Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Keep This Wolf'- Slice the Unspeakables
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Title: Keep This Wolf (26/?)
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-Six--Slice the Unspeakables
"Pack leader." Sarah was loping alongside them before Harry could think about twice about the implications. She had seen both of them emerge from Harry's house at the same time, and her nose would tell her even more than their mussed clothes and hanging hair would. They had bathed, but then Draco had looked at Harry in that provocative way he had, and they'd ended up grinding against each other in the shower. That tended to get wet hair mussed.
Harry turned to Sarah. Her mouth was open, and Harry had the impression that he could see almost all the way down her throat. He gave her a mostly empty smile. "Yes?"
Sarah flickered her eyes at the ground as though she would kneel for a second, but then she pulled back and sighed at him. "Nothing, pack leader. Except that the pack is starting to wonder when the Unspeakables we captured are going to be sentenced."
"You've done well to capture and hold them for this long given their unpredictable magic," Draco murmured behind Harry.
Sarah canted her head back, and her face was strange. "Thank you. Although it was easy once we separated them from their artifacts."
Harry reached back and gave Draco's arm a rough tap. Draco, from his shadowed half-smile, understood what Harry was implying perfectly well.
This is the kind of diplomacy that he does know how to practice. Well done.
They moved through the Forest easily, with Harry's nose telling him that a few members of his pack were escorting him. They moved tentatively and cautiously. They would have smelled the blood, and noted that Paracelsus was gone, and that the enemy that had brought the moon disk with her was also gone.
If any of them objected to Draco becoming their pack leader's lover, they were smart enough not to say so right now.
"Sir," said Sarah abruptly, and came to a stop. Harry saw why when he moved through the trees into one of the small clearings they sometimes used for the starts of hunts.
The Unspeakables stood back-to-back inside a prowling circle of the pack. Even though none of them could fully change into werewolves unless the moon called them, they had enough strength and muscle to be fully intimidating to human-formed people.
Especially people who are trained to regard all lycanthropy as a disease and fate worse than death, Harry thought, and wondered idly if the Ministry would ever understand what a weakness that was, not training their people to battle monsters that could infect them, as they understood it.
He strode forwards, and only needed a moment of looking to spot Invisible Heldeson. She either wasn't wearing a glamour or an artifact that could cast one, or it had been stripped away. She stood a little back from the front of the group, in the middle, as though that would shelter her from prying eyes.
Harry let his teeth flash, and reached out one beckoning hand. Lisa and June showed up from behind her, and Heldeson moved towards him.
She was good, Harry had to admit. She managed to give the impression that she was just naturally drifting in that direction, not that she was being herded or driven. But they both knew the truth, and her eyes, as she halted before him, were burning with a pale hatred.
Harry lifted his head, baring his throat in a gesture that his pack would understand as one of contempt. It didn't matter if the Unspeakables did or not. He was here to perform confidence for his pack, not for them. He heard Draco gasp behind him, and suspected Draco understood, as well.
Although perhaps Sarah whispering to him filled him in.
"You invaded my people's territory," Harry said quietly. "I know that you might have come at the behest of Dolores Umbridge. Or you might have come at the behest of Minister Hinsley, who is worried about my efforts to rescue one of my people from being made an outcast immediately after his release from Azkaban Prison. I will know which one it was."
"The Unspeakables do not act at the behest of anyone but themselves," said Heldeson, without turning a hair. "You should know that, Mr. Potter, after your years as an Auror."
Harry made a little twitch with one hand, and Lisa and June began to growl. Heldeson showed a sign of reaction to the werewolves behind her for the first time. Her eyes flickered in a way that let Harry know her ears would have been laid flat if she was a wolf, and her scent became a thick chain pleated with fear.
"I know that you came here this time having given an artifact to someone else," Harry said, and nodded to the small bag that Draco held. As far as Harry could tell, the full moon artifact wasn't dangerous and couldn't compel a change except in the hands of someone actively hostile to a werewolf, but he still didn't want to touch it. "And I know that Dolores Umbridge is not an Unspeakable."
"We keep the membership of our Department secret," said Heldeson, and it really did sound as though she was going to go through it and recite the lie with a serene face.
"He has a source that came from the Department of Mysteries," said Draco, moving forwards to stand beside Harry. "And I can tell him that Dolores Umbridge was never an Unspeakable."
Heldeson's hatred for Harry was nothing next to the loathing she showed Draco, although it was there more in the lines of her face and the tightness of her hands than anything else. Harry considered intervening, and then held himself back. He would weaken Draco both in his enemies' eyes and the pack's if Harry did everything for him.
Besides, Draco was handling himself just fine.
"You have no idea what loyalty is, do you?" Heldeson whispered, and her loathing was unbridled now. "You have no idea what we offered you, and what you now have spurned. The priceless gift that will never come again--"
"Spare me the dramatics," said Draco, and he looked bored, as though he would have lounged against a tree if any were close enough. Harry wanted to hug him. "I betrayed the people who betrayed me. That's not a crime under any laws I'm aware of."
Heldeson shut up for a second, and Draco swung the bag with the artifact again. "Tell me what Umbridge was doing with it."
Heldeson opened her mouth in a way that Harry knew meant she would deny the request. He caught her eye, and growled.
Either the growl was more impressive than his packmates', or Heldeson heard a greater threat in it because of what Harry had been before his turning. She paled and looked away from him, smothering her face in her hair.
"We let her have it because that was her price," she whispered. "She was the one with the ability to move Minister Hinsley and have him give his permission for raiding here, with the Ministry glancing the other way. And in return, she asked to come along and to take an artifact with her that could force a werewolf, even a powerful pack leader, to transform."
"I never knew there was such an artifact," said Draco, collectedly, as always. Harry flicked an eyebrow at him, and Draco smiled once before turning to Heldeson again. "Where did you come by it? Why didn't you give it to me when I came here to negotiate with Harry's pack?"
There was still an undertone of hurt in his voice, Harry thought, and a smell of it radiating off him like steam rising from a swamp, although he didn't think either Draco or Heldeson were aware of the smell. But Heldeson picked up on the hurt itself, and used it as a weapon.
"You think that you were ever important enough for that, Mr. Malfoy?" She glared straight at Draco as she spoke, and Draco flinched, probably from the lack of the Unspeakable title he had worked and fought for. "Your orders were to go and negotiate and do as you were told, once you received new orders. You were not to know about the existence of an artifact that powerful, or wish to use it if you had." She looked between Draco and Harry. "Your failure to control your desires is evident."
"Of course she would say something like that," Harry said, casually and loudly, making Draco and Heldeson both turn to face him, although with Heldeson Harry thought it was against her will. "Why not? If she can hurt you at the same time as you're humiliating her, then maybe she can think she's won."
"What was wrong with what I said?" Heldeson, give her credit, was overcoming her fear, and gave him a statue-like glance. Harry wondered if he would have to mime biting her to bring the fear back.
"You gave a priceless artifact to someone who blackmailed you into coming along," Harry said. "That doesn't sound to me like you value people with either self-control or your own Unspeakables."
Heldeson tightened her muscles as if against ropes for a second, but didn't say a word. Draco squeezed Harry's arm in return. Harry nodded to him, and faced Heldeson.
"You came here to capture a werewolf, any one of my pack, and take them back to the Department of Mysteries so you could torture them in the name of studying them? Is that right?"
A growl went up and down the scale out of the throats of his pack, and if Heldeson was too self-steadied now to flinch, that didn't apply to the rest of the Unspeakables. They huddled together, and Harry heard more than one whimper, nothing like the whimpers that even his pack would give in the face of fear or danger. They were harder than that. They had to be, given how many hated their very existence.
"That is right," said Heldeson, and gave him a thin smile. "And it's no good appealing to the Ministry. The Minister knows all about it, and he won't give you the indulgence of condemning us."
"Then he can't give you the indulgence of rescue, either," said Harry, and a slow chorus of howls rose from behind him.
Heldeson tilted her head slowly to the side. "I don't think that you would like to have us in your pack, if you turned us."
No. And you would probably either betray other werewolves, the way Umbridge would have, or go and take over a pack and use it against me.
"When I turn someone, I try to make it a gift," said Harry. "Umbridge took that away from me, but so did you. And so no, you're right, we're not going to turn you." He gestured, and his circling pack fell back from the edges of the clearing, then bunched tightly together in most places, leaving a path open that led into the heart of the forest. "We're going to hunt you instead."
"The purpose of a werewolf hunt is to turn someone," said an Unspeakable from behind Heldeson, in the dazed tones of a scholar trying to understand reality. Heldeson darted an angry glance at her, and she looked at the ground and pursed her lips. Harry shook his head. They might say they were so much better than werewolves in every way, but he would have tried to share and slow a packmate's fear and show why they didn't have to be afraid.
"No," said Harry. "Not always. When we hunt animals, it's to eat them. And in this case, it's a punishment." He smiled at Heldeson. "We can't turn into wolves without the full moon, you know. You have a chance. You'll run on foot through the woods. We'll follow--on foot. You have the ability to use your hands to defend yourselves, and we have the ability to use anything we like."
"You know that we might have artifacts we could use against you, too," said Heldeson, her voice small and quiet.
"Unlikely," said Harry. "When we took anything off you that smelled of magic, the way we took your wands."
"And he has an expert here, who could tell him if you did still have some artifacts," said Draco helpfully, stepping up behind Harry. He flicked his wand once, and a faint white light outlined the bodies of the Unspeakables, then bore down on their robes, hands, and faces. For a second, Harry thought that meant the presence of artifacts that his people had indeed missed, and tensed, although in that case, Invisible Heldeson would have been pretty stupid to brag about them.
But the white glow faded, and Draco shook his head at Harry. "They've got rid of them. Or had them all taken. You see," he went on, his gaze resting on Heldeson's face, "I did learn the sort of guard spell that they used on the doors of the Department of Mysteries so they could tell if someone was trying to sneak off with a priceless magical treasure. And it's still good."
Heldeson looked as if she would like to strangle Draco, and Harry intervened. "Do you want to come with us on the hunt? I don't know if you could keep up with us, but you're part of the pack. I do invite you along."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw June tense and lift her head to sniff. But either she could indeed smell the pack on Draco or she thought it worthwhile not to raise the issue right now, because she settled back on her haunches instead of saying anything.
"I want to know if you're going to kill them," Draco said, in a whisper that wouldn't have made sense unless he was getting used to how powerful a werewolf's ears were.
"No," said Harry. "Unless they try to harm a member of the pack again. We're going to chase them into dark places in the Forest, and leave them there."
"So that something else can kill them?" Draco blinked and tilted his head. "I didn't think you wanted other people to do your dirty work for you."
Harry was almost too pleased with Draco's calling other magical creatures "people" to answer the question. "It's not really that. We're giving them a sort of chance. Of course, they probably can't Apparate without their wands, which we aren't going to give back to them. But there's the tiny chance that they'll manage to live, and in that case, if they can get away from us and survive the Forest, we'll spare them."
"But the chance isn't large."
"No," said Harry, and gave him a small smile. "I'm afraid that someone else is going to have to rise to a high position within the Department of Mysteries, since Invisible Heldeson won't be returning."
"If you're asking me whether I want to go back and be your spy in the Ministry," Draco said flatly, "the answer is no."
"I would never ask you that," Harry said. "Not for a member of my pack." He rubbed the corner of his jaw along Draco's neck, leaving a long trail of scent that the right people would know how to interpret. "But do you want to come?"
"You're faster than a human on foot in this form even though you're not a wolf," said Draco, and Harry nodded, although it hadn't been a question. "No. I'll stay here."
Harry was about to question that, given that he would have thought Draco wanted to see vengeance enacted on his enemies, but then Draco gave him a long, slow smile. "I'll listen to what happens to them, though."
Harry kissed him hard enough on the lips to make Draco waver backwards a little and some of his people stare. Well, they would just have to put up with it. "I'll howl extra loud, just for you."
Then he turned around and faced Heldeson and the rest of the Unspeakables, and bared his teeth in a long, slow smile that made most of them pale. Heldeson didn't, but she also had her hands clenched hard enough in the sleeves of her robe to nearly rip the fabric, so Harry didn't think that counted.
"Run," he suggested pleasantly, and then raised his voice in a long, mocking, ululating howl.
The Unspeakables lasted thirty seconds before one of them broke and ran down the cleared path into the center of the Forbidden Forest. Heldeson went with them when June snapped at her heels, obviously not certain if Harry would keep his word. She wouldn't under similar circumstances, Harry knew.
And that was the problem with never being honest. You distrusted everyone around you at the same time.
The Unspeakables ran, and Harry and his pack followed, darting from shadow to shadow, howling when someone slowed down, hearing them trip over roots and cry out and try to catch themselves on trees and try to keep together, and failing at both tasks. And then the Unspeakables met the first of the dryads.
Back in camp, Harry hoped Draco was listening well.
*
Draco closed his eyes and focused. It wasn't that hard to pick out the sounds of the hunt above the normal noises of the Forbidden Forest, once he knew what he was listening for.
The werewolves coursed their prey, and the Unspeakables screamed and chattered with fear. And Draco thought he could hear the crunch of leaves beneath feet that were almost paws, and the sounds of desperate fingers reaching for a handhold on everything, the fear that drove them down one path competing with the common sense that wanted them to head back towards the edges of the Forest and the Apparition point.
And he knew the first scream. Invisible Heldeson, and from the sound of it, she had met something she couldn't manipulate.
Draco leaned back against the tree behind him, sated. He had vengeance. He had double vengeance, on someone who had tried to destroy him for her own, stupid reasons, as well as on the Department that had chewed him up and spat him out. He had a lover. He had his home, Malfoy Manor, back, whenever he chose to go.
Even a second home to stay in, if he wanted.
Draco grinned. Yes, he rather thought, even given Invisible Heldeson's years of taking advantage of him, that he had won this round.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
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