Title: Keep This Wolf

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:

THEREis 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.

Keep This Wolf

Chapter One—Bloody The Circle

"Unspeakable Malfoy?"

Draco raised his head. He'd been studying his fingers in his lap for too long a time, he knew. The sharp tone scraping along the edge of Invisible Heldeson's bland voice told him so.

It was the only thing that would tell him so. Invisibles were the highest ranks among the Unspeakables, and Miriam Heldeson hadn't earned her rank by being highly emotional. She sat behind her desk with a face like still water and perfectly tailored grey robes that would only flow around her when she moved, because they wouldn't dare do anything else. The surface of her desk was free of anything except the discreet plate that announced her rank; personal mementoes were another weakness.

"Yes, Invisible," said Draco, and his voice was perfect. It didn't need to be, since he had already revealed his emotions, but he wanted it to be, and so it was.

"You can pay attention, then." Heldeson handed him the file across the desk. "This is the file on Tyr Thornsberry. Scion to Fenrir Greyback."

"Scion?" Draco raised his eyebrows as he took the file. Scions were werewolves bitten and then trained by a certain other werewolf, held so closely and so intensely that some of the mentor's personality and looks were stamped on them. Scions usually carried on a werewolf leader's "work" after they died, whether that was living wild in the woods, trying to integrate werewolves into wizarding society, or running about and biting normal people. Draco flipped the file open and scanned the first page, finding, as he'd expected, that Thornsberry had changed his first name not long after Greyback's bite.

"Yes," said Heldeson. "Greyback bit him sixteen years ago. We did not know until after Thornsberry was arrested for attempting to bite the Minister's son that he was the Scion."

Draco nodded. He knew Greyback had been killed in battle five years ago. That had been all over the newspapers, impossible to escape even if you did spend most of your time buried up to the nose in files that weren't supposed to exist in the Department with the cloudiest reputation in the Ministry.

"The attack on the Minister's son was revenge, then," Draco said.

Heldeson didn't respond. Getting that far was elementary reasoning, the kind expected of Unspeakable apprentices before their initiation.

Draco passed slowly through the file. Unlike some of his colleagues, he couldn't absorb all the information he needed to know with a glance. He had to read more thoroughly, for comprehension. He knew that Lucius had lamented that sometimes, would have liked a prodigy for a son.

But Draco had achieved what he was in spite of his name, for his mind and his memory and his familiarity with the Dark Arts and his ability to dance along the edge of temptation without succumbing to the lure of any kind of magic. Invisible Heldeson herself had been the one to appear in his office late one night and offer the training to him.

Draco laid the file down when he came to the last page. "I had thought that ordinary werewolves would want to distance themselves from Thornsberry," he murmured, and looked into the Invisible's eyes.

Heldeson would not display emotion, and Draco doubted even Professor Snape could have penetrated her Occlumency shields, but she lifted her head. "This is not an ordinary werewolf."

Only one person in the wizarding world—well, perhaps two now that Draco knew Thornsberry, due to be released from Azkaban in a month, was Greyback's Scion—fit that description. Draco was too well-bred to sigh, even without his training.

He looked one more time at the last page of the file, the only one that included a photograph of Thornsberry as he had looked before he was sent to Azkaban. He was a solid man, with corded muscles and a tattoo of a dark chain on one upper right shoulder. His hair was short, as was his beard, both blond with strong marks of grey. His eyes were the amber-yellow usually only acquired when the werewolf spent too much time in communion with his beast.

"I will go," said Draco, and he rose from the chair and bowed to Heldeson. One didn't need to, but he was high enough up in the ranks to make it a gesture of respect, and he wanted to let her know that he knew she had done all she could to aid him.

Draco turned and left the Invisible's office with long strides, letting the door fall gently shut behind him. His face would reveal nothing of what was going on behind it, as always, but his mind buzzed and burned.

Harry Potter was no ordinary werewolf. Draco Malfoy was no ordinary choice for a negotiator.

There was no reason for the Ministry to reach into the bowels of the Ministry and pluck out an Unspeakable whose talent lay with disarming and rebuilding Dark artifacts, rather than diplomacy, to change Harry Potter's declared intention of taking Thornsberry into his pack. No reason that would be apparent on the surface, at least. But if his father would be disappointed in some respects with what Draco had become, Draco hoped that he would not be disappointed in Draco's general level of intelligence. If there was no obvious reason, there would be many less obvious.

Draco had abandoned the game of politics his father played because he had found something more interesting, an opportunity more seductive. But he still remembered the board, the pieces, the movements.

And how not to be a piece himself.

Harry stood with his eyes closed, his arms folded and his crossed hands clutching his elbows. He didn't hold his wand, not yet. The person—the werewolf—across the circle from him did.

Harry had offered that particular advantage when June Norcom had agreed to duel with him, and settle their dispute that way. It was the only reason she had agreed at all, actually. Harry was so good at defensive and offensive magic both, now, that Norcom would normally have chosen open debate, or at least claws and teeth.

She would have the right to begin the duel with her wand in her hand, and five seconds when Harry would not strike at her.

Fool.

Harry heard the countdown to the beginning of the duel start outside the circle. He turned his head in that direction, unnecessary when his ears now brought him so many keener sounds, but he wanted to let them know he was listening. That he was right here, that he hadn't retreated into his head and abandoned them.

They reached the end of the count and shouted the beginning. Harry heard Norcom's breath draw in to begin the spell.

Harry opened his eyes, and moved.

He had promised not to strike at her; he had never promised to stand still. He heard Norcom's startled shout as Harry bounded off to the side, moving with werewolf speed and wizard flexibility, rushing almost straight up the side of the single tree included within the confines of the dueling ring. Harry hit the first branch, swung himself up, stood for a second with bark under his bare toes, and then launched himself from it straight at her.

Norcom cried a hasty curse. It went past Harry with a stinging sound. But it didn't actually sting, and that made all the difference.

Harry had once ridden Firebolts, and this wasn't harder. He hit the ground with his feet, propelled himself up with a twist, and hit Norcom with a Leg-Locker while she was still scrambling to focus on him and paralyze him with her own spell. Harry watched a bit indifferently as her knees locked and she fell over. Yes, perhaps she would be humiliated to be defeated by such a simple jinx. On the other hand, Harry didn't really want to damage any of his pack.

"Do you yield?" Harry asked, stepping forwards so he could put his wand against Norcom's throat.

She glared up at him. June Norcom had been turned when she was young enough that her beast had grown along with her, and she had bright brown eyes and silvery hair that marked her out as exotic to some wizards, but wouldn't reveal her as a werewolf to anyone who didn't already know.

"You bastard," she said. "You never intended to play fair."

"I kept the rules of the game," Harry said, and smiled at her. Norcom endured that gaze longer than he thought she would before looking away.

"Yes, fine, I yield," Norcom said. Before Harry could move away and lower his wand, she added, "But you might want to think about what it says that so many of the pack don't want to adopt Thornsberry!"

"Certainly I've thought about it," Harry said, cocking his head in the invitation for her to meet his gaze again. She didn't do that, and Harry shrugged and went on. "And I invited anyone who objected to meet me in the dueling circle."

"You—you must have known that you would win." Norcom scowled at the ground the way she wouldn't dare at him. "You were only choosing the kind of contest where you would always have the advantage!"

Harry waited some more, for a more real objection, but nothing happened. He sighed and glanced at the members of his pack who surrounded the circle. They flinched and turned their eyes away, heads bowed, shoulders hunched.

"Of course I chose the kind of contest that would lead me to the advantage," he said, and tried to keep his voice level. When he let his growl into his words, it always worked out differently than he thought it would. "Wouldn't any pack leader do the same? Or must I be alone among them in trying to lose, because of what I was before?"

Silence. But most of his pack had been wizards, and most of them had been changed in the aftermath of the second war with Voldemort, and most of them had some idea about his status as a "hero" that meant he should "play fair" while everyone else was allowed to do whatever they wanted.

"If I was that kind of weak leader, none of you would follow me," said Harry, and reached down, sliding his nails along Norcom's left forearm. She flinched, but Harry had cut her in a place that wouldn't impede her from doing daily tasks, and the wound would have healed by the next full moon. He lifted his hand, shaking it, and blood soared away from his fingernails to land on the ground and the edge of the circle.

The ritual requirements for the shedding of first blood invoked, Harry stalked out of the dueling circle and away from Norcom. That meant turning his back on her, but although he heard a little indrawing of breath as if she was tempted, she didn't strike at him. She knew the rules as well as he did.

Harry snarled to himself, and one of the older werewolves who had been about to come up to him stepped aside. Harry couldn't say that he regretted it. Sarah Woolwine always had some kind of "problem" she needed solved, namely her jealousy of people who were younger and faster than she was.

Harry flung himself along the woodland path he walked most frequently. The Forbidden Forest had its darker trails even for a werewolf, the ones that would challenge him, and this one was on the brink of a challenge. Harry walked it with his eyes and his head snapping back and forth, and things that had come up to the edge of the trees shrank back again.

He had become a werewolf when a woman who had come to the Ministry for her Wolfsbane too late on the night of the full moon had bitten him during her transformation. Harry hadn't liked it, but he'd dealt with it.

And that meant deciding what "rules" he was going to honor, and which ones he wasn't. When he had come to the Forbidden Forest, after a few failed attempts to live in the wizarding world and with other packs, he had immediately decided it didn't make sense that the current leader ruled. He was an old man, not even wise, but manipulated by others who had thought that his fading strength made him a convenient puppet. As long as he was in charge and could win brute challenges, the powers behind the throne didn't have to fight.

Harry had been told the rules of the pack by these people, but they were too greedy and too quick, and didn't check their lies with each other. And so he had learned that he could challenge the leader and remove him only on the night of a full moon, the day before a full moon, only after his first hunt with the pack, when the leader agreed to let him, when the pack held a vote, and half a dozen other ways.

The "rules" of a pack were a lot like the "rules" of the Ministry and the way it treated the Boy-Who-Lived: they could change. So Harry had chosen his own time, a battlefield that favored him—the leader, consumed with arrogance and wanting to prove that he didn't fear the Chosen One, had been easy to persuade—and an easy way to win. He didn't even have to kill the old leader, the way that werewolf challenges were supposedly to the death. He just had to win.

He did, and he became leader, and although he had never cared much for controlling others, it had become clear since he'd been a werewolf that either he did that or they controlled him. And Harry Potter had had enough of that.

He reached the end of the path, in a clearing of tall, strong oaks with black bark, and leaped easily from the ground and to the nearest branch. He pulled himself up to lie flat on it, and looked down into the trampled grass and earth of the clearing.

Harry didn't care for a lot of the changes that had happened to him since he became a werewolf, but he loved the ease of movement in his new body, the power and quicksilver sliding of his muscles.

He rested his cheek on the bark and looked down. If the pattern of the stars—and now he sounded like a bloody centaur—held true, then Paracelsus would return any time.

There was a slight quiver in the tree next to him. Harry rolled to the side, dropping fast, and heard something slam into the branch where he had been. He heard the soft curse, too, and rolled to his feet, grinning, tilting his head back so that he could regard the disappointed vampire clinging above him.

"Don't you ever get tired of that?" he asked.

"Your blood would be delicious," Paracelsus said, which Harry supposed was all the answer he was going to get. Paracelsus rearranged himself on the new branch where Harry had lain, and sniffed at the bark as if that would let him absorb some of Harry's blood and warmth through his nose.

Harry whuffled, a noise that never failed to annoy a lot of people, and leaned against the half-boulder behind him. "What news?"

"Where is my payment?" Paracelsus turned his head, and Harry caught a glimpse of his pale face. Paracelsus had lived long enough to resemble a giant insect, light and dry, rather than a mammal, but right now he was trying the effect of a pout.

"You had it already," Harry said. "Now, if you don't mind, the news. Or I'll go away and ask the centaurs to cast my fortune for the next month from the stars after all."

That made Paracelsus come to attention, as he knew it would. For whatever reason, Paracelsus hated centaurs, and not just because they made annoying, vague pronouncements, which Harry considered a good reason. He had tried to explain the genealogy of his hatred to Harry once, but Harry had hit him with acorns until he stopped.

"The Ministry is sending someone to negotiate with you," said Paracelsus. "To persuade you not to accept Thornsberry into your pack, I am certain. They would prefer that he remain isolated so that he will commit some other error and they can safely kill him."

Harry grimaced. He would be the last to admit that Thornsberry was an appealing packmate. Fenrir Greyback's get and Scion. Who would willingly spend time with him?

But Harry was a leader in a way that most werewolf packs didn't recognize anymore, and he was confident of his ability to stamp his own personality and traits on Thornsberry if he could live with him long enough. Hell, anyone he bit and trained would become his own Scion. Harry hadn't done it so far because he disliked the thought of spreading his infection, but he was capable of it.

And he wasn't going to offer that particular service to Thornsberry for Thornsberry's own sake. It was more for the sake of werewolves everywhere, to show that violent werewolf criminals could be reformed and that the Ministry didn't need to follow them around prosecuting them after they were out of Azkaban.

Harry's first attempts to live with people after he was bitten had failed because he'd still been trying to pretend he was a normal wizard. Now he knew better. He'd never been normal, and wouldn't have been without the effects of the bite, either. It was better for everyone when he stopped pretending, and wouldn't let the people around him get away with their comfortable delusions, either. Witches and wizards like Norcom thought it would be better if he did.

But they were wrong.

"Who are they sending to negotiate?" Harry asked. This was the real information he had sent Paracelsus to infiltrate the Ministry and discover. The general idea of what was coming, he could have got from the centaurs' circle-casting, or maybe even the ramblings of his own packmate who claimed to be a Seer, and did sometimes speak true prophecies.

"Draco Malfoy." Paracelsus hung upside-down by three limbs from the branch, watching Harry to see what would happen.

Harry hoped he liked hilarity. The laughter struck him so hard that he had to sit down. He bent over, whooping into the moss on the floor of the clearing, and was aware of the more-than-slightly-baffled silence from above.

But only three of Paracelsus's limbs were on the tree branch. There was one free, and Harry reached up and easily caught the rock he tossed, an egg-sized stone that could have broken his skull.

"Weak tactics," Harry noted, and crushed the rock with an easy motion of his hand. When he opened his fist, dust dribbled out.

"It wouldn't be if you were less strong," Paracelsus said, and stuck his tongue out at Harry, and leaped from the branch, vanishing into the Forest.

Harry remained where he was for a moment, watching the grass sway and smelling the scent of stagnant water from a pond not far away. It was possible that Malfoy was in on some kind of complicated plot to try to stop him from giving shelter to Thornsberry, and Harry would need to be more careful than ever around him.

But he also thought it unlikely. Malfoy was probably as surprised about this as he was, as uneasy.

Harry smiled as he stood. Or more uneasy. Because Malfoy probably doesn't know yet why I'm so confident that I can accept Thornsberry into the pack, and probably doesn't want to be here.

If the Ministry was determined to set a negotiator on him, though, Harry could have had worse opponents. He had changed in the years since Hogwarts, and not merely from the bite. Malfoy would find him no easy challenge if he intended to take Harry down.

And it might be interesting to see how I can challenge him, Harry thought, leaping from the edge of the clearing and making his casual way through the Forest, back to his pack.