Chapter Twenty-One of 'Keep This Wolf'- Set the Trap
Chapter Twenty.
Title: Keep This Wolf (21/?)
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 Twenty-One-Set the Trap
“I still think that your little trap isn’t going to work.”
Draco smiled smugly at Sarah Woolwine, pulling his hand back so that it was cradled against his side. The crystal cube thrummed and glowed for a moment, hot enough to make Draco wince. But he had endured its version of branding before. This was minor compared to what he had gone through when he established his control over it and bent its maze to his will.
“You have a much more smug look on your face than you used to.” Woolwine cocked her head at him, and then moved a step forwards, nose working as she scented. “What does it come from? Do you think you’ve bested me, because I proved that my mind could be caught in your trap? It would not happen to our leader.”
Draco wanted to laugh and tell her what a change that was from the tune she had been singing when he first came to the Forest, but he had better things to do. He gathered the cube up against him again and shrugged. “Your leader isn’t the one I’m trying to catch.”
After staring at him and sniffing for a moment, Woolwine seemed to accept that. She nodded curtly and turned away. “Then you’ll excuse me while I coordinate the defense of the pack’s territory around-that thing.” She looked at the cube as she spoke, and then away again. “It’s going to take a while.”
She disappeared into the bushes with the same steady lope that Potter practiced, and Draco looked back into the cube, turning it over. He still wondered what his ancestors would say if they knew how he had changed his heritage, but he suspected the far greater crime was abandoning that heritage in the first place-thinking it was something to be ashamed of, and that he could do nothing better than to become a mindless slave.
He owed Potter for rescuing him from that.
Draco scowled and shook his head. He didn’t owe Potter for that, and he refused to start thinking he did. Yes, Potter had been helpful, and he had seemed interested in making sure that Draco knew how helpful. But that only meant a debt in the way that Gryffindors thought of it. Potter would want to make sure that Draco kept his part in the bargain they had made, and didn’t betray his pack. He wouldn’t press the debt crushingly down on Draco’s neck the way a Slytherin would, or taunt him about it.
That only makes it more attractive to owe him than it would someone from my House. It doesn’t mean that the debt doesn’t exist.
Draco touched his forehead, wondering if he was going mental from the stress of recovering his true self, or just breaking from the Unspeakables and their forced training. He owed it to himself, not Potter, to stay sane and focused right now, or he wouldn’t get his revenge. Perhaps he should rest.
He made his way to the guest quarters, although he wondered until he touched the door whether it was still assigned to him, or whether his things had been moved elsewhere. But when he opened the door, everything that belonged to him was still there. Not even the warded trunk looked as if it had been touched.
Potter’s infected the whole pack with that Gryffindor sensibility, Draco thought idly, and sat down on the bed. He wouldn’t have resisted the temptation to at least look around the rooms of someone who had been an enemy. Who knew what interesting things they could have lying about?
Draco smiled a little and lay down, then sat back up and pulled off his boots. Before, when he was an Unspeakable, that would have been something he did automatically; he was trained to be efficient, not to waste time with small chores. When he was Draco Malfoy of Malfoy Manor, he would have had a house-elf do it because he refused to be less than comfortable.
Now, who was he?
I can find out after I have a nap, Draco decided firmly, and closed his eyes.
*
“I don’t think you can trust him, my lord. And that means that you can’t trust him if he volunteered to help you with the defense of our territory.”
June’s muscles were tense, and she didn’t take her eyes off Paracelsus as she slowly circled the cage. He turned to face her all the time, moving as if he had a greased table under his feet. His mouth was wide, his fangs visible. He had made no response to any words except a cackle.
“Oh,” said Harry, and smiled when June glanced at him. “I never said that he would be a willing part of our defenses.”
He had wanted June to investigate Paracelsus’s scent because she had the best nose for emotions in the pack, and should have been able to tell if he was lying should he volunteer something. June now tightened her shoulders in the way that indicated wary interest, even before her scent hit him. “What are you going to do to him, sir?”
That was better than my lord, Harry supposed. Maybe someday he could make June and Sarah call him “Harry” with respect and mean it. “I’m going to make him a magical barrier.”
June took a step backwards. Harry grinned at her. “Smart woman,” he said softly, and then began to walk in a circle around the cage himself, tracing his wand up and down.
Paracelsus stopped turning, but began to laugh, with soft madness, as the bars grew razored and pressed in. He laughed as they cut his skin and made the blood flow. He laughed as the blood soaked the floor of the cage, and when Harry used his magic to gather it up in twining streams and sent it flowing into the air outside the cage.
He didn’t laugh when Harry tried to scoop up a fallen drop on his finger. Then, he lunged.
Harry fell back a single step, and he stood free and Paracelsus had cut himself more than ever. Paracelsus lay there, his body curled, his eyes so hard and hot that Harry could feel them like roasting pebbles on his skin. “June, leave us,” Harry murmured, without taking his gaze from the vampire.
He heard the padding of her feet as she complied, almost running as she headed into the Forest. Well, that made sense. He had unnerved her, he knew. He would apologize for that later. For the moment, what mattered most was that Paracelsus had proved Harry’s theory.
“You controlled yourself surprisingly well earlier for a vampire in the throes of blood-thrall,” Harry told him.
Paracelsus leaned into the nearest bar, and more blood spilled down his arm. “I would not now, if I were free,” he said in a breathless little voice.
“No, I know it,” said Harry. “But that was what Umbridge promised you, wasn’t it? My blood. She wants to kill me, and none of the others do. But if she could have you do it, then that would probably satisfy her.”
Paracelsus turned in a small circle that, this time, held his arms and legs and even the sliver of his chest that showed between his arms-Harry had almost thought forelegs-away from the blades Harry had placed around him. “You have mistaken how dangerous she is. How dangerous anyone with a grudge is.” Paracelsus looked at him again, and Harry could have fallen down those dark tunnels if he wasn’t warier. “I thought we were master and prey.”
Harry held his head back, and watched how Paracelsus’s attention settled on his throat. “Why me?” he had to ask. “There are dozens of werewolves you could have chosen, even werewolves who are pack leaders and have the magic that subdues or summons a pack. You didn’t have to choose me.”
“I was curious about you,” Paracelsus whispered, and curled his fingers on the floor of the cage the way that Harry had curled his fingers on the Ministry floor when he was confronting Umbridge. “I wanted to see what kind of werewolf the Great Harry Potter would make.”
Harry managed to keep himself from closing his eyes and sighing in disgust, but it was hard. Of course that was it. Even the vampire who Harry had thought he had a strange kind of companionship with, someone who would sometimes do what Harry asked and sometimes try to kill him and take his blood, was only another fan interested in the Great Boy-Who-Lived.
“And then I smelled your blood for the first time, and I knew the thrall would come for me,” Paracelsus continued in a slightly wondering voice. “I don’t remember the last time that happened, not well. Just the passion, and the screams.”
Harry opened his eyes again. Here was another strange thing. “You could feel yourself going into blood-thrall, and you didn’t leave?” He knew that vampires called it blood-thrall because they would usually be enslaved to the taste of that chosen target’s blood until they killed them. Harry had never heard of one who would welcome that weakness with open arms.
“I smelled your blood,” said Paracelsus again, and Harry suspected that was all the sense he would get out of him.
“Well, now you’re going to help me defend what you almost destroyed,” said Harry. He knew it was useless to appeal to Paracelsus, or accuse him of treachery. What was done was done, and a vampire didn’t have loyalty to anything but its hunger. “Come, Paracelsus. Give me some more of your blood.”
Paracelsus turned and leaned against the bars again. Harry watched him with so many complicated emotions in his mind, so many memories. Paracelsus bounding through the Forest, flinging rocks at Harry’s head that he could have killed him with and laughing hysterically when he failed. Paracelsus lunging at him and demanding his blood, or the low-voiced monster he had become the last time before Harry sent him away to spy at the Ministry. The way he had danced lightly, freely, among the trees and just seemed another kind of fellow magical creature, wanting to live free of the restrictions of the wizarding world.
He was all of them at once. That was the truth. And he was a vampire in the throes of blood-thrall, who would attack Harry mercilessly if he was free, and was vulnerable to commands from his chosen prey right now, in the distant hope of getting a taste of Harry’s blood. This was why vampires despised the thrall. If it was deep enough, a child could command them to set themselves on fire with a sunlight spell, and they would do it. It hadn’t been deep enough until now, when Harry had Paracelsus caged and near enough to him to smell his blood and sweat.
Now it was.
“I wish that it could have been different,” Harry said, with a single inclination of his head to the fellow magical creature that he had thought Paracelsus was.
Paracelsus crouched now with his back to Harry. His body was bare, his clothes shredded like his skin by the bars, and the slashes were bloodless. The blood that Harry had collected was from victims, transformed into something that could sustain Paracelsus only by the magic of a vampire’s veins, and he had none left.
He will be starving.
Harry quietly raised wards around the cage that only he could penetrate, and then stepped back and away. He knew he couldn’t have trusted Paracelsus, especially after he had betrayed Harry to his face and tried to attack and drain him, but still there was mourning in his heart.
*
“What are you doing?”
Potter glanced over his shoulder, looking surprised as Draco stormed up to him. “Defending my territory,” he replied, and smeared another handful of blood on the tree next to him. It shivered, black and wet, and Draco thought he saw the branches twist, as if the tree would like to get away from the blood.
“You’re a fool,” Draco said, and reached for the heavy bell that hung on his belt, the one made of copper with a clapper of crystal. When he rang it once, the blood glowed with a deep violet color that only one kind had. Draco shook his head, in a dazed sort of awe. “Using the blood of a vampire, as though you can create wards out of that.”
“I never said they were wards,” Potter replied, and handed the bucket of blood he held off to his assistant, a werewolf Draco didn’t know, who looked revolted, but accepted the task. He turned to face Draco fully, and his head projected forwards and his eyes glowed, making him look more like a wolf about to spring than he had even in the Ministry. “What’s the matter? Is it going to interfere with the crystal maze that you have in mind?”
“No,” said Draco stiffly. He couldn’t believe that Potter had lived this long as the leader of a werewolf pack without grasping some basic lore. “But the blood of a vampire gives the characteristics of that particular vampire to the land, or trees, that it’s smeared on. At least, when used in quantities like this.” Glancing down, he saw enough blood in the bucket as the werewolf passed him to assume that Potter had drained Paracelsus. “Do you really want the power of a traitorous vampire surrounding you when you go forth to do battle?”
Potter’s tongue lolled in place of laughter. “Even the blood of a vampire of in blood-thrall to me will do that?”
Draco straightened up. “I saw the way he resisted your commands. If he was in blood-thrall to you, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Potter shrugged, and now his face was grim again. Draco wondered if it was the treachery of one he had considered a friend that had brought him down. That made him even more of a fool than Draco had thought, to reckon a vampire a friend at any point.
Then again, you once would have said the same thing about people who thought they had werewolf allies.
Draco dismissed the notion impatiently. Yes, he had wasted the last few years of his life. It would not profit Draco if Potter wasted what could be the last few days of his own.
“I don’t think he was in blood-thrall at the time,” Potter said. “Not completely. He is now. He turned around and slashed his skin on the bars of that cage when I told him to, and gave me the blood, even after I’d begun collecting it.”
Draco stared in silence at Potter. Now he thought he understood the dampness of Potter’s emotions. He wasn’t the sort who would enjoy that kind of power. He would accept it and take it up, the way he had the leadership of the pack, but Draco thought that was more about wanting to live by his own rules and keep others safe than about wanting the pleasure of command.
“That’s blood-thrall,” Draco said at last. “But he should have come to you first, in that case, and not gone to Umbridge.”
“Umbridge is the only one who wants to kill me, instead of just get me out of the way or use me in some kind of experiment,” Potter said simply. “She apparently offered Paracelsus the chance to taste my blood, as long as he drained me fully and didn’t leave me alive. He accepted. Now, I think, he’s gone deeper than that.” He looked at the blood on the trees.
Draco shook his head. He knew the stories, as well as Potter did, of vampires doing crazy deeds and putting themselves in danger to rescue favored prey. As far as he knew, though, no one had ever tried to use the blood of a vampire in that mental state to protect themselves. Draco had no idea what it would do.
“If something goes wrong,” said Draco, “the way it may, even despite your precautions, I trust that you have some idea of how to get the blood quickly off the trees and the ground and away from your pack?”
“Trust me for that, Malfoy,” said Potter, with a steady gaze over his shoulder. “I won’t let anything happen to someone I want to protect.”
Which probably includes me. But Draco refused to feel gratified by that. He could follow Potter’s logic. If Paracelsus wanted to preserve him alive until he could drink his blood, then the vampire’s blood should make the trees also defend Potter, and give them extra power to do so. But he didn’t know exactly if it would work, and that made Draco edgy in the same way that trying to modify an artifact before he fully understood it did.
“You realize that we’re going to have be out on the front lines, so that we can use the cube, and thus out from under the trees that have the blood on them?” he tried one more time.
Potter stared at him. “What do you mean? I’m going to be out in front, holding the cube, and the rest of you will be behind me.”
Stupid Gryffindor. Draco’s irritation was the only thing that gave him the courage to stop closer to Potter, ignoring the impact of those glowing eyes. “I’m the one who modified the artifact, and it belongs to my bloodline. I have to be the one to hold it.”
“You didn’t say that.” Potter shifted his position restlessly, and glanced over his shoulder at the werewolf still daubing the bark.
“I’m saying it now,” said Draco.
“Then both of us will be there,” Potter said, and gave him another intense look. “It doesn’t mean that you’ll walk out there and face the danger on your own.”
Draco opened his mouth, then shut it. He didn’t need to contest this. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? The most powerful werewolf beside him, to help just in case the Ministry had come up with some means to get past the cube, or they attacked before Draco could really set the trap?
Of course it was what he had wanted. That was why he had said “we,” referring to Potter and himself.
But as he watched Potter pacing in a circle, answering questions that people brought him and setting up the pack in defensive positions, he wondered if he wouldn’t have felt better if Potter would have stayed behind, ringed by the trees that might specially protect him.
It was ridiculous to feel that way. But unlike the Unspeakables, Draco was coming to accept that ridiculous things might still matter.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
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