Part Three of 'The Long-Desired'

[lomonaaeren]

Title: The Long-Desired (3/9 or 13)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Creature!fic,(vampire Draco), angst, violence, profanity, sex, bloodplay, past canon character death, dark (arguably insane) Harry. DH spoilers, but ignores epilogue.
Summary: Sequel to ‘Viper.’ Harry is more determined than ever to prevent Draco from taking Harry as his lover and Long-Desired, which Harry sees as slavery. Draco turns to Harry’s friends for help as Harry spirals down into self-destruction.
Author’s Notes: This is the third of the ‘Two Hunters’ series, which begins with ‘Mongoose and continues in Viper, and it will be the last one. Reading this one isn’t recommended if you haven’t read the others. It is also a dark story, and not very fluffy. This one will probably be between nine and thirteen parts long, updated irregularly.

Part One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

“Harry. This is—a surprise.”

Hermione’s voice was soft and cautious, which made Harry glad that he had decided to contact her first through a firecall. He smiled, hoping that he managed to make it the rueful, contrite one he’d been practicing in the mirror, and leaned forwards so that his head went further into the flames.

“I know,” he said. He drew a deep breath and rubbed his hands as if he were nervous. In fact, that didn’t require a lot of acting. “I thought about what you said after you left, Hermione, and I—I scared myself.” He lowered his eyes and took another deep, shivering breath. “I suddenly realized that I was willing to do anything to be free of the Long-Desired bond, and I don’t want to do anything. I always want to have some limits. I don’t want to go crazy.”

He rubbed his fingers over his mouth and let a remnant of the feeling he’d had last night come back to him. Hermione seemed convinced, because she made a strangled noise and knelt down on the carpet in front of him, her eyes wide and anxious.

“Harry, are you all right?”

“I nearly wasn’t,” Harry answered honestly. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t realized that I could still escape by hunting Malfoy. “But that was what scared me the most, Hermione, and made me realize that I do want to listen to you.”

He put his hand through the flames, and Hermione grabbed it. Her eyes were full of love and tenderness that made Harry despise himself for just a moment.

Then he remembered that the hunt only encompassed the way he would escape from Malfoy. It didn’t mean that he needed to leave his best friends behind. So he wasn’t really lying to Hermione when he said that he didn’t want to go mad.

“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “I’m so glad that you’ve decided to come to me.” Her fingers rubbed over and over his palm. “Will you trust my judgment and try to come to terms with Malfoy through me?”

Easier than trying to come to terms with him on my own, when I would probably betray some sign of what I was thinking.

Harry nodded, and Hermione smiled at him and sat back. “Come through the fire,” she said. “We haven’t had you over for dinner in so long, and I know that Ron will be happy to see you.”

“He will?” Harry asked. He remembered the way Ron had slammed his hands on the desk the last time they spoke. It had certainly looked as if his best friend was ready to turn his back on him for good.

“Oh, Harry.” Hermione tugged at his hand. She was smiling, but her eyes shone as if she would burst out weeping in a moment. “Of course he wants to see you. He just didn’t know how to reach you when it looked as if you were slipping into madness and obsession about vampires and wouldn’t come back to us. He thought maybe seeming to give up on you would get you to realize what you could lose. When it didn’t work, he was in despair.” Her fingers pressed down, causing Harry to wince. “But I wouldn’t say anything about Malfoy yet. I haven’t mentioned him, because I didn’t know how Ron would react.”

Harry carefully tucked away a small piece of hope into the back of his soul. If his own efforts failed, then maybe he could ask Ron to help him kill Malfoy.

“That’s fine,” he said. “What time should I come over?”

“Around six would be fine.” Hermione’s smile grew deeper, and the tears vanished from her eyes. “I presume that you won’t object to vegetarian dishes? I stopped eating meat a few months ago.”

Harry swallowed. Once, that was the kind of thing he would have known about Hermione immediately, and included in all the future thoughts he had about her. Now, he had gone months not only not knowing but not caring.

Look what Malfoy has made me. I don’t want to be that man.

“Yes, that’s fine,” he said. “As long as you don’t try to make me eat spinach because it’s good for me.” He had distinctly unfond memories of spinach after the way that Dudley had held him down one day and forced handfuls of it into his mouth.

“Everyone can have the vegetables they like,” Hermione said placidly, and rubbed his hand one more time before she gave it back to him. Then she grabbed it again and squeezed it hard enough to make Harry gasp. “I’m just so glad that you’re coming back,” she explained, blushing a little, when Harry blinked at her.

Harry nodded and spoke a few more meaningless words before he pulled back through the fire and shut the Floo connection. Then he ended up sitting on the floor in front of the hearth for a time, his eyes closed and his hands resting uselessly in his lap.

I didn’t know that I would come so close to losing them.

I didn’t know that the thought of losing anyone who wasn’t Ginny could still affect me in that way.

*

Draco paused when he came to the outside of the wards and realized that there was no trace of Harry’s presence in the house tonight. He leaned on the boulder and sniffed carefully, seeking some explanation. Of course, there were several possible choices. Harry could have gone to the Ministry to do his paperwork, or maybe he had chosen to search for books that described vampires in a library, so that he wasn’t dependent on Draco’s goodwill to learn about the Long-Desired bond.

Or maybe he had gone on another hunt.

Draco growled softly beneath his breath. Harry was skilled, but he simply didn’t take enough care with his life when he confronted nests. He had nearly died in his confrontations with both the Collector and Caspar. Draco didn’t want that to happen again.

He wondered idly if Harry knew it was happening, or if he counted any hunt as a victory that didn’t end with his death. He suspected the latter. Harry seemed to believe that he was indomitable when it came to vampires simply because he could resist the thrall.

He won’t even look back at the hunt against the Collector and realize that he did well, and conquered her in a single night, because I was at his side.

Draco put down the books he was carrying on the boulder, so that he wouldn’t crush them to powder with his grip. He picked up a pebble and crushed it instead, watching with intellectual detachment as fine milky dust slid through his fingers. His skin was already pale again after the fire-charring of the night before, thanks to the blood he had drunk earlier tonight. Nothing Harry did could affect him for long.

Except yielding, and finally giving Draco permission to make him his permanent donor and partner.

Draco leaned against the boulder, weak with the thought of the pleasure he would feel when that finally happened. He was so caught up in the imagined sensations that at first he thought the voice speaking to him was also part of his imagination.

“Malfoy?”

Then Draco started and leaped to his feet. Yes, Harry really stood by the boulder, and his mouth was squeezed shut in distaste and his hands were held stiffly out in front of him as if he didn’t want to be associated with them, but he was still holding out his hand to Draco.

Draco stilled his muscles so that he wouldn’t approach at once. This might be a trap, and he wanted to avoid pain if he could, despite being willing to endure it to show Harry that he couldn’t break the bond with curses. “Why have you come out?” he asked, letting his voice sink.

Harry gave a tiny nervous flinch with his shoulders and skin, but managed to quiet himself in a moment. His voice was steady when he said, “If you’re right—and I want to read those books you promised me before I say that you’re right, if you even brought them—”

Draco picked up the books from the boulder, holding them out in silent evidence of his ability to keep a promise. He was too stunned to say anything about it.

Harry nodded. “If you’re right, then it would be stupid to keep struggling against this.” His flinch was more violent this time, and Draco smelled distaste rising from him like a foul odor off carrion. “I want to know some way that I can make this bearable, instead of being dragged into it.”

Draco found himself making a crooning noise, high and sweet, rather like the piping of a baby bird when it was hungry. He hadn’t known he was capable of that, but he understood its purpose when he saw Harry’s eyelids flutter.

“I’m more than happy to accept that,” Draco whispered, “to give you the books, to touch you, to help you bear it in any way I can.”

*

The crooning noise seemed to have got into Harry’s head and to bounce around from ear to ear, from fold to fold of his brain. It echoed everywhere, and it gave him the first relief from the tension he had carried with him throughout the dinner with Ron and Hermione, when he had been sure that he would slip up at any moment and give away his plan to only pretend to comply.

Suddenly the reverberating doubts and thoughts were quiet. Suddenly he could think of something other than the next step in this drama, this deception. Suddenly he no longer thought he was about to go mad.

He tried to resist the influence of that croon—of course it was only another vampire trick to try to make him into a slave—and the way that Malfoy was looking at him now. His gaze was intent and longing.

Harry hadn’t ever had someone look at him like he was the center of the universe. Ginny had been too wise to do that, and their relationship wouldn’t have survived if she had. His parents were dead too early for him to remember if they’d loved him with that possessive, greedy kind of love. Hermione and Ron were the closest to him, but they had their own lives and their own work; Harry knew that he couldn’t have demanded that kind of devotion from them.

But here was the devotion being handed to him without his having to ask for it. And Malfoy was a vampire, without the ties of other affections, just as he had told Harry last night, and with a deep native selfishness, so that it wouldn’t affect him adversely in the same way that it would a human.

The dream was deep and tempting and perfectly dark. Harry could see why some humans might agree to be the Long-Desired of a particular vampire, why Lucy had probably agreed before the Collector had bent and twisted her mind into a malleable frame.

He licked his lips and tore his gaze away from Malfoy’s with an effort. He had to remember that this was only a temptation, and thus like other temptations: false at the bottom, without a reality that would match its promise.

At the same time, he couldn’t reject it outright, because he had to keep up the lie that he was cooperating with Malfoy now.

So he murmured, “I’ve never had someone who would do that for me. I’m not sure I know how to relate to someone who would.”

Malfoy crooned again. Luckily, this time, Harry was expecting it and it didn’t quite numb his mind like it had before. He still had to swallow against the temptation to yield and stand there with his eyes closed, absorbing and enjoying the peace.

“Yes,” Malfoy whispered. “You’ve given me your blood three times now, and I haven’t given you enough in return. Anything you want, Harry. Only let me.” His voice was thick and eager, as if he were speaking through clotted chunks of something in his throat.

Harry focused on that thickness and used it to pull himself out of the trance that waited for him. “Yes, well. For now, you can hand me the books and then leave.” He cleared his throat, though he wasn’t the one whose voice sounded as if he needed it.

This time, Malfoy hummed, and the sound made Harry sway on his feet. But Malfoy backed away with a single nod, as though this was something he had planned himself. When he picked up the books and held them out, Harry realized that he would have to come forwards to take them from him.

He did so, staring Malfoy insolently in the eye all the while. His head might swim from the sounds Malfoy had made, he might feel as though he was being enthralled by a vampire for the first time, but he still had the ability to look proud. He would hang onto that as hard as he could throughout this deception that would probably involve him submitting to Malfoy at some point.

Malfoy gave him the books, and Harry looked down so that he could count them and note the thickness of their bindings and the flakes of dust and gilding falling from them.

In a moment, Malfoy stood next to him, arms wrapped around him and lips pressed to his. Harry growled under his breath, but stifled his first impulse to break away. He should take this as more proof that Malfoy was a selfish bastard, he told himself. The vampire claimed he would do anything for Harry, like most vampires did when seducing their victims, but the next moment he was stealing a kiss.

Malfoy’s tongue scraped along his lips, sharply-pointed at the tip, cold and stinking of old death—and fresh death. Harry shook for a moment as he imagined the victims Malfoy must have drained this night. It was nearly enough to make him decide to forget about his plan and stake Malfoy now.

But then he thought of what would happen if he failed to kill Malfoy, the way he had before, and he escaped to drain more people. He would probably do it more viciously, in order to punish Harry with the thought of his doing it.

So Harry stood still and submitted to the kiss, though every muscle in his body was taut with rejection and disgust.

Malfoy didn’t linger, as though he was offended by the disgust. He ran a finger up Harry’s nape instead and stepped back, his eyes bright and wild. Harry felt saliva rise in his throat, and swallowed it back; he didn’t have to taste Malfoy’s tongue this time, so he wouldn’t actually spit in front of him.

No matter that the avarice with which Malfoy watched him swallowing made him want to.

“Go away now,” Harry said, cradling the books close to his chest. “I don’t want to see you again for three nights.”

“Am I to be denied the luxury of your presence for that long, then?” Malfoy didn’t sound concerned. He swiped his tongue over his lips as though they retained a taste of Harry and gave him a slow smile.

“Yes, you are.” Harry made his voice firmer. He wanted to seem as if he were surrendering, but gradually; Malfoy would never believe him if he gave in and seemed to lose his scruples all at once. “I need some time to consider these books and read them, and I work during the day.”

Malfoy hummed again, but this time the sound seemed to affect Harry less. He ignored the suspicion that Malfoy was merely humming in thought, rather than making a noise that would enchant him. “Very well. Three nights. And then I’ll come back, and we’ll talk about what you’ve learned.”

He leaped straight upwards and apparently came down so far across the moor that Harry couldn’t make him out no matter how he stared. And though Harry stood with the books in his arms and waited for ten minutes, Malfoy didn’t come back.

Harry stepped slowly behind the wards and dumped the books on the table in his front room. They sprawled, one of them falling open so that Harry could see a page headed Vampires and Mystical Connections to Humanity.

The place chosen by chance was as good a one as any, and Harry knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. He pulled up a chair and sat down to read.

*

Draco leaped and leaped long past the point where aches coiled in his muscles and he would ordinarily have stopped, because the sheer joy he had from Harry’s presence and willing compliance filled him with the energy to do so. He came down at last on top of another boulder and sprawled there, laughing so loudly that he awoke a Muggle dog who barked at him.

Finally.

Draco had known that his Long-Desired wasn’t stupid, but he hadn’t been entirely sure that his intelligence would overcome his stubbornness. But if he was yielding, if he could only be persuaded to think about it a bit more while coming in range of the pleasure Draco could offer him…

He didn’t even react when I stole a kiss from him. Oh, I know that it didn’t taste good to him, but he didn’t pull away and declare that he wouldn’t meet with me again.

Harry’s mouth had tasted like blood and wine, or the way that Draco remembered wine tasting, even though Draco had not bitten him. The thought made him rise and spring off the boulder again, twisting and finding his way into the sky the moment his heels touched the ground.

Leaping high like this was its own pleasure, with his hair ripping out on the wind and his body doing exactly what he told it, so that he could change directions at a moment’s notice, or flatten himself and pretend to be gliding, or roll over thirteen times before he returned to the earth. And then the earth acted like a springboard to bring him instantly back into the sky, and he could take deep breaths of air colder than he could ever have endured as a mortal, and the land beneath him was a sleeping mass of black and lights, with every light concealing a fragile human life that he could end as he chose.

It was the essence of freedom.

And Harry’s face hovered in front of him every time he turned about or commanded his senses to reveal the green of the grass beneath him, the color of the grass bleeding into his eyes.

Draco didn’t find the image of the face a restriction to his freedom—quite the opposite. If Harry was with him, then he was stronger, swifter, and sympathetic to at least one person besides himself.

If Harry was with him, then his horizons expanded, and he could imagine himself dancing like this all over the world, and centuries in the future.

Alone, a single night could sometimes seem too long.

*

A Long-Desired bond is not exactly like the bonds known to prevail among other magical species. There are various theories as to why this should be so. The present author’s belief is that vampires are incapable of feeling the love and the urge to reproduce that are constants in other bonds. Their hearts beat for survival and pleasure; their wombs will bear no children, their seed sire none. They stand in a halfway house between life and death, barred from ever returning to the daylight and the company of mortals. To remain in the house and keep from departing on the other side into oblivion, they require companionship.

Harry smiled and dug his fingers into the sides of the book. It sounded as though this author thought like him. Vampires were unnatural. Vampires didn’t understand the most basic human urges. Any bond they took on was only a means of keeping them alive and giving themselves what they wanted.

If any book could tell him how to escape the Long-Desired bond, it was this one. The others had been a disappointment, simply stating that escape was impossible because the vampire and the Long-Desired couldn’t kill each other and then setting out to explore the nature of the bond. Harry had no interest in that. Why would he want to admire the trap when its sides were closing in on him? He wanted to leap out of it instead, and see the stars shining above him, and go back to the life he was used to.

Of course, some may object that vampires find companionship in one another, and in their nests. But the nest formation is truly desirable only for the master vampire who guides it. The spawn, who are slaves, revolt as soon as their sire dies and they have some independent sense of self. Many of them refuse to return to a nest for the rest of their existence.

Harry nodded impatiently. Yes, this was the way he felt, but it was also something he knew. He wanted the author to start telling him something genuinely strange and startling, like the way that the Long-Desired bond was limited.

Vampires who have become masters because their sires have died are the ones most likely to seek out their Long-Desired, though many of them do not know what they are looking for until they find it. Then they will court and woo the Long-Desired incessantly, seeking first permission to bite, then continued permission, and finally the completion of the bond in an agreement of lifelong companionship. A master vampire seeks an audience, and a permanent donor, and a source of magic.

Harry snorted. He had known that Malfoy talking about affection and all the rest of it, respecting Harry even if he didn’t respect other mortals, was a load of bollocks.

But to have all those things, the vampire must keep the Long-Desired happy. And that means that he or she will yield with joy to the whims of the mortal tied to them; will share the magic; will, in the end, come to feel something like love. It is not love; it is a replacement for it. That replacement has overtones of possessiveness, of idolization and idealization, of selfish seeking after pleasure. But it will become the strongest emotion and the strongest motive in the vampire’s life. Vampires prolong the lives of their Long-Desired because they cannot imagine, in the end, existing without them. And because the link never forms except between a vampire who requires such a mortal and a mortal who needs the intense focus of such a vampire, it cannot be broken.

Harry flung the book from him. It cracked open against the far wall and scattered pages about the way the books he had searched through for a way to poison his blood had.

No. I’m still not going to spend the rest of my life being a—a plaything and a possession.

With the coldest detachment he’d ever been able to muster, Harry considered killing himself. It was the one way to properly foil Malfoy’s designs.

But he still didn’t want to give up his life. That would mean leaving more vampires unpunished and his best friends mourning, and in the end, it would be admitting that Malfoy was too powerful for him.

Harry nodded slowly and turned his head at last to look at a small trunk at the foot of his bed. It was covered with locks and twists of chain, as well as wards that would mask the stink of Dark magic.

I’ll have to look in one of those books for a solution after all.

Part Four.

Comments

[franalan.livejournal.com]

Oh dear; *is worried*

And Draco seems so happy ... :(

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

He's happy right now, yes.

[xelloss-poo.livejournal.com]

... ... Bad Harry... Bad. >(

*snuggz Vampire!Draco* Why are you so adorable? *pets him*

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

I really don't know! I feel like I should be siding more with Harry, and yet I'm not.

[jtsbbsps-dk.livejournal.com]

oh my oh my oh my!!!
I am getting so frustrated at Harry!!!
and poor, poor Draco - so obliviously happy! But I don't quite understand, how come he wasn't able to smell Harry's deception?

I LOVE THIS!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And Harry didn't really say anything that was a direct deception. He does want to know some way to make this bearable, after all. It's just that his definition of bearable and Draco's are miles apart.

[hambares.livejournal.com]

I cannot even imagine how this will end, but I do know that I am enjoying it very much!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[ura-hd.livejournal.com]

stubborn silly Harry...

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Pretty much!

[jordangrant.livejournal.com]

Wow, you have a way with words. (I think you knew that....)

But anyway, whenever Draco gets close to Harry and you use these powerful descriptions of Harry's disgust... "lips like cold worms against his skin" ... "his breath stank of the grave" -- OMG, woman. Ugh! Double-ugh!

And here's my issue -- if Harry finds Draco THAT physically repellent, how are my two boys going to learn to get along??? I'm in despair. I know you said this fic was dark, but y'know, I thought you meant, dark for a while and then happily ever after.

I think it might just be DARK-dark, because I really can't see a good solution here.

Hence my despair...

Jordan


P.S. I love long novels so I've mostly read those from you, but last night, I went to ffnet and saved a BUNCH of your one-shots. Am now greedily working my way through them...

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Harry does find Draco that physically repellent- right now. And yet, he did experience pleasure at his hands in the Collector's tower, and didn't throw Draco off when Draco climbed on top of him after that. It depends a lot on how much of his blood Draco has drunk and what he feels towards Draco at the moment. His repulsion is actually more psychological than physical. Thus, it can change.

And, well, technically there's a tipping point in the next chapter. Though Harry doesn't recognize it as a tipping point at first.

And thank you!

[aubergineautumn.livejournal.com]

Research!Harry and Able-to-Deceive-Hermione!Harry are fascinating.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[yanagi-wa.livejournal.com]

I'd like to swat Harry, he needs to think more clearly. Draco, on the other hand, had better watch out. Great chapter. But the dark magic has me worried. Is our Harry about to do something stupid?

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And the short answer is: yes.

[allycat-aria.livejournal.com]

I was never fond of Dark!Harry because they never seem real to me. THIS Harry has changed my mind. He's a little bit twisted and a little bit mad. I like it!

I'm also really enjoying vampire!Draco.

[invincible-sum.livejournal.com]

Draco found himself making a crooning noise, high and sweet, rather like the piping of a baby bird when it was hungry.

Very nice! The scene between Hermione and Harry was very touching, even though Harry is still plotting behind his facade, and Draco's exuberant jaunt after kissing Harry was lovely. I'm pleased that at least Harry is back to trying to find an answer to his "problem," rather than just rolling around gnashing his teeth ;)