder attempt, no more disks had surfaced, and Olivia was still in her state of suspension in the hospital.
And until that moment Potter hadn't managed to catch him off guard - though not for lack of effort. The man had been persistently trying to get Draco to talk to him, tried everything he could think of to catch him off guard, tried to get him to just react when nothing else worked. Now Weasley and his sister were all but shouting at each other over her new hair style (or maybe now it had morphed into something she had done over the winter holidays from snippets he picked up here and there) and Draco was caught by that gaze alone.
"Mum still has it stuck to the clock like that will change anything but do you even -" Weasley shouted as Potter's lips parted just slightly, his head tipped minutely to the side.
"Oh get over yourself Ron, I'm a big girl I can make my own decisions!" Ginny flung back as Draco's stomach knotted further, an itch starting at the nape of his neck.
"Fucking selfish Gin! Don't you even think about what all this is doing to dad?!" Weasley kicked at his desk as the weight in Draco's eyelids forced them down, the intensity in Potter's eyes asking too much as it raged with Blaise's voice and the screaming inside his head.
He didn't have answers. He didn't know why. Hell he felt like he was starting to realize that he knew absolutely nothing. And that was bloody terrifying. Yet it wasn't even startling when there was a tugging on the side of his cloak, his brain somehow connecting that this was right, that Protective Potter would be pulling him gently away and down the hall. He didn't even bother looking up, he just let his tired eyes focus dazedly on his shoes as they weaved through the throng of cubicles, through a door, down a hall, and through another door until the noise that he had been growing accustomed to hearing every single moment was no longer ringing around him.
It was silent and Draco breathed that in. It settled him and he brought his eyes up and up, over Potter's lean form and up to his face once more. He was still holding Draco's cloak, the heavy fabric bunched into his fist.
"You look haunted." Potter spoke with uncharacteristic insight and a furrowed brow, his fingers tightening further.
"Simply tired." Draco looked away, down at the hand on his cloak, at Potter's fingers that held so much power and strength. He wondered how many times Potter had killed with that hand - a careful flick, a muttered curse, and most importantly of all, feeling. One had to mean it to kill and as he stared at Potter's wand hand, knowing he could, knowing he had, Draco couldn't picture it - couldn't converge the Potter he knew and the Potter who stole the light from dark wizards and witches eyes.
Draco couldn't use the killing curse any longer. He didn't even have to try to know he couldn't. It wasn't cowardliness or fear or lack of power either, it was the intent that he lacked. The feeling. The thought of causing by his own will anymore death making him slightly ill.
"That's not it." Potter muttered, his hand leaving Draco's cloak to travel along his arm and down to his hand. "You're still ice."
"Well it's cold."
"No, it's bloody stuffy in here and you’re nearly shaking with a chill." His fingers brushed Draco's, pure heat on frozen digits and Draco sucked in a sharp breath. "You need to see a Healer."
"I don't."
"Malfoy somethings wrong, you can't argue that. You haven't been yourself for days." Potter pleaded, somehow sounding stern and gentle at once. It wasn't the tone of Protective Potter or Hero Potter or even Work Potter. He couldn't place it, it was like...he truly cared.
Draco jerked his hand away and took a steadying step back, putting some distance between them. "I'm fine, nothing a Healer can fix at any rate."
"This is still about the disks and the woman isn't it? Are you - I mean does it - has something else happened? Have you found out anything?"
"Do you think I could kill?" Draco heard himself asking, staring down at his own hand like it didn't belong to him but was spliced from another and attached to him while he was sleeping. Except he hadn't been sleeping. Sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant more screaming and ice and people just out of reach...
"What?" Potter stopped cold, his entire body seizing up.
"Sometimes I think...Imperius is a tricky thing indeed."
"Malfoy you're not making any sense, back up and start from the beginning yeah?" Potter tangled his fingers through his hair, his face lined with exhaustion.
Draco nodded slowly, tugging his cloak tighter. "A mind that's not your own, bent to another's will, it can overpower anything. It can make you the complete opposite - can make you what nature never intended. A little curse and you're a puppet but what if one of the strings breaks? I'm not talking about resisting, it's more like...shutting down, a bit of your soul rebelling and breaking. What if that break causes a disconnect that just sits there, gathering dust, unnoticed until you try to be you again but your step is different. Your mind is different. You see different. What if you ignore it and just keep living your life until another string breaks and other. What then, are you you anymore or just a fragment? A puppet, a mutation forever?"
Potter didn't respond right away, he just stared at Draco with his mouth slightly parted in puzzlement. "I don't - that's not.... I mean I've never seen anything like that and I don't...that doesn't make sense. Where is all of this coming from?"
"When you live with Death Eaters you see things." Draco started talking before his mind could even make up a decision to do so, the words spilling out in a desperate attempt to just understand. "There were people held under curses for...months. Not just the Cruciatus either and it changed them. It wasn't always easy to see, mostly it was just glimpses, the way they would hold their fork, the way they would laugh, the flashes in their eye that didn't add up to the things they were saying."
"You think the murders are connected to the extended use of curses. To Imperius?" Potter asked carefully, watching Draco's face like he was looking for the flash the blonde had spoken of.
Draco shrugged and folded his arms under his cloak and close to his body. "When I was with Olivia I saw things...they weren't clear but it was like I could feel a hand pressing over my will. A controlling touch, it made my bones shake and I can't stop seeing it and hearing her and I can't get bloody warm. I close my eyes and I feel like a puppet with broken strings." Draco put a hand to his face, his fingers brushing over a sweaty brow, his words coming out shaky. "I feel like -"
"Shit, Malfoy." Potter cursed, his arm around Draco's waist in a flash as he found himself inexplicably swaying, his body pressed to the long line of Potter's warmth. "When did you sleep last?"
Draco barked out a laugh that hurt his ribs, his body sagging forward in search of more heat. "Can't sleep, it starts all over again when I sleep." His head fell to the crook of Potter's shoulder, his nose inhaling his scent that smelled more of ink than usual. It flooded his scenes and warmth tried to invade the ice inside him, his eyes suddenly too heavy to remain open any longer. "S'warm."
Both Potter's arms were around him now, supporting his entire weight and a moment before he felt magic tingling through him and forcing him into sleep he swore he heard Potter whisper in his ear, "don't kill me when you wake up."
****

His dream was different. There was no ice, no screaming, no people just out of reach.
He dreamed of the Ministry Gala the year before - Potter leaning against the railing overlooking the twinkling garden that stretched out as far as the eye could see, wearing his starched robes that seemed to choke him more than anything else with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a crumpled letter in the other. He seemed completely lost in his own head, his eyes glazed over and staring off without really seeing. He didn't even turn when Draco leaned his back against the same railing, didn't even seem to notice the others presence at all.
"The Minister's looking for you." Draco said, letting his gaze slide away from Potter and over the breathtaking garden.
And that's when it veered from actual memory to something slightly twisted, because even while immersed in the dream world Draco could remember how Potter had nodded absently at that, how he had tilted his glass and drained it dry. He could still picture the way Potter's lips had pursed, how he had eyed Draco from a slit in the corner of his vision, how his chest had puffed out like he was about to say whatever had been on the tip of his tongue whenever they had found themselves alone that all week. He could remember how Potter had let it deflate with a hiss of air before he turned and was gone. Leaving him to stare out at the night for a few moments longer before slipping unnoticed back to his flat - fleeing from all the poorly concealed disapproval following him all evening.
But this was different. The Potter in his dream just turned and smiled. He reached out a hand and threaded it through Draco's hair, using his locks to tug him close until he was pressed between Potter and the railing and then - then he kissed him. He leaned up, tipped his head, and pressed his lips full onto Draco's with a little sigh that made Draco squirm and moan.
A simple kiss that felt so real Draco had to remind himself that it wasn't, that he couldn't taste Potter's lips - that getting kissed on the balcony of a Ministry Gala by Potter was as likely to happen as Voldemort himself resurrecting once more from the grave. And yet at the same time he found himself cursing his conscious, wishing wholeheartedly that he could break free from the last thread of reality and fall completely into the dream, into its version of the past.
He felt boneless, held up by Potter's strong arms and under the magic he was creating between them, his lips so soft and welcoming and seeking before turning hard and desperate - like Potter knew that the ground was starting to get unsteady beneath Draco's feet and that the moment was seconds away from crumbling. Potter cupped his cheek, tipped his head, and devoured him - his eyes rounding and his lips stretching into a shout in the next second as Draco yanked away from him, his back rushing through black air, Potter getting further and further away until he was only a small dot and his voice a tinkling echo.
Draco's heart hurt, his head throbbed, and he was engulfed in water - ice cold and stinging at his eyes, the unfocused sight of a burning house above him. He rushed towards the bottom of the river bed, his lungs burning, the world going dark - all except for a little circle of swirling green, a disk lying beside him with its tentacle arms reaching towards him.
- 7
- 8
- 9
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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)