Chapter Six of 'Keep This Wolf'- Negotiate the Dance
Chapter Five.
Title: Keep This Wolf (6/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Creaturefic (Harry is a werewolf), violence, some gore, angst
Rating: R
Summary: Draco knows full well that he’s being set up. There is no other reason to pull an Unspeakable out of the Department of Mysteries and assign him to negotiate with a werewolf pack. But when he learns the werewolf leader is Harry Potter, Draco wonders if the setup isn’t a different kind than he anticipated.
Author’s Notes: A fic for enamoril, who asked for a story like my “Business Meetings,” where Draco is the leader of a group of vampires and Harry their Ministry-appointed negotiator, but reversed, with Draco as the negotiator and Harry as the werewolf. This story will be updated every Tuesday until it’s finished. The title comes from the poem “Wilderness” by Carl Sandburg:
THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood-I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six-Negotiate The Dance
“Why do you think that you can tame Thornsberry more than any other werewolf can?”
Potter grinned. They were in the middle of a small clearing with a cottage tucked into it, which seemed to be where Potter slept. Other than having sturdier stone walls and some more flowers around it, Draco couldn’t see much difference between it and the house that formed his guest quarters. He supposed if any werewolf would want a sickeningly Gryffindor and rose-covered home, it would be Potter.
They sat on long, carefully carved wooden benches in front of the house that Draco recognized as imitations of the ones in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Potter turned towards him now, slinging a casual foot around so he was straddling the bench.
“Because I’m the kind of werewolf that could make someone into a Scion if I bit them,” said Potter, his eyes very green. “And that ought to mean I can take someone else’s Scion and hold onto him and turn him into a different kind of werewolf.”
Draco stared at Potter. That had not been the answer he’d anticipated, and it wrongfooted him to the extent that he wasn’t sure he could continue the line of questioning.
“You’re too honest,” he muttered at last, knowing his scent had already given him away anyway, and he needed an explanation for his silence. “I thought you would dance around and give me a load of bollocks at first.”
Potter shrugged lightly. “Maybe you have time for that, in the Ministry. I don’t.”
“Because you have members of your pack challenging you all the time?” Draco luxuriated in the freedom to fold his arms. “It doesn’t sound like you should be adopting Thornsberry at all, if you can’t control your own pack.”
“You met the ones who think they can find an outside ally and take the pack from me, sure,” Potter said, his nostrils flaring briefly as something crashed behind Draco in the forest. Draco refused to turn and look. “But there are plenty of others who are perfectly happy to lead their lives and occasionally do something I ask.”
“Occasionally?” Draco had to ask. Potter had seemed pretty bloody involved in the lives of the other werewolves, from what Draco had seen last night. Convincing a bunch of werewolves, who had been wizards and prejudiced against other magical beings, to welcome centaurs and dryads among them would have taken a lot of work.
“Some times more than others,” Potter said, unaffected. “For example, I had to spend a lot of time arguing with them that it was going to be all right to have a Ministry representative sniffing around here. I reminded them that you don’t have as strong a nose as we do.”
Draco stared silently at him. “How literal was your metaphor?” he finally asked, and let his hand fall casually to his wand. “If you mean to turn me into a werewolf, then you should know I have methods to resist that kind of thing.”
“How deep is your paranoia?” Potter gave something that could have been a smile if a smile normally showed that many teeth. “I was explaining the kind of thing I said to my werewolves. I know that you’re not here to find out all our secrets and stir up changes in our way of life-although I had my doubts when I saw you talking to Ninian last night. I know that you’re here to persuade us not to take Thorsnberry. That was all I meant.”
“I didn’t mean to stir up rebellion,” said Draco. Potter sounded more serene than he did at the moment, but that wasn’t to be helped. “I thought it would be a useful means of undermining and distracting you.”
Potter waved a hand. “And you were irritated with me, and willing to do what you could to strike back at me without it being direct. I understand. I shouldn’t have picked at you the way I did.”
His nose gives him an unfair advantage. Draco couldn’t tell what he was projecting to Potter now, but at least he could be poised and calm on the outside. That it was for his own satisfaction more than anything else didn’t lessen the importance of it. “Fine. I do question, though, how someone with more than one person plotting behind his back and resenting his leadership is going to have the time to devote to Thornsberry.”
Potter grinned. “It’s not so much time-not at first. It’s power. I have to overwhelm Thorsnberry’s senses and convince him that he’ll submit to me. Then I can take longer to actually change him from Fenrir Greyback’s Scion into someone who will go along and get along with me.”
Draco frowned and lifted one of the artifacts, a long, thin whip of silver leather, off his belt. He made sure that Potter could see him doing it and track every movement if he wanted to. “Do you mind if I use this? It’ll help me get a better sense of your magical power. You don’t feel stronger than Fenrir Greyback, and right now, I don’t know how you would overpower his influence.”
“You don’t trust what anyone says much, do you?” But Potter sounded as though he was choking back a laugh. He held his hands out to the sides. “I don’t know how much your artifact will tell you. I mean power in a different way. But sure, go ahead.”
No one else had ever been this calm about letting Draco use one of his artifacts on them, even Unspeakables who knew exactly what they did. Of course, that might also come from knowing what these artifacts had done before Draco got hold of them. This particular whip, for instance, had been able to cause despair to any person it flayed.
Draco held back one more instant, taking in Potter’s wide-open hands and gaze, before he nodded and cracked the whip.
It curled around Potter’s right wrist, his wand hand as Draco remembered from school, and for a second, Draco’s senses flooded with light and color. He would be able to sense Potter’s strength from this. Most people felt like either heat, light, or a combination of both. The colors were only temporary, like a Portkey, signaling the transition from the whip touching someone to it telling him the truth.
Except, this time, the colors didn’t vanish. They went on building, complicated swirls of white and purple and blue collecting like the tumbled layers of a kaleidoscope, reaching and turning and falling on each other every time Draco thought he had them under control and could analyze them. He began to panic, a bit. Was something going wrong because he had used the whip on a werewolf instead of a wizard? He had never tested this before.
Perhaps he had been naïve to assume that Potter was still a wizard. Draco hadn’t seen him cast a spell since he’d been here.
But then the colors broke apart, and the familiar sensations of heat and light poured through instead. Draco felt as though he was standing inside a close little room in front of a fire that wouldn’t let him get away from it. He held up his hands to protect himself against the assault, instinctively, and the whip pulled Potter’s wrist with it, bringing his palm closer to Draco. Draco shuddered from the stinging warmth that hit his face.
“I think that’s enough for now.”
Draco jerked. Potter had unwound the whip from his wrist and coiled it back in Draco’s lap; it must have been him, since Draco knew he hadn’t done it, and the artifact wouldn’t have done it on its own without a degree of dangerous independence that Draco made sure to introduce in none of his projects. Potter was also holding his hand, without the sensation of heat this time, peering into his face with gentle, concerned eyes.
“I don’t understand all the images I got from your magic,” Draco murmured to him, shaking his head.
Potter’s smile widened, and he nodded. “That would make sense. I don’t think most wizard artifacts are able to cope with werewolf magic. And I’m the most powerful werewolf that a lot of people have ever seen or heard of.”
Draco opened his mouth, and then paused. “That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve heard anyone say,” he murmured.
Potter looked as though he was enjoying a private joke. “I thought you did think I was arrogant.”
Draco shrugged away the reminder of his past self. He might have been forced to leave that past self behind, but now that he had, he wanted to be what he had achieved instead of who he had been born. “Things change. But you can’t know that you’re the most powerful werewolf in the world.”
“Did I say that? Typical Unspeakable.” Potter put his hands together in a manner that reminded Draco of Invisible Heldeson, but he knew it was a parody and not serious, and he was further irritated that Potter should remind him of Heldeson anyway. “Not listening to the words we ordinary people say, but the ones you want to be true, because they’ll mean that you can take away powerful things from us in case we do something wrong with them.”
Draco did not choose to address the question of whether Unspeakables should leave dangerous artifacts drifting around the world, either. He didn’t see why Potter should control the conversation. “You can’t be ordinary and the most powerful werewolf-that most people know of at the same time.”
*
Harry sighed. He would never have thought it, but he would have to say that he missed Malfoy’s sense of humor. It hadn’t been very good, and he had never liked jokes that were directed at him, but at least he had recognized a joke.
“I’m a powerful werewolf,” he said, “just like I’m a powerful wizard. But you don’t rule the world because you’re powerful. You don’t create great art or become a great Auror just because you have power.”
Malfoy was staring at him as though that line of thinking was also completely alien. Harry twitched back a growl in his throat. The Unspeakables had had a pretty good try at completely reshaping Malfoy, it seemed. The way that some werewolves would bite Scions and transform them for the mere pleasure of creating someone else in their image, instead of letting them be their own person.
And what are you going to do with Thornsberry?
Harry grinned. He had once called that voice his Hermione-voice, but he knew now that it was partially his own conscience. And sarcasm that no one else heard couldn’t hurt them.
Thornsberry is different because he has no chance to live in a regular werewolf pack, he thought to appease his conscience, and focused on Malfoy again. “You don’t think that power should be hidden sometimes?” he asked. He knew that Lucius Malfoy had hidden some of his manipulations and interferences in the Ministry.
Malfoy closed his eyes. “Magical power is different,” he said, as though reciting from a textbook. “Magical power can be used to remake artifacts and minds and the world. And it’s difficult to hide. Accidental magic can explode out of children even when they’re not trying to do anything in particular. We cannot estimate the strength of our own desires. We cannot understand what in our minds gives rise to magic, or how our thoughts interact with our magical cores. Power will emerge, however much we try to deny it.”
“I don’t think it’s different,” said Harry. He had never read the textbook that Malfoy was quoting, and he saw no reason he should have to be impressed by it. “I think that you can be ordinary if you’re powerful. If you just use it a little and not a lot, or if you only want to be one thing. I mean, if I’d stayed an Auror, I might never have been great. I could have just solved regular cases and captured a few people, or something.”
Malfoy’s eyes popped open, and he stared at Harry strangely. “But your magical power is what let you take control of the pack.”
“You weren’t here for the duels,” said Harry, swinging a leg and grinning at him. “How do you know? I ought to tell you right now that Ninian is a biased source.”
Malfoy put a hand to his head. Apparently Harry was giving him a headache. “There’s no way that you could have taken leadership of the pack, even in an unconventional way, unless you somehow defeated the older leader.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “And of course cleverness would play no part in that. Or brute strength. Or setting the situation up to my advantage.”
Malfoy frowned and didn’t answer. Harry thought they had wandered far from the main point, so he returned to it. “Anyway. You said you think I have a lot of power, and I told you that, and that I would be able to hold onto Thornsberry and convince him not to attack anyone. So me having a lot of power ought to convince you further that it’s possible. Why not?” he added, because Malfoy was shaking his head again.
“I don’t know how to interpret what I saw through the whip in the way that I would interpret an ordinary wizard’s powers.” Malfoy’s mouth was turned down again. “And Thornsberry isn’t here, and I don’t think you’ve adopted any other Scion into your pack, so I don’t know how you will convince me that you can handle Thornsberry.”
“No other Scion, but there are some people who wouldn’t mind helping me with a demonstration,” Harry said, and called, “Lisa!” through the forest.
It made Malfoy jump. Harry shrugged an apology at him. He knew that his voice had changed since he’d become a werewolf; Hermione had told him it was deeper and fuller. Ron had said that he couldn’t describe how, but it was different. Harry only knew that his pack could hear him when he called their names in the Forest, but he thought that might be down to their changed ears as much as his changed voice.
Lisa appeared through the trees a few minutes later, looking between him and Malfoy. When she seemed to realize he didn’t want her to guide Malfoy anywhere, she rocked back on her heels and turned her attention to him instead.
“Can you help me with a demonstration?” Harry asked, smiling at her. “The kind of thing that we did when you first came into the pack and you wanted to feel like you belonged?”
Lisa flushed. “Sure. But you know what reaction I had.” And she looked at Malfoy again.
Harry nodded. “I know. But I don’t think that Unspeakable Malfoy is going to spread gossip about your reaction. It’s the nuances that he’s interested in, from a, uh, magical theorist perspective. And my reaction. Right?” He looked at Malfoy.
“Considering that I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Malfoy, folding his arms, “I can’t tell you one way or the other what I’ll need to say about it.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “When she first came into the pack, Lisa wanted to feel a sense of belonging. She was a brand-new werewolf and she had heard that I wanted to welcome people, but the others didn’t make her feel welcome when she got here. So I reached out with the same power I’ve been telling you about, the one that could tame Thornsberry, and used it to soothe her and give her a sense of home. That’s what I’ll be doing now.”
Malfoy frowned further. He really needed to smile more, Harry thought, or his face was going to freeze that way. “Go ahead,” he said at last.
Harry nodded and turned to Lisa. She swallowed and knelt down in front of him. Harry could hear her heartbeat, so quick that he reached out and gently laid a hand on her neck to calm it down. Lisa nodded and nearly ducked her head, then remembered she needed to keep eye contact with him for this. Her lips stretched in a faintly sickly smile as she looked up at him.
Harry leaned down towards her, concentrating. He felt the power springing to life and spreading out around him, the same intensity that he had felt when he battled the old pack leader, the same thing he felt whenever anyone battled him, the same heart-stopping warmth that he could summon when he needed to calm down someone who had been injured. He spread his hands and collected the warmth between them, then pressed them slowly inwards to rest on Lisa’s shoulders.
It was like clutching a blanket of the sun; he could feel the heat better than he could feel Lisa’s skin. But at the same time, he could feel her heartbeat, slamming against his own jaw now, and her emotions sliding through him, warmth and uncertainty and shyness and wonder, and her eyes staring into his own whirled and became the ones he was staring out of. Everything was liquid, in flux. He understood enough of Lisa to know what she needed.
Hush, he whispered, perhaps aloud. He could not project the thought into Lisa’s mind, but he said it with the most powerful body language he could muster, the language of Lisa’s body. His hands rubbed, his magic leaned out and embraced her, and their unblinking eyes were a symbol of connection now instead of challenge. It’s all right.
Lisa panted harshly and dropped her head forwards, breaking the eye contact, her face flushed. Harry withdrew from it more slowly, letting the warmth go as he spread his hands. But a second later, he made sure that he had helped Lisa to her feet. Sometimes breaking away like that could hurt the pack member as much as the pack leader.
“Are you all right?” he whispered.
“Yes,” said Lisa, and cleared her throat. “I didn’t moan this time, did I?”
Harry laughed softly. “I honestly didn’t notice.” He turned to ask Malfoy if she had.
But Malfoy was gone, the trampled grass marking where he had fled towards the guest quarters. Harry stared, then snarled in irritation. How was Malfoy supposed to judge whether Thornsberry could find a home in the pack if he just ran from every demonstration of Harry’s power?
He could have sent Lisa to find out what was going on, but he preferred to do it himself. He sent her back to the weeding she’d been doing and stalked in the direction of the guest quarters.
Chapter Seven.
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