Chapter Sixteen of 'Keep This Wolf'- Give the Blood
Chapter Fifteen.
Title: Keep This Wolf (16/?)
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 Sixteen-Give the Blood
Harry saw a shadow from the corner of his eye. It was shaped like a darting, scything triangle, but when it wanted to, it grew into the shape of a human head and hands. Well. Almost human.
“Potter.”
It was Malfoy, and Harry turned reluctantly back to him. He knew that Malfoy had promised to test the cube on him, and was currently explaining to him how it worked, and that meant he, not unreasonably, expected Harry’s attention. From the way his eyes darted back and forth between Harry and the edge of the forest, he knew he’d lost it.
And from the sharp prickles of his scent, rapidly growing into some that would make a hedgehog’s seem small, he resented it.
“Yes?” Harry crossed his hands on his knees and tried to ignore the other irritated scent coming to him, the one he knew belonged to Paracelsus. “I didn’t mean to disparage what you were trying to show me. It was dead clever of you to figure it out at all. Please explain some more.”
“Why is a vampire trying to get your attention?”
Harry grimaced. He had known, he supposed, that he couldn’t keep Paracelsus secret forever, especially not from someone like Malfoy who was trained in observation, but he had hoped to last a little longer than that.
“Because he acts as a spy for me in the Ministry, and we made a bargain that this time, I would pay him with my blood,” said Harry, and sighed. “He and I have had a teasing relationship for a long time, where he tries to kill me or drain me or at least hurt me, and brings me information if I succeed in resisting him.” He stood up.
Malfoy frowned. Harry had expected him to have the same kind of horrified reaction to Paracelsus that Ron and Hermione did, but perhaps he knew vampires well enough to realize that, for them, that was teasing. “What kind of information did you send him to bring back?”
“I wanted him to ask around about who had really sent you to negotiate with me, and why.”
Malfoy’s posture eased a little, but not much. “I could have found that out for you. If you had let me alone and agreed to let me contact the Unspeakables.”
Harry wanted to bang his head on a rock. Perhaps Sarah, and Ninian in his time, had been right about one thing. Dealing with non-werewolves was more trouble than it was worth.
“You said that you don’t intend to go back to the Ministry. It would be dangerous for you to do that. This way, you get a head start on the vengeance. Isn’t that worth waiting a while for your revenge?” Harry realized that he sounded like he was pleading with Malfoy to accept a bargain, and rolled his eyes. Damn his conscience, anyway. This would be easier if he was like those ancient werewolf leaders who just commanded something to be done, and followed up with claws and teeth if it wasn’t.
“It might be worth waiting,” said Malfoy, his eyes still hard and suspicious. “But I don’t know that you can trust a vampire, and I don’t know that I can trust an ally that wants to bite you and maybe drain you completely of your blood.”
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “I’m worried that he might drain me completely. It doesn’t mean he will. He was in enough control of himself to wait and collect the information for me before he came back for a drink.”
“He’s not in control now.”
No, Harry agreed silently, watching as the shadow wavered back and forth at the edge of the clearing. He sighed and turned towards Paracelsus. “I’ll let you demonstrate the cube on me, though,” he told Malfoy. “Right after.”
“If your mind is confused by the blood loss, it won’t give me an accurate result.” Malfoy stood up with a sound that made it seem like he probably had steel in his spine. “I need to see what you’re doing with this vampire.”
Harry sighed, but let Malfoy trail him towards the forest. At least there was a good difference now, in having Malfoy with him rather than a member of the pack. Harry would have felt responsible for a member of the pack, and wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to put his body between them and Paracelsus. Malfoy, though Harry didn’t want him wounded, could presumably take care of himself.
*
“Potter.”
Draco felt nerves tingle to life in his body that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. They were nerves tuned to the sound of a vampire’s voice, and especially knowledge about vampires that his parents had been careful to pass down to him.
You must never come between a hungry vampire and the one he desires, had been one of his father’s lessons. Not unless you are prepared with weapons that can kill vampires, and are equally prepared for a duel to the death with him.
Draco knew about hunger, the weaknesses of vampires, the way they would sometimes give up an easy meal in favor of one they had been hunting for a long time. That hunt stood a chance of consuming them, should they let it. They wanted the one they had placed on a plate in front of them. They wanted that victim to yield himself, willingly if they could get it, screaming and struggling if that was the only way they could have him.
And this vampire sounded that way when he spoke Potter’s name.
Draco dropped behind, unobtrusively, but with one hand clutched over the wand in his pocket. Potter didn’t appear to notice. He was walking forwards, his head tilted back so that he could focus his eyes on the tree where the vampire clung.
Draco didn’t think he would be prepared, when the vampire abruptly fell like a thunderbolt from the tree, because no one could be.
But the only thing faster than a hungry vampire, evidently, was a cautious werewolf.
Potter twisted his body around, and leaped from the earth as though someone had hurled him. He was in the limb of the tree that the vampire had sprung from at the same time as the vampire touched the ground, and Draco had the unprecedented experience of seeing a vampire stare around for its next meal, instead of picking it right away and charging from there. For a second, Draco thought the creature might take him instead, and his hand closed on the cube.
But instead, the vampire leaped at Potter again, hands spread so that its fingernails extended out like raking talons.
Potter was already gone from the tree that the vampire slammed into, back on the earth and spinning so fast that his feet scraped divots from the dirt. He took out his wand and whispered something that Draco didn’t recognize, although he was under some disadvantages when it came to hearing the incantation.
By the time the vampire had returned to the attack, a wall of wood and green leaves encircled Potter, a new tree grown from the ground for what seemed the express purpose of shading him. Draco could see him through a transparent but otherwise strong section of the trunk. The vampire stalked around it, tearing strips of bark free with a lashing hand.
“Come,” said the vampire at last, voice so deep that Draco heard the word as between the roar of rumbling rocks in a landslide. “You made a promise. You will not refuse to keep that promise now, will you?”
Potter didn’t bother responding. He simply leaned his back against the wooden wall behind him, and waited.
The vampire shut its eyes and seemed to regain some control. Then it focused on Potter, and bobbed a head that had mandibles, Draco thought, like an insect’s. “I apologize for my lack of control.”
Apparently that had been all that Potter had been waiting for, because he leaned in and spoke. “I’ve never trusted you not to drain me, Paracelsus. You’ve tried to kill me since you learned who I was. The first time you attacked me, you went for the throat, which doesn’t incline me to think-”
“Many of my kind drink from the throat and leave the human intact.” Paracelsus gave his head an irritated little side-to-side twitch that Draco had only read about in books. Most vampires didn’t converse with their prey like this. Then again, most vampires had more willing prey, Draco thought. “And you are a werewolf. You can heal wounds that would kill humans, even if I did intend major harm.”
“Most of your kind drink from the side of the throat if they intend to leave the prey intact,” said Potter. “Not the front.”
Paracelsus paused, and sat back on his haunches, long limbs folding like he was a dog. “I struck so fast that you cannot possibly have had time to see where I was striking.”
“A werewolf’s eyes see better than a human’s.”
Paracelsus licked his lips with a white tongue. “That is true. Well. This time you made a bargain. You will not break the bargain?”
“The bargain was blood for information,” said Potter. “You haven’t given me the information yet. For all I know, you haven’t even collected any.”
“I did,” said Paracelsus, and for the first time, he sounded injured. He raised one hand from the ground and pressed it against his chest, over what Draco thought was supposed to be his heart, but since he balanced on three other limbs and stared at Potter like a starving thing while he did it, the impact was somewhat diminished. “The information that you want. Who sent Malfoy here.” He snapped his head at Draco.
“Then give me the names,” Potter said, not moving.
Paracelsus showed his fangs. “An equal exchange is what I propose. One name for each sip of blood you allow me.”
Potter didn’t respond, except to come to the front of the wooden cage he’d constructed. Paracelsus came crawling to meet him, his mouth open.
One swipe from Potter’s fist was enough to break the wood. Paracelsus reached through the gap and tugged Potter against the remains of the wood, almost gently.
Potter closed his eyes, and his face settled into a resigned grimace that, Draco had to admit, was also unique in his experience of vampire-victim interactions. Usually, the victim was in a state of dazed pleasure by now. This time, Paracelsus looked like he was the one in that state as he sank his fangs deep in the side of Potter’s throat.
Neither of their expressions changed, except to deepen, into pain and ecstasy. Paracelsus’s throat began to pump, and Potter whispered, “You’ve had more than a sip now. Give me the names.”
“Minister Hinsley,” said Paracelsus, and his tongue slithered out to catch a drop of blood that was escaping down the side of Potter’s neck.
“We already knew about that,” said Potter. Draco, who could feel parts of him freezing into crystalline observation, without the emotion tainting them, the way he often observed artifacts, wondered if he should object to the word we. But Potter, although he breathed through clenched teeth, still sounded calm, normal, soft. “So. Tell us something that we don’t know. Someone we don’t know about.”
Paracelsus didn’t respond for a long moment. He just went on taking blood. Draco began to move his hand down towards the crystal cube again. He didn’t know if he would be able to entrap an undead mind as easily as a living one. This was the most powerful magical object he had with him at the moment, though, and the best chance.
“Invisible Heldeson,” said Paracelsus, and his eyes closed and rolled back in his skull. The skin stretched across his bones shimmered and looked thicker and healthier, Draco thought. Certainly he was no longer as skeletal as he had been only a few moments ago.
“She didn’t have anything to do with the choice,” said Draco. “She may be conspiring with the Minister to do something, but neither of them was the only mover behind it.”
Paracelsus didn’t seem to have heard him, but Potter, even with the fangs still buried in his skin, gave a sharp tug. Paracelsus’s eyes flew open, and then he sighed and clenched his nails down in the wood. “Give me all of it, and you can have the last name.”
“No,” said Potter. Draco privately agreed. So far, the vampire had told them nothing Draco could not have found out on his own. He was irritated and disappointed, but not really surprised. This was the way that vampires were. They wanted blood, in the end, and they wouldn’t keep promises or bargains, because words and honor didn’t matter to them next to the flow of their victim’s veins. “You’ve had far more than two sips of blood, which were what I would owe you for two names.”
Paracelsus made a low sound, a noise like wind whistling through a flute of bone.
Draco didn’t have a chance to brace himself, although, thinking about it, he didn’t know why he would have braced himself. That noise was the crooning growl of an attached vampire who intended to drink everything, and Draco wasn’t the one Paracelsus was fastened to.
The next second, Paracelsus wrenched his neck backwards, all his muscles rippling down towards his shoulders, like he was made of a great snake perched on top of a mantis body, and Potter came flying out of the last remains of his wooden shelter.
But Potter had got his hand up, Draco saw. Without trying to pull away from Paracelsus-and probably end up tearing his own throat open in the meantime-he had fastened his hand rather securely around the back of Paracelsus’s skull. In the moment that the vampire put Potter’s feet back on the ground and then leaned in to complete the swipe that would open his throat, Potter clamped his hand down.
Draco had never particularly wanted to hear what crunching bone sounded like. He heard it then.
Paracelsus shrieked and whipped his head back and forth. Draco started up, thinking that would tear open Potter’s throat for sure, but Potter had already turned sideways and slipped free. He ignored the long stream of blood pouring down his neck, which Draco would have found difficult to do himself, and brought his free hand up on the other side of Paracelsus’s head. Then he pushed inwards with both of them.
Draco knew about a werewolf’s strength from close contact (closer than he would have liked) with Fenrir Greyback during the Dark Lord’s tenure in Malfoy Manor, but this was something else again, something that maybe depended on Potter’s status as an alpha or other traits that Draco didn’t understand. Potter’s hands pressed, and pressed, and pressed. There was an almost serene expression on his face, as though he had fled into a personal space where nothing mattered but the task immediately in front of him. And that task was killing a vampire in a way Draco had never heard of.
But so far, it seemed to be working remarkably well.
Paracelsus was wailing, now, his hands scrambling at Potter’s arms. His nails inflicted scoring wounds. Potter ignored them the way he ignored the mark on his throat. Still he pressed down, and the vampire’s skull looked deformed now. Draco shuddered to think what that pressure was doing to his brain.
Then Paracelsus, perhaps in desperation for his life, whipped his neck the way he had whipped it again and sent Potter flying over his head.
Potter had to let go, or he probably would have broken his arms. Draco thought he would be dangerous even with one arm broken, but not two. He landed neatly, though, and crouched, as though he was ready to launch himself again at the vampire from that position.
Paracelsus didn’t give him the chance. He went leaping into the forest instead, his head lowered and his voice floating mockingly back. “Umbridge!”
There was silence, then. A wounded vampire would go even more softly than normal.
Draco shook his head, a little dazed, both by the pace of events and by the sense of the way he was slowly coming back to himself after watching them. He turned to Potter. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Potter, and reached up to scratch the wound on the side of his throat. The blood had already clotted, Draco saw. Probably werewolf magic. They would want to heal quickly, after battles and wounds that fleeing prey might inflict on them. “Do you think that last name he called is true?”
Draco inhaled quietly, and considered. He knew that Umbridge had been demoted from her exalted position after the war, but left in the Ministry. He knew that she probably had a grudge against Potter the size of a planet. He wondered why she would choose him as her messenger, though. He had believed much the same things as she had during fifth year, and served as one of her Inquisitors.
But maybe the answer was the same as the answer for Invisible Heldeson and Minister Hinsley. They didn’t care much about Draco at all. Potter was the focus, the problem. Draco was their way of trying to provide a solution.
Still…
“If it is true, I can’t believe she would have the same motive as either of the other two,” he said at last, carefully. “She doesn’t care about Minister Hinsley’s son. And she could never be involved in Unspeakable politics. She’s too loud and noticeable for that.”
Potter nodded. “So what we have is competing agendas, maybe. Multiple things they hoped you would do. Multiple promises traded, and maybe people involving themselves after the fact. It would explain some things.” He looked at Draco intently. “The clumsy way they seem to be manipulating you, the late explanations. The plan never went as it should because too many hands were in the same pot.”
“Yes,” Draco said. “That would make sense.” Agreeing with Potter was almost as strange as watching him wrestle a vampire, but both seemed to be required in this case.
“Then perhaps we should do some investigation, before we settle on a way of helping you,” said Potter, clasping his hands and flexing his arms. “Now that I don’t have a Ministry spy, we’ll have to do the looking on our own. Up for it?”
Draco raised his hand to his face, startled by the grin on his own mouth. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
Chapter Seventeen.
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