Part Seven of 'The Long-Desired'
Title: The Long-Desired (7/13)
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!
“Ten in the evening?” Hermione nodded and flung a cloak over her shoulders. Her tone was distracted as she bent down to sort through a bag at her feet in search of something, but Harry knew she would remember everything he said to her. Hermione had long since got past the stage where she forgot things. “That’s fine. A reasonable hour, for both me and Malfoy.” She straightened back up with a book in her hands and a deep sigh, then shot Harry a keen glance. “It seems that you’re going out of your way to accommodate us both, Harry.”
Harry folded his arms and tried to look dignified and solemn when he really felt defensive and like a small child. “I know I did something wrong,” he said. “I’m sincere in my desire to make up for that, Hermione.”
For no reason that Harry could see, her smile wavered, and she nodded. “I know,” she said. “But I wish you had a better motivator than guilt. I wish you were agreeing to meet with me because you wanted to, and with Malfoy because you’d seen what good the bond could do you already.”
Harry glared at her. “I just started thinking that maybe the way I’d been doing things was the wrong way,” he said. “I know that you’re impatient for me to get better, but maybe you could let me try to come back to health at my own pace?”
Hermione stared at him with her mouth open for a moment. Then she ducked her head and nodded. “Sorry, Harry,” she said with a rueful smile. “Ron lets me manage him just as I like. Sometimes I forget that not everyone will do that. And it’s probably good practice for dealing with Malfoy, anyway,” she added. Then she leaned over as if to catch a glimpse of a clock on the wall that Harry couldn’t see, and squeaked. “I’m going to be late!” She waved a hand at him and scurried away. Harry shut the Floo connection and leaned back on his hands and heels.
He could feel a sullen impulse to rebellion stirring in him. Yes, he’d been wrong to use Dark magic, and probably to think that he would never feel anything after Ginny’s death, since Malfoy had made him feel certain things without much effort. But he wasn’t wrong about everything. He wasn’t wrong that vampires murdered a lot of innocent people, and God knew what vampires like the Collector or Caspar would have done if he hadn’t stopped them.
So he wasn’t wrong about everything, and he wasn’t going to change everything about himself to suit Malfoy and Hermione.
Besides, I don’t think Malfoy would want a partner who just lay down in front of him and let him have his way. At the least, it would bore him.
Harry rolled his eyes. Since when did it matter to him what Malfoy wanted? It didn’t, except that Malfoy could make his life difficult in front of Hermione. So he would go along, and make what compromises he needed to make, and try his best to understand the strange turn his life had taken, and try to atone for using Dark magic and hurting an innocent animal.
But he wasn’t going to say that everything he had done in the past few years was stupid. He didn’t want to live happily ever after with a vampire. He could put up with pleasure now and then, and maybe help on his hunts, if Malfoy really had no loyalty to his own kind. Other than that, he didn’t see any reason they shouldn’t live essentially separate lives. What in the world did they have to do or talk about or share with each other?
I’ll do what I can, he decided, rising to his feet and brushing the soot and dust of the hearth off his hands. But it’s out of the question to ask me to change everything that I am merely so that I can get in good with Malfoy.
*
Draco sighed as the scent of his Long-Desired’s blood came to his nostrils, accompanied by the salt-and-earth scent of Granger. He had landed a distance away and was walking in now, because he thought the sight of him leaping like a mad kangaroo might discomfort Granger. Harry knew well enough that Draco didn’t move like a mortal, but it was best not to confront Granger with evidence of his capabilities if he could avoid it. Granger was his best ally against Harry’s own stubbornness.
Well, perhaps my second-best ally, Draco thought, as he walked over a small hill and came into sight of Harry and Granger waiting for him on the moor. Harry’s fascination with me last night is the best.
He smiled in spite of himself at the memory of the look of rending confusion that his Long-Desired had given him, and then he moved closer still, eager to replace memories with more experience of the real thing.
Harry was facing him, of course, his expression set in hard lines that made Draco lick his lips as he thought of how he would make those hard lines melt. Granger had a lit wand in her hand and she gave a small nod of satisfaction when Draco appeared in front of her.
“I called you here because I want to speak to you about reconciling,” she said. “I think it’s important if you’re ever going to live in the way that the books say the vampire and his Long-Desired have to.”
Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “How are we supposed to live, Hermione? He’s literally dead half the day. We have nothing in common but an interest in predation.” He gave Draco a narrow, critical glance that Draco found more disturbing than he would have confusion or fear or anger. Harry was taking a more detached view of him, and not seeing a way that Draco could fit into his life. That was disheartening. “I can feed him, yes, and-and do other things with him if I must, but that’s not a way of building anything.” He folded his arms and gave a small nod, as if to say that he’d settled that argument.
“There are many ways,” Draco said, because he knew that Granger, from the expression on her face and her scent, would start speaking in a moment, and she would probably wander into philosophical mazes that he didn’t want to explore and feel justified in staying there until the stars went out. “We have years to figure that out, Harry. I’m immortal, and I can extend your life. Imagine hundreds of years to do as you like, with no diminishment in strength or health, and companionship with the one person who understands you best.”
Harry’s shoulders tightened, as Granger sighed, clasped her hands, and looked envious. “You don’t understand, Malfoy,” Harry said, the words so sharp and controlled that they felt like pellets of hail hitting Draco’s skin. “I want to know now why I should do more than give you my blood and occasionally share my magic. Yes, I’ll do that so that you can survive and because it benefits me, too. But more than that? Living together? Hunting together? Being-lovers?” He forced out the word, though his face was red and his scent heavy enough to tell Draco what it cost him to do so. “I think that’s what you want, isn’t it? But I see no way that we can really have that.”
“If you would let me tell you what I’ve learned about the bond-” Granger said, in tones of injured dignity.
“Is it more than what’s contained in these books?” Draco had seen the books, sitting in a pack at Harry’s feet. He floated forwards and pulled them out of the bag, turning them over. Yes, there were all the ones he had lent to Harry, though one of them had a weakened binding that he didn’t remember, as though it had been hurled against a wall and hastily repaired. Draco fixed Harry with a stern eye, and was delighted to see his blush deepen and his body shift defensively onto his heels. Draco held them out so that they would come into range of Granger’s lighted wand and she could read the titles. “These are volumes from my family’s library. I assure you that they contain the most complete information source I have ever found on vampires.”
Granger gave a greedy sound, as though someone had offered her a whole cup of blood and she wanted to swallow it all at the same time, and snatched two of the books from Draco, cradling them against her chest. Draco heard a faint noise that he doubted he would have picked up if he wasn’t a vampire, and glanced to the side. Harry was watching Granger with her precious treasures, and his eyes were wide and his smile relaxed. The flush had almost faded from his cheeks.
He needs more than me, Draco thought. The realization stung, but much less than it would have a week ago. He was willing to do anything for Harry, after all. He needs his friends, and he will revive and become more himself again if he comes back into contact with them-which I can encourage him to do.
He stepped up beside Harry. Immediately he earned a distrustful glance and a tightening of Harry’s shoulders, but he couldn’t care about that, not when the realization was flowing through him and he thought that he could do a good turn for his Long-Desired. He laid one hand on Harry’s shoulder and reveled in the mortal warmth of the skin and muscle under his fingers.
“Harry,” he whispered. “Will you promise me something? If you do, then I promise in turn that I’ll stay away tomorrow night and not demand your blood then.” He tried not to be distracted by the throbbing vein a few inches from his fangs. This was one of the most important moments in his relationship with Harry, or at least he hoped it would be.
“Depends on what the promise you demand is.” Harry’s voice was higher than normal, and he shifted his shoulders back and forth as if he was thinking of the shower that he would have to take when Draco let him go. “If you want me to torture an innocent to death, then I won’t agree no matter what you offer me in return.”
Draco stifled an impatient sigh. “No,” he said. “It’s not that. Will you go out to dinner with your friends tomorrow? If you do, then I’ll stay away.” He thought it important to repeat that until Harry understood and accepted it.
Harry simply stared at him, so frozen that Draco might have thought he’d died if he was mortal. But he was a vampire, and he could hear his Long-Desired’s heart beating and his blood rushing. He closed his eyes and did his best to memorize the sound, though it would never be the same as hearing it in the present. The sound would comfort him when Harry was far away from him and Draco could not bridge the gap with a simple leap.
“You’re strange,” Harry whispered, shaking his head. “I know that you don’t have a nest and that you’re focused on me, but you’re still strange. The Collector didn’t care about hurting others or encouraging Lucy to have friends. You’re acting as though you want that for me.” He peered into Draco’s eyes as though he expected to see something there that would make the mystery easier for him to understand.
“I told you that I would do everything for you,” Draco said. “That’s true even if you don’t do anything but the basics for me, giving me blood.” He traced a finger over the line of Harry’s scar, and Harry jerked his head backwards. Draco let his hand fall, but didn’t take his intense gaze from Harry’s face. “Let me give you this, an evening with your friends where you don’t have to be troubled with me.”
Harry’s neck muscles tightened, as though he imagined that would stop Draco from biting through his throat if he wanted to. Then he reached out and grasped Draco’s chin, tilting his head back and forth. Draco let it happen, and if he rolled his eyes, it was inwardly, where Harry wouldn’t see. The air around them had turned tight and trembling, and he doubted that he would so soon get another chance at convincing Harry if he managed to screw this one up.
“I don’t believe you,” Harry whispered harshly. “There’s no way that you can care about me that much.”
Draco opened his eyes very wide and let his gaze melt and flow as much as possible. He doubted he could look innocent, since the crimson flecks had been circling in his eyes since Harry had granted him free access to his blood, but Harry would distrust innocence anyway. “Why not? You said once that vampires are predators on humans, parasites and nothing more. If your blood tastes more delicious than any other meal I’ve ever savored, why shouldn’t I care for you?”
“But I haven’t helped you,” Harry said. He reached up with his free hand and grabbed Draco’s wrist, squeezing down. He made the bones grind, but Draco didn’t care about that. He could heal them again. It was nothing compared to the fact that his Long-Desired was touching him of his own free will. “I’ve dragged you along on hunts and made you subordinate to my will on them. I’ve granted you my blood extremely unwillingly. I haven’t saved your life. I haven’t been your friend for decades. I haven’t done anything heroic in the years since Ginny’s died that should make you like me.” His voice was rising, turning almost shrill. Draco caught a glimpse of Granger watching them with her mouth open, and wondered how long she had been doing that. She, too, was probably learning more about Harry right now than she had ever thought she would do. “It’s impossible that you can care for me.”
Draco reached up, stroking the back of Harry’s neck, his collarbone, his hair, his cheeks. So much warm skin, so flushed with life that had been yielded to Draco. He was intoxicated with the thought of being able to guard and protect it, and drink of it whenever he liked.
“None of that matters,” he said. “Someone can care for you when you haven’t acted like a hero, Harry.” He paused, and then let the words that wanted to come ramble out of his mouth, though he was uncertain of their truth. “That was one reason that you buried yourself so far in the hunt after your Weasley’s death, wasn’t it? Because you thought you had failed to be a hero by failing to prevent her murder.” Harry flinched away, but Draco had more than enough strength and more than enough of a good position to prevent him from escaping. “You forgot that people can care for you for other reasons.”
“Oh, Harry,” Granger whispered, the books forgotten, moving forwards to put a hand on his elbow. “I should have known.” Her voice became fierce, and too pressing. Draco wanted to snap at her that she would scare Harry away from the revelation he’d almost had, but he knew he would probably do more damage if he seemed hostile to Harry’s friends, so, with an effort, he managed to remain still. “Ginny died. It wasn’t your fault. Ron and I didn’t blame you for not preventing it, and we don’t think you’re heroic because you kill vampires. If you deliberately changed yourself to try and become more heroic, it was stupid and useless.”
Harry’s eyes slid shut, and he began to breathe with deep and deliberate puffs of breath. Draco suspected he was trying to regain some sort of emotional distance, so that he could hurl hurtful words at them.
Draco could not let that happen.
He pushed Granger away and leaned his head forwards until his fangs scraped against Harry’s throat.
Harry jolted and then shoved him back with one stiff arm. Draco let himself fall with the blow, and recovered his feet a safe distance away. Harry stared at him, and then at Granger, in the moment before his eyelids fell and he folded his arms with a desperate attempt at casualness. Draco licked his lips. The sight made him ache with a strange feeling that was most like the emptiness of hunger, but he did not need blood immediately.
“Listen,” Harry said. “I don’t want to listen to either of you talk about Ginny. There’s no reason for it. We’re here to discuss what we should do about the bond. And how I can make up for using the Dark Arts,” he added belatedly, with a look at Granger out of the corner of his eye.
Granger and Draco looked at each other in a moment of perfect understanding. Draco gave a small shudder and sincerely hoped that he would never experience another of those with any mortal except Harry. It was unpleasant, to know that a mind that would die soon could race and keep up with his.
But, for the moment, it served its purpose.
“We must talk about Weasley,” Draco said. “Otherwise, the changes you make will mostly be on the surface, and will last only as long as your guilt about the Dark Arts ritual does. We need something deeper, Harry. We both care for you, require your presence in our lives, and wish you to change. That means that we must wrestle with the ghost of your Weasley and lay her to rest at last.”
*
Harry wanted to shove both Hermione and Malfoy away and escape into his house, or across the moors, or into the mental realm of determination that he had used to resist vampires’ painful attacks in the past. Anywhere and to anything would do, as long as he didn’t have to listen to the words that he was horribly afraid they would launch at him.
They were going to try to convince him that the last few years of his life had been a waste. They were going to tell him that everything he had done since Ginny’s death had been wrong.
That was the one thing Harry could not bear. He had kept going because he had told himself that he could make a difference, eliminating vampires who would prey on humans and so preventing more deaths. If that wasn’t true, if he might as well never have hunted at all, then there was no reason for him not to have lain down and died the moment he had finished ensuring Ginny wouldn’t rise as a vampire.
He did not really want to die. But he had to have a driving purpose, and if someone took that purpose away from him…
What was left?
“Neither of you have the right to speak her name.” Harry knew his voice was too shrill. For the moment, it would have to do. He fell back a pace and swept his eyes quickly over them, seeing Hermione’s mouth open. He rushed on. “I’m the one who saw her die, the one who made sure her death wasn’t tainted by undeath, and the one who dedicated my life to avenging her after that. Neither of you can talk about her.”
“Even me?” Hermione asked with gentle insistence. “When she was my sister-in-law and my best friend after you? Harry, that’s inhuman, to claim that her family doesn’t have the right to talk about her.”
Harry dug his fingers into his palms. It was all going wrong again, and this time, he had no idea how to put it right. He couldn’t confess to Hermione because he had already confessed to her and she didn’t seem to think his words were worth anything, and he had no other Dark Arts books to offer up.
“That’s not what I meant,” he snapped. “You know it’s not what I meant, Hermione.”
“How can I know that?” She came a few steps closer, her eyes touched with a brightness that Harry hoped didn’t mean she was about to cry. He would break if she did. “I don’t know what you mean at all.”
Harry could have held onto his composure if she had waited one moment more to speak, or hadn’t said that last sentence. But he’d failed in explaining it to her, too. Just like he failed at everything else. Just like there was no way for him to succeed, because no matter what he did, everyone wailed at him that it was wrong.
“I wanted to die after Ginny did!” he howled at Hermione, driving his fingers into his palms until blood broke and dripped down. Malfoy watched it with greedy eyes. Of course he did, Harry thought, and whirled away from his hot gaze to stare at Hermione. “I wanted to fucking die, do you understand that? And I hunted vampires so I wouldn’t commit suicide! And now you want me to say that that was useless, and I was stupid, and a fool, because it would have been better for me to die, it would have been better for me to do anything than what I did, because, after all, everyone knows better than I do how I should live my life-”
He could feel his magic rising and towering around him like a wave. In a moment, it would head towards Hermione, not because Harry wanted it to, but because he was too tired and too fucking sick of being pushed and pushed and pushed to restrain it any longer.
Strong arms clenched around him, and Malfoy’s blood-scented voice whispered in his ear, “It’s all right, Harry, it’s all right. I am here for you, and always will be.” He reached out and…encircled the magic that was trying to escape from Harry with power of his own. Harry, his heart pounding wildly, his breath coming hoarse and strained, realized a moment later that that must be the magic Malfoy had drunk from him last night. “I won’t let you hurt your friends.” His voice changed then, to a snarl that Harry wished he could have managed on his own. “Granger, get out of here.”
“But we haven’t talked about the bond yet-”
“Leave two of the books.” Malfoy’s voice was soaring, the snarl infecting every word. “Take the rest. Come back tomorrow night. Go now!” As he spoke the last word, Harry’s magic crashed against the barrier that Malfoy had raised, and broke and fell back like the wave that Harry had been visualizing. Harry covered his face with his hands and shuddered.
Hermione ran off. At least, Harry thought that was the meaning of the two quick thumps that were probably books being dropped and then the sound of footsteps hurrying away.
He stood there, in the circle of Malfoy’s arms, feeling cool flesh pressed against his own, smelling blood, trying desperately to regain control of himself.
It wouldn’t come this time.
All the mourning, all the rage, all the horror and hatred and hope that he could somehow make things better while knowing that all the time he had been too late and nothing would ever make it better welled to the front of his mind, and he began to scream and sob at the same time, slamming his fists into Malfoy’s chest.
Malfoy held him, standing up to the attack in the way that only a vampire could have. Malfoy stroked the back of his neck and crooned to him, in the way that only a vampire who cared about him could have. Malfoy’s magic stood up to the way his own radiated back and forth and buffeted them both, the way that only a vampire who cared about him and had shared his magic by drinking his blood could have. Harry stopped worrying that his power would destroy something or someone and simply gave himself over to the ragged, hoarse shouts that ripped free from him and the spurts of tears and the slam of his fists.
All the while, Malfoy whispered to him, and when he could begin to listen to the words, Harry thought he might even believe them.
“Yes, this is what you need. In the end, you will be all right. You never mourned her. Let your tears fall. Remember her the way she was, and know that you won’t die now because I won’t let that happen. I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll give you something to live for.”
Harry clung, and screamed, and lashed out, and wept.
And, for the first time in far too many nights, he did not care about the future, about the hunts or who he would make die next, or who had died in the past.
The storm of death swept through him, and settled him somewhere on the other side of it, in perfect peace.
The last thing he remembered was falling asleep on his feet to the sound of a soft croon, and the utter assurance that Malfoy would not let him fall.
Part Eight.