Chapter Three of 'Business Meetings'- After the Kill

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Two.

Title: Business Meetings (2/15 or 16)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, mentions of others
Rating: R
Warnings: Creature!fic, angst, violence, sex, ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Draco leads a powerful group of vampires. Harry is their Ministry-appointed negotiator. Cue a series of once-monthly meetings where Harry and Draco argue about the various virtues of attacking the Ministry versus holding back from doing so, and, eventually, other things.
Author's Notes: This is going to be a fic with very short chapters, probably close to 1000 words each. I'm not sure yet how long it will be, but probably 15 or 16 chapters.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—After the Kill

Draco could feel the rasp of dried blood beneath his fingernails as he sat down on the throne. He lifted his hand to his mouth and darted out his tongue to reach the flakes just as Potter came into the room.

For one moment, Draco felt the impulse to freeze, but he put it aside and lowered his hand to stare at Potter instead. Potter nodded to him and strode to his own chair, not smelling surprised or impressed or anything else that Draco would have expected him to. His eyes were narrow and glowing, his stride careless and sure. He flung himself into the chair with enough force to make it shake.

“You are not as happy to be here, this time,” Draco concluded, letting his tongue extend towards his nails again.

Potter didn’t seem to notice the remarkable length of a vampire’s tongue. Indeed, when Draco glanced at him again, he saw that he had his head leaning back, his busy hand rubbing at the nape of his neck. Draco saw the pulse, and had to look away. “No. You can fucking say that, Malfoy.” He didn’t bark when he laughed, he didn’t roar, but the intriguing sound he made was somewhere in between the two.

“Tell me,” Draco said, and finished cleaning the blood. Dried, it had a dusty taste, more like rust than iron, but his body still opened to welcome it, and he could feel his veins twitching in wonder and appreciation. “What happened?”

“The Ministry made another threat against your flock directly to me.” Potter made a sharp, disgusted noise and rocked his chair forwards until it grated and slid on the stone. “As if my agreeing to become your negotiator isn’t enough? What else do they want from me?”

“Perhaps,” Draco said, because he knew such tactics worked with Gryffindors, “you could consider what the threat would mean to us, instead of you.”

There was a pause, and Potter’s throat worked. Then, to Draco’s secret flaring of his nostrils, he dropped his arm and nodded. “There’s that. You’re right.” He focused on Draco then, and frowned. “Someone tried to strangle you?”

Potter’s sight was keener than Draco had thought, if he could make out the fading, silver-white bruises on the skin of Draco’s throat from that distance. He would remember that if he ever needed to kill him. “Tried to force me to my knees and drink from me,” he corrected Potter. “That would be what a vampire tries to do when he’s tired of being ruled and thinks he can claim his freedom.”

Potter’s throat worked again. Then he said, “I take it he’s dead?”

“Will you call killing a vampire murder when I do it, then?” Draco turned his hand and licked at an imaginary patch of blood on the heel of his palm, purely for Potter’s benefit. “An interesting definition of terms you have.”

“I’m thinking about how that death might affect the Ministry’s perception of your flock’s strength.”

Draco paused. Then he showed his fangs. “Potter,” he said, making his voice exquisite, lengthening the sounds and adding the death-croon that most only heard in the moments immediately before a vampire struck, “if you are about to suggest that the Ministry would easily take down my flock because they perceive it as weak, thanks to the death of a single member, then you should know your death would be the first.” He might not be able to take Potter by himself, but all he had to do was let the straining minds in the back of his own slip the leash.

Potter shook his head. His eyes were clear now, and he sat upright, and his scent filled Draco’s nostrils with the quiver of excitement that caused him to suppress his twitching. The sight of Potter so attentive filled a hunger in Draco older and deeper than the one for blood, one that made him feel human again.

“I mean that they might think they can,” Potter said. “And that you would have to kill someone then, and the Ministry might, again, start campaigning to simply eliminate the lot of you.”

Draco lifted his head and showed off the tips of his fangs this time, letting his lips descend over the rest. Potter was not the threat himself. “You have no idea how many vampires I command.”

“Sixty-five,” Potter said.

And there was no hesitation, and there was no hemming and hawing and pretending, and there was no sensation of Legilimency against the borders of his mind, which together were the negatives that made Draco flash down and into being before Potter’s chair, leaning over him, his fangs an inch above the top of Potter’s head.

Potter looked at him without moving, but there was a scent around him, like a brushfire smoldering, that told Draco he wouldn’t have to. He wondered, because he had to wonder, if he would taste Potter’s magic if he drank his blood.

“You will tell me,” Draco whispered. “You will tell me how you know that.”

“Sorry, but the way you enchant your victims doesn’t work on me,” Potter said, still staring at him with bright eyes.

Draco kept his mouth still. Otherwise, he probably would try to bite, for the pleasure of seeing those eyes glaze, Potter’s mouth fall open, his hands uncurl and his body slump back along the throne…

“And I’m a predator, just like you,” Potter continued quietly, “only one who seeks to protect, and not to hurt. I value both human and vampire lives, as long as they aren’t doing something that makes me aware they don’t value others. Step back, Malfoy. I’m only the messenger, not the enemy. The Ministry has a spy in your ranks, yes. Surely you have some inside the Ministry.”

Draco stepped back, moving his body but not his eyes. “I could attack tonight,” he said. “Not you, I would not kill you. But some of those who threaten me, I would.”

“I appreciate that for the gracious gesture it is,” Potter murmured. “Sparing someone who might be a danger is quite a gift, for a vampire.”

“I would not kill you because I want the knowledge,” Draco said. “Give me the name of the Ministry’s spy.”

Potter nodded. “In return, I want the name of the vampire you killed.”

Draco paused, but he doubted, in the end, that it mattered. The Ministry spy had probably already reported the incident where Draco had killed his challenger, along with the exact number of his kind in the flock. His throat grew hot, but he fought back the urge to lengthen his fangs, and inclined his head. “Duncan,” he said.

“Duncan,” Potter said.

It took Draco a moment to realize that Potter had not simply echoed him to fix the name in his memory. He took a step back and studied Potter in profile, committing the lines of nose and chin and lips to memory. Polyjuice could give a human the form of another’s face, but not the exact, small gestures and expressions of the kind that a vampire could notice. “You would swear to it?”

Potter laid his hand on his wand, but he had gone so slowly that Draco knew it was not meant as a threat. “I swear on my magic. Duncan was the Ministry spy as well as the one who challenged you. I reckon he thought he’d got away with the spying act for so long, he might as well take control of the flock, too.”

Draco nodded. He had noticed the changes in Duncan’s scent months ago, as well as the changes in the tremors of Duncan’s leash in his mind, but he had thought it merely indicated that his lieutenant was preparing to challenge him.

He had exiled himself from the human world after his death. It occurred to him, as it had done after each of Potter’s visits, that he needed to pay more attention to matters outside his flock. Not everything they did related solely to their own affairs, any more than the rising of the sun and moon was without effect on the world below.

“You won’t need to fear much retribution from the Ministry for now, I don’t think,” Potter said, standing. “They won’t dare attack without more exact information than they received from him—because he bargained with them to release it slowly, of course—and they can’t accuse of you murdering a Ministry ally when they would have to explain how they knew. If I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Strange,” Draco said.

Potter, about to leave the room, paused, but didn’t glance back. “What?”

“That you speak about the Ministry as if you were not part of them.”

Potter turned then and showed his teeth. Draco flashed his fangs back immediately, but of course Potter didn’t understand that as a vampire dominance gesture and therefore didn’t grasp the conflict he’d almost precipitated.

“Some of them don’t like me for my fame,” Potter said. “Some for my stubbornness, some for my blood, some for my refusal to be manipulated.”

“All of those are reasons that I would find to value you,” Draco murmured. “Especially your blood, oh yes.” He could imagine the way it would leap to life in his mouth, like a supernova.

Potter laughed this time and shook his head. “Well, you’ve at least reminded me there’s another kind of blood politics. I’ll keep that pun in mind the next time they’re discussing me as if they think half-bloods have hearing problems.” He raised his hand and turned away, walking through the dark as confidently as always.

Draco noticed a last brand of Duncan’s blood on his palm, and licked it off without taking his eyes from Potter’s turned back and steady steps.

All the while, he was imagining a different taste to the blood on his tongue, and not simply because this patch was dry.