Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

To the Victor goes the Spoils	By : YamiBakura Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3633 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything related to it. I'm not making any money from this fiction.

Chapter List
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Chapter One – Hogwarts Champion

Headmistress McGonagall stood up in front of the assembled student body and cleared her throat. Almost immediately, the entire group fell silent as they waited for her to speak. This was apparently a bit of a shock for the ex-Transfigurations teacher, because she took a moment too long to collect herself, and Harry fancied he could see a bit of colour tinge her lined cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, though she hadn’t asked them anything yet. “I wish to announce that this year the Triwizard Tournament will be once again hosted here at Hogwarts. Due to… extenuating circumstances, the challenges shall be repeated, though considering we will be hosting new Champions from the other schools I daresay there will be enough of a difference to make it interesting. Students of seventeen and above are eligible to place their name in the Goblet in the hopes of being chosen, save, of course, those who have already participated.” She shot Harry a look that he deflected with a shrug.

“Works for me,” Harry muttered gracelessly to Ron, who looked thrilled. “I expect you’ll be putting yours in, though?” He tried to say it kindly, but his emotions were running amuck with him and he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“Of course I am. Bad luck for you not being able to enter again,” Ron said. Harry shrugged again, hearing McGonagall in the background explaining for the benefit of the younger students exactly what would be required and what would happen, and what the Tournament meant for Hogwarts.

“I don’t want to,” said Harry. “I didn’t want to in fourth year, I thought you knew that now.”

“I do,” Ron began, defensively. Hermione shushed them both a moment later as McGonagall left off explaining and cleared her throat again.

“Some of you who remember the last Triwizard Tournament four years ago will wonder why it’s being held here again, when it’s been so newly reinstated. Well, the foreign ministries have concluded that since – Voldemort –” she visibly stumbled over the name “ – returned at the end of the last, and Cedric Diggory was so cruelly taken from us, with the war over and reconstruction beginning to take hold, they decided that, well…”

She was so uncharacteristically nervous that Harry wondered if there was something she wasn’t telling them. She’d barely gotten herself under control before Professor Slughorn stood up and interrupted her. “It’s good for morale!”

The students cheered him, and McGonagall who looked relieved to have the words out and returned to her seat. Harry applauded with the rest of them, fiercely glad that he wouldn’t be required to join it a second time. He looked around the Great Hall and saw several students looking thoughtful or serious. To his surprise, Malfoy was one of them.

The Malfoy name had been dragged through the mud; it’d have been hard to keep it clean, not when Narcissa was related by blood to Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy was still in prison as a convicted Death Eater. It hadn’t kept Draco Malfoy down for long, however. He was still as imperiously nasty as he’d ever been, with the sole exception being that he no longer sought them out to make trouble. It troubled Ron at times that he could no longer be relied on for entertainment, but Harry hadn’t forgotten that Mrs. Malfoy and Draco had saved his life on more than one occasion. If not for them, he wouldn’t be sitting there – none of them would. And Ron understood that, too – Hermione had made sure of it – but it didn’t stop the feelings built up over decades of blood-feud. Maybe, Harry thought, Malfoy sees this as an opportunity to get some social standing back.

-o0o-

Social standing was the only thing on Draco’s mind at that moment. He’d watched the first Triwizard Tournament eagerly, of course, and had thoroughly enjoyed it despite his disappointment that he couldn’t enter and a bitter, festering resentment that somehow Potter had gotten through. That lasted all the way up through the summer before his sixth year, just before his father was thrown in Azkaban for the first time. He’d explained all about Barty Crouch Jr., and how it hadn’t actually been Mad-Eye Moody who’d tortured him but a Death Eater under Polyjuice, and for a while his estimation of Moody had gone up. That was before Voldemort threatened to kill him if he didn’t take the Mark and kill his parents if he couldn’t find a way to kill Dumbledore. That they’d all survived – whether in prison or not, at least his father was still alive – was a miracle in and of itself.

But if he wanted to do anything beyond scrape by, he’d need to do something spectacular. Just getting into the Tournament would be an amazing feat, but just think… if he won…

With stars dancing behind his eyes, Draco bestowed a benevolent smile on the entire Great Hall, taking immense pleasure in the fact that Potter twitched as though he’d been hexed at the sight of it. His mother had been the one to convince him not to bother Potter any more.

“Lucius… may be in prison right now, but it’s only a few years. It could have been so much worse,” she’d told him. “And we – we are free, and alive, and we still have our house and everything in it.” But only because the Aurors had raided and taken away anything and everything they considered dangerous, long before things came to a head. “We owe our lives to Harry Potter. I know your father would have wanted you to be bosom buddies, and I’m aware that after six or seven years of enmity that this will never happen, but we owe him just as much as he owes us, and you will, therefore, cease these childish pranks and general nastiness. Remember, although you may send me the PG version of what goes on at school, Miss Parkinson also attends alongside you and has no such compulsions about informing her mother of what’s really going on, and Mrs. Parkinson does come round for tea about once a week – just so you know.”

Draco mentally translated this to “Stay the fuck away from Potter or I will know” and decided that it wouldn’t be too terribly difficult. After all, Potter would be basking in his glory – Draco didn’t even know why he’d bothered coming back to school again, considering all that he’d done since dropping out. And as long as Potter and his cronies weren’t bothering Draco, he was happy to leave them and their horrid Gryffindor selves alone.

And so far, they had. Though all he’d ever wanted was either to be his friend, or see Potter humbled beyond recognition when that was rejected, he found that his life was immensely boring without Potter around. It wasn’t something he’d have expected, especially since a lack of Potter in his life was his overarching goal for six years. Now that he’d achieved it, he wasn’t sure he was happy about it.

Abruptly jarred back to the present as Pansy clutched at his arm, Draco blinked and looked up at the Headmistress, who was unveiling the cup for the second time.

“Hogwarts students will have three days in which to place their names in the Goblet, and then we will be welcoming Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students back to our halls. The timeline has been moved up slightly; we will begin the first task a week from Saturday. Quidditch of course has been canceled for the year, although Madam Hooch has, by popular demand, agreed to organise what she calls ‘pick-up games’ for those students who wish to play and keep in practice.”

Across the hall, Draco saw Potter’s face light up in anticipation. He was restricted from entering the Tournament again, something Draco found incredibly favourable since he was the obvious choice, and Draco remembered how bad it had been waiting on the sidelines while Diggory, Potter, Krum, and the Veela-girl battled it out, without even Quidditch to relieve the monotony. He could totally understand, but he was hoping to be chosen anyway.

A week later, after the foreign students had settled in – the Durmstrang students lodged with Slytherins again, though many people noted that this time around the ones from Beauxbatons opted to stay with Gryffindor. When Draco saw many of them hanging around Potter and sighing, lovestruck, and thrusting bits of paper at him to sign – he’d expected Potter to be in his element here, surrounded by fawning fans, not look terminally embarrassed and more often than not refuse to sign anything – he realised why they’d made this decision. Although Voldemort had widely been considered an English problem, whom the English had then dealt with accordingly, stories of Potter’s role in his downfall had breached international waters.

Even more interestingly, Draco noted, about half of Potter’s new fanclub were decidedly male. And he didn’t seem any more or less embarrassed or withdrawn over them than he did the girls. As he idly wondered if Potter batted for the other team, Draco waited with vibrating impatience for the names to be withdrawn from the Goblet. The new Headmistress of Durmstrang was deep in conversation with McGonagall while Madam Maxime carefully examined each of the students she’d brought with her, most of whom were eyeing Potter appreciatively. Potter, in a shocking display that was surprising to absolutely no one, utterly failed to notice them.

The Goblet blazed blue. McGonagall stood up to catch the first name while the whole Hall quivered with tension. “For Durmstrang, the chosen Champion will be Katarina Dukarov! Katarina, please make your way to the side room, thank you.” Katarina Dukarov stood to much applause and cheering, and not a few sullen glances from her schoolmates who hadn’t been chosen. She flashed a winning smile around and gracefully took herself to the waiting room. The Goblet flared up again, and this time McGonagall’s expression registered surprise. Draco crossed his fingers – and secretly, his toes as well – that it wasn’t the Hogwarts Champion yet.

He let out a quiet whoop when she read off the name. “From Beauxbatons, the chosen Champion shall be Gabrielle Delacour!” Vaguely, Draco remembered Gabrielle from the Tournament four years prior; she’d been the little sister of one of the Champions then, and was now a champion in her own right. Then he realised that the Hogwarts name was next, and held his breath.

“From Hogwarts, the chosen Champion is…”

The entire Great Hall sucked in a breath of anticipation as she trailed off, while Draco felt his cheeks turning pink with lack of air.

“The Hogwarts Champion is Draco Malfoy!”

The Slytherin table erupted. Draco’s breath exploded out of him in a fierce rush as he realised people were actually screaming, congratulating him and some were even coming up and patting him on the back. The rest of the Hall – minus a great deal of the Gryffindors who remembered what he’d been like in previous years, but that didn’t bother him, he was the Champion! – was applauding too, no less fervently but without leaving their seats.

All save one. As Draco’s eyes automatically drifted across the Gryffindor table, he saw Harry Potter on his feet and clapping as hard as any Slytherin, a bright smile of congratulations pasted across his guileless face. Draco felt a warm flush of feeling suffuse his chest, and then realised Pansy was tugging on his hair and telling him to get to the waiting room so the rest of them could begin eating.

He stood up unsteadily and felt like the king of everything.

-o0o-

I think I’m going to work on one story per day, and hopefully make my updates on the weekends. Not sure how this will work, but with so many things in progress, and with my desire to finish all of them for a change, it’s better than just leaving you guys hanging for ages. So here’s to regular updates! *raises can of nectar from heaven, aka Dr. Pepper* And reviews. I love reviews. They make me a happy kitty.

PS: I seem to be having difficulty getting this formatted right. I don’t know if it’s my fault somehow, or something going wonky with AFF, but I apologise for any bizarreness while I’m trying to fix it. Also, I apologise for the shortness of the chapter; I didn’t realise how small it was when I was writing it, but it looks tiny on AFF right now despite being about 2000 words long. I’ll try to get the next chapter up to about five or six thousand to make up for it.

PPS: Formatting troubles fixed. AFF was being wonky and wasn't giving me the toolbar for things like font, italics, etc. Hopefully I've got it all now.
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To the Victor goes the Spoils