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lomonaaerenTitle: Record It As a Victory
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Summary: There are several people missing, and no answers. Only a vampire in a silver cage, and the questions he asks.
Rating: R
Warning(s): Some angst, creature!fic (Draco is a vampire), elements of D/s
Word Count: 13,000
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my beta L., without whom I could not have done this. For corona_0304, in the Draco Tops Harry Fest, who prompted Harry capturing a vampire Draco during a missing persons case, a vampire Draco who only asks him questions instead of responding to them.
Record It As a Victory
Malfoy looked up when Harry stepped into the dungeon.
Harry locked one hand into a fist, and locked the fist against the wall as he locked the door itself with a flick of his wand. This was not a dungeon, he reminded himself irritably for at least the ninth time since he had captured Malfoy. This was a perfectly ordinary house in Hogsmeade that had been abandoned by its owner when he had to flee the country just ahead of people interested in collecting on the Galleons he owed. The Aurors had taken it over after the Ministry auction and used it now as a safehouse. And sometimes for other things. Harry had chosen this cellar because it had stone walls and wards that even a vampire would have a hard time dismantling.
It wasn’t a dungeon. Even if some streaks of dampness on the walls, and moss here and there in the cracks of the stones, kind of made it look like one.
Harry whistled out an irritated breath, and approached the cage. It was made of pure silver, and he checked the bars, avoiding Malfoy’s gaze. He wished that vampires still breathed, which was something he’d wished for about as often as he’d called this place a dungeon. It would make it more tolerable if Malfoy breathed, shifted around, cursed Harry, called him an idiot, tried to bargain for his freedom, did something that was normal for a prisoner. Harry was an experienced Auror now. He’d had his share of prisoners under control, sometimes for days and nights in an isolated place until help could reach him.
All Malfoy did was sit and stare, and sometimes respond to Harry’s questions. Not with answers, of course not, Harry thought, pulling back and returning scowl for stare. Not with anything as normal as that.
“You know,” Harry began, the way he usually did, “I’m a better choice for your confession than the majority of other Aurors would be. There’s no way that most of them would believe you didn’t really have anything to do with the crimes, when all those missing people were last seen in your company before they disappeared. They’d leap to conclusions. Conclusions based on the way you drink blood, and based on—” he let his eyes turn to Malfoy’s left arm “—that.”
The Dark Mark hadn’t disappeared with Malfoy’s transformation into a vampire, even though Harry had thought it natural that it would. Instead, it still remained, like a brand on a unicorn’s silky white flesh. Harry knew from experience that Malfoy’s arms still retained a brutal strength, though, that that silky skin overlay muscles. He’d had a brief, fierce struggle with him before he found himself holding his wand to Malfoy’s throat and Malfoy sprawled on the ground beneath him, raising his hands slowly for the sky.
He’d smiled, then, the way he was now, revealing his fangs. Harry squinted at him, and tried to pretend that he couldn’t see his reflection in those glittering teeth.
“Don’t you care about what happens to you?” Harry tried. “I took you and kept you safe because I think there are people in the Ministry who would condemn you without a trial. But we’re going to need answers eventually, you know. I’m already breaking all sorts of rules by holding you here.”
“Who would have believed that you would break rules?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry felt a shiver invade his limbs, and tried to shake them back into stillness and normality. Malfoy’s voice was one thing that had changed with his transformation. Malfoy had acquired a sonorous, bell-like tone, clear, but so deep that it seemed like it might be hoarse until you listened closely.
Harry knew what happened to people who listened to vampires too closely, though. They ended up like Braxton Brewer, or Julia Stone, or Robert Tedrin. All those people who had last been seen in Malfoy’s company, and then had vanished. All those people Harry had taken Malfoy to find.
They’re more important than all the rules I’m breaking, Harry reminded himself, and met Malfoy’s gaze squarely. “You know that I can keep you down here until you start starving to death,” he said.
Malfoy gave what Harry thought was a laugh, but it made no sound. It just caused his throat to flutter oddly. It was something he’d done before, and it never failed to irritate the piss out of Harry. People ought to laugh aloud, even if they had become blood-sucking creatures of the night.
“You expect me to believe that the noble Harry Potter would let anyone starve to death?” Malfoy clasped his hands piously beneath his chin. “Do you know that little of me?”
Harry took a step back. Malfoy’s eyes were still grey, but more piercing, of a kind with all the other disturbing changes that had become part of him.
“I wouldn’t let you starve, fine, you found me out,” he said. “At the point where you start getting hungry, I’ll just turn you over to the Ministry and see what they think of an unregistered vampire running around.”
Malfoy seemed to half-sit up, but the next instant, he had slumped back into that eerie stillness. “Would you do that?” he whispered. “Would you?”
“You tell me, since you’re so good at predicting humans,” Harry snarled at him, and stomped out, slamming the door of the dungeon behind him.
Cellar, it’s a cellar, Harry reminded himself again, and climbed the stairs. It was almost time for his daily firecall from Ron. Harry kept reassuring Ron that he was all right, but that he needed all this time in the field to hunt down the vampire who had made those people vanish—and in fact, that was true. Harry had gone into the case only knowing it was a vampire, based on the reports of witnesses. He had been beyond astonished to find that Malfoy was both a vampire and implicated. He had thought Draco Malfoy had gone abroad with his parents years ago, and was living quietly somewhere in the middle of France right now.
He had Malfoy, but he was still hunting the vampire. Either it was a separate beast from Malfoy, it was the thing that wouldn’t answer Harry’s questions and kept throwing irritating rhetorical questions at him in return, or there was a whole murder of vampires involved. Harry had thought that from the beginning. The disappearances were so sudden, so complete, and had happened to people who were known to be skilled with their wands and wary from either war experience or experience in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. One vampire working alone couldn’t have taken them by surprise. Malfoy had a murder somewhere, a group of vampires working together.
And he was going to tell Harry where they were and what they were doing with these people. Or he would tell the Ministry interrogators.
*
“Do you ever get tired of flaunting yourself?”
Harry scowled at Malfoy again as he stepped into the cellar room and shut the door behind him. He’d waited a day and a half since his last visit, hoping that the extra time to get thirsty would soften Malfoy up. And he had brought some psychological warfare with him, in the form of a glass of water he was planning to sip from ostentatiously while he questioned Malfoy.
Because he had to be contradictory to expectations even when he was a vampire, though, Malfoy was sitting up in his cage, and smiled when he saw Harry. And he was the one who had asked that question, instead of Harry, who should have had the right.
“It seems to me that you would be the expert on that,” Harry said, knowing the retort was weak, and that he should be the one winning answers. But sometimes you had to get a little in order to give. He conjured a chair—he had practiced that spell on dust in this house until he could manage it with ease, and wouldn’t look strained—and sat down in it to take his first sip of water. “Now. What happened to Braxton Brewer?”
Malfoy leaned back with his arms around his knees again. His body seemed more flexible than any human body Harry had ever seen, able to bend in more directions. He watched Harry with a calm, alert gaze, now and then tilting his head up and down as if he wanted to sweep the whole of Harry’s body with his eyes.
But he didn’t answer. Harry gritted his teeth, took one more sip of water, and set the glass aside. Malfoy’s eyes didn’t even follow it. Trying to use that to stimulate his thirst and make him confess faster wouldn’t work, then. Time to step up matters and try something else.
Harry took his time rolling his left sleeve back, the adjustments so slow that he thought Malfoy might not know what he was doing. Then he slid his wand against his wrist and whispered, “Diffindo.”
He’d practiced that spell, too, in the last few years, when he’d had to cut through all sorts of ropes and chains that criminals used, and sometimes his own constricting robes when he fell into a pit trap or a water one. Skin was nothing next to the tougher materials. It parted almost without pain, and a thin trickle of blood began to leak down his arm.
Harry turned his wrist to face Malfoy. Malfoy’s nostrils flared, but they were the only things on his whole body that moved. He didn’t even show his fangs in a smile the way he’d been doing to Harry only the other day.
Disappointed, Harry stood up and circled around to the side of the cage. At least he was rewarded with the slow, almost mechanical turn of Malfoy’s head. But Malfoy still looked infuriatingly polite and still, as though he was indulging Harry’s tricks because it pleased him to do so.
Harry leaned forwards, thrusting his arm back and forth so that the still air in the cellar would carry the scent of blood to Malfoy. This time, Malfoy lifted his lips. It was hard to tell whether he was showing those shiny fangs in a smile or not, though.
“You know that I might be willing to give you my blood if you answered some of my questions,” Harry murmured, lowering his eyelids. He knew he wasn’t the best at flirtation, but he had learned from a few of his lovers that he could look innocent, seductive, or tempting if he wanted to. And it had to be easier to tempt Malfoy than a similar human being, because he wanted Harry’s blood before he wanted anything else. Harry didn’t have to be easy on the eyes or accommodating in behavior or even famous. He just had to have blood running in his veins.
Or down my skin, he corrected himself as he watched Malfoy shift a little closer. His nostrils were wide open, and he was sniffing almost continually. In a moment, he gave up even the pretense of stillness and came forwards to lock his hands on the bars of the cage, swaying as he leaned in.
Harry twisted his arm encouragingly.
Malfoy looked up at him, and his mouth twitched. Then he took a step back from the bars, and resumed his position in the center of the cage, folding up again like a giant spider. As Harry watched in disbelief, he arranged himself so that he was facing Harry but otherwise might not have moved. He did show a bit of fang in what could have been an amused smile, though, so Harry reckoned he had to think of that as a victory.
“Do you want it at all?” Harry countered. His voice was scratchy, which he hadn’t expected. He sounded as if he was the one who had been talking, confessing, for a long time. Roughly, he sealed the wound on his arm with a sharp charm, wincing a little as he did it. That was considerably more painful than he had thought it would be.
“Do all vampires want blood?” Malfoy did move now, as if he was more comfortable with the temptation of food gone from the room, sinking his chin onto a palm gaping wide to receive it. His eyes didn’t move from Harry’s face. They were wide and curious. “Or are we more complex creatures than that, desiring more, capable of being something other than ravenous beasts?”
“I don’t fucking care what you are,” Harry told him. That wasn’t true, because knowing which of those categories Malfoy fit into would have helped his investigation, but he’d had enough of the vampire’s damn rhetorical questions. “I know that you were involved in the disappearances of at least three people, but I don’t think you could have acted alone. I’m trying to give you a chance to turn in your partners and escape harsh punishment. I’m trying to help you here!”
Malfoy tilted his head to the side a minute amount. It was a curious gesture, Harry thought, unlike anything else Malfoy had done so far. He held his breath.
“Do you think this is help?” Malfoy asked, and gestured at the cage around him.
Harry made sure to slam the door behind him as he went out. At least it was a heavy door, good for making noise with if nothing else.
*
“I don’t know what to do, Ron.” Harry leaned back in his chair and rested his booted feet on the stool in front of him, regarding them gloomily. It felt good to be able to vent his frustration to Ron, even though he wasn’t telling Ron all the truth. Ron thought he was hunting down a slippery murder of vampires who took every opportunity to vanish. He didn’t know about Malfoy being in the cellar.
Good. I thought of it as the cellar, and not the dungeon.
Harry was so pleased with himself that he almost missed Ron’s next question. He shook his head and sat up a little. “What?”
“Did one of them bite you?” Ron nodded at his arm. “It looks like you had a gash there and didn’t manage to heal it.” He gave Harry a chiding look. Both he and Hermione were prone to tease Harry about his incompetence with basic Healing charms. Harry had insisted that he was just better with defensive magic, but according to both Ron and Hermione, Healing was part of self-defense, so he ought to have managed better.
“Oh.” Harry looked down at the faint line from the cut on his arm and shook his head. “I scraped it against a door when I was running after one of them, and I had to heal it quickly, before the smell of blood attracted them. Or the bleeding slowed me down,” he added, because Ron looked a little skeptical.
“Huh. Well, you could let Hermione come over and heal it.”
Harry was glad that Ron sounded resigned to Harry not letting her do that; otherwise, Harry might have started quietly panicking. Hermione was just too smart. If she came into this house and looked around, Harry thought she might guess he had a captive vampire downstairs from some stray spot of dust in the corner. And then he would be in so much trouble that having Malfoy escape from the cage and rip out his throat would look mild in comparison.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll try another charm on it later. You know I can usually manage if I rest before I try one.”
“All right.” Ron considered him slowly. “Are you sure that you want to be alone on this case? It might be better to bring in some more Aurors.”
Harry considered that for one bare second before he rejected the notion. Malfoy was enough trouble with just Harry in the house. He could manage to charm someone else, someone who wasn’t as aware of his dark past as Harry was, and there went all of Harry’s attempts to keep the secret safe. “No. Like I said, the Aurors who wandered around after Brewer was declared missing caused more harm than good. You don’t send a whole bunch of Crups tracking your prey when want you want is a cat.”
“First time I heard you make that comparison, mate.” Ron grinned at him, but there was a shadow in his eyes that Harry could see well enough. “Just take care that some bigger predator doesn’t jump on you first.”
Harry was able to smile sourly, thinking of the way Malfoy had at least been attracted by the blood on his arm, if not enough to launch himself forwards through the cage bars. “Too bad for them, if it turns out I have claws.”
*
“Potter.”
Harry picked himself up slowly. His head hurt, and he felt dizzy and half-numb. Had Malfoy thrown him back from the cage bars? It was the only thing Harry could think of that might make him feel this way, but he didn’t remember it, if it had happened.
When he turned around, though, they weren’t in the dungeon-cellar and in front of the silver cage at all. He lay on a thick red rug that covered most of an enormous, polished wood floor. Somewhere behind him, a fire flickered softly on a stone hearth. The only furniture in sight was the red couch, the same dusky color as the rug.
And seated on the couch, legs folded beneath him and hands in his lap, was Malfoy.
Harry snatched up his wand, his heart hammering. Any lump he might have on the back of his head, or any broken ribs, ceased to exist. He’d fought under extreme pain before, and he was going to do whatever he had to, to make sure that Malfoy didn’t harm him.
Malfoy made no move to do so, though. When Harry squinted at him, wondering if this was a new trick, he saw faint, very faint, cage bars in front of him. They seemed to be made of smoke and darkness, wavering back and forth in the air stirred by the fire’s flames.
“Malfoy?” Harry asked at last. He was starting to feel dizzier than he had when he first woke up. Where was this place?
“Potter,” Malfoy said again, with enough of a curl to his lips that Harry was sure it amused him. He leaned forwards, to the point where Harry waited hopefully for him to unbalance on the couch and crash to the floor, but it didn’t happen. His eyes were odd, shadowy, as if the fire couldn’t touch them. “What do you want most in your life?”
“You imprisoned and dead,” Harry said. Then he hesitated. No, he couldn’t want that, or he would have handed Malfoy over to the Ministry already, wouldn’t he? “No, I mean, I want the names of the vampires you were working with. Who were they?”
Malfoy remained still. More still than anyone human could, Harry thought, staring openly. Humans had their heartbeats to rock them back and forth even when they thought they were being perfectly still. He’d seen it.
“If you could only have one thing at the moment, contained in this room,” Malfoy said after a dreamy pause, “what would it be?”
Harry stared around. There didn’t seem to be any change in the room no matter how long he looked, though. Still the same rug, and fire, and couch, and Malfoy. The walls loomed up beyond the end of the rug, distant and dim. He couldn’t see a door.
“My wand,” he said finally, and held it close to him. “Since I have it, I don’t want anything else.”
He thought that might make the dream end, or Malfoy hiss and rush him. But instead, Malfoy draped himself over the couch like a boneless snake and studied Harry as if he had suddenly become interesting. Harry tightened his hands.
This was a dream, it had to be. He wondered if other vampires in Malfoy’s murder could do this. Harry had never heard of it as a vampire ability, but there were some books he’d read that said individual groups of vampires could grow abilities in common with each other. This might be one of those.
And he wondered if this was how the other disappearances had started, with Malfoy contacting those Aurors or other Ministry workers in their dreams and promising them something wonderful.
“You didn’t make an interesting choice,” Malfoy said. “I thought you would make one that was more interesting.” He was silent for a moment, rubbing his finger along his fangs, and Harry resisted the impulse to say something. Because the impulse felt oddly like he wanted to apologize to Malfoy, and even in a dream, that was weird.
“I think,” Malfoy began, after a moment, “that I want to know something else. What are you drawn to? What do you desire?”
“To solve this mystery and go home.” Harry had no idea what Malfoy was getting at. Harry had told him that every time he went into the cellar and Malfoy was there. Did Malfoy think he was lying or something? Or was he sure that Harry was because Harry hadn’t yet handed Malfoy over to the more skilled interrogators at the Ministry?
“What kind of person do you desire?” Malfoy’s voice had become like the crackling of the fire, blending with it, so that Harry heard only one sound instead of two. He realized that he was breathing slowly in and out, in time with that crackling, and stopped, appalled. That really did seem like the kind of thing that would allow Malfoy to gain control of him through a dream.
“Not the kind you are,” Harry said.
Malfoy made a little discontented noise and shifted his position on the couch as if a spring was poking into his royal arse. “Another uninteresting answer. Let us try one more time. What do you think of in your secret dreams, the ones that only you can see, the ones that take place in the innermost heart?”
And before Harry could stop himself, he was thinking of it, of those dreams, the images playing before him bright and vivid. As much as they were images, anyway. They were mostly sensations, the sensation of someone on top of him, sinking into him, sometimes blending with his strength, filling him with warmth.
He had woken from those dreams before wrestling with a blanket, trying in vain to get from it the heat and the feeling of being pinned that he needed, and always, always disappointed.
“That’s much better,” Malfoy whispered, and Harry was sure that he had seen the images. Yes, this had to be a power that his murder had. “And what else do you dream of? Why haven’t you been able to find someone who can do that for you?”
Harry, his face burning with humiliation, told himself that this had been worth it, even if Malfoy now knew some of his strangest fantasies, for the knowledge he had gained in return. Yes, Malfoy and his murder were preying on people through their dreams, and this was one of the ways they did it.
If this is a dream, I ought to be able to fight it. To wake up now that I know it’s not real.
He lunged out with his mind, pushing as hard as he could. He saw Malfoy’s eyes shine for a second with what could have been surprise, and then the colors of flame and pallor, fire and vampire skin, dissolved.
*
Harry sat up in his own bed, breathing hard and looking around his bedroom. Then he seized his robes and his wand and ran towards the cellars.
When he stepped through the heavy door that barred the way to Malfoy’s room, Malfoy lifted his head from within the cage and regarded him. He had started to lean against the bars now, ignoring the hum of magic at his back, Harry saw. Good. That meant he was losing strength.
Malfoy drew himself up and blinked. Harry blinked back, while prowling slowly around the cage to make sure that the wards and the spells he had cast to make the bars sturdy still held. He couldn’t see anything that was cracked or weak. Malfoy hadn’t broken a ward to reach out with his dream-reading power, then.
In a way, that only made him scarier, but it also meant that Harry thought he was closer to solving the case. If Malfoy wouldn’t cooperate with him, Harry really would just take him to the Ministry, and hunt down the rest of his murder using the clues he already had.
“What are you thinking?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry turned around sharply. Malfoy’s voice was too close to what it had been in his dream: drifting, soft, as if he could coax Harry into making an answer if he just kept on like this. He thought he would wear Harry down.
Well, he had done it in the dream, hadn’t he? Harry had answered at least a few of his questions. Harry could feel his cheeks burn when he remembered it.
“You can tell me,” Malfoy said, leaning one hand on the bars of his cage and then opening it there, as if he wanted Harry to reach through the bars and take it. His fingers opened like the petals of some obscene orchid.
Harry stared at it until he realized he was staring. Then he jerked his eyes away and turned around to leave the room. He had been wrong about thinking there would be clues here that would tell him how Malfoy had done it. He was better off going up and firecalling Ron, telling him that he had one of the vampires captive, and then searching for more signs of the murder.
“Wait.”
Harry turned around and folded his arms. “Have some information that you’d like to give me, Malfoy?” he asked. “Finally? You think that you’ll put me off my duty by talking to me in my dreams?” He saw no reason to conceal the fact. After all, Malfoy knew he had been there, and Harry knew. The way he had spoken just now was proof of that.
Malfoy only shook his head, eyes intense and bright as he scanned Harry. Despite the lack of response to his question in words, Harry had to admit he was interested enough to linger. This was the closest Malfoy had come to involving himself in the interrogation, instead of sitting back and letting Harry’s words roll off him.
“I have a question about the dream,” Malfoy whispered. “Tell me and I might answer some of yours.”
Harry sniffed. He didn’t like the way all the information was flowing from him to Malfoy instead of the other way around. He knew the Aurors who had taught him interrogation in the Ministry would be worse than disapproving, would be disturbed that Malfoy had got away with as much as he had. But he had the chance for a good bargain, and it would be stupid to let past deeds or past dislike of Malfoy trick him out of that.
“Fine,” he said, when the silence told him that Malfoy wanted a verbal reply, too. “Tell me what you want to know.”
Malfoy arched his back and rubbed his cheek against the bars as though he was a cat. “What baffled you more in your dream,” he whispered, “that you couldn’t answer my question about the person you desired, or that the person you desired was right there in the room with you?”
Harry froze and stared at him. It made no sense, but if it made no sense, he also knew that it shouldn’t have made his heart feel as if it was humming in his ears.
Malfoy lifted his hands and held them quietly forth, not on the bars, but near them, as if willing Harry to look at them.
And Harry did, with his head full of the dream and the way both he and Malfoy had behaved in it, and he remembered. Remembered those stupid images that he had shown Malfoy when he asked, for no better reason than that he had asked.
He knew those hands could hold him down the way he desired. He knew that Malfoy’s body, lean but stripped of everything that wasn’t strength, could lie on top of him and pin him to the bed the way he wanted.
Then Harry flicked his head, and tore himself free of the spell—probably another form of magic that Malfoy’s murder could practice. No. That might promise to fulfill part of his fantasies, but it could never fulfill all of them. For one thing, Malfoy’s body was cold, and he couldn’t give Harry that warmth he craved.
For another, he was a vampire, and Harry’s suspect, and while Harry knew that he broke the rules and did things he wasn’t supposed to and in general was a plague upon his superiors, he really didn’t think that he would ever stoop to fucking a suspect in a murder case. Or at least a disappearance case. Harry hadn’t found any evidence of murders, but he hadn’t found a lot of evidence of anything, really.
He opened his eyes and found that he was still standing there, that he hadn’t moved away from Malfoy’s ridiculous offer.
No, not even that. Malfoy was enjoying showing off his power over Harry, but that didn’t mean he would ever go through with it even if he was free. He would probably tear out Harry’s throat and leave.
Harry turned and marched deliberately out of the cellars, slamming the door behind him.
*
“I didn’t enjoy it when you ran away from me, you know.”
Harry opened his eyes to white stone, this time. He seemed to be standing in the Great Hall of a castle a lot like Hogwarts, but everything in sight was made of pale marble, and there was a shifting rainbow of soft colors on the ceiling of instead of a proper imitation of the sky. It made him feel sick and dizzy.
He refused to turn around and face Malfoy. From the sound of his voice, he was a distance behind Harry. There was no furniture in sight, so he was probably standing.
Then Harry sneered at himself. In the last dream, he had been lying on the floor, but Malfoy had had his right regal arse perched on a couch. So this time, he was probably in a throne and looking down on Harry.
Harry reached out and began the process of waking up from this dream, the same way he had woken up from the last one. He didn’t need to stay here longer and listen to the temptations and threats of a vampire who had nothing to give him anyway. First thing tomorrow, he would march Malfoy into the Ministry and confess everything.
“Wait.”
The voice seemed to ring in the marble castle in a way it hadn’t in the dark red room. Harry did find himself pausing and turning around. He was curious why Malfoy had chosen this setting instead of the last one. Had he gone from wanting to seduce Harry to wanting to crush him and overawe him?
Malfoy wasn’t sitting in a throne, though. He was standing on his own two feet, his eyes locked on Harry. No, on his throat, Harry decided. Malfoy swayed slightly back and forth, as if he was no longer used to supporting his own weight without the pressure of cage bars.
“Did you misunderstand what I was offering you?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry only shook his head, wordless. He had no idea what Malfoy was going on about now, and his hopes of getting an answer to his questions were sinking bit by bit. He really should have accepted that Malfoy was lying to get a meal in the first place and hoping to lure Harry close enough to the cage that he could bite.
What would happen if Malfoy bit him in a dream?
The thought was so disturbing that Harry again pressed outwards with his will, trying to shatter the images and wake up.
“Stop.”
The walls of the dream firmed, and Harry realized he was still standing inside it. He brought up his wand on instinct, panting hard enough that his body shook. That should not be happening. He had been resisting Malfoy, and he hadn’t taken any of his gifts or listened to him. Why should Malfoy’s power over him be stronger now in dreams than it had been the last time when Harry rebelled?
Then Harry felt a flush invade his face as Malfoy took a step towards him. Perhaps he was listening more than he realized. Perhaps he wanted what Malfoy was trying to give him more than he’d realized.
That made him want to kill Malfoy, to hurt him. He aimed his wand at Malfoy before he realized what he was doing. He didn’t know if he could hurt him in these dreams, any more than he knew if Malfoy could bite him, but it seemed that there weren’t any cage bars between them this time and Harry thought he was the one far more likely to get hurt.
“Harry.”
Harry was getting tired of feeling as though someone was stabbing him with lightning bolts. Just because he had one on his forehead didn’t mean that he enjoyed the sensation. He shook his head and said the first thing that came to mind. “You don’t get to talk about me like we’re friends. You must know we’re not.”
Malfoy studied him for long enough that Harry tried to break out of the dream again. But Malfoy’s strengthened barriers still seemed to hold, and Harry cursed softly as he crashed back into the marble hall.
“I think we should go somewhere more comfortable,” Malfoy said at last, and raised his hand, spreading his fingers and fluttering them.
The air tore open where he touched, and color and warmth leaked out. Harry assumed that he would find himself back in the dusky red room where he had spoken with Malfoy before, but instead, he stood in a bedroom colored green and silver. The bedsheets were sparkling green, the pillows silver, and there was a bloody Slytherin banner on the wall. Harry snorted and crossed his arms. “Do you think you’re going to intimidate me because you brought me to your old bedroom in the dungeons? You’re mental.”
And that was true, as far as it went. Harry was intimidated for other reasons already. The appearance of the room didn’t add anything to it.
Malfoy merely smiled at him and turned his back to Harry, walking towards the bed. “This isn’t a place where I have been,” he said. “Only a place that I would like to be.” He placed his pale hand against the sheets, and Harry couldn’t look away from the way it shone there, like a dazzling star.
Malfoy turned around and sat down, focusing on him, and the effect was suddenly even stronger. Harry heard a soft, hoarse noise, wondered for a second if Malfoy had someone else hidden here who would ambush him, and then started. It was his own breathing.
“Would you like to be over here with me, Harry?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry scanned his face rapidly. Then he forced himself to do it again. Now that he looked, smoky bars of darkness still floated between him and Malfoy.
The relief made him dizzy. Malfoy was still locked behind the wards and spells that Harry had impregnated in the bars of the cage. Harry was safe, at least from the kind of idiocy Malfoy was trying to perpetrate on him.
“I don’t want to, no,” Harry said casually. “Because then you would probably bite me and drink from me, and I don’t want that.”
His words made the light in Malfoy’s eyes flare, and Harry had to look away, and it was a wrench. He really, really wished that he hadn’t said that.
Not so much because of Malfoy, really, but because of himself. Because now the image was in his head, trembling, like a bit of paper blown by the wind. Because now his breath was coming all short and ragged, and it was already loud, and Malfoy would probably think that he was a careless prey animal any vampire could run down.
“Your fantasies can confuse me,” Malfoy said. Harry saw a stir from the corner of his eye that might be Malfoy crossing his legs, folding his arms, but he refused to look at him and be caught again. “I will ask you another question. Answer it honestly.”
Harry’s mind seemed to hum. Malfoy might have strung a wire between his ears, one that would thrum when thoughts traveled along it. And Harry decided, with a sinking feeling, that Malfoy might be able to affect his mind in the dreams, of not his body.
“Would you like me to bite you?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry’s hands drove into his arms, pitting his skin with the marks of his fists. He had seen, both on this investigation and on another involving vampires, the marks that a vampire’s fangs left. They looked painful. But the victims who had gone willingly always insisted that it wasn’t, or only at first, and that it was the pleasure that kept them still and tilting their heads, the lassitude, the sensuous feeling of being wanted intensely for something no one else could provide.
I don’t think like this. This is Malfoy thinking like this, and not me.
A vampire could put him at the center of its world. A vampire could hold him there without effort, and the warmth could come in time.
I am not thinking like this, Harry decided, and threw his mind against the barriers of the dream again.
Maybe because Malfoy was distracted, this time they parted, like veils, and let him through. Harry escaped to the outside, telling himself that he didn’t hear the whisper that traveled with him, either, soft and forgiving and relentless.
Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry. I would like to taste you.
*
Harry bounced out of bed, his skin more slick with sweat than it had been the last time, panting. He spun around the room, his wand in his fist, and scanned all the corners for signs of a broken ward or some intruder. Maybe Malfoy could get out of the cage any time he wanted and was just playing with Harry, making the bars appear in the dream to make Harry think he was safe. Harry had heard of vampires with feline tempers like that.
But there was nothing. Only his bedroom, calm and empty and boring. Harry collapsed into the middle of his bed and put his head into his hands.
The thrumming in his head had started up again, although he was sure that Malfoy wasn’t anywhere near him. This time, the words traveling along it were the command that Malfoy had given him as he was escaping from the edge of his dream.
Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry.
Harry shuddered. If he went down to the cellars now, it would seem like he was obeying the command, and that was the last impression that he wanted to give Malfoy. On the other hand, if he didn’t go down, he might miss a vital clue as to how Malfoy was doing this. This dream had been deeper than the last one, more intense. Malfoy might be weaker from sending it, and let something slip.
Then Harry shivered and let his hands fall away from his face.
He had done what Malfoy wanted for the last little while, hadn’t he? He’d stopped trying to leave the dream when Malfoy ordered him to, for instance. It had been subtle enough that he hadn’t noticed the first time, hadn’t connected it to Malfoy’s orders, but had come up with excuses of his own for it.
The thing was…
Harry’s throat quivered, and he turned his head. He almost felt that Ron was in the next room and would stare at him through the wall, judging him.
But he was alone, quite alone, except for the thrumming thought in his head and the vampire in the cellars below.
The thing was, Harry had never given in easily. He had resisted Voldemort’s commands and his threats on Harry’s life. He had chosen to come back when he could have stayed in death, in King’s Cross Station. He had resisted the Imperius Curse and the attraction of Veela. He had been a fighter all his life. He didn’t do well against Legilimency most of the time, but he’d fought back against Snape and even got into the git’s head once.
So this impulse to surrender and do what Malfoy wanted made no sense. At least, it made no sense if Malfoy was conquering his will. Unless the vampire powers that Malfoy’s murder had were different from all the other ones that Harry had ever heard of.
Harry bounced to his feet, and strode to the door. He would obey the order throbbing in his mind right now. And then he would either get answers, or he would do something else that he thought Malfoy wouldn’t like.
Of course, his threats hadn’t been very effective so far. But he thought he understood better what Malfoy was after, now.
*
Part Two.
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Summary: There are several people missing, and no answers. Only a vampire in a silver cage, and the questions he asks.
Rating: R
Warning(s): Some angst, creature!fic (Draco is a vampire), elements of D/s
Word Count: 13,000
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my beta L., without whom I could not have done this. For corona_0304, in the Draco Tops Harry Fest, who prompted Harry capturing a vampire Draco during a missing persons case, a vampire Draco who only asks him questions instead of responding to them.
Record It As a Victory
Malfoy looked up when Harry stepped into the dungeon.
Harry locked one hand into a fist, and locked the fist against the wall as he locked the door itself with a flick of his wand. This was not a dungeon, he reminded himself irritably for at least the ninth time since he had captured Malfoy. This was a perfectly ordinary house in Hogsmeade that had been abandoned by its owner when he had to flee the country just ahead of people interested in collecting on the Galleons he owed. The Aurors had taken it over after the Ministry auction and used it now as a safehouse. And sometimes for other things. Harry had chosen this cellar because it had stone walls and wards that even a vampire would have a hard time dismantling.
It wasn’t a dungeon. Even if some streaks of dampness on the walls, and moss here and there in the cracks of the stones, kind of made it look like one.
Harry whistled out an irritated breath, and approached the cage. It was made of pure silver, and he checked the bars, avoiding Malfoy’s gaze. He wished that vampires still breathed, which was something he’d wished for about as often as he’d called this place a dungeon. It would make it more tolerable if Malfoy breathed, shifted around, cursed Harry, called him an idiot, tried to bargain for his freedom, did something that was normal for a prisoner. Harry was an experienced Auror now. He’d had his share of prisoners under control, sometimes for days and nights in an isolated place until help could reach him.
All Malfoy did was sit and stare, and sometimes respond to Harry’s questions. Not with answers, of course not, Harry thought, pulling back and returning scowl for stare. Not with anything as normal as that.
“You know,” Harry began, the way he usually did, “I’m a better choice for your confession than the majority of other Aurors would be. There’s no way that most of them would believe you didn’t really have anything to do with the crimes, when all those missing people were last seen in your company before they disappeared. They’d leap to conclusions. Conclusions based on the way you drink blood, and based on—” he let his eyes turn to Malfoy’s left arm “—that.”
The Dark Mark hadn’t disappeared with Malfoy’s transformation into a vampire, even though Harry had thought it natural that it would. Instead, it still remained, like a brand on a unicorn’s silky white flesh. Harry knew from experience that Malfoy’s arms still retained a brutal strength, though, that that silky skin overlay muscles. He’d had a brief, fierce struggle with him before he found himself holding his wand to Malfoy’s throat and Malfoy sprawled on the ground beneath him, raising his hands slowly for the sky.
He’d smiled, then, the way he was now, revealing his fangs. Harry squinted at him, and tried to pretend that he couldn’t see his reflection in those glittering teeth.
“Don’t you care about what happens to you?” Harry tried. “I took you and kept you safe because I think there are people in the Ministry who would condemn you without a trial. But we’re going to need answers eventually, you know. I’m already breaking all sorts of rules by holding you here.”
“Who would have believed that you would break rules?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry felt a shiver invade his limbs, and tried to shake them back into stillness and normality. Malfoy’s voice was one thing that had changed with his transformation. Malfoy had acquired a sonorous, bell-like tone, clear, but so deep that it seemed like it might be hoarse until you listened closely.
Harry knew what happened to people who listened to vampires too closely, though. They ended up like Braxton Brewer, or Julia Stone, or Robert Tedrin. All those people who had last been seen in Malfoy’s company, and then had vanished. All those people Harry had taken Malfoy to find.
They’re more important than all the rules I’m breaking, Harry reminded himself, and met Malfoy’s gaze squarely. “You know that I can keep you down here until you start starving to death,” he said.
Malfoy gave what Harry thought was a laugh, but it made no sound. It just caused his throat to flutter oddly. It was something he’d done before, and it never failed to irritate the piss out of Harry. People ought to laugh aloud, even if they had become blood-sucking creatures of the night.
“You expect me to believe that the noble Harry Potter would let anyone starve to death?” Malfoy clasped his hands piously beneath his chin. “Do you know that little of me?”
Harry took a step back. Malfoy’s eyes were still grey, but more piercing, of a kind with all the other disturbing changes that had become part of him.
“I wouldn’t let you starve, fine, you found me out,” he said. “At the point where you start getting hungry, I’ll just turn you over to the Ministry and see what they think of an unregistered vampire running around.”
Malfoy seemed to half-sit up, but the next instant, he had slumped back into that eerie stillness. “Would you do that?” he whispered. “Would you?”
“You tell me, since you’re so good at predicting humans,” Harry snarled at him, and stomped out, slamming the door of the dungeon behind him.
Cellar, it’s a cellar, Harry reminded himself again, and climbed the stairs. It was almost time for his daily firecall from Ron. Harry kept reassuring Ron that he was all right, but that he needed all this time in the field to hunt down the vampire who had made those people vanish—and in fact, that was true. Harry had gone into the case only knowing it was a vampire, based on the reports of witnesses. He had been beyond astonished to find that Malfoy was both a vampire and implicated. He had thought Draco Malfoy had gone abroad with his parents years ago, and was living quietly somewhere in the middle of France right now.
He had Malfoy, but he was still hunting the vampire. Either it was a separate beast from Malfoy, it was the thing that wouldn’t answer Harry’s questions and kept throwing irritating rhetorical questions at him in return, or there was a whole murder of vampires involved. Harry had thought that from the beginning. The disappearances were so sudden, so complete, and had happened to people who were known to be skilled with their wands and wary from either war experience or experience in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. One vampire working alone couldn’t have taken them by surprise. Malfoy had a murder somewhere, a group of vampires working together.
And he was going to tell Harry where they were and what they were doing with these people. Or he would tell the Ministry interrogators.
*
“Do you ever get tired of flaunting yourself?”
Harry scowled at Malfoy again as he stepped into the cellar room and shut the door behind him. He’d waited a day and a half since his last visit, hoping that the extra time to get thirsty would soften Malfoy up. And he had brought some psychological warfare with him, in the form of a glass of water he was planning to sip from ostentatiously while he questioned Malfoy.
Because he had to be contradictory to expectations even when he was a vampire, though, Malfoy was sitting up in his cage, and smiled when he saw Harry. And he was the one who had asked that question, instead of Harry, who should have had the right.
“It seems to me that you would be the expert on that,” Harry said, knowing the retort was weak, and that he should be the one winning answers. But sometimes you had to get a little in order to give. He conjured a chair—he had practiced that spell on dust in this house until he could manage it with ease, and wouldn’t look strained—and sat down in it to take his first sip of water. “Now. What happened to Braxton Brewer?”
Malfoy leaned back with his arms around his knees again. His body seemed more flexible than any human body Harry had ever seen, able to bend in more directions. He watched Harry with a calm, alert gaze, now and then tilting his head up and down as if he wanted to sweep the whole of Harry’s body with his eyes.
But he didn’t answer. Harry gritted his teeth, took one more sip of water, and set the glass aside. Malfoy’s eyes didn’t even follow it. Trying to use that to stimulate his thirst and make him confess faster wouldn’t work, then. Time to step up matters and try something else.
Harry took his time rolling his left sleeve back, the adjustments so slow that he thought Malfoy might not know what he was doing. Then he slid his wand against his wrist and whispered, “Diffindo.”
He’d practiced that spell, too, in the last few years, when he’d had to cut through all sorts of ropes and chains that criminals used, and sometimes his own constricting robes when he fell into a pit trap or a water one. Skin was nothing next to the tougher materials. It parted almost without pain, and a thin trickle of blood began to leak down his arm.
Harry turned his wrist to face Malfoy. Malfoy’s nostrils flared, but they were the only things on his whole body that moved. He didn’t even show his fangs in a smile the way he’d been doing to Harry only the other day.
Disappointed, Harry stood up and circled around to the side of the cage. At least he was rewarded with the slow, almost mechanical turn of Malfoy’s head. But Malfoy still looked infuriatingly polite and still, as though he was indulging Harry’s tricks because it pleased him to do so.
Harry leaned forwards, thrusting his arm back and forth so that the still air in the cellar would carry the scent of blood to Malfoy. This time, Malfoy lifted his lips. It was hard to tell whether he was showing those shiny fangs in a smile or not, though.
“You know that I might be willing to give you my blood if you answered some of my questions,” Harry murmured, lowering his eyelids. He knew he wasn’t the best at flirtation, but he had learned from a few of his lovers that he could look innocent, seductive, or tempting if he wanted to. And it had to be easier to tempt Malfoy than a similar human being, because he wanted Harry’s blood before he wanted anything else. Harry didn’t have to be easy on the eyes or accommodating in behavior or even famous. He just had to have blood running in his veins.
Or down my skin, he corrected himself as he watched Malfoy shift a little closer. His nostrils were wide open, and he was sniffing almost continually. In a moment, he gave up even the pretense of stillness and came forwards to lock his hands on the bars of the cage, swaying as he leaned in.
Harry twisted his arm encouragingly.
Malfoy looked up at him, and his mouth twitched. Then he took a step back from the bars, and resumed his position in the center of the cage, folding up again like a giant spider. As Harry watched in disbelief, he arranged himself so that he was facing Harry but otherwise might not have moved. He did show a bit of fang in what could have been an amused smile, though, so Harry reckoned he had to think of that as a victory.
“Do you want it at all?” Harry countered. His voice was scratchy, which he hadn’t expected. He sounded as if he was the one who had been talking, confessing, for a long time. Roughly, he sealed the wound on his arm with a sharp charm, wincing a little as he did it. That was considerably more painful than he had thought it would be.
“Do all vampires want blood?” Malfoy did move now, as if he was more comfortable with the temptation of food gone from the room, sinking his chin onto a palm gaping wide to receive it. His eyes didn’t move from Harry’s face. They were wide and curious. “Or are we more complex creatures than that, desiring more, capable of being something other than ravenous beasts?”
“I don’t fucking care what you are,” Harry told him. That wasn’t true, because knowing which of those categories Malfoy fit into would have helped his investigation, but he’d had enough of the vampire’s damn rhetorical questions. “I know that you were involved in the disappearances of at least three people, but I don’t think you could have acted alone. I’m trying to give you a chance to turn in your partners and escape harsh punishment. I’m trying to help you here!”
Malfoy tilted his head to the side a minute amount. It was a curious gesture, Harry thought, unlike anything else Malfoy had done so far. He held his breath.
“Do you think this is help?” Malfoy asked, and gestured at the cage around him.
Harry made sure to slam the door behind him as he went out. At least it was a heavy door, good for making noise with if nothing else.
*
“I don’t know what to do, Ron.” Harry leaned back in his chair and rested his booted feet on the stool in front of him, regarding them gloomily. It felt good to be able to vent his frustration to Ron, even though he wasn’t telling Ron all the truth. Ron thought he was hunting down a slippery murder of vampires who took every opportunity to vanish. He didn’t know about Malfoy being in the cellar.
Good. I thought of it as the cellar, and not the dungeon.
Harry was so pleased with himself that he almost missed Ron’s next question. He shook his head and sat up a little. “What?”
“Did one of them bite you?” Ron nodded at his arm. “It looks like you had a gash there and didn’t manage to heal it.” He gave Harry a chiding look. Both he and Hermione were prone to tease Harry about his incompetence with basic Healing charms. Harry had insisted that he was just better with defensive magic, but according to both Ron and Hermione, Healing was part of self-defense, so he ought to have managed better.
“Oh.” Harry looked down at the faint line from the cut on his arm and shook his head. “I scraped it against a door when I was running after one of them, and I had to heal it quickly, before the smell of blood attracted them. Or the bleeding slowed me down,” he added, because Ron looked a little skeptical.
“Huh. Well, you could let Hermione come over and heal it.”
Harry was glad that Ron sounded resigned to Harry not letting her do that; otherwise, Harry might have started quietly panicking. Hermione was just too smart. If she came into this house and looked around, Harry thought she might guess he had a captive vampire downstairs from some stray spot of dust in the corner. And then he would be in so much trouble that having Malfoy escape from the cage and rip out his throat would look mild in comparison.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll try another charm on it later. You know I can usually manage if I rest before I try one.”
“All right.” Ron considered him slowly. “Are you sure that you want to be alone on this case? It might be better to bring in some more Aurors.”
Harry considered that for one bare second before he rejected the notion. Malfoy was enough trouble with just Harry in the house. He could manage to charm someone else, someone who wasn’t as aware of his dark past as Harry was, and there went all of Harry’s attempts to keep the secret safe. “No. Like I said, the Aurors who wandered around after Brewer was declared missing caused more harm than good. You don’t send a whole bunch of Crups tracking your prey when want you want is a cat.”
“First time I heard you make that comparison, mate.” Ron grinned at him, but there was a shadow in his eyes that Harry could see well enough. “Just take care that some bigger predator doesn’t jump on you first.”
Harry was able to smile sourly, thinking of the way Malfoy had at least been attracted by the blood on his arm, if not enough to launch himself forwards through the cage bars. “Too bad for them, if it turns out I have claws.”
*
“Potter.”
Harry picked himself up slowly. His head hurt, and he felt dizzy and half-numb. Had Malfoy thrown him back from the cage bars? It was the only thing Harry could think of that might make him feel this way, but he didn’t remember it, if it had happened.
When he turned around, though, they weren’t in the dungeon-cellar and in front of the silver cage at all. He lay on a thick red rug that covered most of an enormous, polished wood floor. Somewhere behind him, a fire flickered softly on a stone hearth. The only furniture in sight was the red couch, the same dusky color as the rug.
And seated on the couch, legs folded beneath him and hands in his lap, was Malfoy.
Harry snatched up his wand, his heart hammering. Any lump he might have on the back of his head, or any broken ribs, ceased to exist. He’d fought under extreme pain before, and he was going to do whatever he had to, to make sure that Malfoy didn’t harm him.
Malfoy made no move to do so, though. When Harry squinted at him, wondering if this was a new trick, he saw faint, very faint, cage bars in front of him. They seemed to be made of smoke and darkness, wavering back and forth in the air stirred by the fire’s flames.
“Malfoy?” Harry asked at last. He was starting to feel dizzier than he had when he first woke up. Where was this place?
“Potter,” Malfoy said again, with enough of a curl to his lips that Harry was sure it amused him. He leaned forwards, to the point where Harry waited hopefully for him to unbalance on the couch and crash to the floor, but it didn’t happen. His eyes were odd, shadowy, as if the fire couldn’t touch them. “What do you want most in your life?”
“You imprisoned and dead,” Harry said. Then he hesitated. No, he couldn’t want that, or he would have handed Malfoy over to the Ministry already, wouldn’t he? “No, I mean, I want the names of the vampires you were working with. Who were they?”
Malfoy remained still. More still than anyone human could, Harry thought, staring openly. Humans had their heartbeats to rock them back and forth even when they thought they were being perfectly still. He’d seen it.
“If you could only have one thing at the moment, contained in this room,” Malfoy said after a dreamy pause, “what would it be?”
Harry stared around. There didn’t seem to be any change in the room no matter how long he looked, though. Still the same rug, and fire, and couch, and Malfoy. The walls loomed up beyond the end of the rug, distant and dim. He couldn’t see a door.
“My wand,” he said finally, and held it close to him. “Since I have it, I don’t want anything else.”
He thought that might make the dream end, or Malfoy hiss and rush him. But instead, Malfoy draped himself over the couch like a boneless snake and studied Harry as if he had suddenly become interesting. Harry tightened his hands.
This was a dream, it had to be. He wondered if other vampires in Malfoy’s murder could do this. Harry had never heard of it as a vampire ability, but there were some books he’d read that said individual groups of vampires could grow abilities in common with each other. This might be one of those.
And he wondered if this was how the other disappearances had started, with Malfoy contacting those Aurors or other Ministry workers in their dreams and promising them something wonderful.
“You didn’t make an interesting choice,” Malfoy said. “I thought you would make one that was more interesting.” He was silent for a moment, rubbing his finger along his fangs, and Harry resisted the impulse to say something. Because the impulse felt oddly like he wanted to apologize to Malfoy, and even in a dream, that was weird.
“I think,” Malfoy began, after a moment, “that I want to know something else. What are you drawn to? What do you desire?”
“To solve this mystery and go home.” Harry had no idea what Malfoy was getting at. Harry had told him that every time he went into the cellar and Malfoy was there. Did Malfoy think he was lying or something? Or was he sure that Harry was because Harry hadn’t yet handed Malfoy over to the more skilled interrogators at the Ministry?
“What kind of person do you desire?” Malfoy’s voice had become like the crackling of the fire, blending with it, so that Harry heard only one sound instead of two. He realized that he was breathing slowly in and out, in time with that crackling, and stopped, appalled. That really did seem like the kind of thing that would allow Malfoy to gain control of him through a dream.
“Not the kind you are,” Harry said.
Malfoy made a little discontented noise and shifted his position on the couch as if a spring was poking into his royal arse. “Another uninteresting answer. Let us try one more time. What do you think of in your secret dreams, the ones that only you can see, the ones that take place in the innermost heart?”
And before Harry could stop himself, he was thinking of it, of those dreams, the images playing before him bright and vivid. As much as they were images, anyway. They were mostly sensations, the sensation of someone on top of him, sinking into him, sometimes blending with his strength, filling him with warmth.
He had woken from those dreams before wrestling with a blanket, trying in vain to get from it the heat and the feeling of being pinned that he needed, and always, always disappointed.
“That’s much better,” Malfoy whispered, and Harry was sure that he had seen the images. Yes, this had to be a power that his murder had. “And what else do you dream of? Why haven’t you been able to find someone who can do that for you?”
Harry, his face burning with humiliation, told himself that this had been worth it, even if Malfoy now knew some of his strangest fantasies, for the knowledge he had gained in return. Yes, Malfoy and his murder were preying on people through their dreams, and this was one of the ways they did it.
If this is a dream, I ought to be able to fight it. To wake up now that I know it’s not real.
He lunged out with his mind, pushing as hard as he could. He saw Malfoy’s eyes shine for a second with what could have been surprise, and then the colors of flame and pallor, fire and vampire skin, dissolved.
*
Harry sat up in his own bed, breathing hard and looking around his bedroom. Then he seized his robes and his wand and ran towards the cellars.
When he stepped through the heavy door that barred the way to Malfoy’s room, Malfoy lifted his head from within the cage and regarded him. He had started to lean against the bars now, ignoring the hum of magic at his back, Harry saw. Good. That meant he was losing strength.
Malfoy drew himself up and blinked. Harry blinked back, while prowling slowly around the cage to make sure that the wards and the spells he had cast to make the bars sturdy still held. He couldn’t see anything that was cracked or weak. Malfoy hadn’t broken a ward to reach out with his dream-reading power, then.
In a way, that only made him scarier, but it also meant that Harry thought he was closer to solving the case. If Malfoy wouldn’t cooperate with him, Harry really would just take him to the Ministry, and hunt down the rest of his murder using the clues he already had.
“What are you thinking?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry turned around sharply. Malfoy’s voice was too close to what it had been in his dream: drifting, soft, as if he could coax Harry into making an answer if he just kept on like this. He thought he would wear Harry down.
Well, he had done it in the dream, hadn’t he? Harry had answered at least a few of his questions. Harry could feel his cheeks burn when he remembered it.
“You can tell me,” Malfoy said, leaning one hand on the bars of his cage and then opening it there, as if he wanted Harry to reach through the bars and take it. His fingers opened like the petals of some obscene orchid.
Harry stared at it until he realized he was staring. Then he jerked his eyes away and turned around to leave the room. He had been wrong about thinking there would be clues here that would tell him how Malfoy had done it. He was better off going up and firecalling Ron, telling him that he had one of the vampires captive, and then searching for more signs of the murder.
“Wait.”
Harry turned around and folded his arms. “Have some information that you’d like to give me, Malfoy?” he asked. “Finally? You think that you’ll put me off my duty by talking to me in my dreams?” He saw no reason to conceal the fact. After all, Malfoy knew he had been there, and Harry knew. The way he had spoken just now was proof of that.
Malfoy only shook his head, eyes intense and bright as he scanned Harry. Despite the lack of response to his question in words, Harry had to admit he was interested enough to linger. This was the closest Malfoy had come to involving himself in the interrogation, instead of sitting back and letting Harry’s words roll off him.
“I have a question about the dream,” Malfoy whispered. “Tell me and I might answer some of yours.”
Harry sniffed. He didn’t like the way all the information was flowing from him to Malfoy instead of the other way around. He knew the Aurors who had taught him interrogation in the Ministry would be worse than disapproving, would be disturbed that Malfoy had got away with as much as he had. But he had the chance for a good bargain, and it would be stupid to let past deeds or past dislike of Malfoy trick him out of that.
“Fine,” he said, when the silence told him that Malfoy wanted a verbal reply, too. “Tell me what you want to know.”
Malfoy arched his back and rubbed his cheek against the bars as though he was a cat. “What baffled you more in your dream,” he whispered, “that you couldn’t answer my question about the person you desired, or that the person you desired was right there in the room with you?”
Harry froze and stared at him. It made no sense, but if it made no sense, he also knew that it shouldn’t have made his heart feel as if it was humming in his ears.
Malfoy lifted his hands and held them quietly forth, not on the bars, but near them, as if willing Harry to look at them.
And Harry did, with his head full of the dream and the way both he and Malfoy had behaved in it, and he remembered. Remembered those stupid images that he had shown Malfoy when he asked, for no better reason than that he had asked.
He knew those hands could hold him down the way he desired. He knew that Malfoy’s body, lean but stripped of everything that wasn’t strength, could lie on top of him and pin him to the bed the way he wanted.
Then Harry flicked his head, and tore himself free of the spell—probably another form of magic that Malfoy’s murder could practice. No. That might promise to fulfill part of his fantasies, but it could never fulfill all of them. For one thing, Malfoy’s body was cold, and he couldn’t give Harry that warmth he craved.
For another, he was a vampire, and Harry’s suspect, and while Harry knew that he broke the rules and did things he wasn’t supposed to and in general was a plague upon his superiors, he really didn’t think that he would ever stoop to fucking a suspect in a murder case. Or at least a disappearance case. Harry hadn’t found any evidence of murders, but he hadn’t found a lot of evidence of anything, really.
He opened his eyes and found that he was still standing there, that he hadn’t moved away from Malfoy’s ridiculous offer.
No, not even that. Malfoy was enjoying showing off his power over Harry, but that didn’t mean he would ever go through with it even if he was free. He would probably tear out Harry’s throat and leave.
Harry turned and marched deliberately out of the cellars, slamming the door behind him.
*
“I didn’t enjoy it when you ran away from me, you know.”
Harry opened his eyes to white stone, this time. He seemed to be standing in the Great Hall of a castle a lot like Hogwarts, but everything in sight was made of pale marble, and there was a shifting rainbow of soft colors on the ceiling of instead of a proper imitation of the sky. It made him feel sick and dizzy.
He refused to turn around and face Malfoy. From the sound of his voice, he was a distance behind Harry. There was no furniture in sight, so he was probably standing.
Then Harry sneered at himself. In the last dream, he had been lying on the floor, but Malfoy had had his right regal arse perched on a couch. So this time, he was probably in a throne and looking down on Harry.
Harry reached out and began the process of waking up from this dream, the same way he had woken up from the last one. He didn’t need to stay here longer and listen to the temptations and threats of a vampire who had nothing to give him anyway. First thing tomorrow, he would march Malfoy into the Ministry and confess everything.
“Wait.”
The voice seemed to ring in the marble castle in a way it hadn’t in the dark red room. Harry did find himself pausing and turning around. He was curious why Malfoy had chosen this setting instead of the last one. Had he gone from wanting to seduce Harry to wanting to crush him and overawe him?
Malfoy wasn’t sitting in a throne, though. He was standing on his own two feet, his eyes locked on Harry. No, on his throat, Harry decided. Malfoy swayed slightly back and forth, as if he was no longer used to supporting his own weight without the pressure of cage bars.
“Did you misunderstand what I was offering you?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry only shook his head, wordless. He had no idea what Malfoy was going on about now, and his hopes of getting an answer to his questions were sinking bit by bit. He really should have accepted that Malfoy was lying to get a meal in the first place and hoping to lure Harry close enough to the cage that he could bite.
What would happen if Malfoy bit him in a dream?
The thought was so disturbing that Harry again pressed outwards with his will, trying to shatter the images and wake up.
“Stop.”
The walls of the dream firmed, and Harry realized he was still standing inside it. He brought up his wand on instinct, panting hard enough that his body shook. That should not be happening. He had been resisting Malfoy, and he hadn’t taken any of his gifts or listened to him. Why should Malfoy’s power over him be stronger now in dreams than it had been the last time when Harry rebelled?
Then Harry felt a flush invade his face as Malfoy took a step towards him. Perhaps he was listening more than he realized. Perhaps he wanted what Malfoy was trying to give him more than he’d realized.
That made him want to kill Malfoy, to hurt him. He aimed his wand at Malfoy before he realized what he was doing. He didn’t know if he could hurt him in these dreams, any more than he knew if Malfoy could bite him, but it seemed that there weren’t any cage bars between them this time and Harry thought he was the one far more likely to get hurt.
“Harry.”
Harry was getting tired of feeling as though someone was stabbing him with lightning bolts. Just because he had one on his forehead didn’t mean that he enjoyed the sensation. He shook his head and said the first thing that came to mind. “You don’t get to talk about me like we’re friends. You must know we’re not.”
Malfoy studied him for long enough that Harry tried to break out of the dream again. But Malfoy’s strengthened barriers still seemed to hold, and Harry cursed softly as he crashed back into the marble hall.
“I think we should go somewhere more comfortable,” Malfoy said at last, and raised his hand, spreading his fingers and fluttering them.
The air tore open where he touched, and color and warmth leaked out. Harry assumed that he would find himself back in the dusky red room where he had spoken with Malfoy before, but instead, he stood in a bedroom colored green and silver. The bedsheets were sparkling green, the pillows silver, and there was a bloody Slytherin banner on the wall. Harry snorted and crossed his arms. “Do you think you’re going to intimidate me because you brought me to your old bedroom in the dungeons? You’re mental.”
And that was true, as far as it went. Harry was intimidated for other reasons already. The appearance of the room didn’t add anything to it.
Malfoy merely smiled at him and turned his back to Harry, walking towards the bed. “This isn’t a place where I have been,” he said. “Only a place that I would like to be.” He placed his pale hand against the sheets, and Harry couldn’t look away from the way it shone there, like a dazzling star.
Malfoy turned around and sat down, focusing on him, and the effect was suddenly even stronger. Harry heard a soft, hoarse noise, wondered for a second if Malfoy had someone else hidden here who would ambush him, and then started. It was his own breathing.
“Would you like to be over here with me, Harry?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry scanned his face rapidly. Then he forced himself to do it again. Now that he looked, smoky bars of darkness still floated between him and Malfoy.
The relief made him dizzy. Malfoy was still locked behind the wards and spells that Harry had impregnated in the bars of the cage. Harry was safe, at least from the kind of idiocy Malfoy was trying to perpetrate on him.
“I don’t want to, no,” Harry said casually. “Because then you would probably bite me and drink from me, and I don’t want that.”
His words made the light in Malfoy’s eyes flare, and Harry had to look away, and it was a wrench. He really, really wished that he hadn’t said that.
Not so much because of Malfoy, really, but because of himself. Because now the image was in his head, trembling, like a bit of paper blown by the wind. Because now his breath was coming all short and ragged, and it was already loud, and Malfoy would probably think that he was a careless prey animal any vampire could run down.
“Your fantasies can confuse me,” Malfoy said. Harry saw a stir from the corner of his eye that might be Malfoy crossing his legs, folding his arms, but he refused to look at him and be caught again. “I will ask you another question. Answer it honestly.”
Harry’s mind seemed to hum. Malfoy might have strung a wire between his ears, one that would thrum when thoughts traveled along it. And Harry decided, with a sinking feeling, that Malfoy might be able to affect his mind in the dreams, of not his body.
“Would you like me to bite you?” Malfoy whispered.
Harry’s hands drove into his arms, pitting his skin with the marks of his fists. He had seen, both on this investigation and on another involving vampires, the marks that a vampire’s fangs left. They looked painful. But the victims who had gone willingly always insisted that it wasn’t, or only at first, and that it was the pleasure that kept them still and tilting their heads, the lassitude, the sensuous feeling of being wanted intensely for something no one else could provide.
I don’t think like this. This is Malfoy thinking like this, and not me.
A vampire could put him at the center of its world. A vampire could hold him there without effort, and the warmth could come in time.
I am not thinking like this, Harry decided, and threw his mind against the barriers of the dream again.
Maybe because Malfoy was distracted, this time they parted, like veils, and let him through. Harry escaped to the outside, telling himself that he didn’t hear the whisper that traveled with him, either, soft and forgiving and relentless.
Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry. I would like to taste you.
*
Harry bounced out of bed, his skin more slick with sweat than it had been the last time, panting. He spun around the room, his wand in his fist, and scanned all the corners for signs of a broken ward or some intruder. Maybe Malfoy could get out of the cage any time he wanted and was just playing with Harry, making the bars appear in the dream to make Harry think he was safe. Harry had heard of vampires with feline tempers like that.
But there was nothing. Only his bedroom, calm and empty and boring. Harry collapsed into the middle of his bed and put his head into his hands.
The thrumming in his head had started up again, although he was sure that Malfoy wasn’t anywhere near him. This time, the words traveling along it were the command that Malfoy had given him as he was escaping from the edge of his dream.
Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry.
Harry shuddered. If he went down to the cellars now, it would seem like he was obeying the command, and that was the last impression that he wanted to give Malfoy. On the other hand, if he didn’t go down, he might miss a vital clue as to how Malfoy was doing this. This dream had been deeper than the last one, more intense. Malfoy might be weaker from sending it, and let something slip.
Then Harry shivered and let his hands fall away from his face.
He had done what Malfoy wanted for the last little while, hadn’t he? He’d stopped trying to leave the dream when Malfoy ordered him to, for instance. It had been subtle enough that he hadn’t noticed the first time, hadn’t connected it to Malfoy’s orders, but had come up with excuses of his own for it.
The thing was…
Harry’s throat quivered, and he turned his head. He almost felt that Ron was in the next room and would stare at him through the wall, judging him.
But he was alone, quite alone, except for the thrumming thought in his head and the vampire in the cellars below.
The thing was, Harry had never given in easily. He had resisted Voldemort’s commands and his threats on Harry’s life. He had chosen to come back when he could have stayed in death, in King’s Cross Station. He had resisted the Imperius Curse and the attraction of Veela. He had been a fighter all his life. He didn’t do well against Legilimency most of the time, but he’d fought back against Snape and even got into the git’s head once.
So this impulse to surrender and do what Malfoy wanted made no sense. At least, it made no sense if Malfoy was conquering his will. Unless the vampire powers that Malfoy’s murder had were different from all the other ones that Harry had ever heard of.
Harry bounced to his feet, and strode to the door. He would obey the order throbbing in his mind right now. And then he would either get answers, or he would do something else that he thought Malfoy wouldn’t like.
Of course, his threats hadn’t been very effective so far. But he thought he understood better what Malfoy was after, now.
*
Part Two.
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