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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 Nine—A Time of Refusals

            “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Madam Rettern.”

            The Wizengamot member’s smile was distant as she put out her hand so that he could kiss it. “Your message was most persuasive,” she murmured. “And I was curious.”

            Harry smiled and kissed her hand. It felt rock-steady beneath his lips, the kind of steadiness that he thought Callia tried to achieve and so rarely did. When he lowered it again, keeping hold of it for a moment longer than necessary, Rettern looked at him with the same steadiness apparent in her eyes.

            She had dark red hair, many shades duller than a Weasley’s, and it clung around her face like briars. Harry had never seen her, either in person or in a photograph, with hair that looked halfway tame. Then again, that made him feel partially akin to her, and he had the feeling that it was a deliberate political ploy, so he didn’t sniff at her in disdain as he knew a lot of people did. Her eyes, bright hazel and sharp, never hid themselves under the hair anyway, but stared defiantly at the world. She tended to wear robes in shades of deep brown or green, claiming that she was too old to need fancy colors. Since she was younger than some of the people she worked with, that claim had always amused Harry.

            He could see why the Slytherins had gone to her, other than because she had a grudge against Sandborn. She was one of the few people who could stand up to the Minister.

            “It is the least I could do, for the hero who saved our world and then showed that he had political instincts,” Rettern said, stepping back and gesturing him into her home. Harry had the impression of wide, open rooms, large windows that filled the space with sunlight, comfortable couches. He didn’t look at much of it, because he didn’t dare take his eyes away from her face. Her words bit against his throat like a gentle knife.

            “Thank you anyway,” he repeated, and held out the message that Sandborn had given him. “The Minister sent this.”

            Rettern didn’t take it, choosing instead to keep her gaze on his face. Harry wondered if she was paranoid and thought the message poisoned, or if she had some other reason for keeping away from it. “He has made you a courier for his messages now?” she whispered. “Is there no end to his perfidy?”

            Harry stifled the temptation to tell her that, on the scale of Sandborn’s perfidy, this was pretty bloody far down. “Madam,” he said, and inclined his head a bit stiffly. “This isn’t a message, as such. It’s an offer of peace, of a truce.”

            “Can he give my daughter back her pride?” Rettern asked. She still hadn’t taken the message. “Can he give the people who were unfairly tricked out of their money all those years ago the enjoyment of the years they should have had? Unless he can, I’m not interested in his truces.”

            Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other, ready to reach for his wand if he had to. Rettern now seemed nothing like what he had imagined, especially when he’d heard that the Slytherins had approached her for help. She was snarling, nasty, abrasive. More to the point, it sounded like she might believe it wasn’t the Slytherins who had been cheated out of their money years ago, but the people it would have gone to otherwise.

            “I don’t know about that, madam,” he said. “I only have the message. Should I tell him that you refuse to accept it?”

            “What, and go running back to him with your pride in tatters?” Rettern let her lips roll back from her teeth. “Do you really want to do that?”

            Harry would have ground his teeth in frustration if he didn’t have his first soul firmly at the ready. “Not really,” he admitted. “But if you don’t have an answer for him, or refuse to accept the truce, then I have to report that, too.”

            Rettern stepped back and waved him further into the room. Harry went, his eyes on her face, never moving from her. She wasn’t behaving at all like he had expected her to behave. If she hated Sandborn, she should hate Harry, too, as the emblem of his rule. And if she was polite to him, she should have been polite about Sandborn. It made no sense. He didn’t like things that made no sense when he wore his first soul, which was one reason why Callia’s fluttering the other night had disturbed him so much.

            “Poor hero,” Rettern said. Harry could make out nothing at all from the tone of her voice, whether it was mocking or indignant or thoughtful. “You have nothing left to live for if you don’t have him to serve.”

            Harry bit his tongue against the impulse to protest. The Slytherins might have recruited her, but they wouldn’t have told her about the contract, which meant he had to group her among the company that believed certain things. “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that, madam,” he said. “We’re partners. We help each other.”

            Rettern paused and smiled at him. “You are the only person who could claim partnership with that arrogant bastard and not have it sound pathetic.”

            Harry bowed so that he could hide his eyes. He had the feeling it was a good idea right then. “Thank you, madam.”

            “You don’t vary your mode of address,” Rettern said, and tapped her wand against her leg. Harry had known she had it drawn since he came into the room, but she hadn’t pointed it at him yet, and he wouldn’t flinch until she did. “It would prefer it if you did. Call me Jenna-Jane.”

            Harry nodded again. “If you wish, Jenna-Jane.” He could keep emotion out of his voice as well with a first name as with a surname, so if she was hoping for some revealing sign, then he would disappoint her.

            “Excellent,” Rettern said. “And now, I believe I have invited you by both gesture and implication to take a seat, and you’ve ignored me.”

            That forced Harry to take his eyes off her so that he could look around the room. A large, squishy couch was behind him, scattered with pillows that looked as though they’d been specially designed to cup a weary arse. Harry tried to keep his thoughts off his face as he sat, and, for good measure, crossed his legs.

            “Good,” Rettern said, and actually smiled at him this time, a smile that reminded him of a rat’s, quick and sharp. “Now. Tell me something I’ve always wanted to know.”

            “What’s that?” Harry asked, with the same easy smile he used for newspaper reporters. He thought he knew what was happening now. Rettern wanted a favor from him, or to bask in his reflected “glory,” and she had chosen an unusual method to win that from him. Well, that was no problem. Harry could always give her something brief and seemingly intimate and meaningless, and then leave.

            “What hold does Sandborn have over you?”

            Harry choked. He tried to pretend that he’d swallowed air the wrong way and coughed, but from the way Rettern leaned forwards in the chair she’d taken herself and smiled at him again, it wasn’t successful.

            “Madam?” he asked when he could speak again.

            “Jenna-Jane,” she reminded him.

            “Jenna-Jane,” Harry agreed, glad that he had a name to speak so that he would have an extra chance to recover his composure. “Sandborn has the same hold over me that he does over everyone else. He’s Minister. He was the one who brought our country out of chaos after the war. I owe him the loyalty that I would owe to any representative of the government, whoever it was, and the allegiance that an Auror gives the head of his Ministry.”

            “No,” Rettern said, after so long considering him that Harry thought she was going to kick him out. “Not good enough.”

            Harry had had a chance to recover, now. He turned his hands up, towards her. “I don’t know what would be enough for you,” he said simply. “That’s the only answer I can give. If you think the Minister works more closely with me than with any other Auror, well, that’s true. But he has to. It’s political necessity, not because we’re particularly close friends.” And that was all true, and it would remain true if she asked Sandborn or Sandborn’s aides. Harry could feel himself settling into the chair, as his first soul flared up behind his eyes and the world started making sense again.

            Rettern smiled at him. “You must think me a fool.”

            “I don’t,” Harry said. “Or I would have wondered why Sandborn wanted peace with you, instead of thinking of you as a potential threat. He wants peace because of your investigation, you know. He fears what you might find.” He saw no reason not to go on telling the truth, especially because she would hardly contact Sandborn to confirm that it was the truth.

            “The reason you think me a fool,” said Rettern, and then paused. “Actually, I’m not sure why you do. Little experience of me, I think. That must be the reason. But you are acting as if you believe that no one has any true idea about the real relationship between you and our beloved Minister.”

            Harry gritted his teeth, and managed to hold back a shout with some difficulty. If the fucking Slytherins had told her about the contract, then he was going to—

            “That is right,” Rettern said, with a little nod. “When you stood in front of us for the first time and pleaded for Narcissa Malfoy’s freedom, you had that fire in your eyes. I wondered where it went when you came back two days later, your face all smooth and your mouth full of the Minister’s words.”

            Perhaps I should be glad that I haven’t been in close quarters with her before, if she can read me this fucking well. Harry breathed out slowly and kept his eyes fastened on her face. “Madam, I really don’t know what you mean. Of course I pleaded differently then. I was a child.”

            “Children didn’t grow up that fast in two days,” Rettern said. She leaned in and tapped his knee, which was so unexpected that Harry had to jump and keep himself from raising his wand with a conscious thought. “Besides, you weren’t a child when the war finished.”

            Harry gave her a polite smile. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that. But it’s untrue. Compared to the experience that I have of the world now, and what I know about politics, I was so childish that it makes me hurt to think about it.”

            Rettern rolled her eyes. “All this dancing about the main point, and you won’t take the invitations that I’m extending to you. Very well. I believe that you can become my ally against Sandborn. And if you have any sense at all—which I’m also choosing to believe that you do—then you’ll take my offer.”

            Harry stared at her until he became aware that she was smirking, at which point he slammed his mouth shut and scowled at her. “You don’t know what part I really play in the Ministry,” he said. “Or you forget. I’m the Minister’s public relations victory. There’s nothing you can offer me that would make up for what I would lose by leaving him.” That was true. Malfoy and the other Slytherins would only succeed as long as Harry didn’t acknowledge their help. Rettern went too far in offering him an open alliance.

            “You keep looking to portray yourself as stupid,” Rettern said mildly, more mildly than Harry would have thought she could have given her famous temper. “It won’t work, not with someone who knows how to look for the deception. You do serve the Minister, yes. But I don’t think you want to, and I think you could do good work for me.”

            So it begins. Harry felt an incredible weariness course through him. This was something he should have anticipated, but hadn’t. One of the things his association with Sandborn had done was keep him safe from attempts to court him and make him into a tool or ally—which for most members of the Wizengamot was the same thing.

            “I came here with a message that you won’t accept, and you give me one that I can’t accept,” he said, standing. “I’ll take that much back to the Minister. You’re never going to take a truce from him, are you?”

            Rettern seemed to swell up like a toad as she sat there. “Do you have any idea of the insult that he handed me by refusing to accept my daughter for the Ministry position he offered?” she demanded. “She would have been sure of a career and money that she needs to care for her family, and—”

            Harry nodded and made vague sympathetic sounds as the story continued, but didn’t respond. He didn’t think Rettern was the kind of person who would let her grandchildren starve. Besides, he had heard too many sob stories like this before, from all the people who wanted him to use the power they imagined he had to cure their ills and solve their every problem.

            Rettern realized sooner than most of them that she had lost his attention, though. She abruptly stopped speaking, and Harry woke up and looked back at her to find that she was leaning forwards with her eyes fixed on his face.

            “You don’t succeed in portraying yourself as stupid,” she said. “That includes hiding the glazed look that shows you’re bored by the stories.”

            Harry had no idea what she intended to offer him by now, an alliance or a compliment, an insult or a shove away. He settled for a shrug.

            “You can trust me more than you think,” Rettern said quietly. “The Minister has not succeeded in balancing the people who orbit him as well as you might believe, looking around his system from the inside. There are plenty of people who would be willing to betray him and take his place if they had a bit of help.”

            “Including you?” Harry asked, hoping that she would get angry at the direct question and throw him out. He was tired of this, and what he needed was an excuse to leave.

            “A cheap shot,” Rettern said. “No. But I could offer some of those eager ones my help, and I would appreciate your recommendations as to which ones would best repay my investments.”

            Harry shook his head. Say what he would about the contract with Sandborn, at least there were no false promises in it. Each of them offered what they could pay and no more than that, and he didn’t have to listen to people justify why their grey morality was different and exactly the same as the morality he valued more. “I think I’m going now, Madam,” he told her, and turned to face the door. “If you decide to accept the truce with the Minister, then please do tell me, and I’ll pass the message on to him.”

            “You don’t know what you’re giving up, here.” Rettern’s voice sounded muffled. Perhaps she’d pulled the cloth of her hood over her face. Harry wasn’t about to glance back and check. He felt as if he’d been bathing in slime simply being here.

            “No, I don’t,” he said. “Not for certain, because nothing is ever certain in this world we live in.” That was the sort of proverb that Sandborn had taught him, and that Harry had found useful more than once when he wanted to occupy someone else’s time and convince them he was thinking deeply. “But I can know it by its similarities to other offers I’ve received, and that’s enough for me to hate it.”

            Rettern laughed behind him as he departed. Harry thought it sounded angry.

            He didn’t care. He Apparated home, sent an owl to Sandborn letting him know that the mission had failed and Rettern had declared that she wouldn’t accept the truce, and then spent the next half-hour standing under his shower, warming the water again with magic whenever it failed.

*

            Astoria shook her head when her owl, Invictus, arrived in the kitchen in the middle of breakfast. “You know you’re supposed to wait,” she chided it, carefully wiping Aurora’s face free of the cornflakes and milk that had fallen to decorate it. Aurora burbled at her mother and reached out to pick up another handful of cereal.

            Invictus landed on her arm, hooting, as cheerful as Aurora about getting into trouble. Astoria sighed, held her daughter’s hand away from the squishier of the cornflakes in the bowl, and took the letter.

            It bore Rettern’s seal, and from the slashes in the handwriting that directed it, Astoria could tell she hadn’t been calm when she wrote it. Of course, Rettern was far from calm at the best of times, but she hid the true sources of her anger from her enemies, knowing they would wield it as a weapon against her.

            If this is due to Draco, then I’ll make him deal with the fallout, Astoria decided, and opened the letter. “No, Aurora, you can’t mash them in your hair,” she said absently, and cast a spell that would Vanish the cornflakes from Aurora’s skin the moment they touched a body part other than her hand or mouth. The doleful howl that warbled up from her daughter’s mouth a moment later said that she’d been successful.

            Invictus bobbed and pecked on her arm, and Aurora picked up a tidbit of meat for him. Her owl was fairly calm, and she needed all her attention to tease out the subtle nuances of the words that Rettern had sent her.

            My dear girl,

            I have seen the friend you recommended to me. He strikes me as dangerously unready for life outside the protective embrace of the Minister’s office and his own heroism. Yes, he once did all he could to benefit us, and from that point of view he is incomparably valuable. But I fear that he rests on those laurels and is unwilling to realize that the real world is one of give and take, of compromise. Perhaps he would be useful if we engaged in a more direct battle.

            Progress on other fronts remains useful. I have uncovered links of sponsorships and debts, alliances and relationships, that I believe you will find of interest…

            There was more, but Astoria didn’t attend to it right away, instead perusing the first paragraph again until she thought she had it by heart. She lowered the letter to table with a frown.

            “You know I don’t like to see lines on that beautiful forehead,” Blaise said, stooping to kiss her as he passed. He picked up Aurora and blew against her stomach, making her giggle and forget about her frustration with the food. As he set her back in her chair, he looked at Astoria, and she handed him the letter.

            “I don’t understand,” Blaise said, when he finished reading. “Draco said that Potter was subtle, an actor, capable of understanding the things that he offered and what he didn’t offer. Why would he behave like an enraged rhinoceros around Rettern?”

            “Blaise.” Astoria frowned at him.

            “Sorry,” Blaise said. “I know that you’ve known some fine rhinoceroses.”

            “Exactly.” Astoria reached out and linked her fingers over Blaise’s, stroking lightly. This was one of the wondrous things she’d discovered when she made the decision to leave Draco and move on with her life. She could never argue or debate these things openly with Draco; he would think that she was out of practice with subtlety, when in reality she was simply testing her thoughts in front of an audience and judging from the echoes how sophisticated they really were. Blaise was her audience, her echo chamber, and her equal and opposite partner at times—the rare times—when she went too far and entertained thoughts that were actively harmful. “It doesn’t fit with Potter’s character as Draco portrayed him or as we’ve both seen him behave at Ministry functions.”

            Blaise shrugged. “We don’t know what Rettern offered him. Perhaps you should write to Potter and ask.”

            Astoria paused, eyebrows climbing. She’d forgotten another role that Blaise could play for her: source of good ideas. Draco didn’t usually have one of those in his head except about new and exciting places to fuck.

            “Good idea,” she murmured. “He knows that we’re helping Draco. He ought to expect to hear from Draco’s friends sooner or later.”

            Blaise wrinkled his nose. “I do hate to simply be shoved into that inchoate group, ‘Draco’s friends.’ I’d say that it was time we taught Potter to see us as individuals.”

            “Past time,” Astoria said, and leaned across the table to kiss him. The kiss went on until Aurora interrupted them. It usually did.

*

            Harry had had quite enough of people knocking on his door in the evenings when he was supposed to be able to rest and relax. Worse, his wards had twanged quietly when the knock sounded, which meant the intruders had no wands drawn but weren’t people he knew, whom the wards would have recognized from the magical signatures in their auras. Perhaps Rettern had sent someone to talk to him.

            He stood up cautiously, stretching his back and rolling his neck. He hadn’t realized until the shower how much tension he’d carried with him from Rettern’s.

            He chided himself for that again as he reached the door. What exactly had he expected freedom to be like? To come without costs? No, it didn’t, and he couldn’t run back to the contract’s protective embrace every time he encountered something he didn’t like. It was too bad for him, but he was committed now. Bound.

            Contracted, if you like.

            He thought he still had a faint smile on his face as he pushed the door open. It faded when he realized that he didn’t recognize his visitors as Ministry flunkies or Wizengamot lackeys. The tall woman had a hint of Callia in her face and her eyes, but she wore a long white cloak of ermine fur Callia could never have afforded. The man beside her, dark-skinned and handsome with it, caught Harry’s eye and gave him a slightly familiar smirk.

            “Zabini,” Harry said after a moment. “And Astoria.” He bowed to her. He had seen her at Ministry parties, he recalled now, standing beside Zabini—her husband? Boyfriend? Harry didn’t know—and carrying a glass of ice water. He hadn’t ever seen her drink. That was enough for him to mentally classify her as careful, next to dangerous in his mental book. “Was there something you wanted?”

            “Entrance first of all,” said Astoria, “and then something warm to drink. There is some nasty rain out here, Potter, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

            Since he had been inside before it began, Harry hadn’t, but he nodded and permitted them entrance through his wards. None of the alarms that would have marked concealed weapons or extra wands or malicious enchantments went off. Harry relaxed as much as he could with someone else in his home and reached out to take their cloaks as he had with Callia’s.

            Zabini smirked at him, took off his own and hung it up, and then reached out to take Astoria’s. Harry fell back a step. Perhaps they didn’t mean it this way, but they were Slytherins, and he read their subtle aggression as saying they had a right to comfort in his home.

            He retaliated the only way he could, by giving them a meaningless smile and saying, “What would you like to drink?”

            “Hot chocolate,” said Astoria. “Brandy for Blaise. And then you can tell us exactly what you mean by refusing Madam Rettern’s most advantageous offer.”

            Harry stared at her. The only thought that made it through his astonishment was, Subtle aggression. Right.

            To make the evening perfect, his Floo flared behind him, and Malfoy’s voice called out, “Potter? You seem to have neglected to lower the wards so I might come through.”

*

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