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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)	By : Tommy-Lane Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13084 -:- 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
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Title: A Vicious Tangle
Summary: As a Dark Artifacts Specialist, Draco is used to remaining emotionally detached from strange murders but when a new case has him straddling the line of his reality and another’s, he finds himself unable to keep from falling headlong into its puzzle with Potter always right at his side – tangling himself up in Draco’s already fretted mind.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Smidge of violence (it is a murder mystery after all), language, oral, exhibitionism, anal, HJ, mild bondage, rimming, club!sex, and maybe a wee bit of angst.

A Vicious Tangle

"Tricky little bugger aren't you?" Draco murmured with a quill poised still in the air, the feathered end flicking a bit of hair out of his face before he set its blackened tip to the yellowed parchment. It scratched and dipped perfectly executed black lines of ink, the column filled with his neat scrawl before he set it gingerly down on his desk - his eyes narrowing at the small round disk hovering before him. "Let's try..." He tilted his head and tapped his wand, his wrist bending in a careful loop.

The disk quivered, glowed green, then stopped.

He frowned, sitting back heavily in his chair as he stared at the seemingly innocent hunk of metal. It was beautiful really, a perfect circle, thick without being heavy, small enough to fit in the palm of a child's hand. It looked painted - broad strokes of midnight black and emerald green swirling together in an intricate pattern over its surface on both sides - but his analysis told him quite firmly that it wasn't. There was nothing organic about it, whatever metal it was made from was unrecognizable, an unknown in all the records he had run it past. Then there was the little notches on the side that were in exact even paces around the edge but they weren't scorched or cut or spelled or even drilled with one of those infernal muggle devises he had seen in the Department of Muggle Artifacts.

It was a mystery.

He had been working on it nonstop for much too long already, casting every spell he knew at it to try to get it to open up its secrets to him to no avail. For all intents and purposes it seemed to do nothing, just something pretty to look at, but Draco knew better. There was a darkness to it that he could feel when his back was turned, a thrumming that seemed to stop the moment he caught onto it, almost like it could sense him noticing it.

It was like the jewelry he used to see his Aunt Bellatrix wear and others like her when he was young. Enticing, lovely, drawing the eye and eventually the hand...

With a sigh he drummed his fingers over his desk before he dropped his voice, a careful drone of words devoid of any inflection or emotion. The words spilled from his lips in a long string as the air seemed to thicken around him, filling his tiny office with a heaviness that infiltrated every pore in his body and nook of his office. Every little space except for the area around the disk. The air grew misty in a perfect sphere, repelling the chant that took all of Draco's concentration and power to maintain.

The mist swelled, thickened, obscured the bright green and deep black before it shattered and dispersed like it was nothing more than smoke and a strong gust of air had just displaced it from existence.

Setting his jaw against the ache he felt forming behind his eyes, Draco pinched the quill between his fingers and set it to the parchment once more, his sentence ending in a harsh punctuation that sent a blot of ink blooming in a spidery web.

Damn it, he dropped the quill and shut his eyes, the tension in his shoulders and back spreading with yet another failed attempt. It never took him this long before he was able to get a glimpse into an artifact. It was something he prided himself on, how quickly he could coax the artifacts brought to him open, how naturally he could get them to bend to his will. It was an intoxicating power, a spark of energy that kept him going through the most difficult cases. It was all always worth it in the end. Worth all the long and arduous work to see that look in a certain Auror's eye when he finished ahead of their anticipated time frame.

Not to mention the fact that he was the best in his tiny department was something akin to wearing a shiny badge pinned to his chest, proclaiming to all the people who loved to loath him that they could feel however they like but they were still forced to respect him. And respect was really more than he could have ever hoped for.

But respect was like a blossom in winter. Fragile and easily lost. One misstep would be all it took to snatch it back from him.

The sound of paper pinging against metal slants reached his ears seconds before a sharp point was jabbing into his forehead - pecking at him with such an insistence and belligerent disregard that Draco immediately knew who the memo was from without even looking.

He hated inner office memos and there pointed tips and flapping wings.

He snatched it out of the air, crumbling it in his fist before prying its flaps open and staring down at the untidy, blotted scratches. He eyes caught on the barely legible words - my office, urgent, immediately, and NOW - with a snarl curling his lips up and making his head pound something fierce. It rang loud and clear of disrespect, of barely veiled contempt.

That or Potter was in a mood again. Either way he wasn't in the mood to deal with the Auror and his insane self-righteousness that made him so incredibly touchy when a case wasn't going his way.

Not that he had a choice in the matter.

With a flick of his wand the disk was dropping carefully back down into its protective case, the locks clicking into place at Draco's command before the thick black box went floating over to the far wall covered in shelves housing similar boxes. He watched it insert itself in its ordered spot, the gleaming number 47 staring back out at him before Draco waved his hand and the entire shelf disappeared back into the wall, leaving no hint to its presence and all the hundreds of Dark Artifacts locked safely away.

Then he sat there. And waited - flipping a coin from his pocket in the air and watching its graceful arch and decent as he counted silently in his head.

The second memo came in record speed, surging straight towards Draco's eye like it had some sort of personal vendetta - Potter really needed to learn how to send his memo's out with less emotion. He smirked as he ducked out of the way and watched with a smug satisfaction as it went crashing into the wall. He didn't bother retrieving it and reading its contents, he knew what it would say, Potter was predicable like that.

And in all honesty it was a button Draco liked to push so he got those memos rather frequently. It was juvenile perhaps but fun none the less and made working with the sainted hero more bearable.

With a quick and practiced duck (the doorway seemed to be shrinking, something he kept writing the maintenance department about but had yet to see any difference despite their claims of actually doing something about it), he was slipping from his office and striding down the narrow, badly lit hall.

Draco's department, made up of him and two others - a tall woman whose robes always smelled of boiled cabbage named Damaris Luckwood and a pocked faced man who refused to look Draco in the eye due to something he honestly couldn't fathom because Mr. Cobble only ever mumbled under his breath - was located in an annex on the second floor of the Ministry of Magic. The space was small and dank and people generally forgot where they were altogether despite the fact that they were located near the Auror offices for convenience reasons. Though Draco thought it more likely that it was so they wouldn't run off with any of the artifacts they studied - like the mere closeness of the fierce Auror's could stop them if they were so inclined.

"Coffee Damaris?" Draco pushed the door to her office open with his toe, trying as valiantly as he could not to visibly wrinkle his nose and recoil in revulsion at the smell.

"Off to see Potter again dear?" She peered up at him from behind her rectangle spectacles, her smile missing a tooth in the upper corner but still somehow managing to come across rather motherly. He liked Damaris, she was mental sure but sweet and only smiled in welcome when he first joined the department instead of making her hatred for him loud and clear like many others in the Ministry had done.

He nodded. "And if I don't hurry along my office will soon be flooded with those infernal memos of his."

"I wouldn't say that." She plucked her bright pink mug with cracked red kisses out from her bottom drawer and sent it sailing his way with a carefree flick of her wand. "Mr. Potter's memos are quite lovely I'd say."

"Familiar with his pointed messages then?" He snatched the mug with a hooked finger and let it dangle at his side. Merlin he hated her mug and was determined to purchase her a new one during the holiday season if only for the sole reason that he wouldn't have to be seen with it ever again.

And maybe because he was fond of her, but that was only a slight reason, he told himself firmly.

"Oh yes." She pushed the glasses up her nose with an erect middle finger. "Though usually it's because you're not answering yours. But always very polite Mr. Potter. Very polite indeed."

Draco frowned but nodded firmly anyway, there was no use arguing with Damaris, she may look like a wilting flower in the dead of summer and smell like a rotten garden but she was like a stone wall underneath it all - unmovable in her convictions. "Right, I'll be shortly with your coffee." He made to move and leave her be to work on the object that had metal spikes protruding from its seven corners but her wispy voice had him pausing mid-step.

"And handsome too, wouldn't you say sweetie?" She wasn't even looking at him, her hands busy with her artifact, her blue eyes haven taken on that glossy sheen that said she was no longer available to the land of the living. But there was a little smile on the very corner of her mouth, barely noticeable but it was there and Draco felt his cheek twitch at the sight of it.

She liked to do that Draco had learned over the years. Liked to make little comments right as he was about to leave that stuck a nerve in him, comments that usually had to do with Potter or his personal life despite the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. "Right." He said to the wall above her bent head before turning on a swift heel and marching down the hall, glaringly hideous mug swinging at his side.

The door at the end of the hall creaked as he pushed through it, his ears immediately accosted by the horrendous uproar of the Dark Wizard Hunter's laughter and chatter - their heads poking over the walls of their cubicles to shout at the people next to them. Draco hated it, hated coming to the Auror department with their bright lights and cheery faces juxtaposed by all the scowling and crazed mugs of wanted witches and wizards jeering at him from every inch of available wall space.

Smoothing his hair, he stepped down the hall, squeezing himself through the rows of teetering cubicle walls, sidestepping everyone he ran across and very purposely avoiding eye contact as he stared straight ahead. Potter's cubicle was at the very back, smashed between a fake window and a perpetually empty workspace. Draco couldn't help but wonder why that was. Was it some sort of perk for being the so very special Harry Potter? Or did his coworkers simply loath being so close to the git?

Draco liked to think that it was the latter.

"Ow! God damn - bugger of - every damn time..."

He paused at the flow of sputtered, pained, curses that met his ears as he neared, Potter's voice accompanied by a sharp bang and a pronounced thunk. Oh yes he had been right, Potter was indeed in one of his moods. He grinned momentarily before wiping it from his face and rounding the edge of the dull gray partition, smacking the memo that was zipping towards him out of the way with a practiced hand. He wondered what number that was, he would be surprised if it was only the third, a couple had probably accumulated in his office while he was chatting with Damaris.

Potter's patience was severely lacking.

"Paper win the fight again?" Draco drawled as he entered the workspace.

Potter glanced up with a sharp glare, the pad of his ring finger stuck in his mouth as he no doubt sucked on his recently acquired paper cut. "You're late." He grumbled as he pulled his finger free, shaking his hand out a few times and cursing at the tiny red lines that punctuated his skin.

Draco counted five cuts and that meant there had been five memo's in total. "No, I was in the middle of an analysis, you're just impatient. Believe it or not Potter I am not you're house elf to pop up and do your bidding whenever you call."

"Aren't you though?" Potter's green eyes glimmered as he plopped down behind his wide, ridiculously cluttered desk. There were stacks upon stacks of paper files, empty mugs of coffee, two picture frames that Draco knew housed a photo of his deceased parents and the Weasley family respectively, and a collection of knickknacks that Draco honestly had no clue as to what purpose they served.

"Don't let Hermione hear you say that mate." Weasley chuckled form the opposite corner of the cubicle. "Mornin' Malfoy."

Draco spared him a glance, his lip curling up in an attempted sneer at the redhead's cheery face smilingly back at him. When he had first started working with the famed partners Weasley had conducted himself exactly as Draco had expected he would. He growled and yelled at Draco every free chance he could get, making sure his disdain for him was more than obvious to everyone within a hundred foot radius. And he sulked. Whining constantly at what bad luck they had getting stuck with such ‘a slimy Slytherin git’ when they had just managed to get rid of his sorry arse when school ended.
Not that Draco really minded his vicious comments and outright hatred of him. It was familiar when nothing else in his life had been since the war. But then one day without any warning Weasley had suddenly switched gears, striding into Draco's office one morning with a fuming Potter at his side and grinning widely at the confused blonde...it had all gone downhill from there. Since then Weasley was all smiles, friendly chatter, and oddly timed winks that made Draco highly suspected that the man did it on purpose simply to throw him off kilter.
"Good afternoon." He grumbled in correction and greeting before turning back to Potter who was sucking on his finger again.

Merlin did the man forget how to cast a simple healing charm?

"Finished with the disk yet?" Potter demanded more than asked, making it perfectly clear that he expected Draco to have figured it all out by now.

"No." Draco stared steadily back at him, unfazed by the uncontainable energy emitting from the other man. "It's proving more complex than I originally anticipated."

"Complex." Potter repeated, making Draco scowl as he shifted in his seat and shot Weasley a look. "How long you think?"

"To be determined."

"Give me an estimate then."

Draco's jaw tightened as he stared down at the dark haired man. People often called the young Auror passionate, focused, energized, and obsessive even. Draco knew that it was all true, that nothing could leash Potter back when he had his head to the grind stone and an unsolvable case in his hand. That wasn't the issue, the issue was that he couldn't stay still long enough to see the facts as they were, he couldn't wait to hear out the explanation, he couldn't be bothered to notice that pushing Draco did absolutely nothing except make him want to punch him in the eye. Plus it wasn't like he wasn't trying like Potter was unconsciously hinting at and glaring at him wouldn't cause him to solve the mystery any faster.

Potter was the hero. He liked to leap and fight and run.

Draco was the brains. He liked to gather and question and have sure solid facts before pushing forward.

"Undetermined." Draco ground out with narrowed eyes, watching as Potter frowned back at him.

"Malfoy-" He started tightly, looking very much like he was going to go off the hinge again, a look that more often than not made Draco's pulse jump.

"Harry." Weasley warned from his corner and Draco had to resist a snort. If Potter was the hero and he was the brains then Weasley, heaven help them all, was the peace maker – a fact that still made Draco’s left eye twitch if he thought too closely on it.

Potter swung his narrowed eyes to his friend, mouth fixed in a hard line. "People are dying Ron!" He interjected with a wobble to his voice that liked to sneak its way into his speech whenever innocent lives were involved.

"Yeah and getting all indignant won't help anything." Weasley stated, sounding too much like Granger for Draco's comfort, he even had a theory that the curly mess of a girl had her boyfriend on a word of the day study session every morning to expand his vocabulary. "Hear him out, yeah?" He nodded in Draco's direction and Potter stiffened in his chair, his body strung visibly taut. "Or do you need a nap first?"

"Fine." Potter grumbled, deflating a little under his mate's piercing blue gaze. "You tosser." A smile twitched on his lips as he picked up a wad of paper and threw it across the cubical, the ball bouncing against Weasley's thick shoulder. Draco glared at the exchange, unsure why seeming them goof around always set him on edge. "Enlighten me than Malfoy, what great obstacle is standing in your way?" He arched an eyebrow and stared expectantly at the blonde.

Draco felt a fire ignite from the embers that never seemed to stop simmering in his chest, the same embers that always sputtered back to life when he was around Potter for any length of time. He sneered and folded his arms over his chest, purposely ignoring Weasley's little chuckle as they both caught sight of the glaring pink mug. "If you're unsatisfied with my work Potter then perhaps you should stop requesting me as your analysis expert." He replied with an icy edge to his even tone, his eyebrow lifted in a perfect arch of reserved distaste.

Potter's smile fell away as he sat forward abruptly. "I don't request you!" He argued.

"You do." Draco smirked.

"He does." Weasley agreed with a conspiratorial nod and a lowered voice like Potter wasn't sitting right across from them with an opened mouthed glare.

"Oi Ron, on my side remember." Potter snapped, chucking another wad of paper at his partner.

"Not this time mate, I'm a forced representative of S.P.E.W remember?" Weasley shook his head as he stood, pulling something from his top drawer before marching over to Potter and slapping it against the right side of his chest. "And you called Malfoy a house elf therefore I'm duty bound to harass you...or something like that." He explained cheerfully, giving the garish lime green pin on Potter's robes a little tap before moving quickly away. "Love the mug, Malfoy." He grinned, swiping the pink atrocity from Draco's loose fingers. "Milk and sugar?"

"Please." Draco smiled, relinquishing the mug with gratitude.

Potter grumbled under his breath before sending a hex Weasley's way, who dodged it was ease as he slipped from the cubicle with a deep rumbling laugh. "Play nice boys!" He called back at them before disappearing altogether.

Draco stared after him, wondering idly why he was always excusing himself for some reason or other whenever Draco showed up. With a sigh he shifted his attention back to the matter at hand, resigning himself to the probability that he would never really understand the youngest Weasley male. Not that he gave it all that much thought, he mostly just joked around with Weasley to get under Potter's skin and well...the redhead could be rather entertaining - at times.

"Fucking S.P.E.W." Potter glared at the pin after pulling it from his robes and tossing it tiredly on his desk to rest amongst the chaos. "Look, Malfoy-"

"The disk is undefinable." He interrupted with a pronounced sigh, sitting slowly down in the chair opposite him. Draco knew that tone of voice, the tired way he spoke Draco's name, the lift and fall of his chest beneath his black and red robes, the slow blink of his green eyes. Potter always came at him strong, demanding, belligerent even, but it usually ended up like this when he did and it told Draco everything.

It told him that Potter wasn't sleeping. That he probably wasn't eating well either. That he lived and breathed his current case and that it was plucking maddeningly at his heart and brain till his every last nerve was flayed open. Draco's chest ached at the sight of it and though he couldn't say why it mattered that Potter was so disheartened, it simply did.

"How so?" Potter glanced up, his eyes lit with curiosity.

"The metal is unknown, the markings unheard of, the paint...it's like it's been plucked from an entirely different dimension. There is no precedent for it, nothing affects it, nothing harms it, nothing is even changed by it." Draco explained as best he could to someone who had no background in his line of work. In truth it was so much more complicated than that. So much so that Draco was starting to feel like Potter looked.

"So we're fucked." Potter sighed heavily, carding his hand through his thick hair and leaving it there, rubbing at the back of his head.

Draco nodded slowly. "I need more information about the case otherwise-"

"It's classified."

Draco cocked his head and caught Potter's gaze, giving him a pointed look. "Oh? And you've suddenly taken to following the rules to the letter then?"

A smile twitched up Potter's cheek. "Are you asking me to bend them for you of all people?"

"Are you implying that you don't already do that? I seem to recall an incident last month, at the gala..."

Potter cringed and pointed a finger at him with a stern glare. "You promised never to speak of that night."

"Promised did I?" Draco smirked. "Because I don't know why I'd willingly seal up such brilliant blackmail material..."

"Malfoy you tell and I tell." Potter threatened and Draco's smirk flipped into a frown.

Damn, he knew letting Potter save him at the lake last year was going to come back and bite him in the arse, even if it was only losing in a battle of wills that he wasn't even serious about. He had absolutely no desire to tell anyone about what happened at the gala, he didn't need to fuel Potter's obsessive fan club with images like that. His hand tightened on the armrest at the thought, he would have to forcibly wipe their dim little minds if it came to that. Except it wouldn't because he would never let it slip and he was only one who knew what had happened.

"Sign this."

Draco jerked out of his thoughts to focus on the form sitting before him on the desk, a quill hovering in the air above it. "What is it?" He asked.

"Gag restraint. You know, the usual." Potter let a sly smile curve his lips as he waited for him to sign. Draco loathed the way he said things like that, letting them drip off his tongue as if they were of a sexual nature and not some mundane procedure.

"Still don't trust me?" Draco feigned hurt, knowing that it was the necessary protocol before Potter could give him any more information, his finger's moving the quill over the form to sign himself over to its constraints - the spells woven into the agreement tingling up his arm as he did so.

"I do now." Potter snatched the form back and stuffed it into a drawer before rising from his seat and undoing the black leather clasps holding his Auror robes together.

Draco stiffened as his nimble fingers worked. "What on earth are you doing Potter?"

Potter chuckled and shrugged the scarlet material off to reveal a worn white tee with a small hole in the bottom hem and dingy jeans. "Off with yours Malfoy." He muttered in response, tossing his robes away and sticking his wand in his pocket that must have been magically enlarged.

"I beg your pardon?" He balked, trying not to stare at the way Potter's jeans hugged his arse as he bent to retrieve something from his drawer. Why in the world was he dressed like a homeless squib when Draco knew full well that Aurors had rather nice uniforms of form fitting scarlet and black shirts and thick trousers with pockets along the sides to hide any numerous amount of weaponry.

"Off with the robes. We're going to a muggle neighborhood so unless you changed your mind..." He walked round the edge of his desk and propped his hip against the wood with a nonchalant air, obviously enjoying having caught Draco off guard.

"You could have led with that information." Draco snapped but stood and undid the tiny buttons holding his trim black robes together, carefully folding the material over the back of his chair after he managed to pull them from his body only to catch Potter holding back a laugh as he stared at him. "Merlin what is it Potter?" He grumbled, glaring at the man and very purposely keeping his hands at his side so he wouldn't start smoothing his clothes in nervousness.

"Nothing, it's just...what are you wearing?" Potter was grinning fully now, eyeing Draco up and down.

"What am I wearing?" Draco retorted with a pointed look at the hole in Potter's shirt, smirking at the bashful blush and quickly downcast eyes for a split second that overtook Potter's face. "It's called a suit Potter." Draco rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.

"Yeah I know but a vest? Really, isn't that a bit...much?"

"Its work attire you dimwit." Draco sneered and straightened his black tie. "Just because you lack fashion sense doesn't mean everyone else does as well."

"I doubt anyone out there is wearing a three piece suit." Potter snickered, his gaze lingering on Draco's hands as he tugged on the hem of his black vest to make sure everything was in its proper place.

"That's because everyone in this blasted department in an Auror and you're all culture starved simpletons obviously."

"Oh, obviously." Potter's grin widened impossibly as he nodded.

"You look as bright as dishwater when you smile like that, did you know?" Draco pocketed his own wand and glanced towards the entrance, not all together surprised when Weasley was still nowhere to be seen.

"How sweet of you to notice." Potter chuckled and before Draco could even fathom what he was doing, the Auror had his arm snugly around his waist, their faces brought far too close and making his breath catch from the suddenness of it. "Hold on." He winked and tightened his grip, smashing Draco against him.

Draco yelped as they spun - finding himself squeezing through space with a nauseating tug - reminding himself in the back of his brain to yell at Potter the moment they appeared back on solid ground.
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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)