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His Actium	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9608 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Nine—Risks Spotted

            Harry had no problem getting the Veritaserum into the tea. Robards had watched him obsessively before it arrived, but he leaned back in the chair and looked away when it came in, as though to prove that he could trust Harry. He overdid it, of course, linking his hands together behind his head and whistling, making the trainee Auror who had carried the teatray look at him in wonder. But that didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the teacups came down in front of Harry, and he took the vial of Veritaserum out of his pocket and tapped the drops into the cups without slowing down. The vial slid back into his sleeve, the way he had learned to slide daggers, and then he turned and smiled, bowing as he offered the nearest one to Robards.

            “Are you ready, sir?”

            Robards took the tea from Harry and looked at him approvingly. He seemed to think that this was the way Harry always should have been: calmer than was natural, following pure-blood traditions, offering to serve him. That made a thought flash into Harry’s brain that nearly choked him. Did Robards wish that he was one of the people Harry had been sleeping with?

            Harry shook his head at the idea—mentally—after a brisk, horrified moment. No, it was unlikely. Robards might have harbored traces of that desire long ago, but, like other people who had told Harry they once would have liked to sleep with him, it would have been chased out of him by sheer disgust at this number of partners. Once you passed some magical number, Harry had learned, then you were a slut, not someone whose numbers might be misreported by the papers, and you didn’t deserve any more sympathy.

            He preferred to be something different than the Ministry’s Whore, perhaps, now that he had learned what he really was. But he refused to be ashamed of simply sleeping with lots of other people and enjoying the sex with them when he did.

            Robards took a swallow of his tea, and Harry managed it in the same moment, and then they both laid aside the cups and stared at each other.

            “You may begin, Auror Potter,” Robards said, though the stiff tone to his voice said that he wasn’t happy about it.

            Harry smiled. He considered the virtues of subtlety, and decided to abandon them. With any luck, he could ask the question and Robards still wouldn’t know why he’d decided to ask that particular one. “Why did you want me to investigate Malfoy?”

            Robards’s hands came down as if he would push himself back from the desk, but his mouth was already moving, answering the question. “I hate him. I want him arrested and put away.”

            Harry blinked. Well. That was no less than he had expected, but still, really. And it was intriguing to know there was that much personal emotion behind what Harry had assumed was mostly a business rivalry. “Sir. Didn’t you think it was a conflict of interest for you to be the one to handle the case and assign me to investigate it?” Robards could have hidden his animosity better by giving the case to one of his subordinates who could handle it in a more professional manner.

            “I knew it was.” Now Robards looked as if he thought he should just tear his tongue out of his mouth and have done, but of course he went on speaking. “But I didn’t care. I wanted him gone.”

            Harry shook his head, lost. He had thought there was something subtle and long-reaching and long-ranging behind this. Now he had to wonder if perhaps the person who had made sure that Robards’s name wasn’t associated with the business that rivaled Draco’s wasn’t someone else, perhaps one of his business partners. Left to himself, Robards might have let the association dangle in the open. “I—badly enough to frame him? Why?”

            Robards had a weird, tormented expression on his face, the mixture Harry of enjoyment in talking about what he really felt and anger that he had done so when it could incriminate him that Harry had seen in some other criminals under Veritaserum. “Everyone knew he had to be committing crimes of some kind to run his business that well. Everyone. But the investigations turned up nothing. What could that mean but that he’d bribed the Aurors sent to investigate?”

            “That he was innocent?” Harry winced when he heard his own eager tone. Veritaserum in low doses like this made someone lose control of his emotions, and would reveal what he really felt as well as what he really thought. If Robards hadn’t noticed it yet, that they were both under the potion, he would soon.

            But Robards sneered at Harry. “Of course not. Someone with the Dark Mark on his arm can’t ever really change his ways. I’ve tried to catch him before, with anything else that I could think of, but nothing succeeded. I’ll have him. I’ve promised myself that. This was the only way I could think of.”

            Harry thought about asking whether the arrest of the smuggler who had pointed to Draco was fake as well, but that wasn’t a question he needed to ask, not when he could check the records. “An even number of questions, sir, just as you specified,” he said. “You have four to ask me.”

            “Veritaserum,” Robards groaned, sweat starting out on his forehead. “Why did you break the tradition of the Veritas Moment?”

            Harry laughed at him. “Of course I didn’t. The Moment says that we have to answer under the same conditions, and we can each set one. Your condition was an even number of questions rather than an odd one. My condition was Veritaserum for both of us, simply not announced. You should have asked if you wanted to know. And that was your first question.”

            Robards looked aghast at himself, and rushed quickly on. “Did you really sleep with Malfoy?”

            “Yes.” Harry would have tried to hold back more than the bare answer ordinarily, since that was really all he owed, but he thought the complete truth would horrify Robards more. He put his boots up on the desk and swayed back and forth in his chair. “And it was good. The best I’ve ever had.”

            Robards looked as if he wanted to be on the other side of the room now, and continue asking questions at the same time. Cringing back and forth between his options, he finally shook his head and blurted, “Why did you start working as a whore for the Ministry?”

            “Should I not have worked as a whore for you, but instead someone else?” Harry managed to parry before the potion took over and forced him to answer. “I did it because people abused my trust, and me, when I was still young and stupid. I skulked around for a while, but I knew that I could never really make the papers stop taking an interest in who I slept with, and I’m not good at hiding everything I do. Hiding in plain sight, behind a mask? Sure. But people are going to notice when Harry Potter goes into a restaurant, even if it’s a Muggle one, especially since more and more of the Prophet writers are Animagi. And I decided that I didn’t want those stupid people I’d slept with to ruin sex for me.”

            “But why did you sleep with Malfoy?” Now Robards just looked woeful, wistful. Harry studied him and nodded slowly. No, he didn’t think Robards had wanted to sleep with him after all. Robards had wanted him to be a hero, the perfect Auror, and Harry had dared to do something that ruined that image.

            If you really knew me, you would know I was never perfect.

            “Because it was part of the job,” Harry said. “Because you told me to. Because he was attractive. And then because I found myself liking him. Sympathizing with him. He’s handsome, and he seems to find me handsome back.” He refrained from touching the whip-mark next to his eye, but it was hard. Veritaserum could induce honesty through bodily gestures, too, sometimes, especially if emotions were running high. Of course, Harry felt pretty calm next to Robards. “I wanted to sleep with him, by the end.”

            “If you slept with him because you liked him, then you were compromised, and he could be guilty!” Robards pointed an accusing finger at him.

            Harry shook his head and bent forwards over the desk, making Robards retreat as if he thought Harry might have a sexual disease spread by his breath. “And if you decided that I should investigate because you didn’t like him and were sure that he was guilty although there was no evidence of such a thing?” he breathed. “You don’t think that would compromise you far more?”

            “There are people who would back me up!”

            “And people who would back me.” Harry gave him a slow smile and reached down for the antidote to the Veritaserum in his pocket. “Really, I think it’s best if this just stays private, don’t you?”

            Robards shook his head, but Harry didn’t know if that was in denial or not. He found out when Robards lurched to his feet and tried to come at him around the desk, his face twisted and his mouth open in a passionate shout.

            Harry drew out the small object he’d been reaching for and shouted, “I call for an end to the Veritas Moment!”

            Robards staggered to a stop, his eyes fixed on the knife Harry held. Then he straightened up, and an odd dignity surged over him like a wave, leaving him calm. “You’re going to kill me, then,” he said. “I always knew it, even though I decided to have no guards around me when I met with you.”

            “You’re ridiculous sometimes,” Harry said, the Veritaserum taking the honesty out of him whether he wanted it to or not, and then jabbed the knife hard under his fingernail.

            The pain shot through him, made him drop to one knee, and occupied his mind for long moments, even as Robards shouted at him and shook him. By the time that he could convince his mind to concentrate on the moment in front of him again, Harry knew that the influence of the Veritaserum would have passed. He had given them both only a small dose. The Veritas Moment was a moment, after all.

            When he stood, it was to see that Robards had retreated a small distance and was staring at him cautiously. “You’re mad,” he said.

            Harry smiled. He had no idea whether Robards thought that was the truth or not, though he might still be responding that way under the conviction that he had no choice. “No,” he replied. “That was an easy way to get the truth I wanted. And I wanted the truth, not the polite denials you might have managed to dress it up with if you were in front of a jury who also thought Draco was evil.”

            “You call him Draco,” Robards said, and then turned his head away and spat on the floor of his office.

            Since he wasn’t the one who would have to clean the carpet, Harry just shook his head. “Yes, of course I do,” he said. “And you can tell anyone else you like that—if you want me to tell everyone that the Head Auror is corrupt and taking out personal grudges through the medium of his job.”

            Robards sneered at him. “Everyone already thinks you’re a whore, Potter. Who do you think they would be more likely to believe?”

            Harry sighed and leaned a hip on the desk. He was surprised that Robards needed this much education, but if he did it well enough, then perhaps Robards would leave Draco alone from now on. “The papers see it that way, of course. But they also follow my career with fascination and opine about how terrible it is that I can’t find my one true love and remember that I’m a hero. If you made it clear that I’m devoted to Draco—and I know you would put it that way—they would only become more interested, and some of them would be sympathetic. While a Head Auror who likes to present himself as the picture of rectitude would earn furious interest, but of quite a different sort, if someone discovered his corruption.”

            Robards glared at him. Harry smiled back. He knew what Robards was seeing, what turned his reaching instincts to one side. He was seeking some weakness in Harry’s armor. He thought that he had to be able to find a secret shame, something Harry hadn’t guarded well enough that he could use to manipulate him.

            But that was what his friends hadn’t understood, what Draco hadn’t understood, what the Ministry and the people in it who despised him didn’t understand. Harry was ashamed of the way that he had hurt people like Draco, yes. He was not ashamed of what he had done to himself. It came out of his own choices. He had made the decision not to stay faithful to one partner, he had made the decision to take that pain he had experienced and use it as a weapon to carve a new path for himself, he had not cowered before the betrayal. He never would, and that left his enemies no natural hold to cling to.

            He might have made the wrong decisions, but no one was going to make him feel that way by simply sneering at them or being prudish.

            “You want to keep this secret, then?” Robards’s words had a faint, steaming edge of disbelief.

            “In a way,” Harry said. “Draco will know, of course, and depending on how much of a threat he feels you are, he might move. But it really is possible that it can end here. Let it go, Robards. I don’t work for you anymore. I don’t want my old job back. You have no reason to threaten Draco or think that any investigation will convict him, if no one has so far. This should be the natural end.”

            Robards looked at him for long moments before he slowly nodded. His face burned with hatred, but Harry had seen more disturbing things. It was all right. They might manage to come to an understanding after all.

            “What will you do, because I tried to use you?” Robards asked, as Harry moved towards the door.

            Harry couldn’t help it; he chuckled, and glanced at him over his shoulder. “Why would you ask that? Don’t you see that it could get me thinking about revenge when I haven’t, so far?”

            Robards’s fingers tightened in front of him, and he tried to form his face into a neutral mask.

            Harry shook his head. “I think what you did was disgusting, but your fear of me is more disgusting still,” he said. “Don’t worry, Robards. What happens after this doesn’t depend on me, but on you and Draco. You can make your decisions untainted by my unnatural desires.”

            He shut the door and went his way with a light heart. There was the chance, of course, that Robards would be stupid and escalate this, but Harry no longer felt that was a huge chance. He would take it.

*

            “I had half-expected you to send your cockatoo with a message.”

            Harry smiled and leaned one shoulder on the mantle about his fireplace, watching as Draco’s face floated in the flames. “Why would I do that when you asked me to contact you by firecall? Besides, I’ve tried to train her that way. She’s more interested in eating the messages. And I can’t train her to recite an entire letter without punctuating it with profanity.”

            Draco’s face flushed, an odd experience to see when it was green the way the Floo connection made it. Harry thought it probably came from the statement that Harry wanted to respect his wishes, which Harry knew he didn’t get often enough. He went on gently, describing the meeting with Robards and the way that the situation was balanced and depended on Draco now.

            Draco’s expression changed to thoughtful. “I cannot fear him simply because he hates me,” he said, when Harry finished. “There are too many people around who do that. And so far, he hasn’t been an effective business rival. But I could fear someone with his power if he finds another way to move against me.”

            Harry shrugged. “Just keep doing whatever you do to fool his investigators.” He grinned when Draco glared at him. He knew that Draco wouldn’t admit whether there was something illegal going on or not, and Harry didn’t intend to ask.

            “He could find someone like you to make a different kind of investigation, someone who might not be so scrupulous,” Draco pointed out.

            Harry shrugged again. “And then, if that person succeeded in finding anything suspicious, I would still bring out the tale of what happened when he tried to use me—all with the right amount of outrage about being used, of course, and how I can’t believe he would try something like that. That would taint the results of the successful investigation, too. In the end, the Ministry would sack Robards or at least find someone else to fit the position of Head Auror simply to quiet the accusations.”

            Draco opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and looked thoughtfully at Harry.

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”

            “I think,” Draco said, barely breathing the words, “that I don’t know what to think. About the way that you could feign outrage. About the way that you talk about feigning outrage.”

            Harry blinked. “I am outraged that he used me against you and told me that there was proof that you’d committed a crime when there wasn’t. Sorry if you thought that I didn’t feel that anger.”

            Draco shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, either,” he said. “It’s the same way I felt when I told you that I never would have thought you’d grow up to become the Ministry’s Whore. You’re not—the person I thought you were.”

            Harry stared at him, then snorted, because there just weren’t that many ways he could respond to an accusation like that. “Because after I lied to you, slept with you under false pretenses, admitted that, conned information out of an archivist, and told you that I’d slept with many other people under false pretenses as well, you thought that lying to Robards would somehow be too hard for me?”

            Draco shoved himself back from the fireplace, and for a moment Harry was afraid that he’d close the Floo connection. Then he said in a muffled voice, “I’m coming through. I think we need to discuss this in person.”

            Harry nodded, realized that was useless, and so said sharply, “Fine,” moving out of the way.

            It seemed a long time before the fire roared and admitted Draco. Despite everything, Harry could see him trying to cut off contact here. He had a strange problem with Harry’s past, or he really couldn’t forgive Harry for tricking him even though it had seemed as if he could, or he distrusted the information that Harry had pulled from Robards, perhaps. Any and all of those.

            But Draco did come through the fire, although he stopped with one elbow on the mantle and studied Harry soberly instead of moving in. Harry watched him back. Draco looked thoughtful and controlled, more like the way Harry had seen him in his office before they slept together than at any time since.

            Strong enough to come onto my territory and confront me there, Harry reminded himself, and waited.

            “I still think,” Draco said, “that you made the wrong choice all those years ago. That you should have done anything rather than turned to sleeping with people for money. You violated your own ethics. You violated your own soul.”

            Harry took a step forwards, and then made himself turn and stop. He Summoned a glass from the kitchen and then used Aguamenti to fill it with water. He drank it, making himself focus on the smooth rim of the glass against his teeth, the pour of cool liquid across his tongue, and nothing else.

            “Harry?” Draco’s voice was soft.

            “I should have done anything else?” Harry asked, draining his voice of emotion, because that was the best thing he could do right now. “Such as become a Ministry political flunkey? Turn into an Auror who didn’t care about corruption in the Department, as long as I got to arrest Dark wizards? Become a hired killer? They offered me that, you know. There were some people who thought I could be the best one to do it, since I could get into so many places just by asking for an invitation.”

            He turned back and caught Draco’s eye. Draco stared at him with fascination and revulsion mixing and overlapping in his face.

            “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harry told him flatly. “Nothing. The choice I made was the wrong one because I didn’t consider all the consequences, sure. But if you insist that it tainted me somehow, then you’re no better than Robards, who thought that I couldn’t be a hero or a good Auror because I was no longer pure. If you’re jealous about the people I slept with before you, that’s too bad, because I won’t apologize for that. Some of those people I never slept with, although I spread the rumor that I did. Some of them were criminals, and what they did was infinitely worse than any betrayal I could have given them. Some of them were lovers I just enjoyed being with.”

            “But it’s not you,” Draco said. “It’s not the person you were, it’s not the person you should have become.”

            Harry stared at him, then gave a weary snort. “Because? Give me a reason why. You’ve seen for yourself that I’m willing to sleep with someone just because I want to and because the Ministry tells me to.”

            Draco’s face turned a deep peach color and he glanced away, fiddling with a strand of his hair. “Heroes don’t do that,” he said. “Gryffindors don’t do that.” His voice was weak.

            “But playboys do,” Harry pointed out. “Reckless young men who hop from bed to bed do. Sure, some people have said that I’m only the first since the war, but plenty of people believe the other. Why did you choose that first perception, and decide that I should never be anything more than an innocent schoolboy?”

            “Because what you did disgusts me.”

            Harry found himself relaxing, and smiled at Draco over the top of the glass of water. “Finally, an honest answer.”

            Draco stared at him now. “It doesn’t bother you?”

            “Of course it does,” Harry said. “The same way it bothers me that it disgusted Robards, but not enough to stop using me. The way it bothers me that my friends thought I should still want nothing more than a family, and that I could walk out the door and find my perfect partner waiting for me, when they, of all people, ought to have known how difficult that is because of my fame. But you have the chance to change your mind, and what’s between us right now is difficult for other reasons. I’ll give you some time. If you do decide that I’m not disgusting, then we can be together. If not, then I’ll leave you behind. I’m done having partners who keep telling me that all I have to do is change, just a little bit, and then we can be together.” Two of the men he slept with in the first year after the war had been like that.

            “You haven’t changed,” Draco hissed, and there was the flash of a cobra in his eyes. “If you think—”

            “I’ve abandoned my job for you,” Harry said, speaking very slowly. “I’m not going to take any other lovers until you decide that you don’t want me. I’ve acknowledged that what I did was wrong. What I’m not going to do—and I’ve told you this before—is wallow in shame and wail about it and decide that I would have been better off doing anything else for the last ten years of my life. That’s what you want? Go fuck someone new.”

            Draco reared back, staring at him. “I don’t understand you,” he said at last.

            “I know,” Harry said. He tried to soften his voice, but it was hard. He was so tired of people deciding that he didn’t feel sufficiently guilty about sleeping with many people to match their own disgust. That was what it really was, their attempts to impose their own moral standards on Harry, not wanting him to be different for his own sake. “That’s because we slept together in weird circumstances and there’s a lot to forgive on your side. You don’t trust me, most of all. You don’t think I’ll keep my promise not to sleep with other people, not yet.”

            Draco twitched as if someone had tried to punch him. “That’s not it.”

            “Then what is it?” Harry asked, and waited, and didn’t receive an answer. He nodded. “It’s all right, Draco. I accept that it’ll take a while for you to decide you want to trust me. Again, I’m sorry. But I’m sorry for what I did to you, not for every decision I’ve made in the last decade. If you can accept that, we’ll be fine. If not, we’re through.”

            Draco spent a few more seconds drawing in air through his nose and mouth as if he were going to speak. Then he turned away and departed through the Floo. Harry leaned his head on his hands and sighed.

            He wanted this to work out. He didn’t know if it would.

            Fovea screamed from the aviary. Harry smiled and straightened up, then. No matter what the circumstances, there was always a cockatoo around to remind him that it wasn’t the end of the world.

*

            unneeded: Well, Harry feels that way, too, but there’s a limit to how much he will give up and change.

            SP777: Thanks!

            I had a cockatiel, and have an African gray.
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