Chapter Thirteen of 'Keep This Wolf'- Break Down the Walls
Chapter Twelve.
Title: Keep This Wolf (13/?)
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 Thirteen-Break Down the Walls
Harry hesitated outside the guest quarters. He knew that Malfoy had wanted to be left alone, but he felt as if he should go back inside and tell Malfoy that he could have whatever he needed-a guide to the Apparition point, or his parents summoned, or something else.
And this is quite different treatment for someone you were thinking of only half an hour ago as a potential source of trouble.
Harry sighed. He would defy a lot of people not to feel pity for Malfoy after they had seen him suffer a breakthrough and a breakdown at the same time.
Well. Ron and Hermione could probably resist the pity. And Ninian, and Malfoy’s superiors, or they would never have abused him that way in the first place.
Harry could feel the growl rising in his throat. Treatment like Malfoy’s disgusted him. Conflicts with other werewolves had made him unable to stay in the first few packs he’d tried, but another reason was that he despised the way that “leaders” sometimes treated their subordinate werewolves. They acted as if they didn’t matter, as if the only satisfaction to be got out of life was flashing their teeth and eating first.
Being a leader meant so much more than that, if it was done right.
But at the moment, Malfoy wanted to be left alone, and Harry knew that he wouldn’t do any good going back in and questioning him. So he went off to be a leader, reassuring the members of his pack that Malfoy hadn’t betrayed them too badly, and talking to Sarah Woolwine. After Ninian, she was the strongest opposition to his leadership. Time to sound her out on if she wanted to fight him, too.
*
Draco lost track of how long he lay there. Most of the time, he would know, if only because the Unspeakables had to have a good time sense when working in their windowless, unmarked Department, but his internal clock had broken just like so many other things about him had.
My ability to feel sorrow seems to be unimpaired.
Draco gave a sharp grimace and drove his hands into the bedspread, picking himself upright. He looked around the guest quarters. Nothing showed any sign of intrusion in the last-few minutes, or hour, or whatever it had been. Then again, he’d been so miserable, and drifting through the grey shoals of his own misery, that he thought a whole procession of werewolves could have trooped through, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair, staring at the way the bright strands curled around his fingers. He couldn’t remember the last time his hair had been this messy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had broken down and cried.
And now his stomach ached with hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, either. He ate at regular times in the course of an ordinary day, carefully scheduled. Since he had been here, the pack had fed him well and regularly, too.
Draco rested his head in his hands. They still trembled. He wondered what he was going to do. At the moment, it seemed more likely he would be sacked for failing to complete his diplomatic mission than because he had showed his emotions, but even if they took the pressure off him for some reason and assigned someone else to the mission, he wouldn’t last back in the Department.
He loved what he did. It had been a chance offered to him for inscrutable reasons; he knew they hadn’t wanted him for his family connections, because, by that point in time, no one did. They had thought he could be trained. They had thought he was smart enough to be worth training.
He thought again of Potter’s offer for a place in the pack, and snorted bitterly. He doesn’t think I’m worth it, or that I belong here. He’s only offering it to me out of pity.
That led him back to the notion of what he was going to do. His thoughts circled warily around it like a fish for minute after minute until Draco tugged sharply on his hair and ordered himself to focus. He had to know what wasn’t going to happen, as well as what was.
What wouldn’t happen: him crawling back to the Ministry and begging to be given another place. He had spent long enough doing that.
Another thing that wouldn’t happen: him crawling back to the Manor and huddling there for the rest of his life. Or committing suicide.
Draco paused, and lowered his hands from his hair. He swallowed, blinked, and looked again into the dusty corners of the small house as though that would give him the answer.
In truth, the answer was inside him, and he didn’t know what surprised him more: his inclination to live, or the fact that he had fallen so low suicide had ever seemed like an option.
Draco shuddered and shook his head. No, it wasn’t going to happen to him. He wasn’t going to give up on his life just because that would make some people comfortable. No, damn it, no.
Well, it’s fine to think that, he decided sarcastically a second later. That doesn’t actually give you something to do.
Draco took a deep breath. All right, he didn’t want the place Potter had offered him in the pack. He didn’t want to be a werewolf. Besides, he didn’t want to live in the Forbidden Forest for the rest of his life.
On the other hand, it might offer him a place to retreat to if he needed it. Pity would at least mean Potter was unlikely to kick him out. And Draco didn’t think that most of the other werewolves cared enough about him to demand that Potter kick him out.
So. He had a place that he could live for a while, if not stay permanently. What did he want most, besides that?
This time, the answer was immediate. Revenge.
It was something an Unspeakable would never be allowed to seek. But he was shit at being an Unspeakable.
Maybe not shit at being a Malfoy, though, he decided a second later.
A Malfoy would take revenge and laugh in delight. A Malfoy would make sure that no one who had hurt him would manage to walk away and rejoice in it. A Malfoy would be someone that no one would think they could take advantage of, ever again.
Draco frowned a little. He had given up his heritage. How sure was he that he could reclaim it? That people wouldn't laugh in his face if he announced that he was coming back to reclaim it?
That's another way you could approach things, though. You could do it in secret, the way that your enemies did the vast majority of their actions against you. You would make sure that no one could laugh at you that way. Until the moment when you confronted them and they thought you could do them no harm. Until the moment when they started to laugh and found their mouths stuffed with blood.
Draco's back straightened slowly as he thought about that. His hair seemed to hang less limply around his face, and even his hunger was less noticeable.
Yes. That was the way. If he reclaimed his heritage in secret and said to no one that was what he was doing, then he would have the consolation of both triumph and privacy.
Draco sighed and gave a little stretch of his arms. He felt more alive and more clear-headed than he had felt in a long, long time.
Perhaps it was time to go visit Potter, and see how serious he was about his offer of sanctuary in the pack. And some food.
*
Harry studied Woolwine in silence for a few minutes. They had eaten lunch at her house, with the host providing the meal, as usual. Woolwine had harvested berries from her garden recently, so that meant a lot of tart fruit and some milk and not much else.
"What would make you truly happy in the pack?" he asked her, while Woolwine looked at him with eyes as fathomless as a wild wolf's. "I don't want to lose you, but I thought you were unhappy for a lot of the same reasons as Ninian, and so you might not stay now that you know he's left."
"It's not his presence that I need to content me." Woolwine stirred restlessly, a ripple of motion that ran down her shoulders and mostly lodged in the middle of her spine. "He was a troublemaker. I'm glad to see him gone."
Harry bit his lip to hold back the hysterical laughter at her hypocrisy, and nodded. "Very well. So what would make you consider the pack your home?"
Woolwine sat there so long that Harry began to believe he wouldn't get an answer, just another attempt to dance around the truth. But finally she looked up and said, "You treating me like someone who matters, instead of an obstacle to be struggled around."
Harry eased slowly back into his chair, intrigued. "I thought you were the one who was all for the old traditional rules that said no one else could be equal to the leader."
"I know you aren't as stupid as that," said Woolwine, her hands closing down hard enough to rip her nails across the table. "I'm not asking for you to make me into another leader, or even you second-in-command. But the old leaders, they respected me. They saw me as someone who could offer them advice about the continuity of the traditions in the pack. You tossed me aside because you wanted to make your own rules."
Harry thought about that. He wouldn't have put it the same way, but he supposed it was fair. Yes, he hadn't been interested in giving Woolwine any credit. She had been one of the werewolves who was utterly horrified at the way he used challenge rules to win instead of play silly political games. He had assumed that everything which came out of her mouth would be equally silly.
"If I started treating you like your opinion was worth more, would that be enough to change the past?"
"I would remember it," said Woolwine, her eyes burning a little more, and Harry braced himself for a bad outcome. "So I would recognize anyone else who started using the same excuse to turn against you."
Harry laughed and held up one hand in surrender. "Fine. As long as you don't spread rebellion in the pack anymore, I'll do my best to listen to you and respect what you have to say. But I do expect no more constant little prickling challenges to my authority, understand? No sidling up to newcomers or negotiators sent by the Ministry and hinting that I shouldn't be in control of the pack."
"Why would I undermine a leader who respects me?"
Harry had to admit that was a good answer, although he also noticed that she hadn't said "that I respect." He supposed Woolwine's respect was harder to come by than her mere good opinion.
But this was a good beginning, and he reached for the wooden cup of heavy mead that had stood by them on the table all this while, waiting for the moment when Harry would either drink it himself or with her. Woolwine tensed in a way that he hadn't known she still would, eyes locked on the cup.
Harry held it out to her. "Will you share this drink with me in acceptance of a good bargain driven?"
Woolwine's hand trembled for only a moment as she grasped the cup, but it was a moment that Harry intended to remember, along with the thick flutters of scent from her. This had been a lot more important to her than he'd realized. "I will." She swallowed the mead with a scissoring motion of her throat, and handed the cup to him, letting out a grunt when he swallowed in turn.
“As much as I hate to interrupt this touching moment, Potter, I do have something to ask you.”
Woolwine grunted again, but Harry didn’t think it was with approval this time. She scrambled to her feet instead, lips parted and teeth bared as she stared at the man in front of her.
Harry stared, too, but for a different reason. Intellectually, he knew the reason he hadn’t sensed Malfoy’s approach was that he had been too focused on the important bargain with Sarah. But it was really like seeing someone completely new appear in front of him, especially when he could smell him and see him now.
And he liked both what he smelled and what he saw.
Malfoy had a harder edge to his face that was familiar, but only in a way that a photograph might be when compared to the real thing. Harry had wished for the boy who had taunted him, who had made plans, who had been alive when they were together in school, to come back. And now he had, and it was obvious that he was a man, a boy no longer.
Why he had never decided to be that man before, Harry had no idea. The important thing was that he was, now.
“Yes, what is it?” Harry finally asked, when he realized that Malfoy was waiting for him to speak in response to Malfoy’s initial question. Waiting condescendingly, looking down his nose, but waiting. Harry shook his shoulders and tried to recover some of the authority that Woolwine had just agreed to obey. “Are you leaving?”
“For a time,” said Malfoy. “I wanted to talk to you about the offer of sanctuary in your pack that you made to me. Is it still open?”
Woolwine turned around with her eyes wide and betrayed. “Unspeakable Malfoy has been misinformed by his superiors,” Harry told her, deciding that words like “used” and “manipulated” would get Malfoy angry at him, no matter how true they were. “I told him that he was welcome to stay here in the pack if he liked.”
Woolwine paused, no doubt hearing all the things he hadn’t put into that offer, like turning Malfoy and making him a full member of the pack. A second later, she nodded and melted away, her footsteps on the path that led out of his clearing deliberately heavy. She wanted Harry to know that she was leaving instead of staying to eavesdrop.
Malfoy gave no sign of caring about her. “After I handle some of my business affairs, I’ll come back,” he continued. “What I want to know is if you’ll provide me with a safe space to launch my attacks from.”
“Are you going to drag my pack into your feud with the Unspeakables?” Harry had to ask, as reluctant as he was to disregard the spectacle of Malfoy shining in front of him. “I can’t afford to anger the Ministry any more than I already have.”
Malfoy gave him a shining, contemptuous smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t dream of asking you to go beyond the natural limits of your interference.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Harry asked, feeling magic surge along his spine and down his shoulders, a little like the way it had before the challenge against Ninian. He was tired from that, still. It had been a long day. But dangers to his pack didn’t vanish just because he was tired. “I’ve tried to give you-”
“A chance,” Malfoy interrupted. “You haven’t dealt with me the way you would have with any other negotiator, right from the beginning. And whatever enemies you had in the Ministry before I arrived, I didn’t create. I don’t think they’ll let you alone no matter what I do.” He leaned forwards, planting one foot on the bench where Woolwine had sat. “I ask that you stand by the natural consequences of your behavior, and protect me from the Ministry if they come calling.”
“If they come here, I can do that,” said Harry. “I’ll just be defending the pack’s territory. If they attack you at home or wherever you’re planning on going, then I can’t do anything about that.”
Malfoy gave him a single slashing glance, and then nodded. “Yes, fine, I accept that. I’ll try not to lead trouble back to you, but I can’t really provide you with any other guarantee.” He paused, then smiled. “You’re regretting offering me a sanctuary?”
“Not nearly as much as I would if I made that offer and you still didn’t find yourself.”
Malfoy squinted at him. “This doesn’t have much to do with you. The Ministry and my bosses manipulated me and you at the same time. I broke free of their lies. I would have done that without you.”
Harry suppressed the urge to retort that Malfoy wouldn’t ever have faced up to his responsibilities without Harry challenging him, and instead snorted. “Fine. Go and come back, and try to lead your enemies here, would you? It’s the only place I can actually stand beside you without the pack or the Ministry thinking I’m trying to do something I shouldn’t.”
Malfoy, who was turning away as smoothly as a waterfall flowed, froze suddenly. “Stand beside me?” he asked, in what sounded like a croak.
“I thought that’s what you were talking about. I did offer you sanctuary, after all.”
Malfoy released a long, tense breath. “I’m not used to hearing it phrased that way,” he said absently, which made Harry think he had some strange allies. “All right. Yes. I’ll come back, and you’ll stand beside me.”
Harry didn’t really have the chance to concoct an appropriate reply before Malfoy was gone. But maybe he didn’t have to. Harry leaned back in his seat slowly, his eyes closing and his smile coming out.
The Minister, or whoever had really chosen Malfoy for this mission, would probably live to regret the day they had done so.
Draco Malfoy was back.
*
When he was sure he was distant enough from the pack’s territory that no one would see-or smell-him, Draco slowed down and pressed his hands to his flushed cheeks.
He had spoken to Potter as he would to any temporary ally in politics, and Potter had responded as one. Trying to claim that he had never promised as much as Draco was trying to hold him to, being difficult and loud and obstinate.
And then…that simple phrase, assuming it was his duty, his responsibility, to stand beside Draco, as if he was part of Draco’s family, the only people Draco had known that kind of whole-hearted support from.
Think about it later, Draco advised himself, and began once again to stride towards the Apparition point. If he no longer felt he walked alone quite as much as before, that was his own private business.
Chapter Fourteen.
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