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lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-26 06:45 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-26 06:45 pm
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Knowing the Price and the Value, 3/3- for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
irrevokable
Part 3 of 3- sorry for spammage.
“Did you see the Daily Prophet this morning?”
Draco didn’t bother to look up, but only shook the newspaper, which was spread out in front of him, in praise of Potter’s observational skills. Potter laughed, that sound Draco loved to hear, and shut the door behind himself.
“Yes, well, that was one of mine.” Potter stretched his arms over his head, wincing only slightly. It had been a few weeks since he received the shoulder wound, and it had healed more swiftly than Draco thought it should. Perhaps Potter visited St. Mungo’s on the sly, he thought, watching around the edge of the newspaper. “I couldn’t quite believe it when we managed to hook her. She survived unscathed through her crimes at Hogwarts and her part in the Voldemort war, but Dolores Umbridge is out of the Ministry at last.”
“Hmm,” said Draco. He could feel his cock stirring as he watched Potter stretch again and take a few swift steps in lieu of a victory dance. “I know what would put me in a celebratory mood.” He shoved his chair back from the desk and spread his legs, patting the side of his thigh.
Potter laughed softly. His eyes were a color Draco had never seen before, a bright green close to malachite, but the same lust sparkled in them as always. He took one stride, slid easily to his knees, and waved his wand. Draco’s clothes were open before he knew it, and then his erection vanished inside a perfect, warm, wet mouth.
Potter’s better mood led to a better blowjob, though Draco wouldn’t have believed that if someone had told him so, since they’d been pretty fucking spectacular before. His tongue tried new and experimental patterns. He varied his breath as well as the motion of his mouth when he hummed, and he bobbed his head as if he were a Muggle child with a lolly. His hands roamed, for the first time Draco could remember, stroking the tender skin along his thighs and dipping just behind Draco’s balls to rub there. Draco caught his breath deep in his chest and came explosively down his partner’s throat.
He was still weak-kneed and panting when Potter pulled back, winked, and did up his trousers again. Draco sat there, gazing down at him, wordless. Then he found his hand lowering, as if of its own free will, to tangle his fingers in Potter’s hair.
With an easy chuckle, Potter pulled back from the touch. “Come on, Draco, no need to tax yourself,” he said. He stood and glanced at his desk, his posture casually shielding his crotch from Draco’s covetous gaze. “Dyers thinks that we should be able to go after the next major conspirator soon. We haven’t found any ties to Shacklebolt yet, which means the upper levels of the Ministry may not change as much as we thought.” He whirled around, and Draco was able to make out no sign of arousal. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t still get a proper position. I promised it, and I’ll make sure of it. A man of your talents shouldn’t be wasted.”
Arrogant Potter. He thinks more of his own talents than he does of mine, I’m certain. Draco avoided Potter’s gaze, and showed nothing of the bile rising up his throat. He just nodded. “Of course,” he murmured.
He rubbed his fingers together several times that day. They felt oddly dry. Potter probably had dandruff, and he’d spread it to Draco when Draco skimmed his hair.
He couldn’t see any sign of dandruff, no matter how closely he studied Potter. Of course, that mattered not a whit. The git probably had enough sense to cast spells that would keep it shielded from plain sight. It was only someone who touched him who would know the difference.
*
A furious pounding on his door awakened him from a dream of gripping Potter’s hair and fucking his mouth, so hard…
Draco jerked up, erect and gasping, and realized that he was still in their office. He’d fallen asleep over the desk, stubbornly trying to finish up one more of paperwork before he went home to the Manor, this time on a case where he and Potter had arrested five wizards trying to smuggle living demiguises into Britain. He licked his lips, cast a spell to take away the erection, and strode to the door, since the intruder didn’t intend to stop knocking.
“Yes?” he snarled, only to find himself on the end of a wand. He thought for a moment Potter’s enemies had come hunting him, before a Lumos charm flared and he realized he was blinking down at Granger.
“Do come in,” he said, stepping out of the way and rolling his eyes when she immediately pushed past him to settle in his chair. See, Potter, even your friends agree that I have better taste in furniture.
“It’s been a month, Malfoy,” Granger said. She folded her arms and regarded him with a disturbing air of calm. “You haven’t made any progress. I’m going to Shacklebolt tomorrow and telling him that you should be removed as Harry’s partner, unless you can tell me that you’ll have Harry back to normal by morning.”
“Then you’ll have to go to Shacklebolt, I’m afraid,” said Draco, and yawned. He didn’t try to conceal it. Did Granger think it was easy, being a field Auror? Since she had chosen to study magical law, she remained behind a desk most of the time.
“You don’t care, do you, Malfoy?”
“About your threats?” Draco shook his head and settled in Harry’s chair, which tilted alarmingly beneath him. “Not a great deal, no. I think you’d find, if you took a moment to look at reality, that Harry is causing quite a stir of interest in the Ministry. Most people think it would be a good idea to accommodate him. I’m unlikely to be dismissed because you think that’s what should happen.”
“I meant that you don’t care about Harry,” Granger clarified impatiently. “A true friend would have wanted him to stop this madness. He’s already been hurt several times.”
“He was only hurt once,” Draco said sharply.
Granger sniffed at him. “No, he wasn’t. There was the shoulder wound four weeks ago, and he was limping last Tuesday, and then he broke a finger last weekend, and he came in favoring his left arm this morning. That’s what I mean. You don’t care about him. He’ll die on your watch because you can’t be arsed to pay attention to anything but your career.”
Draco hated the jealousy that flooded him then, sharp and sour as vinegar. If Potter was hurt, he should have been the first to know; it could affect his performance in the field, and therefore Draco’s own safety. Granger didn’t care about Potter either, since she had tried to hire Draco to spy on him. Draco didn’t want the position of Potter’s best friend, but since he’d been fulfilling that role by default for the past several months, he at least should get some of the special consideration that came with it.
“Maybe,” he said, summoning up the reserves of venom he had dammed too often around Granger, “if you and Weasley could have been arsed to believe him in the first place about the werewolves, he would never have had to come to me.”
Granger slammed her hands on the desk. “There is nothing about werewolves behind this, Malfoy! Harry’s just gone a little mad in his need for vengeance, and he’s trying to hunt and pull down people who have nothing to do with the original cause!”
“If you believe that, then why aren’t you stopping him?” Draco dug his fingers into his arm to prevent himself from lashing out this time. “You’re supposed to be Gryffindors, aren’t you? Against the suffering of the innocent and all that.”
“No one can stop Harry when he gets in one of these moods.” Granger shook her head impatiently. “We couldn’t talk him out of following you, or out of suspecting that there was something wrong with Snape in our first year at Hogwarts, even though Snape wasn’t the one trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Somehow,” Draco murmured, “you don’t comfort me. He was right about me, after all. And he’s right that Snape was involved in defending the Stone, even if he wasn’t trying to take it.”
Granger ran a hand through her hair, which sprang up and looked ugly behind the sweep of her fingers. “You don’t understand, at all. He’s not right about this. We’ve tried and tried to explain that to him. We’ve tried to listen to him sympathetically. We’ve tried to bring him back to himself. He doesn’t want to come back.”
“Then maybe this is what he is now,” Draco shot back, “and you should respect that and learn to deal with him on this level.”
“I want my friend back,” Granger said. “And I won’t get him this way.” She stalked away, paused long enough to say, “I’m going to Shacklebolt tomorrow,” and then flung the door open and flung it shut behind her.
Draco was left alone to brood on the fact that he hadn’t seen Potter’s wounds, which must have meant that Potter had gone out of his way to conceal them from Draco’s probing eyes.
I should have known. The conviction grew in him as he felt jealousy boil once more, pickling his heart. I have a right to know.
*
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Potter had the nerve to let the door fall shut behind him as if it were an ordinary morning, and to frown at Draco as if he had no idea what he meant. “Tell you what? There are lots of things that I’m forbidden to tell you by the Unbreakable Vow, Draco. I thought you knew that.”
“Not that,” Draco spat, and rose to his feet, his wand clenched tightly in his fist. “You didn’t tell me that you were wounded after the first time. You should have told me—“
“Why?” Potter’s eyes were still bright with amusement. “None of the rest of them caused me to bleed on the floor. And that first one discomfited you so much—“
“It did not discomfit me—“
“You weren’t watching your own expression,” Potter said, now with an infuriating gentleness. “You looked absolutely disgusted, and not a little angry.” He shrugged. “I had them treated before they could interfere with my performance in the field. I assumed you would rather not know.”
“I have a right to know,” Draco said, and stalked a little closer, watching for Potter’s wand.
“No, actually, you don’t.” Potter still looked amused, but he folded his arms and leaned against his desk. “You never volunteered to come with me on these hunts. As long as I stay alive and in shape to benefit you, then it shouldn’t matter to you where I’m going or what happens on those journeys. You’ll notice that I took no cuts to the mouth.”
The jealousy and the anger were feeding on one another, tugging on Draco’s stomach like the urge to vomit. “You think this is only about what shape you’re in when you give me blowjobs, you bastard?”
“Of course,” Potter said, and finally his eyes started to darken and his brows to bend down. “What else would it be about?”
Draco hit him with a Body-Bind, or tried. It seemed that Potter had an instinctive reaction to that particular wand movement. He spun out of the way, ducked behind his desk, and came up holding his wand, to fire a purple line of light at Draco.
Draco probably wouldn’t have been able to dodge that a month ago, but becoming a field Auror had paid off in more ways than the obvious. He folded to the ground, and heard the sound of an impact with the wall behind him, mingled with the smell of burning wood.
He fired from the floor. Potter cursed in startled tones as his right foot suddenly took on a life of its own and tried to hop away from him. While he was casting Finite Incantatem on it, Draco climbed back to his feet and aimed a spell that should feel like someone kicking him in the teeth at Potter’s face.
Potter was still too alert for that, though, and cast a Shield Charm before Draco’s blow could land.
And then they began fighting so fast that Draco couldn’t distinguish one spell from another. He knew he used Shield Charms, and that some of the hexes got through and stung fierce wounds into being along his shoulders and spine. He also knew that he had burned off the hem of Potter’s robes and some of his skin, but he wouldn’t give up. He just gritted his teeth and came in harder, as if that would solve anything. Draco cut Potter’s desk in half down the middle and destroyed his horrible Muggle chair; Potter retorted by flipping his desk over when Draco tried to hide under it and taking off the arms of his comfortable seat.
In the maelstrom of adrenaline and magic, Draco became aware that he was screaming, raw, wordless cries, and that Potter was shouting, louder and louder each time because his words were blocked by Draco’s voice, “Malfoy, what is this about? What on earth did I do? Look, will you calm down—will you just—fuck, that hurt—“
“You cut me out of it!” Draco finally said, when the urge to simply scream had passed and he wanted Potter to know the depth of his folly. He dropped to his heels and flung himself into an arching movement to escape the curse headed for his chest, and then finally managed to fire a Body-Bind that Potter couldn’t escape. The other man fell stiffly to the floor in front of one weirdly glowing half of his desk. Draco stood up and advanced on him, resisting, with some difficulty, the temptation to kick him in the groin. “You didn’t let me help! You never once asked me my opinion! And then you moved away when I tried to touch you!”
Potter stared at him with those dark green eyes from the middle of a motionless face.
“You didn’t give me the chance to make up my own mind about you,” Draco whispered heatedly, crouching down next to him, gripping his chin, and shaking it. “You told me that story about losing your partner and your allies, but you never thought that I’d sympathize, did you? Oh, no, everyone knows that Slytherins don’t do sympathy! You just assumed what I’d do and did the opposite. You said you didn’t want to tax me, but I know the truth. You thought you wouldn’t get anything out of me, so why bother even asking it?
“Well, let me tell you something, Potter. I’ve changed more in the last five years than you could ever imagine. I learned more during the war than you could ever imagine. Going after you in the Room of Hidden Things was the last genuinely stupid thing I ever did. And I’m not stupid enough to let someone like you hold me at a distance when I have the chance to get closer to you. Do you fucking understand now?”
He paused, his chest heaving, and then remembered that Potter’s jaw was bound and he couldn’t answer. He fumbled for his wand and cast a localized Finite Incantatem, just enough so that Potter could answer back.
“No, I don’t fucking understand,” Potter whispered. “I wasn’t taking your choices away, for God’s sake. I was keeping you safe. And I was offering you what you said you wanted. What’s the problem now, Malfoy? Did you change your mind about the price? I’ll give you something else, if—“
“Fuck yes,” said Draco, his voice rough, and not just with the screaming. “Let me show you what I want.”
And he cast again to release the Body-Bind, then surged forwards and seized Potter’s lips in a kiss.
Or maybe it wasn’t a kiss. Call it a passion-filled snog, Draco thought, through the haze filling his head. That would do quite well. His tongue was ramming into Potter’s, and his teeth were clicking against Potter’s, and his body reported all sorts of wonderful and disturbing sensations from elsewhere as he forced his face further and further into Potter’s, breathing noisily, chewing, licking, trying to climb into him.
Then Potter’s tongue answered back.
Draco opened his mouth wider and bit down on Potter’s lower lip. That won him a startled exclamation, followed a moment later by a moan. Draco smirked, smug as a centaur at the revelation that Potter liked a bit of pain with his pleasure. He had known it, based on the way he sometimes gagged around Draco’s cock but insisted on sticking it down his throat anyway.
Potter spread his legs then, and started answering with the rest of his body as well as with his mouth. Draco snarled in welcome and let himself be rolled over. If Potter had some need to dominate, let him dominate, as long as it meant that they were both finally engaging in this, and that the bastard wouldn’t hide his arousal any longer.
So long as he gave Draco the choice, instead of assuming, like a Gryffindor git, that he already knew everything about Draco.
Potter’s knees were locked on either side of his legs. Draco’s legs were locked around Potter’s hips. It didn’t make for the best angle for rutting together at first, but they found a rhythm that suited them both, and they didn’t need to find their passion. It rose and crashed over them like a drowning wave, and Potter practically howled with eagerness. Draco wondered for a moment whether that bite might have been from a werewolf after all.
And then he lost himself to the wonderfully painful pressure against his cock from an inviting hardness—finally finally—and the tight pinch of his trousers around it and the unsteady, frantic motions of Potter’s hips and the mouth that was still trying to devour his, even as it meant that Potter had to bend his neck down at an awkward angle.
And those eyes, dark with lust at last, and drowning drowning drowning Draco in deepest green.
When he came, it was an affair of arched back and stretched spine and legs bent to the snapping point. A muffled wail bubbled in the back of his throat. He felt Potter’s shoulders, Potter’s shoulders, tensing with his own climax and trembling with his own furious grunts, and his satisfaction tore through him so hard that it left him trembling like a swimmer who’d tried to outrace a flood in the aftermath.
Potter’s face twisted in orgasm, and his eyes widened. Then he threw back his head, and a sound like the deeper cousin of that laugh Draco loved ripped his throat apart. And Draco found himself stroking Potter’s flanks, his torso, everywhere he could reach, hoarsely whispering encouragement.
The agony of wanting was worth it, he thought when Potter had collapsed across him in a limp, sweaty mess, given what he got as a prize. And then Potter turned his head and laid his cheek across Draco’s in a simple, wordless gesture that made have to close his eyes. Well, that was all right. Everyone had to close their eyes sometimes.
“Wow,” Potter said at last, like the uneducated, completely uneloquent halfblood he was.
“Yes,” Draco said. He dredged up determination, remembering that Potter might change his mind now that the heat of the moment was past. “And I meant what I said. I have a new price. You can stop paying me Galleons; I don’t need them, since I’ll be sharing your bank vault. But we share, from now on, partnership and power and sex.”
“You’re sure you won’t change your mind?” Potter braced himself with an arm on Draco’s chest and pulled back to stare into his face. “This isn’t your fight. Or,” he amended, probably warned by the flash in Draco’s eyes, “it doesn’t have to be, anyway. There’s no reason for you to take on danger—“
“Except that you are doing so,” Draco said, “and I know what you’re worth. I’ll have you know, Potter, that that’s one thing no Malfoy has ever neglected to do.”
“What’s that?” Potter blinked. Draco wondered idly how clear his face was to Potter right now. Potter’s glasses were hanging askew off one ear. Draco’s had flown across the room somewhere. The charm to keep them on one’s face was meant for running and dodging, not for a session of passionate sex.
“Protect their investments,” said Draco.
When Potter smiled and bent down for another kiss, Draco knew he was understood.
*
“He’s talking about aiming for Head Auror, now.” Granger stood in the door of Draco’s office, staring at him. Her hands were on her hips. Draco thought of mentioning how unattractive it made her look, but then decided not to. Why should it be his duty to improve her appearance? “You know that he won’t do well in that position.”
Draco stretched his legs out on his desk—unlike the one Harry had ruined, this was not an antique from the Manor, so he might as well rest his feet on it—put his hands behind his head, and grinned at Granger. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “With that newfound obsession with office politics you’ve described more than once, there’s no reason he shouldn’t do well. And now that he’s mostly cleaned out the Auror Department by having Ernest Thicknesse arrested, he very sensibly wants to make sure that no more corruption creeps back in, or he’d have to do it all over again.”
Granger shook her head and twined a curl around her finger. “But he never used to be like this,” she muttered. “I think you’ve been a bad influence on him.”
Draco dropped the grin and his feet. He leaned forwards and rested his elbows on the desk. “Granger,” he said clearly. She shot him a started glance. “Hearing people die three feet from him, people he was helpless to save, changed him. So did having someone he trusted absolutely betray him. Whether or not you want to admit that, it’s still true. I’d think that you’d want to learn what the new Harry’s like and befriend him, instead of constantly bemoaning that he’ll never be the same again.”
“Why do you care?” she challenged him.
“Because not being friends with you hurts Harry,” Draco said. “And I don’t like it when he hurts. Stop it.”
“Protecting your ticket to fame and fortune, Malfoy?” Granger’s eyes were narrowed with dislike.
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Draco said with resigned distaste.
“Damn right she doesn’t,” said a voice from behind Granger, and Harry stepped past her and into the office. He circled around to stand next to Draco at once. Draco rose to his feet. The desk was between them, but a quick slide took care of that, and then he could set his shoulder against Harry’s and curl his arm around his. Harry gave him a quick smile, but his eyes were hard and dark with anger when he turned back to the woman who had been his best friend.
“I’ve just become more aware, Hermione,” he said quietly but intensely. “I’m not a cynic. I know what my name’s worth now, that’s all, and that I can’t fight every evil with a wand. I’m doing more good in the Ministry than I’d manage otherwise in twenty years. Is that really worth arguing over?”
“We just want you back, Harry,” Granger whispered. Her eyes glistened.
Harry shrugged. “You can have me, but on my terms. And those terms require acknowledging, first, that you believe me about the werewolves—and with Thicknesse’s little confession yesterday, I have no idea why you still doubt me—and then apologizing. When that happens, maybe we can have dinner together.”
“Not at the Manor,” Draco interjected. “I have some standards.”
“Of course,” Harry agreed, kissing his hair.
“How can you stand him, Harry?” Granger asked, her voice rising. “He’s horrible.”
Draco turned his head to the side, presenting his profile, the better to show off his narrowed eyes and expression of utter scorn. “I’m someone who knows exactly what Harry’s worth, Granger, and how to value him,” he said. “A lesson you lost along the way, when you started demanding that he conform to your terms and ignore his own changes just because you didn’t share that experience with him.”
“He keeps talking about worth,” Granger said, past him, to Harry. “Can’t you see that he just wants to use you?”
“There are so many different kinds of worth, Hermione,” Harry said, in a dismissive tone.
Granger stalked out. Harry stood gazing after her sadly for a moment. Draco rolled his eyes. I have to do something, or he’ll brood the rest of the morning, and that’s something I would be quite happy never to share again.
“There are many different kinds of worth, you’re right,” he said. “For now, I think I need to appraise your mouth again, since it’s been a whole two hours and it may have lost some of its savor in the meantime.”
And Harry let go with that resonant laugh that Draco loved, and his eyes shifted from one kind of darkness to another. Draco had learned to appreciate those, too.
Draco dragged him into a kiss, smug again.
No Malfoy ever made a better bargain.
“Did you see the Daily Prophet this morning?”
Draco didn’t bother to look up, but only shook the newspaper, which was spread out in front of him, in praise of Potter’s observational skills. Potter laughed, that sound Draco loved to hear, and shut the door behind himself.
“Yes, well, that was one of mine.” Potter stretched his arms over his head, wincing only slightly. It had been a few weeks since he received the shoulder wound, and it had healed more swiftly than Draco thought it should. Perhaps Potter visited St. Mungo’s on the sly, he thought, watching around the edge of the newspaper. “I couldn’t quite believe it when we managed to hook her. She survived unscathed through her crimes at Hogwarts and her part in the Voldemort war, but Dolores Umbridge is out of the Ministry at last.”
“Hmm,” said Draco. He could feel his cock stirring as he watched Potter stretch again and take a few swift steps in lieu of a victory dance. “I know what would put me in a celebratory mood.” He shoved his chair back from the desk and spread his legs, patting the side of his thigh.
Potter laughed softly. His eyes were a color Draco had never seen before, a bright green close to malachite, but the same lust sparkled in them as always. He took one stride, slid easily to his knees, and waved his wand. Draco’s clothes were open before he knew it, and then his erection vanished inside a perfect, warm, wet mouth.
Potter’s better mood led to a better blowjob, though Draco wouldn’t have believed that if someone had told him so, since they’d been pretty fucking spectacular before. His tongue tried new and experimental patterns. He varied his breath as well as the motion of his mouth when he hummed, and he bobbed his head as if he were a Muggle child with a lolly. His hands roamed, for the first time Draco could remember, stroking the tender skin along his thighs and dipping just behind Draco’s balls to rub there. Draco caught his breath deep in his chest and came explosively down his partner’s throat.
He was still weak-kneed and panting when Potter pulled back, winked, and did up his trousers again. Draco sat there, gazing down at him, wordless. Then he found his hand lowering, as if of its own free will, to tangle his fingers in Potter’s hair.
With an easy chuckle, Potter pulled back from the touch. “Come on, Draco, no need to tax yourself,” he said. He stood and glanced at his desk, his posture casually shielding his crotch from Draco’s covetous gaze. “Dyers thinks that we should be able to go after the next major conspirator soon. We haven’t found any ties to Shacklebolt yet, which means the upper levels of the Ministry may not change as much as we thought.” He whirled around, and Draco was able to make out no sign of arousal. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t still get a proper position. I promised it, and I’ll make sure of it. A man of your talents shouldn’t be wasted.”
Arrogant Potter. He thinks more of his own talents than he does of mine, I’m certain. Draco avoided Potter’s gaze, and showed nothing of the bile rising up his throat. He just nodded. “Of course,” he murmured.
He rubbed his fingers together several times that day. They felt oddly dry. Potter probably had dandruff, and he’d spread it to Draco when Draco skimmed his hair.
He couldn’t see any sign of dandruff, no matter how closely he studied Potter. Of course, that mattered not a whit. The git probably had enough sense to cast spells that would keep it shielded from plain sight. It was only someone who touched him who would know the difference.
*
A furious pounding on his door awakened him from a dream of gripping Potter’s hair and fucking his mouth, so hard…
Draco jerked up, erect and gasping, and realized that he was still in their office. He’d fallen asleep over the desk, stubbornly trying to finish up one more of paperwork before he went home to the Manor, this time on a case where he and Potter had arrested five wizards trying to smuggle living demiguises into Britain. He licked his lips, cast a spell to take away the erection, and strode to the door, since the intruder didn’t intend to stop knocking.
“Yes?” he snarled, only to find himself on the end of a wand. He thought for a moment Potter’s enemies had come hunting him, before a Lumos charm flared and he realized he was blinking down at Granger.
“Do come in,” he said, stepping out of the way and rolling his eyes when she immediately pushed past him to settle in his chair. See, Potter, even your friends agree that I have better taste in furniture.
“It’s been a month, Malfoy,” Granger said. She folded her arms and regarded him with a disturbing air of calm. “You haven’t made any progress. I’m going to Shacklebolt tomorrow and telling him that you should be removed as Harry’s partner, unless you can tell me that you’ll have Harry back to normal by morning.”
“Then you’ll have to go to Shacklebolt, I’m afraid,” said Draco, and yawned. He didn’t try to conceal it. Did Granger think it was easy, being a field Auror? Since she had chosen to study magical law, she remained behind a desk most of the time.
“You don’t care, do you, Malfoy?”
“About your threats?” Draco shook his head and settled in Harry’s chair, which tilted alarmingly beneath him. “Not a great deal, no. I think you’d find, if you took a moment to look at reality, that Harry is causing quite a stir of interest in the Ministry. Most people think it would be a good idea to accommodate him. I’m unlikely to be dismissed because you think that’s what should happen.”
“I meant that you don’t care about Harry,” Granger clarified impatiently. “A true friend would have wanted him to stop this madness. He’s already been hurt several times.”
“He was only hurt once,” Draco said sharply.
Granger sniffed at him. “No, he wasn’t. There was the shoulder wound four weeks ago, and he was limping last Tuesday, and then he broke a finger last weekend, and he came in favoring his left arm this morning. That’s what I mean. You don’t care about him. He’ll die on your watch because you can’t be arsed to pay attention to anything but your career.”
Draco hated the jealousy that flooded him then, sharp and sour as vinegar. If Potter was hurt, he should have been the first to know; it could affect his performance in the field, and therefore Draco’s own safety. Granger didn’t care about Potter either, since she had tried to hire Draco to spy on him. Draco didn’t want the position of Potter’s best friend, but since he’d been fulfilling that role by default for the past several months, he at least should get some of the special consideration that came with it.
“Maybe,” he said, summoning up the reserves of venom he had dammed too often around Granger, “if you and Weasley could have been arsed to believe him in the first place about the werewolves, he would never have had to come to me.”
Granger slammed her hands on the desk. “There is nothing about werewolves behind this, Malfoy! Harry’s just gone a little mad in his need for vengeance, and he’s trying to hunt and pull down people who have nothing to do with the original cause!”
“If you believe that, then why aren’t you stopping him?” Draco dug his fingers into his arm to prevent himself from lashing out this time. “You’re supposed to be Gryffindors, aren’t you? Against the suffering of the innocent and all that.”
“No one can stop Harry when he gets in one of these moods.” Granger shook her head impatiently. “We couldn’t talk him out of following you, or out of suspecting that there was something wrong with Snape in our first year at Hogwarts, even though Snape wasn’t the one trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Somehow,” Draco murmured, “you don’t comfort me. He was right about me, after all. And he’s right that Snape was involved in defending the Stone, even if he wasn’t trying to take it.”
Granger ran a hand through her hair, which sprang up and looked ugly behind the sweep of her fingers. “You don’t understand, at all. He’s not right about this. We’ve tried and tried to explain that to him. We’ve tried to listen to him sympathetically. We’ve tried to bring him back to himself. He doesn’t want to come back.”
“Then maybe this is what he is now,” Draco shot back, “and you should respect that and learn to deal with him on this level.”
“I want my friend back,” Granger said. “And I won’t get him this way.” She stalked away, paused long enough to say, “I’m going to Shacklebolt tomorrow,” and then flung the door open and flung it shut behind her.
Draco was left alone to brood on the fact that he hadn’t seen Potter’s wounds, which must have meant that Potter had gone out of his way to conceal them from Draco’s probing eyes.
I should have known. The conviction grew in him as he felt jealousy boil once more, pickling his heart. I have a right to know.
*
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Potter had the nerve to let the door fall shut behind him as if it were an ordinary morning, and to frown at Draco as if he had no idea what he meant. “Tell you what? There are lots of things that I’m forbidden to tell you by the Unbreakable Vow, Draco. I thought you knew that.”
“Not that,” Draco spat, and rose to his feet, his wand clenched tightly in his fist. “You didn’t tell me that you were wounded after the first time. You should have told me—“
“Why?” Potter’s eyes were still bright with amusement. “None of the rest of them caused me to bleed on the floor. And that first one discomfited you so much—“
“It did not discomfit me—“
“You weren’t watching your own expression,” Potter said, now with an infuriating gentleness. “You looked absolutely disgusted, and not a little angry.” He shrugged. “I had them treated before they could interfere with my performance in the field. I assumed you would rather not know.”
“I have a right to know,” Draco said, and stalked a little closer, watching for Potter’s wand.
“No, actually, you don’t.” Potter still looked amused, but he folded his arms and leaned against his desk. “You never volunteered to come with me on these hunts. As long as I stay alive and in shape to benefit you, then it shouldn’t matter to you where I’m going or what happens on those journeys. You’ll notice that I took no cuts to the mouth.”
The jealousy and the anger were feeding on one another, tugging on Draco’s stomach like the urge to vomit. “You think this is only about what shape you’re in when you give me blowjobs, you bastard?”
“Of course,” Potter said, and finally his eyes started to darken and his brows to bend down. “What else would it be about?”
Draco hit him with a Body-Bind, or tried. It seemed that Potter had an instinctive reaction to that particular wand movement. He spun out of the way, ducked behind his desk, and came up holding his wand, to fire a purple line of light at Draco.
Draco probably wouldn’t have been able to dodge that a month ago, but becoming a field Auror had paid off in more ways than the obvious. He folded to the ground, and heard the sound of an impact with the wall behind him, mingled with the smell of burning wood.
He fired from the floor. Potter cursed in startled tones as his right foot suddenly took on a life of its own and tried to hop away from him. While he was casting Finite Incantatem on it, Draco climbed back to his feet and aimed a spell that should feel like someone kicking him in the teeth at Potter’s face.
Potter was still too alert for that, though, and cast a Shield Charm before Draco’s blow could land.
And then they began fighting so fast that Draco couldn’t distinguish one spell from another. He knew he used Shield Charms, and that some of the hexes got through and stung fierce wounds into being along his shoulders and spine. He also knew that he had burned off the hem of Potter’s robes and some of his skin, but he wouldn’t give up. He just gritted his teeth and came in harder, as if that would solve anything. Draco cut Potter’s desk in half down the middle and destroyed his horrible Muggle chair; Potter retorted by flipping his desk over when Draco tried to hide under it and taking off the arms of his comfortable seat.
In the maelstrom of adrenaline and magic, Draco became aware that he was screaming, raw, wordless cries, and that Potter was shouting, louder and louder each time because his words were blocked by Draco’s voice, “Malfoy, what is this about? What on earth did I do? Look, will you calm down—will you just—fuck, that hurt—“
“You cut me out of it!” Draco finally said, when the urge to simply scream had passed and he wanted Potter to know the depth of his folly. He dropped to his heels and flung himself into an arching movement to escape the curse headed for his chest, and then finally managed to fire a Body-Bind that Potter couldn’t escape. The other man fell stiffly to the floor in front of one weirdly glowing half of his desk. Draco stood up and advanced on him, resisting, with some difficulty, the temptation to kick him in the groin. “You didn’t let me help! You never once asked me my opinion! And then you moved away when I tried to touch you!”
Potter stared at him with those dark green eyes from the middle of a motionless face.
“You didn’t give me the chance to make up my own mind about you,” Draco whispered heatedly, crouching down next to him, gripping his chin, and shaking it. “You told me that story about losing your partner and your allies, but you never thought that I’d sympathize, did you? Oh, no, everyone knows that Slytherins don’t do sympathy! You just assumed what I’d do and did the opposite. You said you didn’t want to tax me, but I know the truth. You thought you wouldn’t get anything out of me, so why bother even asking it?
“Well, let me tell you something, Potter. I’ve changed more in the last five years than you could ever imagine. I learned more during the war than you could ever imagine. Going after you in the Room of Hidden Things was the last genuinely stupid thing I ever did. And I’m not stupid enough to let someone like you hold me at a distance when I have the chance to get closer to you. Do you fucking understand now?”
He paused, his chest heaving, and then remembered that Potter’s jaw was bound and he couldn’t answer. He fumbled for his wand and cast a localized Finite Incantatem, just enough so that Potter could answer back.
“No, I don’t fucking understand,” Potter whispered. “I wasn’t taking your choices away, for God’s sake. I was keeping you safe. And I was offering you what you said you wanted. What’s the problem now, Malfoy? Did you change your mind about the price? I’ll give you something else, if—“
“Fuck yes,” said Draco, his voice rough, and not just with the screaming. “Let me show you what I want.”
And he cast again to release the Body-Bind, then surged forwards and seized Potter’s lips in a kiss.
Or maybe it wasn’t a kiss. Call it a passion-filled snog, Draco thought, through the haze filling his head. That would do quite well. His tongue was ramming into Potter’s, and his teeth were clicking against Potter’s, and his body reported all sorts of wonderful and disturbing sensations from elsewhere as he forced his face further and further into Potter’s, breathing noisily, chewing, licking, trying to climb into him.
Then Potter’s tongue answered back.
Draco opened his mouth wider and bit down on Potter’s lower lip. That won him a startled exclamation, followed a moment later by a moan. Draco smirked, smug as a centaur at the revelation that Potter liked a bit of pain with his pleasure. He had known it, based on the way he sometimes gagged around Draco’s cock but insisted on sticking it down his throat anyway.
Potter spread his legs then, and started answering with the rest of his body as well as with his mouth. Draco snarled in welcome and let himself be rolled over. If Potter had some need to dominate, let him dominate, as long as it meant that they were both finally engaging in this, and that the bastard wouldn’t hide his arousal any longer.
So long as he gave Draco the choice, instead of assuming, like a Gryffindor git, that he already knew everything about Draco.
Potter’s knees were locked on either side of his legs. Draco’s legs were locked around Potter’s hips. It didn’t make for the best angle for rutting together at first, but they found a rhythm that suited them both, and they didn’t need to find their passion. It rose and crashed over them like a drowning wave, and Potter practically howled with eagerness. Draco wondered for a moment whether that bite might have been from a werewolf after all.
And then he lost himself to the wonderfully painful pressure against his cock from an inviting hardness—finally finally—and the tight pinch of his trousers around it and the unsteady, frantic motions of Potter’s hips and the mouth that was still trying to devour his, even as it meant that Potter had to bend his neck down at an awkward angle.
And those eyes, dark with lust at last, and drowning drowning drowning Draco in deepest green.
When he came, it was an affair of arched back and stretched spine and legs bent to the snapping point. A muffled wail bubbled in the back of his throat. He felt Potter’s shoulders, Potter’s shoulders, tensing with his own climax and trembling with his own furious grunts, and his satisfaction tore through him so hard that it left him trembling like a swimmer who’d tried to outrace a flood in the aftermath.
Potter’s face twisted in orgasm, and his eyes widened. Then he threw back his head, and a sound like the deeper cousin of that laugh Draco loved ripped his throat apart. And Draco found himself stroking Potter’s flanks, his torso, everywhere he could reach, hoarsely whispering encouragement.
The agony of wanting was worth it, he thought when Potter had collapsed across him in a limp, sweaty mess, given what he got as a prize. And then Potter turned his head and laid his cheek across Draco’s in a simple, wordless gesture that made have to close his eyes. Well, that was all right. Everyone had to close their eyes sometimes.
“Wow,” Potter said at last, like the uneducated, completely uneloquent halfblood he was.
“Yes,” Draco said. He dredged up determination, remembering that Potter might change his mind now that the heat of the moment was past. “And I meant what I said. I have a new price. You can stop paying me Galleons; I don’t need them, since I’ll be sharing your bank vault. But we share, from now on, partnership and power and sex.”
“You’re sure you won’t change your mind?” Potter braced himself with an arm on Draco’s chest and pulled back to stare into his face. “This isn’t your fight. Or,” he amended, probably warned by the flash in Draco’s eyes, “it doesn’t have to be, anyway. There’s no reason for you to take on danger—“
“Except that you are doing so,” Draco said, “and I know what you’re worth. I’ll have you know, Potter, that that’s one thing no Malfoy has ever neglected to do.”
“What’s that?” Potter blinked. Draco wondered idly how clear his face was to Potter right now. Potter’s glasses were hanging askew off one ear. Draco’s had flown across the room somewhere. The charm to keep them on one’s face was meant for running and dodging, not for a session of passionate sex.
“Protect their investments,” said Draco.
When Potter smiled and bent down for another kiss, Draco knew he was understood.
*
“He’s talking about aiming for Head Auror, now.” Granger stood in the door of Draco’s office, staring at him. Her hands were on her hips. Draco thought of mentioning how unattractive it made her look, but then decided not to. Why should it be his duty to improve her appearance? “You know that he won’t do well in that position.”
Draco stretched his legs out on his desk—unlike the one Harry had ruined, this was not an antique from the Manor, so he might as well rest his feet on it—put his hands behind his head, and grinned at Granger. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “With that newfound obsession with office politics you’ve described more than once, there’s no reason he shouldn’t do well. And now that he’s mostly cleaned out the Auror Department by having Ernest Thicknesse arrested, he very sensibly wants to make sure that no more corruption creeps back in, or he’d have to do it all over again.”
Granger shook her head and twined a curl around her finger. “But he never used to be like this,” she muttered. “I think you’ve been a bad influence on him.”
Draco dropped the grin and his feet. He leaned forwards and rested his elbows on the desk. “Granger,” he said clearly. She shot him a started glance. “Hearing people die three feet from him, people he was helpless to save, changed him. So did having someone he trusted absolutely betray him. Whether or not you want to admit that, it’s still true. I’d think that you’d want to learn what the new Harry’s like and befriend him, instead of constantly bemoaning that he’ll never be the same again.”
“Why do you care?” she challenged him.
“Because not being friends with you hurts Harry,” Draco said. “And I don’t like it when he hurts. Stop it.”
“Protecting your ticket to fame and fortune, Malfoy?” Granger’s eyes were narrowed with dislike.
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Draco said with resigned distaste.
“Damn right she doesn’t,” said a voice from behind Granger, and Harry stepped past her and into the office. He circled around to stand next to Draco at once. Draco rose to his feet. The desk was between them, but a quick slide took care of that, and then he could set his shoulder against Harry’s and curl his arm around his. Harry gave him a quick smile, but his eyes were hard and dark with anger when he turned back to the woman who had been his best friend.
“I’ve just become more aware, Hermione,” he said quietly but intensely. “I’m not a cynic. I know what my name’s worth now, that’s all, and that I can’t fight every evil with a wand. I’m doing more good in the Ministry than I’d manage otherwise in twenty years. Is that really worth arguing over?”
“We just want you back, Harry,” Granger whispered. Her eyes glistened.
Harry shrugged. “You can have me, but on my terms. And those terms require acknowledging, first, that you believe me about the werewolves—and with Thicknesse’s little confession yesterday, I have no idea why you still doubt me—and then apologizing. When that happens, maybe we can have dinner together.”
“Not at the Manor,” Draco interjected. “I have some standards.”
“Of course,” Harry agreed, kissing his hair.
“How can you stand him, Harry?” Granger asked, her voice rising. “He’s horrible.”
Draco turned his head to the side, presenting his profile, the better to show off his narrowed eyes and expression of utter scorn. “I’m someone who knows exactly what Harry’s worth, Granger, and how to value him,” he said. “A lesson you lost along the way, when you started demanding that he conform to your terms and ignore his own changes just because you didn’t share that experience with him.”
“He keeps talking about worth,” Granger said, past him, to Harry. “Can’t you see that he just wants to use you?”
“There are so many different kinds of worth, Hermione,” Harry said, in a dismissive tone.
Granger stalked out. Harry stood gazing after her sadly for a moment. Draco rolled his eyes. I have to do something, or he’ll brood the rest of the morning, and that’s something I would be quite happy never to share again.
“There are many different kinds of worth, you’re right,” he said. “For now, I think I need to appraise your mouth again, since it’s been a whole two hours and it may have lost some of its savor in the meantime.”
And Harry let go with that resonant laugh that Draco loved, and his eyes shifted from one kind of darkness to another. Draco had learned to appreciate those, too.
Draco dragged him into a kiss, smug again.
No Malfoy ever made a better bargain.
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